Past

The Past section describes my journey from my Bachelor Industrial Design to my Final Master Project, reflecting on how each activity shaped my development as a designer.

Reflecting on my development, my perspective on design and myself as designer has grown. The bachelor Industrial Design was a search for interest, conducting projects on various topics, leading to the believe that to create meaningful impact, I needed to specialize myself in a specific domain in the master. During my master, this perspective evolved as I developed my competences and engaged in activities that significantly influenced my vision and identity.

My journey can be marked by two distinct phases, interluded and shaped by a year of studying the master Science Education at TU/e. Envisioning a communicative role for myself, I decided to do this joint degree to enhance my ability to communicate design and technology effectively.

Phase 1: Specialization

After completing the bachelor, I saw myself as a user-centered designer striving to create knowledgeable designs that seamlessly blend in with daily life to create positive impact, while addressing concerns about negative consequences of digital technology. Due to my believe, in the master I sought to explore, choose and specialize in design approaches that extended beyond user-centered design, and focussed on developing expertise on digital technologies related to my vision.

Through the courses Embodying intelligent behavior in social context (EIBSC), and Designing User Interfaces with Emerging Technologies (DUIET), I gained in-depth knowledge on learning algorithms and emerging technologies and how to apply them (T&R, MD&C). These experiences allow me to transfer design ideas into functional prototypes and designs such as in M1.1 Let it Flow, in which I was responsible for the integrated technology.  

Difficulties in experiencing a hands-on approach in the M1.1 project confirmed my preference for a research and knowledge driven approach, in which I can justify design choices (D&RP). By taking a critical stance towards rich interaction in a designerly perspective on IoT (DPIoT) I learned to critically examine design approaches and methodologies, enhancing my ability to choose an approach to specialize myself in (C&A, D&RP). The courses Constructive Design Research (CDR) and Researching the Future Everyday (RtFE) enhanced my knowledge and skills in conducting design research, specifically within a showroom approach using speculative, critical or future design, and highlighted the value of qualitative data in these methods (D&RP). The potential of speculative and critical design to critically address, and make people aware of concerns about technology, aligned with my PI&V and guided me towards using it in projects.

In my M1.2 research project, I aimed to combine speculative or critical design with the knowledge from the courses on technology and realization. This research evolved in giving a self-developed series of speculative design workshops that used this knowledge to a class of high school students, instead of the intended combination within a design artefact (U&S, C&A, D&RP). Therefore, it partly achieved the aims, but it deeply confirmed my decision to do the joint degree.

Phase 2: Educational Designer

The remainder of the master exclusively included projects. Returning from the educational context and setting a development path within these projects was challenging, leading to an unsuccessful first attempt of the M2.1 design project. This setback highlighted key weaknesses in my approach, such as indecisiveness in selecting correct design and research activities and a tendency to seek continuous validation for design decisions.

To address these weaknesses, aligning with my vision to create educational designs, I adopted a Learning Experience Design (LXD) approach. Using design tools inspired by LXD enabled me to make confident design decisions during the second attempt of the M2.1 design project, significantly improving my Design and Research Processes (D&RP). Combining my educational expertise with design methods, principles and frameworks allowed me to develop and learn from self-created co-creation and user-testing sessions (U&S, C&A), enhancing my overall approach to design.

These sessions often involved designing and testing for a learning outcome, through which I developed a goal-oriented approach that is focussed on the learner and its learning outcome (D&RP, U&S). Prototyping with new techniques and materials further developed my ability to translate design ideas into physical artifacts and digital applications (T&R). Additionally, using empirical research methods, such as the Game Experience Questionnaire ¹ and algorithmic literacy scales ², led to extensive data collection that required new data analysis skills, which allow me to effectively generate and communicate insights and make informed design decisions (D&RP, MD&C).

Overall, these experiences significantly enhanced and refined, but did not fulfil, my competencies and my Professional Identity and Vision. As it contrasted my view upon being a designer, it hardened defining my role as designer. Reflecting on the application of and enhancing my competencies further in my Final Master Project, I redefined my role as a designer, detailed in the ‘Present‘ section.

1. IJsselsteijn, W. A., de Kort, Y. A. W., & Poels, K. (2013). The Game Experience Questionnaire. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. ↩︎
2. Dogruel, L., Masur, P., & Joeckel, S. (2021). Development and Validation of an Algorithm Literacy Scale for Internet Users. Communication Methods and Measures, 16(2), 115–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2021.1968361 ↩︎