PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY
I care for humans, care that extends from my closest relationships, to the individuals I design for, but also our entire society. Naturally I am guided by my social and moral compass, leading me through the complex landscape of human values and ethical considerations, which brought me to questioning the field of rising technologies, where I often can’t believe how innovation and economical values are getting prioritized over human values.
I try to embrace this complexity by immersing myself in the technological developments, understanding them, and seeing where the opportunities and pain points lie, followed by trying to unravel it again through asking the critical questions and going back to the human scale. Empathizing with all perspectives involved, citizens, society, business, government, etc, understanding individual desires and concerns, and making the topic understandable and inviting for all these to join the discussion on.
I believe I can only achieve my goal when taking a holistic position as a designer. Keeping the overview of the different perspectives involved, where I like being the link between these different voices. Communication is key, but also the choice of (form) language, to make everyone feel welcome. I combine my analytical thinking with my creative skills to make conceptual designs, trying to make surprising connections to provoke discussion and let it become a human topic again.
VISION
Where intelligent systems are rapidly gaining prominence in our daily lives, there is rising the demand for designers to question the relationship we have with these data-driven systems. We start to face challenges like people losing control as systems begin to push our boundaries, steer us in directions, influence our choices and invade our privacy. A level of complexity where I believe designers should aim for unraveling it to ensure that technology remains humane, by using the human power to be critical, questioning the why, guarding human norms and values, to radically change the way we innovate.
This vision touches many different topics, people and perspectives, asking for using our power as designers to look at things from a holistic perspective, getting everything/everyone around the table, making connections that others do not see. Besides this, we operate from empathy, giving a human touch to complexity. In this context, everything, from the issues to the regulations, happens on a high level, where society just has to deal with the results. Therefore, I value to go back to the human scale, to make it a topic again where we can formulate opinions and have a discussion around.
I believe the first step in creating fundamental change is creating a general awareness and understanding in society. Through my designs, I want to provoke criticality. I use aesthetics to achieve this by making a complex topic understandable and inviting, a form language that everyone will quickly recognize and one can easily relate with. But also in the business context where intelligence is developed, we need to provoke criticality and discussion. In an ideal world, the values of all stakeholders would be more aligned to avoid conflict. We can’t wait on regulation for them, since technology evolves so quickly, making the rules quickly obsolete as well. I believe in focusing on risks and consequences, which require reflection and a clear rationale. No matter what kind of technology you are working with, the technology should remain humane.ir needs at the center and challenge technology to grow towards this, because ultimately, technology has to be the answer to a human need, so keeping the world a little bit human.