Showcasing who I am, how I work, and what I like to work on

My identity is rooted in the characteristic that I am always challenging myself to learn. I like a hands-on and technology-aided approach to learning a new skill, or to a design project. Therefore, programming and digital prototyping are skills that suit me well, and together with my passion for innovation have led me to develop a healthy obsession with defining and designing the future of HCI. Being an advocate learner, I seek to apply HCI to improve education - using intelligent technologies to create more intelligent humans.

My skills and knowledge include game design, digital realization, user-centered design methods, and technology ethics. By continuously developing these skills I aspire to realize my vision for education through my own ventures and entrepreneurial efforts. As an entrepreneur I want to realize great products that lay the foundation for responsible and durable implementations for the future of education. Besides technological- and design skills, this includes a good understanding of foundational theories on learning and the psychology of the learner. For which I draw great inspiration from connectivist learning theory.

I get a lot of intrinsic motivation from collaborating in a team with different expertise’s that work together to build a great product. My role as a designer and entrepreneur is to take leadership and shape the product vision and use this to push my team forward. I know my strengths and weaknesses as a person and as a designer, but as a learner I will continue to cultivate my skills towards my vision.

My Vision

Looking towards a future where technological advancements continue to evolve at an unprecedented rate, I remind myself of the words from ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus:

We will have to constantly rethink the connection between humanity and technology to let the two grow together. Comparable to what the smartphone did in 2007 and what online social media did in 2012, I belief innovations in media technologies (social media, eXtended Reality) and AI will lead to a new paradigm of HCI, and in society as a whole.

I imagine a future where social and interactive experiences play a key role in an individual’s education. Building on connectivism where learning is theorized to reside in networks, I approach the design of educational products and systems from a human-centered perspective. In my manifesto on education ‘Networked Experience Learning’ I philosophize of 3 important networks around the learner: The Network of Learners, the Network of Facilitators, and the Network of Experiences and describe the role of the networks respectively. The Network of Experiences proposes a new perspective on the technologies and activities we use to learn - a network where all experiences are connected to each other, to the learner, and the learner’s constructed network of reality. As the network emphasizes a balance between learning in the physical and digital world, it is the starting point for the design of a responsible ‘educational metaverse’.

The current techno-social climate raises many challenges for designers and leaders to responsibly design the impact on the user and society. An ‘educational metaverse’ could be detrimental if the priorities of the users are not aligned with the priorities of those creating it. It is my role as a designer to help create this with responsibility to the user, especially the most vulnerable. Because this challenge is so complex, it motivates me to keep developing myself to be able to do the best I can. To design for the user on products that are constantly evolving it takes an ever-evolving skillset to cater to the needs of the user, and I think I have the skills and the attitude to do so.

The toolbox that forms the foundation for my development

Technological innovation lies at the core of my identity as a designer. Over the past years, I have established a foundation in many technological disciplines like 3D modelling, animation, rendering, creative coding, software engineering, and game-, app-, and web- development. I carry most of these skills with me as I put my focus on XR technology. Building this skillset has provided me with the confidence that I would be able to learn most technological skills necessary for creating educational XR products, and use iterative prototyping as an effective way to improve my designs.

The only way that my designs will make a positive impact on the world, is when align with the needs of the user. Many skills are required to understand what these needs are and implement them in the right way. Especially when designing for a vulnerable target user, I put the user at the core of the project through user-centered design, conducting user research, and empathizing with the user. I am constantly learning to better understand different perspectives and understand the changing society. With a solid identity and vision, I can now dive deep into understanding the needs of the different stakeholders in educational XR design.

To create products that are both valuable and sustainable, a good understanding of the business environment is essential. In my toolbox T&R and U&S stand front and center in the products that I create, and B&E serves as a foundational skill to design innovative products that could bring real change to the world. I will continue to learn how the world of business and design really work by collaborating with external parners and companies during my MSc.

I like to address the opportunities-, and the ethical questions that advanced technologies raise. I find the issues around data intriguing because they play such a significant role in the future of society. Because of this, my BSc involved multiple data-related courses, including software development for engineers, and an IoT research project. The skills collected from these courses will help me in M1 to conduct research and leverage data in my design processes.

I can take leadership in the design process and host exploration-, and ideation sessions. More importantly, I can facilitate convergent thinking sessions that help the team to come to great solutions out of a pool of ideas. I have learned to include aesthetics in my products, both as an engineer and as an artist. During the first few projects of my BSc I left this to others, so I could focus on the technical aspects of the product. Now that I am diving deep into XR design, I have found my way of including aesthetics in the form of digital 3D environments, characters, and interactions.

Design and development of a VR game for learning touch-typing

For my Bachelor Graduation Project I started the design of a course that teaches children aged 9-13 touch-typing. In the VR game, the player is brought along on a time travel adventure that tasks them to collect letter codes in order to save the inhabitants from the evil villain.

Image tracking technology is used to bring the hands and keyboard into VR (Mixed Reality). With custom hand- and keyboard visualizations the player is able to locate keyboard keys more effectively. The course gradually provides the player with less visual aid as the game progresses. It uses these game mechanics to support the learning process.

Process

The design process consisted of 2 larger iterations of 10 weeks. These iterations consist of exploring, designing, developing, and testing the game. The structure and the methods of other touch typing courses were analyzed, and hand-keyboard interactions were extensively explored. I like to get my hands dirty as soon as possible, so from early on I started designing in Unity, exploring the various interactions and rapidly making digital prototypes.

By structuring the process in defined iterations and clear deliverables, I created clear goals and (time) restrictions. This helped me in the development phase to keep a focus on the essential features and stay motivated to work hard and reach the deadline. Both iterations contained consequent phases of exploring, designing, developing, and testing – and have proven to myself and my supervisors that I was more than able to individually lead the design process, and was able to realize a great product.

Outcomes

With iteration 1, I created a preliminary VR game that was used for play testing in 1-on-1 sessions with 20 target users. This artefact acted as a proof of concept, and allowed me to effectively test the design of the interactions, story, and course content. The data gathered through observations and interviews was the starting point for iteration 2.


With iteration 2, I created a 12-minute demo VR game that highlights the advantages of touch-typing in VR through its unique mechanics. The demo was intended to release on SideQuest in order to validate the solution with the target customer. However, an unforseen update in the Oculus Integration SDK caused problems with the keyboard tracking that prevented it from entering the platform. Nonetheless this process taught me about the challenges of launching my product, and furthermore about the challenges of marketing educational games.

Learning in the metaverse: A connectivist approach to designing transitions between virtual worlds

As part of my education I wrote a research paper to explore the design of virtual educational experiences. I explore the connectivist learning theory to describe how its principles can be used to design the future of an educational 'metaverse’. In particular, my experiments explored the effect of different forms of 'transitions' for players to navigate between virtual worlds. The 3 various transitions that the experiment used are illustrated in the image below.

Process

The first steps of the research process were exploration and devising the relatd work section. I extensivly explored the topic by reading and connecting research paper to form my argumentation and research question: 'How can the design of transitions between virtual worlds stimulate the player's ability to connect information?'


The experiment was conducted with 24 participants, seperated in groups of 8 based on the various transitions. Playing the game was followed up with a survey and a multiple choice test. Quantitative data analysis shows no significant effect size between the three transition in regards to autonomy, immersion, and ability to connect learning content. The research continues with a discussion and conclusion where I present the meaning of the results in relation to the related work.

Outcomes

Based on this research question, the method and the research artefact were constructed. This research artefact consists of an educational video game that is designed to teach participants about a 'forest ecosystem' through the exploration of virtual worlds. Each one of the five worlds contains information about the role of a respective species in the ecosystem: villagers, wolves, goats, plants, and fungi. The participant is free to navigate and explore the virtual world and the information that is presented about the species. The information within the worlds is presented separately but as the information stands in relation to the information in other virtual worlds, the participant is challenged to create connections between the distributed learning content and construct a mental model.

The eventual outcome of the project is the research paper and personal reflection. Both can be read through this link.

Design and development of XR environment for virtual production

At SAP, my main responsibility has been creating the 3D environments for virtual production. These productions place a presenter or event host in a virtual environment to supports the story they are telling. Together with the XR studio team I realised many videos and live events for the company and its customers. Furthermore, as a designer I was entrusted to improve the usability- and deployability of the XR studio. The result of this process was a collection of 8 XR environments that supported the sales colleagues to tell the story about the SAP Strategy and its software products.

Process

To resolve usability issues in the XR studio, a initial overview of the current pain points and opportunities from stakeholders was essential. Findings from 13 stakeholder interviews were analysed and grouped in 9 categories to form the design goals.

After pitching 4 preliminary concepts based on the design goals, my supervisor helped me choose the one that fit best with the priorities of the department. After this decision I started the process of designing environments and creating mock-ups in Unreal Engine.

This process consisted of creating a mood board, that was revised multiple times to come to a concession about the story, the general style, and the structure of the scenes. Starting in Unreal Engine from early on allowed for exploration and a process of many iterations; each making the worlds more readable, realistic, and aesthetic.

Outcomes

The deliverable was an Unreal Engine project file with 8 unique scenes. Once loaded into the XR studio, scene switches, animations, and the virtual screens could be controlled through a control panel in the studio. Besides the Unreal Engine project file, I created an instruction manual with guidelines for both the studio team and the presenter. This ensures that the story is structured in a coherent way and the technology is used properly.

A startup creating social connection through physical social media

In parallel to the previous university projects, is my journey of founding a startup, called Spaces. This startup was founded two years ago together with two other designers and good friends of mine. We came together around the mission of connecting people after the COVID pandemic, where at the time we were affected by the trends in digitalization and the vision of what the ‘metaverse’ would be. As we believed that this should be done differently, we set out to create ‘physical social media’ – Augmenting the physical world with novel forms of interaction for people to experience their media (photo, video, music) , and each other.

Our first project was called Spaces Arts, an interactive art installation that allows its users to collaboratively create music and visual art. Through the tangible interactions of laying down and turning the dials/gemstones, we enable them to explore the auditory and visual landscape, and create something beautiful together. This shared experience between strangers was magical to us, and in order to reach more depth, we continued our next iteration of the concept with a new project.

The Social Pop-Up

The social pop-up continues on our findings around the challenge of connection people in the public space. Whereas Spaces Arts was a meaningful experience for visitors to play and explore together, a deep personal connection was still missing – something we set out to create with the social pop-up. This version would contain the opportunity for visitors to share personal photos, share music, and play social games.

After an initial design phase of ideation, digital prototyping, and customer interviews, we acquired funding for the project and started the process of iteratively constructing the pop-up installation. In this construction phase, two test versions were created and set up in the city centers for days of collecting qualitative user testing data. Over the summer months of 2023 we carried out the final version of the social pop-up for 16 full days, reaching 1500 visitors. The project succeeded at reaching the goals set out in collaboration with the municipality of Eindhoven, but also our own goals of learning about the concept’s potential of reach customer-solution fit. We saw the project as an Minimal Viable Product to test its potential in the market and learn about the challenges at hand. Proudly looking back on this project, we choose to venture into a new project, one that has more potential to reach customer-solution-fit, and is more scalable.

Otof App

We have seen how people show their personal photo’s in the public space, and we recognize the value that photos hold. We see the trend of digital photography but also how analog photography is making a comeback. This provided us with the design opportunity to redefine the role of photography in people's daily lives. With this, we designed and developed Otof.

Otof is a photography app that functions as an analog camera for your smartphone. With the app the user takes 18 photos per month, but when a photo is taken the user can’t instantly see the result. Then at the end of the month the photos are printed and delivered to the user's home. This provides the user with a monthly surprise where they relive their most valuable memories, and give it a place in their physical surroundings.

An alpha version of the product was developed and user tested with a group of 20 participants. Now that the app is ready for launch we are conducting market research to identify the first market segment to position the product. With the scalable system, we are steadily growing our user base, and executing our first marketing campaign during the last months of 2023.

Personalised leraning

Process

Outcomes

My development and my plans to continue growing

The past 3 years at the TU/e have been an amazing journey that taught me a lot about myself both as a person and as a designer. As a conclusion to my BSc I would like to summarize this journey up to my FBP to reflect on myself and inspire others:

I have found my passion by closely observing the products around me and being curious to understand the bigger societal- and historical context of the world. I started the bachelor program with an interest in just about everything and gradually narrowed this down: From everything technology related, to software, to XR (extended reality).

Through the diverse self-directed projects and learning activities I was able to explore my interest and pursue the things that fit me the best.

The activity that has made the most impact on me was my internship at SAP. With this internship I worked together in a real company, applying the expertise areas in the real world and finding out about my weaknesses in a hard but effective way. Most importantly, I learned what it takes to create real impact with a project, and this is what I carried with me to my FBP.

The Final Bachelor Project is the result of my BSc development and gave me the change to have a project that would capture my identity and vision in one deliverable. I set out to create a VR game for children, knowing that this would allow me to demonstrate and further develop my skills in 3D realization, user research, and entrepreneurship and contribute to the vision of meaningful educational experiences in XR.

Besides development in these 3 core expertise areas, this also allowed for plenty of room to develop my creative skills in the form of creating a storyline, characters, scripts and environments. Finally, collecting game data is also included to some extent, but will be the first future point of improvement.

Constantly wanting to better myself to work towards my vision has been the motivation to stay disciplined throughout the entire process. After being zoned in at the final bachelor project, first priority is to take a step back and see what new opportunities the future can hold.

Future

I am convinced that working at a company I love would result in the best learning experience. Finding this company and job position helps me to work towards this position as a goal.

While searching for this company I start my MSc the following year. I am planning to use M2.1 to prepare for my Final Master Project at this particular company. I am already proud of my FBP result, but with this approach, I will be able to create something at least twice as great for my FMP.

To develop such a product, I seek to develop myself in the expertise area of User and Society and learn more about psychology, sociology, and ethics in the context of thoughtful XR design. M1 will allow me to temporarily shift focus from creating products to doing research, and build a thorough understanding of the area I am most interested in: XR educational game design.

Besides my MSc I will continue to develop the VR typing course as a startup. My foundation in all 5 expertise areas set me up to be a well-rounded designer, capable of launching my own product.