Personal Development

For the past two years, I have developed myself in different ways. I started in year one by focusing on different design disciplines, so I would get a good understanding what opportunities and options design had in store for me. I realised this by reading books and watching documentaries, and then keeping track of the progress I made by reflecting on my opinions and inspirations.

 

Additionally, I laid focus on planning and implementing structure in collaborative settings, since I felt that processes went very chaotic. Through implementing structured guidelines and centralising communication among teammates, I gained greater control over steering our collective direction.

 

Throughout year two, I decided to focus more on developing specific skills, rather than design disciplines. Firstly, I worked on low- and mid-fidelity prototyping with emphasis on interactions, as I felt my earlier prototypes didn’t fully reflect my design intentions. For developing a waking-up experience, I started small by testing simple electronics, in order to examine if the interaction of the launching mechanism worked properly. In case the electronics didn’t work or wouldn’t fit, I could easily adjust them without spending too much time. After testing, I proceeded by upscaling the design and improving the aesthetics, where I was able to amplify the interaction. This taught me the importance of flexibility in prototyping. Having the ability to quickly adapt or simplify components was key to maintaining momentum in the design process.

 

At the beginning of this year, I was also eager to grow in ways that would support my vision. I wanted to focus on human-AI interactions in interfaces, since I wanted to combine more-than-human approaches with building robots. During the process of building the Body-to-Image AI system, I realised that clearly communicating how the model created outputs, was essential to foster confidence in users. During user testing this became very apparent to me, as users would constantly ask questions regarding the decision-making process of the model. This prompted me to create an interface, with emphasis on communication, trust and transparency. I felt the interface was difficult and took a long time to get right, but the process highlighted how iterative and responsive the design process had to be.

 

Thirdly, I took opportunities to make more posters throughout the year. I already had experience with creative processes like sketching, but felt I lacked in digital forms of making, such as with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. I wanted to communicate designs in more professional manners. Throughout the learning process, I discovered that developing fluency in digital tools gave me more control over my creative output, helping me to better realise and refine my visual intentions. Still, I found this difficult at times. In order to properly translate ideas to digital tools, the thematics of the poster had to be in line with the design. When I made decisions to quickly go to poster design, the result would come out the wrong way. I realised that the foundation for the poster had to be solid, before I could start designing the poster.

 

Still, there were things I had trouble with. Throughout Project 3, I found it difficult to separate personal and professional dynamics. Being in a group of friends made me hesitant to hold teammates accountable for their work. Additionally, I remained very quiet during meetings, mostly because I didn’t prepare myself adequately. My coach pointed out that Expertise Area’s needed to be integrated properly, for the project to become a success, but instead of taking initiative, I stayed very passive — I let others take the lead and didn’t ask for any help from my coach or tutors. As a result, I didn’t receive credits for Project 3. I realise I need to shift my mindset towards taking action, in order to become more engaged, both with my own work and in relation to team settings.