My very first project at the TU Delft is one that immediately shaped me as a designer, and therefore I find it important to include it on this website. It shaped me because thoroughly understanding my user turned out to be the solution to solving a problem, which is a lesson I have never forgotten about good design.

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Design for another

The assignment was to design something for someone else, and that someone else became my father who has multiple disabilities in his arms and fingers. Because of this disability, he has to train four times a day with a weight of 1 kilogram to preserve the muscles in his hands; something he did not like doing because of time restraints, or so I thought.

Observation

After observing my father I discovered that time constraints did not turn out to be the biggest problem with training; it actually was the fact he had to exercise during his breaks at work as well. He is a high school teacher and he did not want to do his exercises in front of students or colleagues and therefore shut himself off from the rest of the school. This is when I knew the focus should not be on ‘faster’, but on ‘invisible’ exercise. The eventual solution consisted of a prototype of elastic bands that could be worn under a shirt or blouse without being seen that provided resistance to his arms throughout the whole day.

To this day, my approach to designing products is to dig deeper as to what réally needs to be accomplished.

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