I’ve made this portfolio first and foremost as a showcase of my work in Design. After my Bachelor and Masters Industrial design, I am ready to develop products and experiences for the future. With a focus around aesthetics, interaction and design fiction I am extremely enthusiastic to work on emergent technologies that can help make the world a better and more exciting place. In my work, I combine my passion of filmmaking with design to develop and tell stories of the future, to steer innovation along interesting and most potential paths.
A future without technology seems, at this point in time, very unlikely. Even more, the continuous progress of implementing emergent technology in our everyday lives will presumably be just as rapid and normal as we experience today. Society will move forward through this thrust in innovation, but likewise discussions about the impact of emergent technology will be a result. I think it is the job of the designer to translate the complexity of these (sometimes still invisible) debates towards an influential set of decisions from which aesthetical elements can be given shape. Shape in qualities of form, interaction, but also becoming more and more important: aesthetics of intelligence as an increasing amount of devices is becoming ‘smart’[4].
The development of media such as augmented reality, especially made more accessible by consumer tech giants [1,2], will create new possibilities for the world’s interweavement with the digital environment. Not only will this allow for products to be even more independent from their physical embodiment, but it will spark possibilities where aesthetic, personal and (close to) life like experiences can be summoned in every situation of our everyday life.
Simultaneously, our everyday shall move away from the world of mainly screens and attention seeking devices, therefore rather leave room for technology to move more to the periphery. By shifting dynamically across the interaction attention continuum [3], this balance can be carefully designed. All with the goal to not distract people from their own values and the beauty of life to make technology practically invisible [5].
Curiosity is what drives me in this world of endless discovery, learning and truth-seeking. As a ‘thinker’ I try to see the bigger picture, while using the endless possibilities of imagination to conceptually explore my field of interest: emergent technology and its influence on the world. With a foundation of academic research and exploration, I seek to explore the way we should interact and experience intelligent products, extrapolated on the trends of the state of the art of the industry today.
In my skillset, I try to combine the power of design with the strengths of multi medial prototyping and storytelling. From my passion found in the audio-visual world, I am able to build worlds and immerse people in possible scenarios. Important here to me is to have not only the focus on the visual, but to cover dimensions such as sound and touch too. In the created these (speculative) scenarios I propose concepts to evaluate their place in the future, or ask relevant questions through design fiction.
Whenever my design process is executed in teams, I desire to take the role of transformational leader. There, I aim for a visionary image of the design goal in a larger context, while making sure personal development and enjoyment of the members is kept just as important. All while aiming for the creation of value in an intrapreneurial context. A proactive approach characterizes the development of my work, in a calm but structured manner.
[1] Apple Glasses: VR and AR Are Coming. MacRumors. (2021, January 5). https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/apple-glasses/
[2] Google ziet toekomst in AR-bril: Google Glass 2 aangekondigd. RTL Nieuws. (2019, May 20). https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/tech/artikel/4719196/google-ziet-toekomst-
[3] Bakker, S., & Niemantsverdriet, K. (2016). The interaction-attention continuum : considering various levels of human attention in interaction design. International Journal of Design.
[4] Wensveen, S. A. G. (2018). Constructive design research. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven.
[5] Zhuo, J. (2015, May 12). The Future of Design in Technology. Medium. https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/the-future-ofdesign-in-technology-fe1697e5826.
During the summer holidays after my graduation, I decided to work on a special project for a ‘friends activity week’. There, everyone of the friend group organised their own day of activities. Together with Lars de Langen, I created what we called ‘an experience’ for the group. With a total amount of eight people that had to experience our creation, that in that same week had been to the Efteling and had played paintball, the stakes were heigh for us to create something special.
What began with a vague idea of creating an immersive experience using lights and sounds, slowly became a 2 hour long escape room. Located in an empty room in my house, the group would start by playing a game on a computer. There the story of the entire experience would be introduced in a beginning narrative. Then one of the participants could walk and interact with the game till eventually the player would walk inside a room that resembles the actual physical room in which our experience took place. From that moment the experience changed completely, as when the player would walk towards the digital computer in the digital room, the screen would go black. Not only that, all the lights in the physical room would turn off and a loud sound would play in the room itself. After some silence the participants would hear the voice-over from the earlier played game, but now from the sound installation in their room. From that moment on, they have to collaborate with this new entity on puzzles in the room, which are set around the lights in the room turning on and off for example. To interact with this new entity, the participants were given a microphone, through which they could talk and answer questions of the digital entity. Eventually, after eight puzzles and discovering all the secrets in the room, they are released again and all lights turn back to normal.
What makes this experience special, is the automated process behind it. In total 4 devices and 8 Philips Hue lights are communicating with each other over internet. After the introduction on the computer, a signal is send to another computer to turn off the lights and play a sound over the speakers. To interact with speech, a Google Voice-kit is used to understand what the participants are saying. This then communicates to all the other devices, under which and ESP for serial connection with another computer. We used OOCSI for communication between all devices and Unity3D for all experiencal parts, such as the game and the creation of animations for turning on and off the lights. The result (compressed in a 30 minute video) can be seen below. This projects shows how we can create unique experiences with the devices around us, as it demonstrates the potential for immersive scenarios with IoT, sound and images on our everyday smart objects.
I recently bought a Looking Glass Portrait Holographic screen. Using a light-field display, it can show not only objects in 3D but also with a holographic quality to it. It looks as if objects displayed are actually there. Except for the fact that it is a display, the Portrait doesn’t have a clear use-case. Therefore, I decided to play around with it and create some small prototypes. Using Unity3D and a Leap Motion controller, interactive 3D scenes can be easily displayed on the device.
By connecting my Philips Hue lightbulbs to Unity3D, I was able to control them from my pc. To make use of the unique qualities of the Portrait’s display, I chose to recreate my own (student) room in Unity3D after which I mapped all my lights to digital lights in the same room. Interacting with the lights through buttons however didn’t feel very intuitive. I therefore went with a more abstract way of interacting: a ball that the user could move around in the digital room. Based on the proximity of each light to the ball, the lights would change their intensity. This way of interacting allowed the user to more or less show where they needed light in the room, after which the system determents which lights to use.
In comparison to using a conventional 2D screen, the Portrait allows for an additional dimension of viewability (and therefore interaction). Intuitively, since the brightness of the lights are based on proximity of the digital ball, the third dimension became the control over intensity of the generated light composition. Looking critically at this project, is is clear that this is not the future of smart light control. Interaction is quite uncomfortable, individual light control is extremely limited and not to even mention the complexity of the setup if rooms are not square like mine. However, is shows a very magical new world of interacting with IoT and the potential of holographic displays. Even more, I learnt about translating interaction to more abstract level, by using an indirect way of input (the digital ball). This was just a small and early exploration of the Portrait for now. More will absolutely follow!
My final master project has preluded my directions for the steps after my graduation. The methodology I developed there is a backbone for my ambition to become a futurist. This profession is rather unknown to many, or vague at the very least. Finding a direct path to become when is therefore not the easiest. Even the definition of what a futurist could be is not completely set in stone. I use the definition ‘someone who assesses the future and sells this assessment in a more or less packaged form’ [9]. As my ‘packaged form’ is developed through my FMP as a combination of multi-media prototypes, I will focus on another important aspect of becoming a futurist. A futurist namely has to have large set of experience and knowledge to make more accurate predictions of the future and gain credibility. All of these aspects can be gained through experience in ‘the field’ by doing assignments and working in the industry.
It is therefore my goal after my graduation to take part in that ‘field’. This means I aim to work as designer in companies that contribute towards innovations in technology. This can reach from the more research focused (e.g. TNO) to a more commercial product development context (e.g. Signify). The general premise of this part of my career path is to get a better feeling of technological development and broadening of my network within technology. However, at the beginning of my career adventure, I like to focus on the development of my consulting skills. As a futurist, the goal is to provide the best fitting and most useful advice for a client, which I am currently not feeling too confident about. I therefore feel that a career in design and technology consultancy allows me to grow in composing fitting proposals to clients and gain general credibility in providing future insights professionally.
While a focus on a career in design is very valuable, I do not want to lose my ambitions around filmmaking. Previous project in my masters have proven the potential of combining the realm of media with design, which I still aim to combine in the years to come. I therefore aim to continue with the movement I have set up with des-fi. Concretely speaking, I will be doing film related projects around future or speculative concepts as a project at the side. My primary job in the earlier mentioned ‘field’ will have to leave room (one day a week, for example) to do my film projects as a second flow of income, but mainly as a passion project. In the beginning, I will slowly expand my current film company towards the service that I propose in des-fi, resolve al its limitations and imperfections and prepare for assignments from the industry.
At the time of writing, I am still working on early steps in my path to employment. In the past period of time, I have applied to vacancies and have gained experience through job interviews. For now, I continue to do so and aim to find a fitting job to kickstart my career. Whichever precise direction I will take, or opportunity I will find, I am confident and more than enthusiastic about the future that is to come.
[9] Cramer, T. L. (2020). Becoming Futurists: Reluctant professionals searching for common ground.
Maastricht University. https://doi.org/10.26481/dis.20200520tc