PAST
How I developed myself in the expertise areas during the master
FINAL BACHELOR PROJECT
Prior to starting my master's at ID, I completed my bachelor's at ID, also at the TU/e. My FBP, The Grass Garment, was an exploration of how one can listen to and collaborate with grass as a more-than-human co-designer in the context of clothing. This project —and the values embedded in this— became a starting point for my master's education. This helped me select courses and my track: Constructive Design Research.
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BUSINESS & ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Through my courses and electives, I learned to recognize trends and how these can impact society (U&S). For example, Designing Conversational Experiences revolved around the design and development of conversational user interfaces with the use of AI. This calls for careful consideration of data breaches and other ethical issues.
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My M2.1 project, for which I built a loom for outdoor weaving, required me to develop an understanding of other looms, how these shape our relation with our materials, and how these compare to other looms. Through designing, I can translate the challenges I observe into tangible outcomes (T&R) that offer new insights and innovative starting points for others to build on.
CREATIVITY & AESTHETICS
This expertise area is included as one of my specializations within this master's. For me, it goes beyond thinking of original concepts and making neat-looking prototypes, but rather use creativity to shape the research, select the right perspectives to take, and the most suitable tools to conduct a research plan. This expertise area is also strongly connected to Technology & Realization for me. Courses such as Interactive Materiality, Matter of Transformation, and Unexpected Material Engagements taught me to find the right balance between intuition and knowledge-driven design thinking through making processes. This also supports my design and research process skills. Matter of Transformation specifically helped me bring structure in using theory to inform the design process, and vice versa. It allows for thinking through making, which I applied in all my master's projects.
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Joining the course, The Thinking Eye, from the architecture department, offered me some time outside of ID. Through drawing, I learned how to translate and communicate my ideas. But it also challenged me to go beyond the obvious, and use drawing to speculate. Drawing, therefore, becomes a tool to explore; a skill I thoroughly enjoy using and applying in all my projects to articulate what I want to say or do.
MATH, DATA & COMPUTING
For the course Designing Conversational Experiences, I worked with ID’s Data Foundry and OOCSI to program the electronics and an HTML interface of a chatbot that we designed and developed during the course. This not only offers hard skills in programming and prototyping, but also helps me better understand the data flows of such a system.
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Looking at my projects, they are often complex in the data that they generate. Not because they are large datasheets with endless numbers, but rather include rich reflections, sketches and observations that are situated. Therefore, this expertise area is for me not about mathematics or algorithms, but rather about developing a sensitivity for data that is not obvious or straightforward. My skills have developed enormously to find emerging patterns over time, and to develop a vocabulary to talk about these findings. Adopting a first-person perspective in my M1.2 and M2.1 projects especially helped with this sensitivity, learning how to pay attention, and how to unpack the things I observe.
TECHNOLOGY & REALIZATION
This is my second specialization expertise area. I consider T&R as the bridge between my theoretical understanding of things and doing design research. Interactive Materiality offered me the opportunity to use material explorations to steer our making process of an interactive prototype. Similarly, my other electives also supported my knowledge of materials and tools through prototyping various demonstrators. I have developed making skills in a wide range with a variety of materials. Constructive Design Research, Research Methods, and Matter of Transformation helped in translating a making practice into knowledge. This especially shaped the rest of my master’s as I often used a (sample) making approach to generate my data.
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USER & SOCIETY
Since finishing my bachelor’s degree, I have considered the U&S expertise area as much larger than often interpreted at this faculty. As I consider design as relational, entangled, and transformative, I intend to design for more than human values only. And since I chose the CDR track, I don’t often engage in traditional product design, but rather focus on research to explore how we might design for such a complex world. Considering the large transformative effect of design, I think it is essential to include other perspectives besides the human ones. During Unexpected Material Engagements, I did this through applying a material-driven approach to making insect habitats with beechnut shells. I explored and observed the beech tree to include it as an actor in my making process, and to see it’s beechnuts as more than resources.
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The workshops I designed for the Research Methods course allowed me to include a human perspective in design research, and taught me how to set up a solid research plan. While this is in contrast to my open approach to conducting research, it was a valuable course for me to understand how to keep my projects grounded.
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In Designing Conversational Experiences, I conducted user tests, but was also able to further dive into the ethical and societal considerations that are crucial when designing, specifically conversational user interfaces and AI. It taught me about the vulnerability of data and users when in contact with AI.
PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
During my Master’s, I presented my work at several venues, such as Dutch Design Week ('23 & '24), Material District ('24), Friday Next at Evoluon Eindhoven ('24), and interzum Cologne ('25). These activities helped to expand my network, improve my presentation and networking skills, and present myself as a professional. With the increasingly individual master’s program, I learned to improve my planning and organization skills for structuring my study program. My Teaching Assistant jobs for Sustainability & Design and Design <> Research —for which I hosted tutoring sessions— allowed me to improve communication, take responsibility, and develop the skills to convey knowledge to other students.
DESIGN AND RESEARCH PROCESSES
The mandatory course Constructive Design Research, for which my group applied a Studio approach to investigate co-creating with Google’s AI assistant Gemini (Bard at the time) in the context of textile fabrication, helped me design a structured research outline. I had the opportunity to write this into a paper with my group, which got accepted for IASDR 2025. The translation from a university paper to a paper for publication was a great exercise to refine my writing skills. I further developed my research skills and knowledge during my track course Research Methods, for which my group members designed workshops to investigate the role of, again, Google’s AI assistant Gemini in tinkering activities within a Material Driven Design (MDD) process. The workshops and interviews we conducted supported my skills in conducting research with participants, expanding on my often first-person perspective research. My M1.1 —for which I worked on bioreceptivity of mycelium samples— taught me a more systematic approach to sample making. Through documenting this, I became more familiar and comfortable with this structured approach, which can be considered as explorative research.
PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY AND VISION
At the start of my master’s, my vision was largely focused on the textile industry and its polluting effects. While I still find it a relevant topic, my master’s helped to zoom out and consider a larger, more relational view, while remaining grounded in textiles and materials. My professional identity continued to refine towards making as a way to do research, and I expanded my knowledge on several theories. The most important shift here is the sensitivity to pay attention to emergence, which I improved through my courses and projects.
