Design is more than just creating innovative products, systems or services. As designer, I believe it is important to be critical, and to present design insights in a comprehensive way. By working on design research projects, such as project 3, I learned to use design as a tool to attribute to scientific knowledge. Through design research I have been able to ground my design projects with academic knowledge, positioning the design by critically investigating approaches of others. By formulating design challenges, I learned to choose fitting methods for my research scope. With these design challenges I am able to generate a body of related work, improving my theoretical knowledge on any subject important to the design scope. This has improved my ability to take well-informed design decisions. With regards to my Final Bachelor Project, I have used extensive literature from the field of psychology to understand the causes for the behavior of the target group. This enabled me to discover the right design gap.

Over the course of my bachelor I have learned to target my design reports to the right audience and developed to ability to write academically as well as reflectively. To develop my reporting skills, I have often set goals to improve my writing, because I tend to have difficulty with providing information dense content. Through my internship I learned to structure and proofread my writing, as I wrote a design-sprint report for multiple stakeholders. Next to this, co-design sessions, street interviews and graphic designs have developed my ability to communicate professionally to users and team members. By being the secretary of E.S.F.F. Dekate Mousa (the student photography association) in my second year, I learned to collaborate with different organizations and to host  lectures for our members, making me feel confident presenting in front of large groups. Perusing both a board year as well as a full-time bachelor has made me good with planning and organization.

As I have explored the field of Industrial Design over the past three years, I have been able to shape my professional vision and identity. My vision began as a very personal set of beliefs, but after having experienced designing for a real client during project 2, this started to gravitate towards a professional outlook on design. By being critical and setting goals for myself, I explored different sides of design: I discovered how much impact I can create by involving users in my design process and through project 2 I learned that, by designing for health related difficulties, I can help others improve their wellbeing. In this process, I explored which skills make me unique, where I have always used my identity and vision to guide my development. Through my Final Bachelor project I have discovered how much I tend to design from a human behavior perspective.

Past

During my bachelor, I have developed myself into a designer who starts from the need of users to explore design challenges and opportunities. The course ‘User-centered Design’ introduced me to the involvement of target users within a design process, initiating my interest in human-product interaction as I learned to adapt interviewing methods in validation of design decisions. Through ‘Socio Cultural Sensitivity’, I acquired insight on how cultural differences evoke a difference in human behavior and to position a design in its context. This resulted in project 1, where I implemented user-centered design methods on a rudimentary level: administering questionnaires on a vulnerable target group, involving a keen eye on ethics. I deepened my expertise with project 2, approaching the design process with multiple stakeholders and designing for a real client. This gave way to my interest in design for health-related difficulties, as I learned that solving such difficulties can have a huge impact on someone’s life. With the course ‘User Evaluation Methods’ I ensured a strong foundation in my ability to select the research methods according to a design challenge.

Concluding this development, I applied these skills in a professional setting during my internship. I learned that, by approaching a design process from human needs, design can have a positive impact on societal issues.

Present

During my Final Bachelor Project, I build upon the human-centered methods from project 2, with a combination of multiple user evaluation methods, by adapting the mindset from my internship: making impact starts with individual people. As a result I conducted four expert interviews, set up a collaboration with DigiBende and immersed myself in the experiences of the target users. This proved many different perspectives and allowed me to find design opportunities.

Past

I have always been fascinated with the physical interaction between humans and the world. I believe it allows us to connect with our environment. Where I approach design from human needs, my process has become driven by interaction. Over the course of my bachelor, my design approach has manifested itself in the creation of physical prototypes as a way of iterating on design decisions. Developing this expertise has been of great impact to my identity.

With the courses ‘Creative programming’ and ‘Creative Electronics’, I learned how to create interaction between products and users. With this knowledge, I was able to communicate with engineers from different disciplines through ‘Engineering Design’. Attributing to my crafting skills, I taught myself CAD, to 3Dprint the ‘Eatsy’ prototype. Through project 2 I learned to design custom PCB’s and how to use 3D-modelling. This improved my ability to visualize concepts without spending materials. ‘Aesthetics of Interaction’ initiated my interest for interaction. Through the course I learned to design human-technology-interaction, by creating a user context. This resulted in my choice to join the ‘Seamless interaction squad’, my first acquaintance with artificial intelligence and app development, as I explored trustworthiness in AI, sparking my interest for human behavior.

Through my internship, I developed a nuanced perspective on the use of technology in a design, as I learned that a design does not need technology, if this does not match a user’s need. This improved my ability to create long lasting, sustainable solutions. With my development in this area, I can make informed decisions on when and where to integrate technology in a search for maximal impact for a user.

Present

For my Final Bachelor Project, I wanted to prove I could integrate all my technological understanding in one prototype, whilst adhering to the user needs. The result is a seemingly simple design to the user, yet at its heart it combined sensors, actuators, repairability and machine learning to be sustainable and impactful. The development in this area has increasingly improved my experimental mindset, where my knowledge of ‘Technology & Realization’ provides me with the ability to easily craft complex and interactive designs from a technology-driven perspective, but where users are always at heart.

Past

‘Creativity & Aesthetics’ are inherent to design. However, over the past years I have learned to apply creativity in a professional and structured manner. In my first year,  I learned to adapt a variety of ideation techniques i.e., body-storming, 5-3-5 ideation, design briefs, pressure cookers, sketching and prototyping. I refined the use of these methods in my second year, as I learned to follow double diamond processes with project 2. This project also taught me how to perform critical concept selections, which improved my ability to argue about design decisions to fellow students, stakeholders and clients. Often being a chaotic thinker, developing these methods into efficient tools has been important in becoming the designer I want to be.

Naturally my feeling for aesthetics has also grown in this period. Project 1 kickstarted my ability in graphic design as well as refining prototypes. In my second year I began experimenting with many different materials, such as laser cutting and cardboard modelling during project 2 In search for a deeper graphical understanding, I learned to convey information through illustrative hierarchy, as part of my internship. This provided me with a swift and iterative workflow within creative software, enabling me to professionally elaborate on graphic design decisions to colleagues. And, where I have always had difficulty writing, I learned to show my design decisions with my photographic abilities.

Present

During my Final Bachelor Project, I have learned to select and adapt different ideation techniques individually such as: a research synthesis, sketching, lo-fi prototyping. Adding to this, I learned to work with soft materials in the process of wearable design. Combined with the other prototyping techniques, this developed me into a designer with the ability to bring a concept to the physical world, ready for user feedback.

In the last years I have developed myself into a practical and experimental designer, ideating by using materials, sensors, actuators and interactions, building design decisions upon user needs and academic knowledge. However, I also discovered my greatest pitfalls are within the area of ‘Creativity & Aesthetics’. Where I have learned to develop ideations techniques, I experience difficulty being concise with elaborating on my processes in an academic way. For this project I got caught up in crafting an aesthetic, fully functioning prototype, which resulted in less proper process documentation.

Past

I believe this area of expertise is very important for establishing and maintaining the right impact through a design. Through ‘Introduction to Business Design’, I learned to position my design within its market, creating business models and competitor analysis to ensure innovation. The course ‘Design Innovation methods’ deepened this knowledge, allowing me to quickly analyze the market viability of my design. From the extracurricular continuation of project 2, as a result of the impact it had on the clients, I developed design managing skills and experienced positioning myself in the professional field of design.

In continuation of my understanding for professional design, I learned how to be part of a start-up during my internship at morgenmakers. This made me realize the importance of project management and how the right collaboration can provide real impact. In doing so, I developed professional communication skills, improved my writing and learned how to incorporate ideation techniques when working with stakeholders: by sparking their creativity.  

Present

By following a human-centered design approach during my Final Bachelor project, I was able to collaborate with multiple parties. With these different perspectives, I could identify the shared difficulties that different people in my target group experience. Using my knowledge from ‘Design Innovation Methods’, I explored how to provide OWN IT with a sustainable business model. By analyzing the organizational practices of ‘Squease’, who have a similar product, I ensured the validity of this business model.

Past

I believe, being an industrial designer means to have an understanding of natural sciences and data sciences, facilitating effective communication with engineers from different disciplines. With a foundation in ‘Calculus’ and ‘Natural Sciences Conceptual’, I was able to understand the principles behind electronics, sensors and actuators. This allowed me to trouble shoot individually, design safe circuits and create more complex interactions. Following this, I improved my skills in logic reasoning extensively, by developing multiple Android-based apps with project 2 and project 3.

Attributing to my ability within ‘User & Society’, I developed programming skills to analyze large data sets, by following ‘Data Analytics’. Switching from analyzing to measuring, the course ‘Making Sense of Sensors’, allowed me to gather user both input and interpret results in an academic way. This provided me with the skills to set-up design research processes and made me realize how important objective data collection can be for validating a design. Overall, my development within this area has made me a more conscious designer: I have learned to understand how natural and data driven processes work, which helps me with taking the right decisions with regards to technology.   

Present

I had set the goal to conduct a large data driven user research during my Final Bachelor Project. However, due to the complexity of the target group and with concerns for ethical approval, this resulted in my decision to collect quantitative data through simple analog scales.

Never the less, I integrated my development of ‘Math, Data & Computing’, by finishing the goal I had set for ‘Technology & Realization’: crafting a fully functional prototype. I implemented machine learning within the prototype. By following a lecture from the course ‘Interactive Intelligent Products’, I was able to adapt Dr. Rong-Hao Liang’s script to work with my prototype.