Competence & Reflection

User & Society

I learned to start from people’s real situations, not only from design assumptions. Across my projects, I worked with children, students, consumers, internal stakeholders, office workers, and meeting participants. Through interviews, field studies, design probes, co-creation, journey mapping, stakeholder conversations, and user evaluations, I became more sensitive to what people feel, avoid, hesitate about, or find uncomfortable. This became especially important when designing around mood, stress, privacy, and group state.

Creativity & Aesthetics

I use visual and experiential qualities to translate insights into something people can feel and understand. In Doodle Adventure, storytelling supported creative confidence. In Sunday Blues, tangible reflection made mood exploration more personal. In Stress in Sight, abstract visualization made collective stress visible without exposing individuals. In AI Alien, material behavior became a way of communicating. In the Pack Consumer Experience Playbook and my FMP, visual structure helped people navigate complex experiences. Through these projects, I learned that aesthetics is not decoration, but a way to shape meaning, emotion, and interpretation.

Technology & Realization

I explored technology as a medium for experience, not as the starting point of design. I worked with AI-supported storytelling, cross-device visualization, voice input, local AI processing, Arduino control, ferrofluid movement, and Wizard-of-Oz prototyping. These explorations helped me understand how technical systems can support interaction, embodiment, and awareness when they are guided by clear human needs.

Business & Entrepreneurship

I developed this area most strongly through my Kraft Heinz internship and the Bol.com redesign project. In these projects, I learned to consider stakeholder needs, organizational workflows, decision-making logic, service trust, and the practical value of design. I started to see design as something that not only creates experiences for users, but also supports teams, aligns perspectives, and becomes actionable in real contexts.

Math, Data & Computing

I worked with data, AI tools, and system logic as ways to represent complex experiences. In Stress in Sight, stress data was translated into cross-device visual feedback. In AI Alien, AI responses were translated into physical movement. In my FMP, group state were explored through visual logic, AI-supported image generation, and scenario-based system behavior. This taught me to work carefully with data and computation, especially when human experiences are sensitive and should not be reduced to fixed labels.

Reflection

Looking back, my Master journey helped me move from designing separate experiences to designing more carefully for people, context, relationships, and meaning. At the beginning, I often focused on creating engaging interactions or clear visual outcomes. Gradually, through projects about mood, stress, service trust, consumer experience, and group state, I became more aware of the sensitive human layers behind design situations.

My strength lies in understanding people’s experiences and translating subtle insights into visual, interactive, and experiential forms. I learned to use research not only to collect findings, but also to question assumptions, reframe problems, and guide design decisions. I also became more confident in using visual language to communicate complex or emotional experiences in a gentle and understandable way.

At the same time, I still see space for growth. I want to improve my ability to conduct longer-term evaluations in real contexts, especially when designing emotional and social experiences. I also want to communicate complex design systems more clearly to different audiences, so my work can be better understood, discussed, and applied.

Overall, my competence development forms a clear loop with my PI&V: using human-centered research to understand people deeply, and using creative expression to make experiences more meaningful, reflective, and supportive. My FMP became the clearest expression of this development.