Developing towards a social designer
During my master's program, I aimed to enhance my design skills, gain experience in healthcare, and integrate psychological principles through design approaches. This is done in through exploring user experience in ‘Doppers Festival Journey,’ social innovation in ‘Bedazzle Shared Bikes,’ and empathic design in ‘Supportive Tools for Addiction Therapy.’ These experiences deepened my understanding of design that fosters empathy, steering my specialization toward User and Society, and Creativity and Aesthetics.
Initially I focused on designing for vulnerable mental health groups, however my second year led to a passion for playful design, particularly for children with developmental vulnerabilities. Working with these children through the projects, “Wonderbox” and “The Playyard of Many Colors" shaped my experience in different design approaches towards playful design for children.
In future work, I aim to continue expanding my specialization by potentially further developing “The Playyard of Many Colors” with the Matheusschool to explore the durability of play, and thereby deepening my knowledge of playful designs for children with developmental vulnerabilities and enhancing product realization in subsequent design processes.
FMP Development
Before the FMP, I set four goals that were integrated into the design activities:
1.
Design a collaborative game that fits the sensory aesthetic of children with autism (C&A)
2.
Perform an ethnographic study to deepen their playful behavior (U&S)
3.
Integrate a company as a stakeholder (B&E)
4.
Build a high-fidelity prototype to visualize the interaction (C&E, U&S, T&R, M,D&C, B&E)
Design activities
Overall, goals 1, 2, and 4 were achieved throughout the design process, while goal 3 required a different approach than expected. Here, incorporating a company would shift the focus away from the user group and more towards a business perspective, which would affect my other three goals.
Therefore, I planned a final evaluation to asses the product on the market through the business model canvas. An interview with the developer of EmbeddedFitness showed that he could not help me evaluate the design through a business perspective, but instead help me with product realization, which brought the insight that the design was still at the beginning of the design process and showed me how I could further develop the product. Therefore, future learning activities lie in the further development of products based on user testing, business perspectives, and product realization.