My Bachelor Industrial Design was a great help for me to develop my Vision and Professional Identity. By reflecting on my projects, courses, interests, and personality, and looking at other designers and their work,  I came to have a more clear view of what my professional Identity and vision are. In my first year, I had difficulties with understanding the difference between a vision and an identity. By rewriting multiple times in the past three years I strengthened my vision and identity. I think my vision did not change through these years, but in the beginning, I could not pinpoint what it was. My professional identity did evolve. My personality stayed the same but as an Industrial Designer, I found my strengths, weaknesses, and interests in the design process. I found I am a designer that likes to focus on conceptualization and on keeping the overall purpose in mind. Prototyping is my weakest point, but I do think it is an important skill to have for efficient user testing.

 

During my first year of Industrial Design, I found that I like to focus on helping other people. I wanted to make their life more fun and their behaviour and thoughts interested me. I found that I was an optimistic and empathic person. Next, in my second year, I found my interest in psychology, I wanted to improve the quality of life of people and I described flaws and impairments should not be a reason to enjoy life to a lesser extent. I wanted to give the user confidence. During my third year, I discovered my entrepreneurial mindset and my interest in influencing behaviour and helping people to experience life to the fullest.

 

My vision and professional identity were always ‘hidden’ in those descriptions. The way I am as a professional designer determines how I work and what I like to work on. This influences my vision. The designs I made during my Bachelor all had something in common; making sure people do not enjoy life to a lesser extent because of their flaws or difficulties. Adding my interests and my personality with how I like to design and what I would like to achieve has led to my current Vision and Professional Identity. Since mental health, particularly depression, is becoming a bigger problem in current society, I think helping people to conquer and preventing this is very important. People are exposed to many stressors such as social media, work overload and expectations to always be attainable. Moreover there is a lot to choose from and people are overloaded with information. This might cause a lot of stress and sometimes even a burnout or depression. New social platforms are created, new apps, new and better devices. I think designers should take the user’s stress levels more into account while designing those interfaces. I hope my further designs will help people to maintain a healthy mental condition and to take a positive look at their problems.

 

In the upcoming years as an Industrial Design master student, I want to pursue my vision and I want to strengthen my skills in ‘User & Society’ and ‘Business & Entrepreneurship’. It is important to be an expert in coming up with concepts that match the user’s needs to make sure my designs trigger optimism. By doing this, I hope to get an even more clear vision and professional identity. At the beginning of my Bachelor program, I did not see the importance yet of defining a professional vision and identity. However, now I believe a designer can be more effective when having a vision. Now, I have a more clear view of what courses I want to follow, what job I want and what I want to design. By focusing on my strengths as an Industrial Designer and pursuing my goals, I hope to make a large positive impact on society.