I was born in the south of the Netherlands next to the Belgium border. After I graduated high school, I went to Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU) -which is an art academy- where I specialized myself in Product Design. During that four years I contributed one year as a member of the board of student association C.S. Veritas. That particular year gave me insights of running a company on a large scale. Thereafter I did an internship at HEINEKEN Nederland where I developed an understanding in sales and marketing.
Right now I am a full time second year master student in Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology. The choice for this is based on three main arguments. First, being raised in a teachers family, I value the power of education enormously. My bachelor was fun and I learned a lot, but it didn’t challenge me at a high level. Since I am still quite young, I decided to challenge myself and enjoy as much education as possible with a study at University Masters level. Second, during my period at Heineken I met a colleague who was responsible for the deployment of new products. A role that I admired and saw myself doing. This colleague advised me to conduct a design education program at Master level if I wanted to have his job one day. Lastly, the most substantive argument, I noticed during my bachelor’s degree that I am not -how I like to call it, with due respect- “een Bijenkorf designer” that designs “simple” products that people can buy at every corner of the street. I seek for profundity in design and I want to be challenged in more ways than only designing physical artifacts. I realised that for me, design is everywhere around us, and I want to be educated to understand how it works and especially, how to give it my own twist.
On this website, I will define my identity as a person and designer, my vision and the goals I have set to become the designer (and person) I want to be.
During the past years I learned a lot about myself. Not only by ‘just doing’ and reflecting afterwards, but also in a proactive manner: conducting personality tests. A few years ago, SamHealth tested my personality by doing a DISC Personality Analysis. According to the test, I am a Communicator in the segment Influence. Another personality test classified me as a Campaigner with extraverted, intuitive, feeling, and prospecting personality traits. Reflecting on these tests, I mostly agree and it helped me to gain insight in who I am and I behave. Seeing myself in the proverbial mirror helped me to accept my pitfalls and to get the maximum out of my strengths. I believe I can describe myself as an enthusiastic, optimistic, convincing and impulsive person. I prefer to accomplish targets with and through people. Instead of working alone, I am more effective when I have company. I am energetic and sometimes I can be careless and chaotically. I am a person that needs acknowledgement.
One of my pitfalls is that I can be too optimistic and have almost no interest in details. Because of this, I make my decisions most of the time in a spontaneous way, based on my own gut feeling. I have a short tension curve and I don’t fancy ongoing conservative routines. I am an encourager and motivator for others and I find myself often negotiating in conflicts. I am submissive and I always try to get the best out of the people around me. I can express myself and my idea’s (in Dutch) on a high level and I like to survey the bigger picture.
I can not overlook the growth areas. I need to challenge myself in being less impulsive and consider first before I decide. I need to learn how to be more result driven instead of process driven since I know that I get energy from creating the actual product or service. Once I understand how such processes could be executed, and once I work with others instead of alone, I can be a well-educated process ánd result driven designer. I need to dwell on details and facts, finish and don’t give up so easily. And finally I need to slow down sometimes so my teammates can follow up. I believe it’s important to reflect on what I am good at, what are my weaknesses and what I want to become. This way I can focus on what I need to develop more and what I should try to avoid.
Over the years, I learned that I am a dreamer, a person with visionary thoughts that randomly generate thoughts throughout my life. I try to use this asset to boost my design projects in the early phases of the project. The vision, the idea, -in other words: the whole story- is invented by the dreamer in me. Afterwards, the realist in me joins the project as well. I am able to realistically reflect on the project. This realist helps me to include business aspects of design within my projects, as I acknowledge the fact that everything in the world is about making money, which I do not see as a negative thing. The challenge of these two different character traits is finding the right balance between them. Once the realists take over the project, dreams are annulled and I see too many obstacles slowing down the process. If the dreamer runs the whole project, I will not achieve a significant end result.
As mentioned, I do not shy away from the commercial aspects of design. I learned that for me, creating social and commercial impact on society and the market is crucial. Using design to create this impact inspires me a lot.
The above character traits only really took shape in the last few months (this semester). COVID has drastically affected my study program since I was not allowed to visit RMIT (Melbourne) for an exchange and there were limited facilities offered by the university (online instead of offline lectures, partly closed workshops, etc.) that I could make use of. In addition, the influence of COVID also affected me on a personal level. Being a social, extravert person, I really struggled with having limited social (unplanned) contact and the world I live in felt very small. It was shocking and shameful how much impact this has on my psychological condition as I found myself quite depressed. Unfortunately, this had a tremendous impact on the process of the M2.1 project. On the other hand, due to the unusual feelings I experienced, I reflected a lot by talking with close friends and family which enabled me to understand more about my character, vision, weaknesses and strengths.
During my bachelor at the art academy I learned that I get energy out of designing with my hands in the workshop. The direct interaction with materials inspires me and working with different machines (3D printers, CNCs, lathe, etc.) and materials in the workshops became one of my skills as I learned how to shape materials. I realized that I like to communicate my ideas and vision with a (physical) visual form or interaction.
In the upcoming years I want to develop myself in being an inspirational team leader that always oversees the bigger picture with a holistic approach. I want to connect people that are extremely good at one specific subject with each other. Being that designer, I counterbalance my lack of details by making advantage of my persuasiveness. I know I am not good enough in a lot of things, but finding and connecting with people that are the expert in what I need will eventually help to reach their and my goals.
Musk has the power to disrupt society and challenge the status quo. He is a dreamer that will end up in history books as one the greatest entrepreneurs from our era. Musk is able to turn his dreams in reality by attracting the right people for the right jobs. As an undergraduate in economics, he is now one of the most influential people on earth pursuing his dreams with the help of large numbers of motivated experts he needs to accomplish his dreams.
Ive is one of my favorite designers as he tends to use a holistic approach in his work. Together with his team he has accomplished to create designs for one of the biggest tech disruptors Apple. He started at Apple designing just one device; Apple’s first iPod. Later he developed himself as a true inspirational leader as he managed the design teams and had a huge impact on the design process and results of all Apple’s touchpoints (products, websites, physical stores, Apple park, etc.).
I believe a designer is the translator of human needs, human desire and things that scientists can accomplish. We, the society, are facing now and have to face a lot of drastic changes in the upcoming years. Even though that always sounds a bit harsh, it will bring humanity to a whole different level. There will be changes that not all of us will accept at first sight. In my opinion, that’s where the future designer has to take his or her responsibility.
Driven by incomprehension and dissatisfaction I find it interesting to unite various specific specialisms. With all the experts together, the chance of missing a detail in doing research, designing, testing and finalizing an idea will be nil. This approach fits with my earlier statement about “design is for everyone”.
Being a translator of human needs, human desire and the increasing amount of possibilities created by scientists you have to question all stakeholders and sometimes even reject innovation. Next to a translator, I believe a designer is a public watchdog that always sets the evolution of the society at the very top.
Being a public watchdog requires a natural inquisitiveness in the desire of the world’s society. Next to keep educating yourself in the possibilities of technology, it is highly necessary to constantly query the society for its findings of the new technological advancements. The world is getting more and more connected with each other which can be seen as an advantage for the future designer. Querying all layers of society has never been so easy and will become more easier over the years. Don’t be afraid of sharing knowledge, embrace the power of connectivity and bring humanity to the next chapter.
Nowadays there is a growing amount of movies and TV series that shows the spectator a world where new technologies are integrated in our society. The shows are constantly testing and searching for the ethical boundaries that we -as a society- lay on. I believe this is an absolute genius way of stimulating a society to form it’s opinion about all the new technologies. For example Black Mirror makes it able to get in contact and see the good and the bad things that can come out of an innovation in a simplified way. Forming an opinion about all the topics that are shown in this matter is not complicated and can be done by everyone.
In my opinion nowadays innovators are questioning and focusing on their specific target group. That is not just a big mistake of the innovators, is it a threat to society. Query only the direct users of a product will only make the product for this particular group better. I strongly believe in questioning both direct and indirect users of services and products to make sure the environment and the product itself will strengthen instead of harming each other.
Personally I want to challenge both scientists and all layers of global society to embrace new technologies. With such new technologies I will focus on livability instead of increasing the lifespan of a human being. Using seamless technological design I want to make the quality of life better for everyone on earth, I want to create social impact. But as mentioned above, I do not shy away from the commercial aspect of design. On the contrary, I want to create social and commercial impact at the same time.
I believe -inspired by McKinsey Design- that design should be used to shape every part of a company (incl. organisational structures, product and services) in order to differentiate from competitors. As McKinsey Design expressed; design should be addressed in the so-called “C-suite” of companies if they want to succeed. Doing so, design can influence the business model of a company and vice versa.
I envision myself as one of the designers in a C-suite in the future searching for the right balance between commercial value, society’s desires and the vision of the company. To find this balance, I believe using design is the most important asset a company can use and that is what I want to do in the future. A design function at the top of a company enables me to use a holistic approach and tackle different challenges within the company’s culture, products, HR, touch points, appearance, revenue, etc.
To get there, in my opinion, there are two main paths I could take. On the one hand I could work at a company and by working hard, challenging myself and a bit of luck I could make it to that desired position. Another path I could take is starting my own business and work as a consultant, based on Design Driven Consultancy using that holistic design-driven approach from the beginning of my career.
I was never a profound patrol head, and although I realized that the climate was suffering from people’s behaviour, I also did nothing to protect our planet and did nothing to change the way people treat our climate. Nowadays, I have a different take on this. I am -more than ever- aware of the influence human beings have on the planet and I want to address this topic in my work.
As mentioned, I can be blunt. This also counts when discussing sustainable concepts or our planet in general. This blunt and hard opinion sometimes takes a physical form in the form of an interaction or object. For me, using critical design to address societal changes is very important. I believe, in the near future we will see more interactions and object by designers influencing the debate about climate change, form society’s opinion and eventually create and leverage momentum to change structures of companies.
The understanding of climate-neutral action also affects the economy. I believe that this is an opportunity for designers to design change in a) the way society works, b) the effect it has on the environment and c) how to create a healthy economy. I believe this is where I can make a difference. Addressing ethical issues while designing new seamless interactions and business models is something that gives me energy. In return, I can use that energy to create change.
I want to highlight an intrinsic interest that has gained more and more words and action in recent years, namely: the world of mobility. This interest is expressed in the sports I fancy, games I play, news I read and the organisation and persons I follow on social media. When reflecting on why I have this interest (e.g. reflecting on the sport Formula One), I realized that I again use a holistic approach. I am not a fan of one team or one driver, I am a fan of the whole racing culture, (infra)structures, and impact the sport has on society. Unlike most people, I find the most interesting roles within the organisation the persons who are able to influence “the bigger picture”. Of course, the end results are in the hands of the drivers, but to be competitive a team, right-minded people with the right vision and roles are needed.
I notice that I reflect deeper and think more deeply about the world of mobility than my conversation partners. The reason for this could be the fact that the mobility context lends itself perfectly for using a holistic approach. Within the mobility network, there are so many touchpoints and interaction with both direct and indirect users. In addition to all different interactions with different means of transport itself, interactions with mobility are now also moving out of the vehicles, which entails a design challenge. In other words, there is increasingly more to (holistically) oversee which intrigues me very much.
Next to all the touchpoints, the world of mobility has an enormous impact on how society works and how it affects the environment, which I find very interesting. The sector has a huge influence on how people and their goods are transported and therefore it practices influence on different levels of society (e.g. amount of jobs, the way people go on holidays, etc.). On the other hand, society is increasingly demanding change in how the sector functions and the resources they use. With the help of new emerging technologies, the sector reacts with the development of EV’s and AV’s. The entry of these new technologies is what I want to make a difference in. I believe by listening to direct and indirect users and by addressing ethical issues, the sector of mobility can create services or products for everyone in our society.
Since the start of my Bachelor -Product Design at HKU-, I always figured myself as a designer for common, daily used, products. This vision of the designer I wanted to become changed throughout the years of my bachelor, as i found out that i tend to use a holistic approach in design. Driven by dissatisfaction, enchantment and personal interests, I used the freedom of the HKU to explore design for debate.
During my year as a full time member of the board of student association C.S. Veritas I was responsible for all business related aspects including the building. Within this year, I found out that a business minded approach suited me well, and I developed my qualities in entrepreneurship, manager, project developer and team player.
After this year, HEINEKEN offered me a job which I took for six months. Within these months I was able develop my managerial skills even more. One of the projects I was responsible for was to put Heineken BLADE into the market. Within the context of this project, I met colleges of the international development and strategic departments. By talking to them I realised that a similar function fits me better than the function I fulfilled at that point in time. I decided to develop myself more with education to be able to do a function, like I ran into at HEINEKEN, in the future. As I was searching for the right master, I come across the Industrial Design Master at the TU/e with the track Design, Leadership and Entrepreneurship. With the help of this educational program, I am trying to combine my passion for art, material, shape and forms with the strategic business aspects of design.
Looking back at all projects I have done in the past, I noticed that once a design/concept became to detailed, my enthusiasm decreased. This adds to the holistic approach of which I feel confident. In addition, I gain a lot of energy by assigning the right person to the right job and establishing connection between experts with different expertises. I feel confident within the role ‘connecting leader’. I tend to ask questions in order to enthuse people to work together developing creative solutions.
But, I am not there yet. I still have a lot to learn becoming the designer I want to be. For example, I want to learn how to bring the best out of a process and employees to lift the outcome of the project to a higher level. I want to learn how commerce plays a role in a design process. I want to learn how to make a positive impact on society with design and how make profit out of it. In addition, I chose the track DLE to play and explore the body of thought of being an entrepreneur within the safe environment of the TU/e.