Areas of expertise development
If you click on the areas it will filter the courses and projects that added the most to this area you can hover over them to read more. The bigger projects most of the time added to all competencies but I highlighted my biggest learnings, if you want to read more about them click the pictures of those.
Creativity and Aesthetics
Starting my bachelor's I explained having the focus on the “artistic elements of design” I was thinking this area was just about the looks and ideation techniques. A year later my focus in this area shifted to aesthetics of interaction, I explored this in-depth in my courses and projects. The year after that I developed again in these ideation techniques and learned how to implement them in other domains than design doing co-creation.
Course: From Idea to Design
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Introduced me to the design process and taught me all kinds of ideation techniques like body storming, mind mapping, and pressure cookers. It gave me experience in how to walk through iterations and reflect after every step. It taught me that the process is sometimes more valuable than the end product.
Course: Exploratory Sketching
Improved my visualization skills and gave me tools on how I can communicate my ideas, it also helped me explore these skills on different types of media like an iPad.
Course: Socio-Cultural Sensitivity
Officially belongs in User and society but it taught me most in this area. It taught me about making, all the small assignments gave me the mindset of exploring through prototyping and thinking of aesthetics and the message instead of functionality. I found out that this approach fits me well.
Project 1: F'leau
In this project, I went into depth in the look and feel of the product and did material explorations that allowed fidgeting. This taught me that material properties can be an important factor in the interaction with a product.
Course: Design For the Everyday
Introduced me to interaction design, and creating value with rituals in interaction with everyday objects. This course sparked my interest in this topic, I loved the way of working focused on making and the speculative perspective of making products big and meaningful.
Course: Aesthetics of Interaction
Taught me how to create meaningful experiences, and made me consider aesthetics beyond appearance. It taught me methods on how to do this, such as Interaction relabeling and the interaction frogger framework. The setup (design critiques) of the course made me a more critical designer.