Current design often prioritizes efficiency, outsourcing and optimization through AI. The focus is increasingly on replacing human skills instead of strengthening them [1]. This can be seen in the rise of human-AI automation systems, as opposed to human-AI augmentation. AI for automation aims to take over human work, whereas AI for augmentation refers to integrating AI with human expertise to complement and enhance human skills [2]. I find this a worrying trend, because it often comes at the cost of human curiosity and exploration. I believe that AI, and technology in general, should move beyond productivity as its main goal and instead contribute to a better quality of life. As a designer, I feel responsible for shaping the environment, products and interactions around us, and I see this as a chance to actively contribute to that shift.
The domain of human creativity illustrates this tension clearly. The use of generative AI to replace our creative work is becoming more common every day. With just a few clicks, tools such as ChatGPT allow anyone to produce impressive output. When creativity is approached primarily as a means to an end, outsourcing it to faster and more efficient tools seems attractive. However, I believe that this approach skips what actually makes creativity valuable: the process itself. Delegating all our creative tasks to AI can reduce the value we place on creativity as a deeply human ability. To me, that loss is far more concerning than the quality of the output AI can generate.
To respond to this development, not only within the domain of creativity but more broadly, I believe it is important to deliberately incorporate elements of play into design. I see play as a state of mind driven by intrinsic motivation rather than obligation. Play is about enjoyment and exploration, not external rewards or efficiency. Through my own experience, I have come to realize how important this state of play is for my well-being, helping me relax, feel joy and connect with others. Yet as we grow older, we enter this playful state far less often [3]. In today’s society, the mindset of play often clashes with the prevailing culture of productivity and performance.
For me, play consists of three key elements: curiosity, surprise, and creativity, as these elements form the basis of most activities that I do out of intrinsic desire. These elements are reflected in my design work and guide my design decisions. Creativity, for example, appears in a sketching tool I designed in which AI adds surprising elements to a user’s drawing to stimulate their creativity. Curiosity plays a central role in a VR game I developed with my team members, where players work together to uncover the mysteries of a meteorite through playful and surprising challenges.
I believe we need to be more intentional about how AI tools are developed. The question we should ask ourselves is simple: do we want AI to replace human qualities, or do we want it to enrich them? My answer is clear. AI should empower what makes us human. Designing for play, and not only for functionality, is crucial in achieving this. That is why my goal is to create designs that spark curiosity, invite surprise and actively encourage creativity.
Vision
[1] S. Dégallier-Rochat, M. Kurpicz-Briki, N. Endrissat, and O. Yatsenko, “Human augmentation, not replacement: A research agenda for AI and robotics in the industry,” Frontiers in Robotics and AI, vol. 9, Oct. 2022. https://doi.org/10.3389/frobt.2022.997386
[2] S. Raisch and S. Krakowski, “Artificial Intelligence and Management: The automation–augmentation paradox,” Academy of Management Review, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 192–210, Jan. 2021. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2018.0072
[3] The Basics - National Institute for Play. (z.d.). National Institute For Play. https://nifplay.org/what-is-play/the-basics/
As stated in my vision, my goal is to combine technology and elements of play in a way that strengthens human qualities, rather than focusing only on functionality. To work toward this goal, I often use a Research through Design approach in my projects. This approach fits my vision well, because it allows for an iterative and open process. I start a project with an open mindset and use design artifacts to explore how people interact with them. By testing early artifacts directly in context, I uncover unexpected behavior, which helps me decide where to continue exploring. This naturally leads to an iterative process with multiple cycles of making, testing, and reflection.
To be able to meaningfully use and reflect on these artifacts, input from stakeholders is essential. In my projects, I actively involve stakeholders, whether they are users or experts, depending on the focus of the project. Designing based on stakeholder input is therefore one of my main strengths. I have experience with organizing workshops, conducting interviews, user tests and using questionnaires to gather both qualitative and quantitative data. I am comfortable analyzing qualitative data, extracting relevant insights and translating those into concrete design decisions and next steps.
I prefer to involve users throughout the entire process. Because elements of play, namely curiosity, surprise and creativity, are difficult to measure, I have found it most effective to run multiple (exploratory) workshops and user tests over time. This helps me to discover promising new directions and gradually work toward an end goal, while continuously staying connected to the users and their experiences.
Techniques from my designerly toolbox include: object-oriented programming, visual programming in Unreal Engine, digital prototyping, designing with AI as material, sensors and actuators, laser cutting, woodworking, lo-fi prototyping, user tests, interviews, exploratory workshops, questionnaires, thematic analysis, data visualisation and several business models. This toolbox provides me with techniques to generate design output during my projects.
In group projects, I often take the role of deep dive specialist. I am in my element when I have a clearly defined task that allows me to work independently in a focused way toward a high-quality result. I especially enjoy working through complex issues. However, this focus can sometimes cause me to lose sight of the bigger picture of the overall design process, and in those moments I benefit from others helping me to zoom out again.
Identity
During my first year, I developed the vision that I want to use design to help people step out of their daily grind by inspiring and entertaining them. To better understand how people experience joy, I realized that I needed a basic understanding of psychology. This motivated me to follow the elective Introduction Psychology and Technology. I was drawn to the domains of light design and game design, because designing within these contexts allowed me to work directly toward my vision. To explore and develop in both directions, I chose the USE learning line The Secret Life of Light and followed Project 2 in the Games & Play squad.
While my core vision of inspiring and entertaining people remained largely the same, exploring both directions helped me clarify my personal interests. Over time, I found myself more strongly drawn to game design than to light design. To continue developing in this direction, I chose to follow Project 3 in the Games & Play squad and selected the elective Design for Games and Play 2. At the same time, I became curious about how I could use AI as a designer, which led me to choose the elective Intelligent Interactive Products.
One important realization during my second year was that effectively using emerging technologies such as VR and AI requires a stronger foundation in technical skills, particularly programming and a deeper understanding of how AI works. To develop myself in these areas, I decided to follow a self-assembled minor at Utrecht University. This minor included the courses Programming for Games, Computational Intelligence, Graphics and Data Structures, drawn from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence programs.
This external learning activity had a clear impact on my vision. It shifted from using game design directly to entertain people and reduce stress, toward designing with AI and elements of play. To further explore this space, I chose the Artifice squad for my Final Bachelor Project.
Year 3 + 4
Year 1
Year 2
Past
Business and Entrepeneurship
To be able to truly develop and eventually launch my designs, I believe they need to create value for both people and the economy. Understanding markets, recognizing opportunities, and using business tools are essential for shaping strong value propositions. This is what the expertise area Businesses and Entrepreneurship represents to me.
My development in this area started with the course Introduction to Business Design. In this course, I learned to work with tools such as Business Model Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas and personas. By applying these tools to large companies like Meta and Adidas, I learned the fundamentals. However, it was during Project 2, where I applied these tools to our own design, that I truly gained hands-on experience and learned how to use them to inform design decisions. I further built on this foundation in the course Design Innovation Methods, where my teammates and I took on the role of business innovation consultants. In this course, I was introduced to a wide range of business models and learned how to manage design processes that involve multiple stakeholders.
In Project 1, I took initiative in setting up and conducting an interview with a stakeholder. This showed me how valuable stakeholder input can be, especially because it brings in perspectives beyond the design team.
Link to FBP
In my Final Bachelor Project, I worked from the belief that design should create real value, both for people who use it and for organizations that implement it. I identified that creative thinking is an increasingly important skill for employees in large organizations. Since it is unrealistic for most companies to replace their entire workforce, many organizations are actively looking for ways to strengthen the creative skills of their existing employees. Semantic Switcher directly addresses this opportunity. This way, it creates value for both organizations and the direct users.
Creativity and Aesthetics
Rich ideation sessions and idea development are essential in almost any design process. In addition, prototypes have form and interaction through which aesthetic qualities are expressed. For these reasons, I see the expertise area Creativity and Aesthetics as indispensable to design.
For me, creativity is built on two key elements: novelty and value. Value can take many forms, such as efficiency, problem-solving or aesthetics quality. To generate and refine ideas that are both new and valuable, I learned a range of ideation techniques during the course From Idea to Design. Since then, I have consistently applied methods such as sketching, lo-fi prototyping, and Wizard-of-Oz in my projects. My development in this expertise area deepened further during the course Aesthetics of Interaction. This course showed me that aesthetics go beyond visual appeal or beauty alone, and that they can communicate meaning, guide user behaviour and provide feedback or feedforward during interaction.
Link to FBP
In my Final Bachelor Project, these skills came together most clearly during the exploratory workshop. In this activity, ideas were developed and communicated through storyboards, and different concepts were explored based on their interaction dynamics. A partly Wizard-of-Oz setup was used to test, compare and refine specific interaction principles.
Math, Data and Computing
To more consciously design with AI as material, I find it important as a designer to understand how AI models work under the hood. This understanding, together with using data to support design decisions, fits within the expertise area Math, Data and Computing.
Through the course Data Analytics, I learned the basics of Python and how to use it to analyse datasets and create data visualizations. I built further on these skills in Making Sense of Sensors, where I collected real-world data and applied my data visualization knowledge in practice. During Intelligent Interactive Products, I learned the fundamentals of machine learning, including how linear support vector classifiers make decisions. I applied this knowledge directly by training and optimizing a simple decision-making algorithm.
My development in this expertise area was strengthened most during my minor, particularly through the course Computational Intelligence. In this course, I learned about different AI search algorithms and implemented several of them myself through programming. I also learned how to reason with uncertainty, a concept that plays a role in almost every AI system. This helps me better understand not only how AI models make decisions, but also their limitations.
Link to FBP
In my Final Bachelor Project, I did not train AI models myself. However, the knowledge I gained about machine learning and reasoning with uncertainty allowed me to better understand how sketch-rnn models operate and how to meaningfully integrate them into my application.
Technology
and Realization
In my approach to design, which consists of multiple cycles of making, testing, and reflection, I find it essential to create prototypes that can actually be experienced. This way of working is reflected in the expertise area Technology and Realization. These prototypes can be physical, but because of my interest in and work with technologies such as AI and VR, they are more often digital or a combination of physical and digital.
During the courses Creative Programming, Creative Electronics and Making Sense of Sensors, I learned the basics of coding and working with sensors and actuators. I further developed these skills in Engineering Design, where I was responsible for the technical implementation of our project. In Project 2, I learned how to build a VR experience using Unreal Engine. I continued building on this knowledge in Project 3, where my teammates and I worked with more advanced techniques, such as switching between augmented reality and fully virtual reality within a game environment.
My most significant development within this expertise area came from the course Programming for Games during my minor at Utrecht University. In this course, I learned to work with C#. I am confident in saying that I can now program proficiently in C# and apply this knowledge to similar object-oriented programming languages. In the course Intelligent Interactive Products, I designed an interactive game controller that tracks different types of movement. Looking back at these activities together, I see this expertise area as the one in which I developed the most throughout my bachelor.
Link to FBP
In my Final Bachelor Project, I applied these skills in a concrete and integrated way. I developed a working prototype in which users can digitally sketch. This sketch is automatically sent to an AI backend through an API call, after which a sketch-rnn model is selected and drawn onto the same canvas. In this project, I combined my existing programming skills with newly self-taught knowledge about working with API calls and browser-based applications.
User and Society
To create designs that have a positive impact on people’s lives, I believe it is essential to involve users as key stakeholders and understand them within their societal context. This way of working is reflected in the expertise area User and Society.
During the course User-Centered Design, I learned both qualitative and quantitative methods to gather insights and to evaluate and validate my designs. These methods include interviews, questionnaires and user tests. I applied this knowledge directly in Project 2, where I took the lead in setting up and conducting interviews with two experts working in the field related to our project. This experience helped me develop skills in asking better questions, shifting perspectives, and using qualitative insights to inform design decisions.
I built further on this foundation in the course Introduction to Psychology and Technology, where I gained basic knowledge of psychology and its relevance to design. In Design < > Research, I learned how testing early design artifacts in their real context can be a valuable way to gather insights. I applied this approach directly in Project 3, where my team worked with a Research through Design approach to explore and evaluate different VR and AR interaction methods in order to uncover unexpected user behaviour.
Link to FBP
In my Final Bachelor Project, I actively involved users as key stakeholders throughout the entire design process. Insights gathered from evaluating design artifacts with users in context informed every major design decision I made in this project.
Professional skills
All courses and projects throughout my bachelor contributed to the development of my professional skills. One area in which I improved significantly is presenting. Through many (midterm) demo days, I became more confident in presenting my work and in clearly communicating the points I want to convey to the right audience.
In addition, I learned how to collaborate effectively with teammates who have different skill sets. While most courses and projects involved working with other industrial design students, Engineering Design was the first time I worked in a team with different academic backgrounds. I developed this further during my minor, where I collaborated on practical assignments with computer science students. Although they were often more advanced in programming, I contributed in other ways through my soft skills. I took initiative within the team and often took the lead in planning, organizing and dividing tasks.
Through these experiences, I developed my leadership skills. I see this as valuable for my future professional career, where I expect to work with people from diverse backgrounds who may have more specialized technical knowledge than I do. Being able to bridge these differences and keep a team aligned is a strength I continue to build on.
Design research processes
My preferred way of doing design research is by using the Research through Design approach as my overall research strategy, while structuring my individual design activities with the RTDP model. This way of working allows me to build knowledge through design artifacts and through the act of designing itself. At the same time, it helps me avoid working randomly, because each design step is guided by moments of reflection and a central vision.
With this approach, I do not see design and research as separate activities. Existing research informs my design decisions and helps shape each new iteration, while design artifacts function as tools to explore questions and gain insights. I used this same methodology throughout my Final Bachelor Project, where research and design continuously informed and strengthened each other.
During this bachelor program, I built a strong foundation in design and gained the space to explore my strengths, weaknesses, and interests. To truly work toward my vision, I am convinced that I need a deeper understanding of how different AI techniques work under the hood. For this reason, I plan to continue my academic path with the master’s program Artificial Intelligence at Radboud University.
By combining the technical depth offered by this master’s program with my design skills and mindset developed during the bachelor's program Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology, I believe I will be able to work across both domains. From a design perspective as well as a solid technical understanding, I aim to create AI systems that integrate elements of play to enrich human qualities rather than replace them.