Personal
Development
Plan
Identity & Vision
Vision
What does it mean to have a personalized media experience?
With social platforms still on the rise and information being worth its weight in gold, advanced digital entertainment largely remains uncovered.
Video games, for example, take a long time and a lot of funds to be developed. Meaning that they have to fit a large audience to justify this investment. Of course, personalisation can come from character customisation, story choices or personal takes on aspects of the game.
But I believe that there is a missed opportunity here. What happens when you combine industrial design elements with those of game design? When involving creative techniques and an iterative way of working in a very established product, a more empowering, inspiring, confidence-inducing or entertaining product can arise.
Aditionally, what happens when you involve arising technologies in the mix? What can virtual or augmented reality, sensors, data, 3D printing and the internet of things for example do to make a media experience more fulfilling?
I firmly believe that with the skillset designers have, a potential in the way media is experienced can be unlocked. When implementing features a designer can look at this feature and really take apart why it’s there, what has been done and approach new options in the same way one would look at design solutions for a more classical design challenge.
So to come back to the first question, media can and should be so much more. And over the course of my design career, I’d love to explore different creative ways to do so, firstly starting with game design.
IDENTITY
I’m someone whose interests often change and shift.
And as someone who’s driven by the things that interest me it often makes it hard to find focus in my development direction.
A lot of my growth has been about how to use it as a strength rather than a weakness. As a designer, I’m someone that gets energy out of learning new things, tinkering with systems, expressing myself creatively and, lastly, game design.
My strengths lay in finding unique approaches and technological realisation. I’m a very social designer and I love to communicate and collaborate with other creatives and designers. Critically reflecting on myself and my work is deeply ingrained in me and I’m always looking for ways to become a better version of myself.
As mentioned before, I’m a quick and enthusiastic but chaotic learner. I’ve picked up a lot of tools and programs across my bachelor and a few that have been helpful to me are Blender, Unity, Adobe CC, Arduino, Fusion360, Solidworks, Fritzing, HTML, CSS, Sketchbook and Cura. The combination of those skills and programs ties really well into the future design area mentioned in my vision.
One of my biggest weaknesses is having issues with finishing up personal projects, and this is mainly due to difficulties with project workflow and structure. Additionally, because my personal interest and focus shifts frequently I often lose interest in things I found very interesting before. Lastly, I’m hesitant to share work as it is very much a part of myself. Not wanting to put my work in a vulnerable position makes it hard to get real-world feedback and input on my work, which often means I move over to a new project instead to avoid a vulnerable position.
In the future I want to be more confident and experienced in the direction I’m going right now. I want to have more control over design processes and understand and recognize different parts of that process. I also want to have more confidence in my own work and open up to put it out before I deem it to be good enough to share.