Business and design combination yields Facebook job for BBA Taylor Ward

Taylor Ward’s student experience has been tailor-made for success.

His joint major from the Beedie School of Business and the School of Interactive Arts and Technology combined a host of internships across North America with success at the global IxDA Student Design Challenge. It created a unique experience — one that has culminated in a coveted graduate role at Facebook.

Ward begins his role as a product designer at Facebook in San Francisco this fall on the back of a successful internship in Facebook’s Seattle office.

As an intern Interactive designer, he worked on high profile projects examining how users consume videos.

According to Ward, life at Facebook is everything you would imagine.

“The culture is a lot more open than I thought it would be, and everyone is passionate about what they are doing,” he says.

“As a young designer, it was really empowering being around these senior designers. And the office is like a playground— it’s a similar vibe to Google.”

The Facebook internship built upon Ward’s experience in previous intern roles at global advertising agencies in New York, Colorado and Vancouver.

In each one he gained invaluable experience and honed his design and business skills.

“Design and business come hand in hand in industry, and my education has given me a unique way of thinking,” he says.

“Business tends to be very grounded, realistic and procedural, while design is logical and creative. It’s two different streams of thinking, and I’ve gained a balance between them.”

Aside from internships, Ward set the pace at the prestigious global IxDA Student Design Challenge in 2015.

With a competition theme of envisioning the wearable city, he won gold for a novel shoe insole design that transforms kinetic energy from every step into potential electricity that can be used to power cities.

In addition to earning a prize package valued at more than $3,000, winning the competition was a pivotal moment in Ward’s career.

“IxDA is the project in my portfolio that changed everything for me,” he says. “It opened a lot of doors and got me into the internship programs at R/GA and Facebook.”