Development

Looking to the past three years I now finally can say how the chosen experiences have influenced me as a designer; what has shaped me to what I am now and how does this will affect my future. However, naive as I was, in the past I thought one semester would completely define my attitude towards design. Below a summary of how the rich amount of activities that bounced me back and forth between different disciplines and finally directed to my current state of being. Click here for my personal development plan of this semester.

As a starting designer I used the first semester to explore all the competencies and get used to the educational system. Making an interactive installation with Philips for the STRP festival triggered my preference for experience design through user focus & perspective, designing research processes and ideas and concepts. Creating such an elaborate experience made me think about designing interactive installations rather than products or services. Within a mixed team of seven students, first year, final bachelor and masters, I managed to play an active role in a learning environment that was the best introduction to Industrial Design I could wish for.

While being a team leader of an out of the box project about quadrocopters my interest in functional technology was triggered and with that I developed my social cultural awareness, form and senses and designing business processes. By visiting the studio of my coach I started thinking about stylish and ergonomic functionality without integrating technical interaction. My indistinct vision of the beginning of that semester got a more concrete form by activities related to the history and influence of art and design on society. I became able to use my observations and experiences and implement them into a final result in both my project and assignments.

With my first individual project I got the chance to see what influenced me during my design process. By experimenting with technology and focusing on ideas and concepts I was able to pay attention to my personal development in a different type of teamwork and communication. In a more self-organizing context I explored and validated through expert meetings, jam sessions, and working with a Kinect in order to create a musical instrument that was part of a group improvisation system. The project gave me the possibility to show initiative and becoming more aware of how my activities affected my vision and identity.

During this semester started to let go of the ‘reflecting per competency structure’ and making the connections between the different activities that were done within these competencies. Not only within the education but also as a designer within society I began to make connections; namely within socially relevant issues. By creating value together with stakeholders I saw how I can influence - and create value for - society. From a communicative point of view I also developed the first signs of stronger visual and verbal communication. There was no direct consequent identity but I used my project, reports and portfolio video to experiment different styles and structures while designing and presenting.

Doing my internship was based on two main objectives; exposing myself to the real world and making a decision about what kind of designer I would like become. My period at the experience design consultancy ‘Entropii’ in London gave me the possibility to find out how I would fit within a professional environment while discovering my preferences in designing. I found out that with the user centered part of designing digital experiences I was able to add value with the knowledge I gained within ID while also learning new methods that I can take with me. However I think it is just as important that I realized that I am not suitable for sitting behind a computer in order to design. I need physical tools and active user engagement to make me an effective and happy designer.

As I look back to my internship I believe that this was perfect for my personal and identity development. It felt as a huge step in my view on designing and seeing myself as a designer serving within society. I used my self proclaimed freedom to fully focus on my work within the company and find out what I really want. This may have been at the expense of my in depth competency development since I saw my internship as a whole. The process of designing was not interpreted as an separated competency developed approach and therefore I missed the focus on the educational requirements of competency reflection.
Concerning the academic aspect I believe that I paid sufficient attention to combining my gained knowledge within the education and the newly gained knowledge. I made myself familiar with the user generate approaches of the company and emerged myself in the theory of usability and user interaction while writing content for a white paper. In this way I made myself useful while keeping exploring new methodologies within user centered designing. Therefore this condition has been translated in pursuing my academic development as I admired to have done with developing my identity.

At the end of my B2.1 semester I concluded that my brain more and more started working as a creative factory with mini insights based on knowledge gained through exposure in the form of experiences and memory. This resulted that, in the next semester, I was able to use a continuous stream of input to find out what to design for the user by using the different skills I learned over the years. Since this last semester I no longer see myself as a designer with a set of skills but rather as a designer with an approach. The learning during the project and assignment no longer focuses on learning a certain skill but rather on adding value to this approach (i.e. creating a mindset rather than learning to sketch). I now consider my holistic design approach as a skill that exists out of certain methodologies I created during my time at Industrial Design. For me the focus shifts from what I design towards how I design and research. This means that I more and more value my own design thinking and want to present this as a toolkit to implement the needs, behaviour and motivation of people in order to innovate. I am starting to see myself as a linker of different disciplines. Throughout the semesters, while picking up little bits of all the different competencies and their respective activities, I gained detailed knowledge of all the possibilities and necessities of the design process. Zooming out on this semester I see that I elaborated on all the interesting aspects I encountered in the first years at ID; empathic user involvement, researching and making. I evolved the competence to combine the essential aspects, just as I believe a designer can serve within a company.

Looking towards a new period as an Industrial Designer it is time to validate & proof my design thinking. With the possibility of taking my Final Bachelor Project towards a new development phase in a research project I think I can elaborate on the process. In this way I can implement more of my approach as described in my vision in all the phases and immerse myself in my user. This should result in not only a presentable method but also in shaping myself into an individual that can be represented.

Second, in the trend of setting up my company, I want to connect more with other people within the ID Eindhoven community and more important; their skills. Especially when approaching two years of all 'individual' projects I think it is very valuable to start investigate how this interesting group of people can work more closely together. Since the start for this will be made during modules I am planning to gather as much knowledge as possible about people who can identify my way of working but also people with a whole different approach than me.