Expertise Areas
Design and Research Process +++
During my undergraduate study, I learned the user-centered design process, which allows me to follow the double-diamond design process. But I found the students in TU/e conduct a more flexible design approach, which took me a while to get used to it. During my M1.1 project DATACH, we derived our final concept from multiple iterations and validations. This experience made me realize that there shouldn’t be a specific path or order. We need to tailor the design approach to our project and try to start the prototyping as early as possible. Double-diamond might be a good tool to promote the teamwork process, but there is no need to stick to it.
At the same time, learning how to conduct research as a designer is the focus of my postgraduate study. I chose the CDR track and took several courses to learn the research process, including 'Constructive Design Research' and ‘Research Methods’. I transformed my working pattern from creating new products to deriving theoretical conclusions. I learned how to identify a research question and the role of research prototypes. With these skills, I did my individual research projects SERENITY and EASI. My growing interest and the development of this competency drive me to pursue my career goal in the future, which is to be a Ph.D. researcher.
User & Society +++
I always believe that design starts with the user's needs. It is the designers' responsibility to understand users and stakeholders and meet their needs with innovative solutions. In my opinion, user research is not just about listening to what people say, but more about understanding their actual needs through in-depth observation and inspection.
However, I put too much emphasis on qualitative research in the past while overlooking quantitative research skills. So I chose the lab design methodology in the course 'Constructive Design Research' to gain more knowledge about quantitative research. And in my M1.1 project DATACH and M1.2 project SERENITY, I combined quantitative data with qualitative data well as suitable evaluation methods. Also, I started to enhance my explorative study skills by conducting co-creation sessions, workshops, and focus groups in the course 'Designing user interfaces with emerging technology' and FMP project EASI. As I have determined to further my studies in the field of healthcare, users will be an integral part of my design and research. I will maintain a user-centered design process, learn more theories and methods in this area, and overcome cultural and language differences to explore various social environments.
Technology & Realization +++
As a designer, I should be able to create good design concepts, as well as implement those concepts in rapid prototyping, both physically and digitally. During my undergraduate study with an engineering background, I acquired skills in 3D modeling and 3D printing, as well as various craft and mechanical equipment techniques. After graduation, I realized that digitization and programming are becoming more and more important for designers, so I taught myself Arduino and Processing, and practiced in courses such as making the research prototype in the course 'Constructive Design Research' and in the project SERENITY.
Moreover, I am curious about emerging technologies, I see them as special design tools. In the course 'Designing with Advanced AI', I learned about machine learning and different types of algorithms. In the course 'Data-Enabled Design', I learned about using data as creative material in real-world design cases. In the course 'Designing user interfaces with emerging technology', I learned how to expand the boundaries and establish a vision for future technologies. I will always keep an eye on emerging technologies and use them for good to generate and implement new concepts.
Math, Data & Computing ++
In my opinion, Math & Computing have a strong connection with Technology & Realization. They can often play a unique role in specific projects. For example, it allows designers to apply artificial intelligence to their projects to improve user experience. In the 'Designing with Advanced Artificial Intelligence course, I learned about using algorithms to analyze large datasets. I used Weka for data mining and applied the trained model to Processing to create a website AI4STAY that helps people find a suitable place to live.
Moreover, computing can be used to filter and visualize data. I joined Nurdle Soup, which is a student innovation team that aims to raise awareness about protecting the environment by identifying plastic particles in water. I'm in charge of data visualization and I learned data analysis skills from team members whose major is data science.
Through math and data, designers can also gain insights into user behavior and mental states to support analysis and ideation. This is related to some mathematical analysis software, such as Matlab, which is the part I would like to learn further.
Creative & Aesthetics +
I have always believed that creativity and aesthetic are the most basic abilities of designers. I used to spend a lot of time practicing Sketch, Ai, Ps, and Rhino, just to make my work presentable. However, as my understanding of design deepened, I discovered that aesthetics are not just about the perfect shape of a product, but also about the meaning behind the shape that designers want to convey to the audience. Good aesthetics can make users more willing and easier to understand the deep thoughts behind the concept.
While creativity and aesthetics play an important role in the design outcome, they are equally important during the design process. First of all, a quick sketch is a great tool for presenting ideas and helps in the collective creative process. There are many design methods that work well on paper to generate new ideas, such as co-creation, brainstorming, mind mapping, etc. What's more, creativity is not just about intuition. Learning how to evaluate and test the existing design concepts helps a lot for the next iteration. In my FMP, I developed the final toolkit through two workshops and three major iterations, which made the final design well-received both in terms of creativity and aesthetics.
Business & Entrepreneurship +
I took some business and entrepreneurship courses during my undergraduate study, and had a period of entrepreneurial experience from 2017 to 2019. I formed an entrepreneurial team for campus cultural products. Building a team from scratch is a very challenging task. Not only team coordination skills are required, but also marketing, stakeholder and risk control skills. The graduation project of my bachelor's degree INDIGO was also business-related. It was about branding and product design for an autism nonprofit.
Due to limited time and energy, I didn’t take courses on business and entrepreneurship during my postgraduate studies. But I believe that business is very important for designers, and commercialization is key to bringing design to the market. The world outside the campus is the best classroom for learning business. For this reason, I did my research project in Games for Health as an intern during my second-year study. I worked on citizen science games and the goal was to help sustain the long-term engagement of participants. I learned a business perspective of the citizen science project and the various problems that a company faces when running a project. And the outcome of the EASI Toolkit is very valuable for the business side of the company, helping the communication between different stakeholders and the company.
IDENTITY
Self-awareness
During my undergraduate study in industrial design, I found myself skilled in the following aspects. First of all, I am a person with strong empathy, willing to listen to the voices of various stakeholders and substitute myself with other people's perspectives to think from their standpoints. This is shown in two of my undergraduate projects, PODDO and INDIGO, both of which focused on vulnerable groups. At the same time, due to my engineering background, I have a strong hands-on ability, so my project often contains interactive prototypes. Moreover, I have a strong logical ability, as I applied myself to deduce every step of my design with a reasonable basis. These professional characteristics helped me become a qualified designer.
Self-exploration
However, there was still some confusion at that time. Because of a lack of experience in applying the design skill that I learned from school to practical use, I keep wondering about the value of my design in real life. I chose to have a gap year before postgraduate study and worked in several companies to explore the specific area I really want to focus on. After finishing my fourth internship as a user experience designer in a medical technology innovation company, I became interested in design for care.
Self-identity
After all the experiences I went through in the past few years, I found that I was obsessed with applying top-end technology to daily products, which would make the technology perform in an effective way. While as a designer who plays a small role in the whole development process, my influence would be limited. During the internships, I was restricted to the user research report prepared by the researcher and the technical scope given by the development engineer. Thus, I prefer to work with the identity as a combination of industrial designer, HCI researcher, and electronic engineer, which would make my voice louder and stay at the forefront of the field. I am fully aware that only by breakthrough can I make it happen, and I firmly believe that having a Ph.D. is my choice.
VISION
Driven By Technology
Technology is all around us, as natural as the air, but it also plays a vital role in various professional fields, making an irreversible impact on human life and dominating the whole world. Although technology promotes the development of society from a macro perspective, does it make people enjoy their lives in a more positive way? I believe in technology, but at the same time, I noticed that high-end technologies don’t necessarily make people happier when using them. The number of people suffering from negative emotions such as pessimism, anxiety and irritability does not decrease while the technology is blooming. Technology is neutral, what matters most is whether people use it in the right way. I prefer to be a designer who naturally integrates technology into human daily life and pursues humanistic technology.
Bring Along Vitality
The two specific areas that I'm most interested in are health and gamification design. The experience of working in a medical technology innovation company has made me realize that people are starting to pay more attention to their well-being, both physical and mental. The current medical and health field has huge untapped potential and room for improvement, and design plays a unique value in it. When tangible, meaningful and playful interactions are added to the well-being field, it can bring vitality and joy into people's daily lives.
Lead To Humanity
In my opinion, design is a bridge between people, technology and society, and also a bridge between different professionals in different fields to promote cooperation on social issues. However, there are so many brilliant design ideas being buried due to a lack of commercialization opportunities. Therefore, designers should communicate with collaborators and stakeholders from different disciplines (i.e. psychology, medicine, business, etc.)to integrate human-centered design into actual projects, in order to make meaning-driven innovation and create more equitable, inclusive and value-based outcomes for every individual.
Former Apple design chief Jony Ive once wrote a letter to commemorate the 10 years of Steve Jobs's death. It says that 'Steven truly believed that by making something useful, empowering and beautiful, we express our love for humanity'. This is also my ultimate belief as a designer.
DEVELOPMENT
During my postgraduate study, I did my best to prepare for a Ph.D.. I followed a Constructive Design Research (CDR) track and had multiple research-related courses to earn the essential knowledge to be a qualified researcher. Moreover, I focused on design research in the healthcare and gamification field.
During my M1.1 project DATACH in the Game & Play squad, I felt the charm of gamification design. Within a three-student team, we made an explorative board game that shares knowledge and stimulates conversation within teams during onboarding day. In my M1.2 project in the Health squad, I did research about using sonification as part of gamified rehabilitation therapy for post-stroke patients. This project was a cooperation with the rehabilitation center Adelante. I designed an interactive audio game as a design probe called SERENITY, and tested it with nine therapists. With the help of my supervisor Daniel Tetteroo, the paper of the project has been accepted at the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. This experience made me more determined to continue working as a researcher in the healthcare field.
For my M2.1 and FMP, I worked in Games for Health and conducted a research project about citizen science games. Choosing citizen science games as my research topic fits in with my master study plan which focuses on gamification design. While the research of citizen science games is not directly related to health, the goal of the game is to promote life science developments, so it is in line with my goal of pursuing meaningful innovation for well-being. Last semester, I established a player typology model from theories and validated the model through interviews. This semester, I converted the model into a design toolkit and tested it in three workshops. The whole process of bridging theory and design practice was a big challenge for me, which made me improve in all aspects of the design research field.
Regarding my expertise areas, I achieved an overall development in CDR skills and all of my expertise areas. Following user-centered design methods, I conducted an iterative design process and had a comprehensive understanding of user needs from workshops, which help me to characterize US-related considerations in my concepts. Through developing the toolkit in Miro and designing the feature prompt cards, my knowledge of TR and CA got further developed. BE was mainly developed by cooperating with Games for Health, the final toolkit was highly recognized by the company and they are planning to frequently use the toolkit in their future workshops and game jams. Moreover, I have logically analyzed and presented different quantitative and qualitative data (from focus group sessions, questionnaires, workshop results and observations), which enhanced my data analysis capabilities of MDC.
Now I'm more confident to say that I can lead the research process by myself, analyze and dissect the research topic step by step, and figure out the appropriate methods to draw in-depth conclusions.
FUTURE
After my graduation, I will start a new journey as a Ph.D. researcher at Aarhus University. My research will focus on fabricating bio-sensors for healthcare. The goal is to design and develop flexible bio-sensors with user interfaces to enable continuous, seamless, and portable monitoring of physiological signals. I see flexible and wearable biosensors as a promising field because: 1) They are easy to carry; 2) They can get the test results quickly without long waiting; 3) They are low in production cost, which is beneficial to areas with limited resources; 4) They are more suitable for wearing and can fit the skin for more real-time sampling.
To start my research, I first need to strengthen my knowledge of biosensors and electronic circuits, and potential technologies including vinyl-cut copper circuits, inkjet printing and circuit digital embroidery. At the same time, I will start to plan my career. My ideal future is to enter academia, I am interested in doing a postdoc and eventually having a career as a researcher at the university. In that case, I also need to learn how to communicate my research as a professional researcher and teach as a tutor.
The road and growth will never stop, and I'm thrilled for the next journey.
