Creativity & Aesthetics
In the years of my bachelor I have followed multiple courses that have thought me skills in this area of expertise. These skills range from making skills, skills to design for interactions and different perspectives. I will discuss the most prominent experiences.
As I describe in my professional identity, I have a talent for drawing reality. As a designer I’m also quite 2D oriented. In my second year of industrial design, I followed the course ‘Exploratory Sketching’. This course gave me skills to also sketch ideas that are only in my mind. This enables me to communicate my concepts better with others. Furthermore, in this course, I also learned how to sketch with markers, to give it a more finished look.
The second creativity course that I followed in my second year of the bachelor is ‘Cardboard Modeling’. Cardboard modeling focusses on ‘sketching’ ideas in 3D. This got me out of my comfort zone, but was an extremely helpful course. I can now make moving and interactive models with foamcore and cardboard.
In my project 2 design I was in the smart mobility squad. We designed a system for an autonomous car where a chair and augmented reality would alert the user when the car would switch from level 4 autonomous to level 2 autonomous, meaning the user has to take over control again. In this project I made alterations to an existing car chair. Here I obtained extra sewing skills with fabric. Furthermore I designed the look of the augmented reality, by doing so I learned how to design a virtual environment.
A mandatory course I followed, but one that was very helpful, was ‘Aesthetics of Interaction’. Here I learned about different frameworks regarding interaction. This course offered different tools for a design process, like movement based design and interaction relabeling.
An elective that I chose in the second year of my bachelor was ‘Tangible Embodied Interaction’. This course really steered me away from always designing digital things with screens and buttons, and helped me to really start thinking out of the box more. Design something that is tangible, that can help the user manipulate the digital world with more wholesome interactions. In this course I brought my skills obtained in ‘Cardboard modeling’ to good use, when making the prototypes from foamcore for the mini project.
In my B3.1, I did free electives at the TU/e. The course, ‘Designing for the Everyday’, had a structure that gives the student space to form his or her own opinion. Every week we were asked to read or watch media to discuss in the lecture. This opened my eyes to new ways to deal with a design process.
In the course we also had to do a mini project, in which we had to design for a ritual. My group, consisted of very aesthetically focused designers, that also had a lot of making skills. Me however, was more of a practical kind of designer, that likes to focus on function over appearance. So designing the table with the plant was really out of my comfort zone. However, I did learn a lot from my teammates. Together with one of my teammates, I made the table. I believe she was able to pass some of her making skills on to me. From her I learned how to make a nice form out of raw wood, by sanding and shaping it.
Like I described in the introduction of Past, the area of creativity and aesthetics was one of my most developed area of expertise. I discovered throughout these courses that I do have a talent of working with paper materials (e.g. sketching , and cardboard modeling). I like to use these tools in my design process. As a designer I will choose function over look anytime. However, after becoming confident in this area, I learned that both function and good aesthetic can go in harmony and are both very important in design.
As I describe in my professional identity, I have a talent for drawing reality. As a designer I’m also quite 2D oriented. In my second year of industrial design, I followed the course ‘Exploratory Sketching’. This course gave me skills to also sketch ideas that are only in my mind. This enables me to communicate my concepts better with others. Furthermore, in this course, I also learned how to sketch with markers, to give it a more finished look.
The second creativity course that I followed in my second year of the bachelor is ‘Cardboard Modeling’. Cardboard modeling focusses on ‘sketching’ ideas in 3D. This got me out of my comfort zone, but was an extremely helpful course. I can now make moving and interactive models with foamcore and cardboard.
In my project 2 design I was in the smart mobility squad. We designed a system for an autonomous car where a chair and augmented reality would alert the user when the car would switch from level 4 autonomous to level 2 autonomous, meaning the user has to take over control again. In this project I made alterations to an existing car chair. Here I obtained extra sewing skills with fabric. Furthermore I designed the look of the augmented reality, by doing so I learned how to design a virtual environment.
A mandatory course I followed, but one that was very helpful, was ‘Aesthetics of Interaction’. Here I learned about different frameworks regarding interaction. This course offered different tools for a design process, like movement based design and interaction relabeling.
An elective that I chose in the second year of my bachelor was ‘Tangible Embodied Interaction’. This course really steered me away from always designing digital things with screens and buttons, and helped me to really start thinking out of the box more. Design something that is tangible, that can help the user manipulate the digital world with more wholesome interactions. In this course I brought my skills obtained in ‘Cardboard modeling’ to good use, when making the prototypes from foamcore for the mini project.
In my B3.1, I did free electives at the TU/e. The course, ‘Designing for the Everyday’, had a structure that gives the student space to form his or her own opinion. Every week we were asked to read or watch media to discuss in the lecture. This opened my eyes to new ways to deal with a design process.
In the course we also had to do a mini project, in which we had to design for a ritual. My group, consisted of very aesthetically focused designers, that also had a lot of making skills. Me however, was more of a practical kind of designer, that likes to focus on function over appearance. So designing the table with the plant was really out of my comfort zone. However, I did learn a lot from my teammates. Together with one of my teammates, I made the table. I believe she was able to pass some of her making skills on to me. From her I learned how to make a nice form out of raw wood, by sanding and shaping it.
Like I described in the introduction of Past, the area of creativity and aesthetics was one of my most developed area of expertise. I discovered throughout these courses that I do have a talent of working with paper materials (e.g. sketching , and cardboard modeling). I like to use these tools in my design process. As a designer I will choose function over look anytime. However, after becoming confident in this area, I learned that both function and good aesthetic can go in harmony and are both very important in design.
