These past years have served to orient myself and construct a broad understanding across several design fields, such as UX Design, Human Computer Interaction, Research Through Design, Speculative Design and the engineering expertise that go along with it.

            However, following this Bachelor’s I will pick elements of this general skillset to specialize further in, aspects that suit my developed way of working and that I believe will make a meaningful change to the industry, to prepare myself for a professional career that calls for situated knowledge.

 

Next semester I will start my Master program at Sint Joost -Ecology Futures- that delves deep into sustainable material research, and I believe that the following core concepts I’ve learned during Industrial Design will stay relevant and will be expanded upon during this next endeavour:

 

 

Technology & Realization

 

Firstly, I want to shift my focus from product design to material science, allowing me to invest more labour into understanding tactility without having to simultaneously think of an implementation for it.

Like explained in the ‘past’ and ‘present’ sections, I already posses quite some expertise with matters such as wood, plastics and metals; yet I still want to explore ceramics and grow more adept in researching how these materials are currently mainly produced, what the consequences of these processes are, and how such industries could be approached or changed to be morally fair and symbiotic to any stakeholders or impacted environments.

 

As I’m getting closer to gaining proficiency over these materials separately, I also want to research the way they react to each other and uncover any potential synergies that are still compatible with a circular perspective.

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Business & Entrepreneurship

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Especially throughout my last projects I have been creating a network within the disciplines of design and artistry; I’d like to keep this practical attachment to industry viability in my projects by gauging together with relevant stakeholders what factors could actually make a wide-scale difference in the utilization of resources, and how to approach the current market receptiveness, as not all developments -no matter how great- are adoptable due to zeitgeist.

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Math, Data & Computing

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I’ve finally outlined the role of this competency area within my design process, namely to make prototyping less material-intensive through simulation and digital iteration, and to support the usage of physical resources by collecting and processing data on material behaviour to validate potential use-cases.

            As most hypotheses of a designer will always be rooted in a level of subjectivity, I plan to further explore Digital Twins and work with material testing labs to complement these findings with objective results for added reliability.