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Past Overview & Analysis

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In the last year of my Master, I analysed and reflected on my own way of working, my competencies, my preferences, and my identity. I realised that the what, how and why I design is my identity; I attempt to clarify this in the ‘thinker-create-proof-share’ process, a description of my methods.

_thinker: thinking, tinkering, 4-d sketching, exploration and reasoning
_create: iterate, build, prototype and develop
_proof: evaluate, reflect, user-centre, and proof-a-concept
_share: discuss, present, exhibit, publish, show and re-use

These four interconnected steps describe my approach and my focus: I work this way, and I believe that these four steps are needed in a good project. This already hints at my design-research preference: my ‘need’ for proofing and sharing, which strengthens my designs a lot, is difficult to fit in a traditional design environment. In addition, I really like the challenge of solving a problem through exploration and analysis, a combination that is suited for design-research.

If we look at the contents of all my designs, we can see that there is always a combination of interactive technology and a focus on behaviour. How do people and groups behave, and how can we influence that with technology? At the end of my Bachelor, I dubbed this eliciting interaction and behaviour, and this is still my vision, although it has been concretised. Technology is a powerful medium to elicit behaviour, to stimulate people to behave in a certain way. This can and should be done on a small level, creating a new sort of affordances, but especially on a larger level: motivation gives so much energy and enthusiasm, that we can use it to make radical behavioural changes, but also as a tool for intensive learning. There is a lot to design and study regarding this topic, and I look forward to continue working on that.