Competency Development
The chosen expertise areas for my Master studies are ‘User & Society’ and ‘Creativity & Aesthetics’. Here I will discuss my personal development in these two and all other expertise areas, ordered from most to least developed.
Design and research processes
Throughout the masters, I experimented with several design and research frameworks looking for the ones that fit me.
The course of CDR introduced me to research-through-design with the methodologies of Lab, Field and showroom design. I discovered my passion for qualitative field studies, as there is nothing more exciting than trying to make sense of the messy reality of the every-day lives of people.
Within the course ‘The Sound of Smart Things’ I applied Agent Based Modeling as a design methodology for prototyping complex systems, which was the inspiration for my individual research project.
During this project I used auto-biographical research as a method to gain insights into the design process of a complex and smart system. As I experienced during the Sound of Smart Things, this involved designing from an object-, user-, as well as a system perspective.
Lastly, in my graduation project, I combined my experience in designing decentralized systems with a strong user centered approach, mixing and matching design methods and perspectives along the way.
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Still, I have one major pitfall in all design projects: I am a thinker (if not a worrier), therefore I am often hesitant to explore hands on, without knowing where I am going. During the courses of constructive design research and Matter of Transformation, as well as during my M2.1 semesters and graduation project I needed a big push to start designing with my hands in order to synthesize my knowledge.
User & Society
To me, this expertise area encompasses all methods and perspectives that aim at understanding the user in its socio-, technical- and cultural context. This includes to appropriately involve users in different stages of a design/research process, as well as the use of theories from social sciences to understand the impact of the context and design on its users.
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I developed this area through several courses, in several ways.
During the course design for behavior change, I was introduced to several theories from social psychology and applied a selection of them to analyze user behavior. Next to that, I learned to apply behavior change methods and frameworks in a design process. Also, the course made me more aware of the ethical considerations that play a part in design interventions.
The course of Environmental Psychology provided me with a higher level perspective on human behavior in relation to our environment as this research field aims to understand the underlying mechanisms of human behavior.
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During my graduation project, I used the Privacy Regulation Theory from the field of environmental psychology to gain understanding of my design context and I based my design itself upon this theory. Next to that, I carefully grounded my design goal in the construct of social connectedness and made sure to evaluate my design accordingly.
Lastly, I involved my users in three stages of the design process, first by an exploratory acting out session, secondly by a Co-Constructing stories study, used to evaluate the first concept and lastly by a one-week field study to evaluate the concept in context. All of these user involvements were analyzed through (a variation on) a thematic analysis.
Creativity & Aesthetics
Here I describe the way that I use creativity methods, and how I aim to create high quality output in terms of form and senses.
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I developed this expertise area through the courses of Matter of Transformation and the Sound of Smart Things. During the first one, I learned to rapidly prototype with high quality materials and developed a visually coherent style throughout the series of four prototypes. Next to that, I grew to present my work confidently and clean, physically as well as digitally. In the latter, I discovered speculative writing as a way to combine my creativity with context observations and I experimented with sound as a modality to design with.
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I applied this expertise area in my graduation project, where I preferred analogue design activities to explore the shape and appearance of my design, for example, creating a physical mood board, sketching by hand and tinkering and acting out with paper mock-ups. Exploring the soundscape was a digital, iterative tinkering process using Audacity and Processing.
Technology & Realization
Making the design come to reality through combining electronics, hardware and software.
This expertise area is only developed through my graduation project. I started with very basic Arduino, processing and electronics experience and skills and ended with a fully functioning system.
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Throughout the project, I tried to develop the electronics and Arduino sketches alongside the development of the concept. Therefore, I started experimenting with the main sensor early on in the design process. During the second and third iterations, the realization of the soundscapes and the sound mappings was a creative process, creating the processing code by trial and error, constantly evaluating the outcome and making tiny design decisions.
Next to that, the process of realizing the physical prototypes felt like a happy interplay between ‘making it work’ and ‘making it beautiful’. The coding process of the ESP was a challenging puzzle of solving electronical quirks, mathematical problems and software typo’s. However, I very much enjoyed soldering, sanding and spray painting.
Math, Data & Computing
Using tools and mathematics, data and computing theory in the design process.
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The course of Complex & Adaptive Modeling introduced me to Agent Based Modeling. This proved not only to be a helpful skill for simulating complex behavior, but grew to be the structure for many of my following design- and research processes. By converting the modeling steps of a complex system to design activities, I was able to (conceptually) design complex systems, as can be read in The Sound of Smart Things, my research project and graduation project.
Further, I applied this expertise area mainly in the realization of my graduation project prototypes. For example, I developed my skills in sound signal processing in the programs of Audacity and Processing. Next to that, the code of the prototype holds several calculations to translate the magnetometer output signal to usable rotation values of the prototypes and to translate the output values of the prototypes to the shared soundscapes.
Business & Entrepreneurship
To me this expertise area includes all the considerations to make a design suitable for and salable in the market: market analysis and competition, creating value propositions for different stakeholders, risk analysis, etc.
This is my least developed expertise area. However, developed through designing the Daycare+ system with several activities. The vision on the future context including a stakeholder analysis was used to analyze the complex design space with several stakeholders. This was used to guide the concept development. Next to that, I used the business model canvas to gain an overview of the system from a business perspective. In the final phase of this project, I created a business roadmap with future development activities for the client. Hereby I noticed that my interests lie in the very beginnings of an RDD process.