Past
Throughout my bachelor's studies, I learned the importance of including second-person perspectives in my design projects. I often found myself establishing design choices on intuition and my own experiences during the first year. While this definitely should be part of the design process, it could be difficult to establish an impactful and valuable design without a user centered focus. As a result, I had spent much time developing my qualitative research methods during Project 3, Design <> Research and Marketing research and developed the skills needed to establish a well grounded qualitative study.
What I also learned during the course Design for Debate is that a second-person perspective might not always benefit the final concept. This is especially true when using a speculative design approach as the value in such a project comes from the discussions that result from the design and not from the functionality and usability of the design itself. In other words, a speculative design is not always meant to be valuable for the user directly. Yet, in such a situation, being empathic, open to new mindsets, and sensible of social, political, and cultural perspectives is of great importance.
Project 2: Personas used as tool to empathize with target group
Project 3: workshop and group discussion to evaluate toolkit.
Other activities that contributed to my development
User Testing. Design projects: Project 1, Project 2, Project 3.
Emphasizing the target group. Elective: Socio-cultural Sensitivity, Social Psychology and Consumer Behaviour, Sustainable Energy Transition. USE course: Innovation by Design. Major course: User-centered Design.
Present
All skills I have acquired throughout my bachelor's studies proved to be extremely valuable during my Final Bachelor Project. For example, I felt particularly comfortable leading the focus group session, as I was capable of empathizing with the participants and able to involve them in the group discussion. On top of that, I managed to structurally collect, process, and evaluate the obtained insights.