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Ahn (M.D.M. 鈥�06) seems too warm and approachable to be an agent of radical change. Yet those are the traits that she shares with her signature project, the Waymo Driver: a combination of both hardware and software that, when applied, looks like a sailboat wearing a fedora, but that aspires to make your car drive itself.

Ahn didn鈥檛 set out to design autonomous vehicles, or to work at Waymo, which spun out from Google in 2016 and, like Google, is a subsidiary of parent company Alphabet. But she did plan to devote her career to tackling complex challenges with society-altering implications, and the futuristic world of autonomous vehicles certainly qualifies.

鈥淚 enjoy [projects] with lots of technology and complexity, and making new things鈥攖hat鈥檚 what gets me,鈥� Ahn says. 鈥淚鈥檝e always enjoyed the chaos [of pursuing an undefined solution]. That鈥檚 actually the most exciting time for me. When you鈥檙e able to create something new for people to experience, it鈥檚 so satisfying.鈥�

Ahn鈥檚 career has included three such industry-shaking challenges. In 2001, after completing her first master鈥檚 degree in industrial design in her native South Korea, she took a job at LG Electronics, where she worked on digital electronics such as home-theater products in the midst of the high-definition revolution. Then, after five years there, she moved to Chicago to pursue a second graduate degree at 91制片厂 Tech鈥檚 Institute of Design. She stayed in the area to take a job at Motorola, a flip-phone behemoth that was racing to adapt to the smartphone era.

鈥淵J was always more than a designer. She was not only good at solving problems, but also at understanding and defining the problems that needed to be solved, even on projects that were complex and ambiguous,鈥� says Peter Pfanner, Ahn鈥檚 supervisor at Motorola. 鈥淪he鈥檚 a prototype for what designers need to be in the future, and for what design needs to be able to do.鈥�

This story was featured in the fall 2021 issue of 91制片厂 Tech Magazine. You can read the .