(created using the Ready Player Me platform readyplayer.me)
How I curiously …
I have always been a curious person, wondering how things work and why they work like they do. Through my teenage years I developed this same curiosity about people, why do they act like they do and why does this differ per context they are in? Then, during my student years, I focused towards questioning what drives people to either happily introduce or doubtfully refuse a new technology. Me, being fascinated by emerging technologies, then developed the aim to discover how to design emerging technologies to fit within our everyday life.
… create the future
My interest lies in social robots, smart home technologies, and most of all social virtual reality. On a feasibility level, these technologies require quite some perseverance to get comfortable to work with. I consider it one of my strengths to bring the required determination to take on the challenge of working with them. Because of this attitude, I managed to develop myself on a technical level from having no skills at all at the beginning of my bachelor’s to being able to create a virtual reality experience with accompanying Arduino prototypes for my final master project.
How I thrive by myself …
When working on a project, the parts I enjoy most and therefore am quite strong at are discovering the context and the technical development of the prototype. Regarding discovering, I want to know as much as possible about the context I am working with. Whether that is previous work or technical possibilities for making novel prototypes. By doing this, I feel secure that what I will be doing is of added value to the existing body of work and is realistic to achieve. Technically developing prototypes is something I can do forever because each thing I learn opens new thoughts in my mind on what else then might be possible.
… and search for collaboration
Working in my own bubble on a project is not entirely going to cut it for me, I need to get sparks of inspiration from what others are doing. This is why I am a strong supporter of collaboration, especially with people outside of the industrial design faculty. For example, as the business mindset is not natural to me, I value the multidisciplinary project at Innovation Space to delve into this. Even more, I treasure the collaboration I have with CWI to stay informed on the newest research.
(created using the Ready Player Me platform readyplayer.me)
Simone Ooms 