The only true design expertise I had coming into this bachelor was my skillset in fabrication. Through my individual interest I had self-thought a large portion of wood and metal working skills. I specialized in small scale wood and metal turning. This background laid the groundwork for my attitude towards making. Since I was already familiar with teaching myself complex skills, I had the confidence I could learn any other type of fabrication technique. An example of this is when I went out of my way to learn how to MIG weld for the capstone design project.

Coming into this bachelor I had a very specific outlook on what I thought design should be. My design vision consisted of returning to analogue interaction/interfaces, and de-digitalizing product design. This vision was naïve in its understanding of my personal motivation and transformed into the vision to embed interactivity and functionality into everyday objects through materiality.

User and Society

In this section, I will explore my development in areas that, while not directly tied to my four primary competencies, have significantly enhanced my design practice and understanding, aligning with the foundational principles of creating value through design. I had to develop an understanding of utilizing qualitative and quantitative research methods to gather user insights. I had to utilize different perspectives to empathize with users.

My project 2 revolved around using futuring methods to solve for social problems we would face 35 years from now. We decided to address the decline in conversational quality through an interactive data visualizer. To do this successful we had to several user tests, combining semi structured interviews with observational studies. This has taught me how to gather and utilize user insights to enhance the user experience.

In Project 3, I gained a fresh perspective on user involvement in the design process. We evaluated the emotional impact of our designs using the PrEmo framework, which further developed my ability to incorporate user emotions into design decisions, a critical aspect of empathetic design practices.

Stakeholder perspectives was a course I took to familiarize myself with utilizing different perspectives to generate insights. It also taught me how understanding other people’s first person’s perspectives is essential for empathizing with user needs.

I was able to combine all these developments in my use learning line, where I utilized user insights to re design existing user experiences.