PRESENT

How did I implement the Expertise Areas and my Professional Identity and Vision in my Final Bachelor Project

Reflecting on my professional development over the past three years of my Bachelor’s degree, it seems like my vision has changed fundamentally, shifting from product to transition design and reorienting from a user-centered to a systemic approach, acknowledging the value of strategic and speculative design principles in transitional processes. Yet, mapping out my professional development, it can be noted that my goal, and motive to enroll in the study Industrial Design, to use design to evoke systemic change, has remained constant over the course of my bachelor’s degree, merely the methods and attitudes used to accomplish this goal have changed.

Reconnecting with my vision, I set the goal for my final bachelor project to explore opportunities to integrate speculative design approaches in strategic decision-making processes with the goal of stimulating systemic change. This goal was met in the design of CIVIC Vision which enabled me to explore how varying storytelling techniques could be leveraged to identify opportunities for value creation in the field of urban development. Acknowledging the potential of futuring techniques to draw narratives of an alternative future into the present, various material explorations were created, which all aimed to inform citizens and municipalities in the creation of their vision for their city and visualize their interdependency.

Applying principles of systemic design, I prioritized the consultation of stakeholders, including experts of the municipality of Eindhoven and Delft but also citizens of Eindhoven, to map out the complexity of the design space, identify opportunities for system-level change, and inform and validate design concepts. Approaching the design process from a strategic standpoint, it was my goal to design a concept that could be integrated in a citizen participation meeting and facilitate valuable data exchange to support the municipality in the creation of a CO2 neutral city.  

USER & SOCIETY

The expertise area of User and Society was the expertise area that first drew me to Industrial Design, allowing me to bridge the gap between technology and society with meaningful designs. In the CIVIC Vision concept, this expertise area was integrated in the form of various interviews and co-creation sessions with stakeholders of the municipality of Eindhoven and Delft and residents of Eindhoven, supporting me in developing a better understanding of the problem space and informed and validated design decisions. Ultimately, a user test was organized to assess to what extent the AR experience of the CIVIC Vision concept resulted in reflection, discussion, and co-creation, informing directions for future development.

CREATIVITY & AESTHETICS

Acknowledging the complex nature of the design space and the ambiguous nature of values, the expertise area of Creativity & Aesthetics was applied through the creation of various material explorations throughout the design process of CIVIC Vision. These material explorations enabled me to reduce the complexity of the problem space and explore various modalities, among which lights, pictures, text, and color, to represent the values of citizens and communicate their interdependency. Ultimately, through this exploring-by-making approach, I was able to identify the qualities of multi-dimensionality, relationality, experience-ability, and ambiguity that were considered vital in the communication of values and visions, and their interdependence in material and spatial arrangements. These qualities were then integrated into the final CIVIC Vision Concept, using spatial positioning, illustrations, and color, to inform the vision of citizens and communicate shared and unshared values.

TECHNOLOGY & REALIZATION

In the creation of the material explorations, various prototyping techniques were used, including laser-cutting, UX design using Adobe XD, and the creation of filters in Meta Spark. Ultimately, the explorations were translated into prototypes of an AR experience. Initially, these prototypes were made in the software Unity, enabling me to manipulate transparency levels of pictures using sliders and apply image tracking. However, as problems arose when integrating the tracking of multiple images and the application appeared to be less flexible in use than expected, it was decided to switch to the program Web AR Studio, allowing me to complete various iterations of the AR experience and focus on the optimization of the interaction.

MATH, DATA & COMPUTING

To generate illustrations that reflected a public value in the context of urban development, while preventing the introduction of personal biases, various iterations were created using the generative AI Dall-E. Here, AI was introduced as a tool to support speculation through the creation of visualizations of alternative futures, priming participants in their imagination. Additionally, while orienting myself on the software Unity, I familiarized myself with the basics of creating AR experiences, using C-sharp to add an interactive layer to game objects in an AR experience.  

BUSINESS & ENTREPENEURSHIP

Ultimately, it was important to me to create a solution that was desirable, viable, and feasible to implement in the context of the Climate mission. Consequently, my design process started with a thorough analysis of the problem space, informed by the insights attained during stakeholder interviews. Throughout, the process these same stakeholders were repeatedly consulted to co-create or validate design concepts. Approaching the project from a strategic point-of-view, the initial concept of the CIVIC Vision AR experience was extended to a value-driven citizen participation concept, facilitating value exchange between citizens and municipalities. This concept was translated into a service blueprint, mapping out the interaction and supporting tools and processes.

DESIGN PROCESS

Acknowledging the highly complex nature of the context of the Climate Mission, my design process centralized systemic analysis of the problem space through the consultation of various stakeholders, leveraging theories of embodied cognition through the creation of material explorations to simplify the problem space and reduce uncertainty. By repeatedly switching between short-term and long-term orientations, insights gathered from material explorations, in the present, informed visions of introducing value-driven design into the context of urban development and ultimately the concept of CIVIC Vision.