For Ayaan Irshad (12), a passion that started with a single birthday gift has grown into something far larger.
“When I was younger, at my birthday party, I had a bunch of friends who got me a collector gift and it was this giant Lego boat,” Irshad said. “It was difficult for me to build at first, but I ended up messing around with it, putting different things together, and not actually building it properly, and I found that was fun and interesting. And eventually, I went back to it and started getting into building them as a hobby. So then that was the only thing I’d ask for gift-wise: just any Lego set.”
What excites Irshad isn’t just the process of assembling a set according to instructions; it’s understanding how Lego operates as a design system.
“I like how they look on display and any function they have,” Irshad said. “Some of the sets have little cockpits to open up or little features. If it’s a ship, they have landing gear that you can push something out and pop out some things [at] the bottom. The functionality aspect of it is cool. Display matters, but so does motion, mechanics.”
This passion for Lego has helped foster an exploration of technology and computer science.
“It’s been one of my big passions for years,” Irshad said. “I’d make Lego sets online, I’d design magazines featuring my own things that I make, or custom mini-figures. I’ll make Lego video games or websites about Lego. I have a crazy collection at home. I have shelves, like 5 bookcases just filled with different sets. It was a big passion that funneled my interest creatively [into] what I do now in a lot of ways.”
This year, while looking for a job, Irshad naturally gravitated toward the place he’d spent countless afternoons devoted to his long-standing hobby.
“This year, one of the things I [wanted] to do was find a job because I’m a senior going to college soon,” Irshad said. “Because UTC [Lego store] is where I go to a lot, I was looking, [and] they happened to have a spot open, so I applied and ended up going in for a few interviews, and it was really fun.”
Irshad said that working at the Lego Store has turned out to be more creatively engaging than expected. He’s been entrusted with one of the in-store features: the Pick-a-Brick wall; where customers can purchase individual Lego pieces in large quantities.
“I actually do get to do creative things,” Irshad said. “There’s a wall of bricks at the back. Recently, they gave me complete control of that. I get to choose what pieces are in there, order them, organize them, and basically choose what goes where. I put out the pieces for anything I think would look good or things to build sets or their own creations with.”
Outside the store, Irshad’s relationship with Lego has continued to evolve. His creativity has expanded into digital design tools and online building platforms.
“I mostly like building my own things,” Irshad said. “I build my own sets out of extra pieces. But, there are online websites for designing them digitally I’ve messed around with. You buy the pieces online, make your own instructions, and then I can build it, and I have my own little custom set.”
As his projects grew, so did the overlap between Lego and technology. Irshad said he found joy in coding by applying it to something he already loved.
“When I was starting to learn how to code, I was just basing my projects [on] anything I was interested in,” Irshad said. “So, one of the things was Lego. I was learning different software and technologies, and I was tying it back to Lego. I was learning how to do web scraping, which is just reading any data from a website, and I was also learning how to integrate code into Google Sheets, but I was doing it with Lego. I made an app to go on my phone. I could add different shelves and then add the Lego sets I have on it to represent [my] collection.”
That lifelong thread of creativity has led Irshad to become involved in extracurriculars that solidified his interest for design.
“It’s influenced my creative passions throughout the years,” Irshad said. “I started doing robotics through that actually: making magazines of my Lego sets or drawing Lego figures in stop motion animation. When I was in middle school, we had a Lego robot, and you’d code that to get it to move around and do tasks. And that brought me to the robotics program.”
Irshad described the progression as natural: Lego led to robotics, robotics led to coding, and coding led to a broader sense of purpose.
“[Lego] helped me become interested in coding and engineering in general, which is ultimately what my passions are and what I’m wanting to do,” Irshad said. “As for [whether] I’d want to work with Lego in the future, I would. I want to use skills like coding in some capacity.”
Irshad said he hopes to keep building—whether that means software, electronics, or something entirely new.
“I’m hoping to be creating things in general,” Irshad said. “Doing that in college and past college is a job, but then somehow doing that with Lego—I don’t really know yet. I know if I hopefully go to school here, I’ll definitely want to continue working [at the Lego store].”
For now, Irshad’s pursuing the field that Lego nudged him toward all along.
“I’ve applied for computer engineering, and software electronics is the field I want to go into in the future,” he said. “That’s my main goal and then Lego—honestly, I like it as a hobby. Ideally, if there’s ever an opening in the company that would align with the things I can do, I would totally want to do that. But [whatever the case], the future seems like something I’ve been assembling for years.”
