Hi. I'm Emma,
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From the beginning of my studies, I have been driven by a desire to design thoughtfully and sustainably. I learned early on that every choice in a system – whether in geography, engineering, or creative projects – has ripple effects. This systems thinking guides my approach: great design must consider not just individual elements, but how they interact within the bigger picture. I hope that reflecting on my professional identity, appreciating or maybe even sharpening my strengths, and working on the weaknesses that I identify will help me get closer to creating projects that I am proud of and that embody this systemic thinking.
Professional Identity
I love talking with people and trying to understand them. Volunteering as an exhibition guide at Dutch Design Week 2024 opened my eyes to how much there is to learn from everything and everyone around us. Every human and non-human has a valuable, unique perspective on the world we live in, which is often unheard of (Figure 1). This excites me. It motivates me to decenter myself, stay CURIOUS, and keep learning.
This curiosity drives my design approach, but often meets resistance in my PERFECTIONISM. While that mindset drives my PERSISTENCE in projects, it can also hold me back from exploring more within them. I tend to find myself fixated on making the ‘right’ decisions, forgetting that “designing is taking decisions based on too little information,” as we were reminded in the CBL Project 1 kickoff lecture.
As American journalist Michael Pollan writes in Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World, “design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents, culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose” [1]. This suggests that mistakes generate insights and are a part of the journey, so there’s no reason to fear them.
That’s why I have started welcoming mistakes, learning to persist through them, and discovering where they lead. This attitude helps me stay active: taking notes, throwing myself into research, talking to people, and embracing the mess because the world is messy.
[1] “The Botany of Desire Quotes,” Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/908398-the-botany-of-desire-a-plant-s-eye-view-of-the-world (accessed May 18, 2025).
[2] “Opsin,” Flore Hanna Wormskamp. https://florehanna.nl/?projects/Opsin (accessed May 19, 2025).
Vision
In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, American feminist and philosopher of science Donna Haraway writes “it matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories” [3]. This outlines the power of stories in shaping our thoughts and how these create new stories and realities. We are forming the future through today’s actions, so exposing ourselves to as many different stories and perspectives as possible will ensure we are making the right decisions.
With climate change seen by many as one of the world’s biggest challenges [4], many solutions I see out there seem very consumer-focused and involve giving up things that bring us joy, like flying to visit family abroad. They often ignore the experiences of people and non-humans most impacted by the crisis, like the octopus. We have been leaving storytelling behind, which is why I believe creative media like video and installations are so important. They help spark curiosity about how magical the world around us is and hopefully inspire meaningful action to keep it alive and even help it thrive.
Also, the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “the only constant in life is change” [5], but I think that movies, at least for me, are an exception. They have always been a part of my life. After watching a movie with family or friends and talking about it, I feel like anything is possible. This sense of wonder and connection helps me navigate the whirlwind that life sometimes can be, and I believe this is important, so I want to create more experiences through design that can anchor us in this world of constant change.
This is all reflected in my vision:
I want to create stories about humans and non-humans that spark curiosity, evoke empathy, and inspire action. I believe research, thinking systematically and sustainably, and incorporating fun through storytelling will help me achieve this.
[3] “Staying with the Trouble Quotes,” Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/48445485-staying-with-the-trouble-making-kin-in-the-chthulucene (accessed May 18, 2025).
[4] “Special Eurobarometer SP538 : Climate change,” data.europa.eu. https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/s2954_99_3_sp538_eng?locale=en (accessed May 18, 2025).
[5] F. Bastos, “The Significance Of Embracing Change: The Only Constant Is Change Explained,” Mindowl, Nov. 18, 2023. https://mindowl.org/the-only-constant-is-change/#:~:text=%E2%80%9C%20The%20only%20constant%20is%20change%20%E2%80%9D%20means,tomorrow.%20Change%20is%20a%20big%20part%20of%20life. (accessed May 18, 2025).
01.
Past
Last year, my vision was “create design that sparks conversations”. This year, I identified three components that I believe are essential for this. These are the imperatives “spark curiosity”, “evoke empathy”, and “inspire action”. I also moved from user-centered design to more multispecies or more-than-human and life-centered design, with a new or iterated focus on storytelling, fun, sustainability, systems thinking, and research.
The project that had impacted me the most is CBL Project 1, where my group and I created a physical-digital hybrid educational game that allows for an interactive and entertaining exploration of stakeholder thinking, encompassing the varieties of systems, scales, and impacts that individuals may face within different environments. Players are assigned a stakeholder (character pamphlet) at the beginning of the game, and my proudest contribution was making those (see Figures 2, 3, and 4). I tried my best to make the design as aesthetically cohesive as possible using Adobe Illustrator for the first time, while incorporating research I had conducted on each of our stakeholders. My favorite one was the humanitarian 😊 . I like that the design concept would challenge the player’s perspectives.
Figure 2. Front of a Character Pamphlet.
Figure 3. Back of the Humanitarian Pamphlet.
Figure 4. Character Pamphlets in Use.
02.
Present
Reflection on Collaboration
I organized this section into three main competencies that feed into my vision. I believe these are important to me and will direct my future development. Note that the expertise areas user and society (US), creativity and aesthetics (CA), business and entrepreneurship (BE), technology and realization (TR), math, data, and computing (MDC), are all mentioned throughout these competencies, highlighting that each is unique and already connected in some ways to others.
Systems Thinking with a Focus on Sustainability
'Normal' Research
03.
Future
I look
forward to continuing to work on the Engineering Art and Intercultural
Design projects. These are really helping me learn to place the red thread,
which has been missing from my last CBL Project, the Power of Perspective, and
probably many of my past projects. I like the direction we are going in for Engineering
Art, and I’m learning a lot from the different disciplines my teammates
study. Intercultural Design makes me think, and helps me with
perfectionism, as we are encouraged to make mistakes. I cannot wait to interview
our expat and maybe even ask her to take us on a digital touchstone tour.
I also plan
on continuing my search for internships. The competence I feel is most
important to develop right now is systems thinking, and I think this can be
applied to any context, so I am not looking for anything specific. My only
selection criterion is that it needs to spark my interest in some way.
In the case
that I do not find an internship, I would like to expand my knowledge through
the electives that they offer here at the TU/e and delve into research in my
own time to ensure that I am keeping track of topics which I find interesting
right now like multispecies design or more-than-human design and life-centered
design, and subjects which I will discover later.
To ensure
that I reach all goals I set in the future, I plan to set a limit on the number
of goals per quartile. In other words, I want to make these SMARTer, but
specifically more achievable.
Overall, I
want to stay curious and persist through the unknown!