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TOM VAN 'T WESTEINDE

HELLO!

WELCOME TO MY SHOWCASE!

FINAL MASTER PROJECT 2017

ABOUT ME

Nowadays we are dealing with a growing amount of societal challenges like climate change, ageing and energy consumption. These problems are becoming more and more transparent due to the possibilities of online debate. The collective thinking that is being facilitated because of this transparency results in the realisation that we cannot continue living the way we have been living.

VISION

ON SOCIETY & DESIGN

Let's talk about innovation.

In this fast developing society we are more than often introduced to words or phrases that become very popular for a period of time. With media operating through increasingly digital channels these ‘buzzwords’ are often even used in all layers of our current society. To me the biggest buzzword we currently use since ‘synergy’ and ‘thinking out of the box’ is 'innovation’ Since the 1950's the word has become associated with bringing a new technology to the market and developing commercialised products. Looking to the origin of innovation and it’s definition it is actually about renewal; choosing to do things differently and make choices outside the norm, rather than making something new.

The role of design

This need for focus on the user in its context results in a shift in large organisations that puts design much closer to the center of the enterprise. It’s not about aesthetics, but about applying the principles of design to the way people work. Since design is about questioning current practices, exploring new territories and imagining things that do not yet exist it is very well capable of transforming a society that faces the social challenges of our modern age.

While the issues are growing in significance it becomes more difficult for any of these individual stakeholders to resolve these challenges due to their complexity in size, regulations and resources. There is a need for a shift towards multiple stakeholder collaboration and new types of value creation. This requires an adaptive attitude that uses those challenging characteristics of innovation to cause a systemic shift in the mind and results in people changing their behaviour and way of thinking.

Thinking like a designer can cross the traditional boundaries between public, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors. This requires a human-centred approach that taps into capacities we all have but are overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. Design thinking relies on the ability to be intuitive, to recognise patterns and to construct ideas that have meaning as well being functional for a specific context.

In order to get to this shift companies and organisations need to focus on new ways of working. This needs to result in a culture that takes into account the influence of decisions on societal and economic effects that go outside their existing models while incorporating the multidisciplinary aspects of collaboration Aspects of this shift become visible in the trend of ‘Corporate Social Responsibility and the rise of the term ‘Purpose Economy’. It indicates that companies are not solely focus on plain profit but acknowledge that the more socially engaged they are, the more actual difference they can make. Therefore the starting point of companies when tackling those challenges should become more focused on their user; the people that use their products and services in that fast changing society.

I applied these principles in my design processes and focus on the user to develop a bottom-up approach for problem solving (M12). My recent experience with my Graduation Project at ‘Jongens van de Tekeningen’ has however emphasised my shift from designing from a mere societal perspective to a designing within a business-to-business context. Although I have written about how companies and organisations are not able to handle the challenges of nowadays society; it is there where the change in the way of working needs to take place in order to have a societal impact.

This realisation became visible in the fact that a client (read; organisation or company) often first needs to be happy before that their user even get’s to see what they have come up. I however do see it as my role as a designer to use the principles of design to break through the ‘dominant logic’ and keep focussing on showing the value of really starting with the user when trying to improve products, systems or processes.

IDENTITY

MY DESIGN APPROACH

I see my own way of working as a form of creativity with at its core the making of connections and combining observations with existing ideas. It is at the the intersections of these insights that I am able to quickly get the essence out of a context or situation. This abstraction can however never be translated back 1:1 to that situation. Therefore I need to design interventions that can communicate these insights to quickly iterate on new possibilities and solutions.

I start with an empathic approach to get insights in as much of the stakeholders as possible. I do this by facilitating the right environment to talk, draw, and observe to get insights in a certain situation and identify how a problem is framed and could be solved within the specific context.

These activities transition to explorations in the context to engage with all the stakeholders to see where there is space for design interventions. Based on the insights I design interventions that make the insights from the previous step actionable rather than just informing the stakeholders. This interventions beging lo-fi methods they allow to for quickly exploring new possibilities.

Facilitate

Engage

Finally I need to step away from the individual approach and combine the insights from the previous activities to ultimately empower the stakeholders to take action towards their goal and develop a different perspective on their way of working.

In this way I have developed a user centred design approach that not necessarily focuses on the wishes and needs of individuals but rather uses design to collect their experiences. I use this as input for the development of tools and services that enhance their way of working and hopefully ultimately create improvements in society.

Empower

GROWTH

REFLECTION ON THE PAST

Looking back to my Master as a whole it has become clear that my main development took place in regard to my creative confidence. The brothers Tom & David Kelly (2013) refer to this as “…the self-assurance and belief in one’s ability to create change in the world around them” (idem, p32). Since they see this notion as “…a muscle that can be strengthened and nurtured through effort and experience” I can say that I have had quite some exercise during my education.

As I ended my Industrial Design Bachelor with the feedback to reconsider my presumed academic attitude and start to think about myself as a more hands-on, practical designer I began the Master with a fresh perspective on my identity as a designer. Although I had achieved a solid and steady development in regard to the competencies of design, the learning process I went through felt like the first year of my Bachelor all over again. As a result of working on more in depth projects and modules I started to reevaluate myself as a designer while becoming more aware of the low level of self-assurance in my way of working. This was the starting point of the path towards the recovery of my own creative confidence.

The fact that I went through this development within an university environment gave me the opportunity to take the (extra) time to go through this learning process. I was able to find help within and outside of the educational system to go through several reflective lessons that would help me regain that confidence (EA: self-directed and continuous learning). This process has resulted in multiple insights in who I am as a person and how this relates to me as the designer I have been able to become; feeling stronger and ready to develop myself [further] outside the context of the university.

Kelley, T. and Kelley, D. (2013). Creative confidence. London: William Collins, p.32.

As the projects and electives in the Master required a more in depth approach I noticed that my starting point for designing started to change. Whereas I used to start my design process from a predefined challenge and project brief I noticed that I started to relate my vision on design to a societal, more abstract, narrative before bringing it back to what I could do as a designer. This became visible in the paper I wrote for my research semester and present at the SiDeR student conference (EA: teamwork and communication). Here I first mentioned the link between design and society when designing technological mediations (EA: math data and computing) in the form of ‘engagement catalysers’ that were designed to influence the sociality between two strangers “…in a socio-cultural environment where means for advanced sociality are necessary” (Westeinde, 2015).

Designing Engagement Catalysers

While societal challenges became one of the major themes of my vision in my Master I also refer to this starting point for designing in my Graduation Proposal. I began to see that many other designers and start-ups were designing from a certain frustration in their environment; for example the people behind Fairphone who questioned the way we are producing smartphones. With the module Ideating in Skills I started to explore this personal approach through a first person perspective methodology (EA: design and research processes). Although this was a very intense learning experience that started to open a lot of uncertainty I noticed that I started to shape my vision based on personal frustrations about, for example, the old fashioned way the educational system is build, the opportunities for better[healthcare], or people’s attitude towards change in neighbourhoods and organisations.

As I choose my projects based on these personal frustrations I got confronted with the danger of working from my individual perspective in my M12 semester. Where I wanted everything that I designed for this social design project to be “just right” before sharing it with others, this fear led to me slowing down my project and wait rather than act; wanting to make it perfect rather than launch. I needed the business context from my [Graduation Project] to separate myself as a person from the designs that I made (EA: self-directed and continuous learning).

Although I enjoyed both the modules Materiality in Time and Context and Poetry in Design a lot in terms of their typical and experimental design approach they were very much about physical products (EA: technology and realisation) as outcome of the process (EA: design and research processes). I acknowledged that for me it is not so much about design as a product and it’s [functional aesthetics] but rather about applying the principles of design to how people work, as I touched upon with the elective Design for Behaviour Change (EA: user and society). This has eventually resulted that the current starting point for my vision came from the frustration towards the current use of the word innovation. It should not be focussing on invention, creation or intellectual property but on choosing to do things differently.

DON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE OF DOING NOTHING JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN'T DO EVERYTHING

To explore how my academic attitude could develop further in my Master study I did several electives that heavily built upon a theoretical background. With the elective Mental Models I wanted to take my basic knowledge in social psychology (EA: user and society) a step further and get a better understanding of the workings of the human brain. With the elective Design for Behaviour Change I wanted to continue on this psychological part of design too see if it could find a place in my Graduation Project. With both assignments I found myself merely broadening my knowledge with a diverse range of theories and see them as handhelds for designing to balance it with my gut feeling. Because of this I did not always get to the necessary depth in documentation but rather make a lot of visuals to communicate my findings (EA: teamwork and communication)

Co-creation sessions in the neighbourhood

For me it became more and more clear that writing text, report or papers were not the best way for me to document my findings (or development for that matter). When working in a visual way on the other hand I am able to much better make connections between theory and observation. If I took my teams, user or other stakeholders along in my visual process, like with the elective Planning for a Design Start-Up and during the M1.2 semester with residents in a neighbourhood (EA: user and society), I could engage them better with my thinking process and more quickly iterate on certain findings. Also when making and handing over the deliverables of electives I found myself making the posters, presentations and videos to communicate or to develop either the process or the design (EA: creativity and aesthetics). Whether it was capturing the idea of Wizard of Oz prototypes for Designing for Peripheral Interaction (EA: technology and realisation), documenting my process and reflection through a video diary for Ideating in Skills, or exploring poetry as input for design qualities during Poetry in Design I always trusted on my aesthetic and communicative skills to show the value of the designs and and the process (EA: creativity and aesthetics, design and research processes and teamwork and communication).

The growth in these skills is one of the reasons I was able to do my Graduation Project at ‘Jongens van de Tekeningen’ because I applied there with the animation video I made during the first semester of my Graduation. Also in the business context of their projects I showed that I was a visual thinker; making visual and tangible means to communicate my insights and experiment with notion from theory with clients (EA: business and entrepreneurship, creativity and aesthetics).

WORK

A SELECTION OF PROJECTS & ASSIGNMENTS

FUTURE

WHAT IS NEXT

With doing my graduation with Jongens van de Tekeningen (JVDT) I have found a company that acknowledges me as a designer and sees how my approach can contribute and add a new perspective to their core business. Therefore I am glad I can announce that I will start working with JVDT as of September this year!

I want do further develop my skills as a design facilitator and see how I can improve my design approach to let people see the value of visual design thinking. Furthermore I want to explore how I can add to the scala of deliverables of JVDT with more tangible products and systems that can take their approach a step further.

In the context of JVDT I will be able to quickly develop and learn these skills because I will get in touch with a lot of different other companies and type of stakeholders. On the long run I would like to use the take aways to develop my confidence in convincing people of new ways of working and eventually apply this knowledge within a large company or organisation.

THANK YOU FOR READING

YOU CAN READ MORE ABOUT ME ON MY LINKED-IN PAGE.