Professional vision and identity
Drawing back to the PDP that I have proposed at the start of this semester, I simply ‘chose’ to be a User Experience designer within the medical sector, specifically focussing on vulnerable user groups. My research and designs would be recognizable by reaching a deeper understanding through influences from the field of social psychology and by reaching a certain level of visual quality. Reflecting upon this, I do see the aforementioned identity shining through when analyzing my project. The whole project has revolved around User Experience design and Human-Computer Interaction, I have reached a deeper level of understanding by using influences from the field of social psychology and I do believe that I have nourished a certain level of visual quality in my designs and presentations. However, whether my work is focussed towards the medical sector, specifically focussed on vulnerable user groups, is questionable. Even though ‘health’ is a very broad term and mental wellbeing and the healthiness of family relationships is perfectly applicable within this field, I don’t necessarily feel that my work has added value and knowledge to the scientific realm within the medical sector, particularly because I was not able to execute my study with the participants that I had initially aimed at, due to resource and time constraints. My project has eventually leaned more towards the field of HCI, which can of course be perfectly intertwined with the medical sector, for the reason that computers are very well capable of aiding users in their mental- and physical wellbeing. I now realize that I perhaps shouldn’t have made the generalization of my initial target group to the target group that I ended up testing with so naturally and gullible, because it has eventually resulted in an unavoidable redefinition of the focus of my work.

Constructive Design Research
As stated in my PDP, becoming more acquainted and skilled with the scientific methodologies of doing (design) research has been a returning goal in my previous PDPs as well. After participating in the course CDR, in which I have chosen to get acquainted with the methodology of laboratory research, and after participating in this Research Project, in which I have chosen to get acquainted with the methodology of field research, I am now finally feeling as if I am ‘more complete’ as a design researcher, because I am no longer just muddling along when doing scientific research. I recognize myself to become more skilled in reading research articles, more skilled in scientific writing and I am becoming more aware about the external and internal factors that could influence the reliability and validity of my results. This semester has given me a whole different (more positive) perspective on what doing design research entails, even though I have visibly struggled with seeing design activities as part of a research process instead of seeing research activities as part of a design process.

I continuously had to be conscious about my goal for this project: I don’t want to design a product that works, I want to find the answer to a question, using the designed product as a means to answer this question. Even though the answer to that question might be negative or even neutral: it is still an answer to that question, which suffices for a research project. When making the track choice for my Master’s program, I didn’t hesitate to choose RDD, because I was not yet sufficiently acquainted with the scientific methodologies to even consider the CDR track. And to be honest, RDD seemed to to be more applicable to my personal liking in the first place, because it came closest to what I have been doing for the past four years during my preliminary training. Moreover, I held the belief that there would be no creative process involved when doing constructive design research. ...I was wrong. If I would have known and experienced then what I now know and have experienced during this semester, the choice between the RDD and CDR track wouldn’t have been that easy.

Technology & Realization
Finally, my PDP discusses my personal opinion that as a User Experience designer, I must be able to prototype/realize my designs so that the meaning of the product, service or system can become clear to the audience, which is one of the primary reasons for choosing the AE of Technology & Realization. Even though I have actively chosen elective courses within the AE of TR, I have not actively participated in practices concerning this AE during the Design Projects of the Premaster and the M11 semester, since I have been too easily drawn towards the tasks that I am already capable of performing successfully. For this project I wanted to shift the focus from the AE of User & Society a bit more to the background and focus more actively on the AE of Technology & Realization, aiming towards a working (high fidelity) prototype as a deliverable for this project. Reflecting upon this goal, I am disappointed to admit that this goal was not reached during this semester. However, it might also have been a bit ignorant to believe that a research project provides the time and means to focus on an extensive integration of TR, let alone a high fidelity working prototype, as I have been advised to keep the time and effort for a research prototype minimal because doing the actual research has priority over having an amazing prototype. The prototype should have only one function, and that is to be designed to an extent that it is capable of providing an answer to the research question. Even though I have been experimenting with the Philips Hue lights by retrieving their individual IP-addresses and altering lines of code that were provided to me to be able to be more ‘free’ in my capabilities with the lamps, it soon became clear to me that everything I needed to be able to execute my study as intended was already present and fluently working in the Philips Hue Mobile Application. I have decided to not spend days of work to create something that is already ready to use. I am planning to pursue the same goal for upcoming semester, in a second attempt to focus on the AE of Technology & Realization.

Closing off this reflection, I have finally tasted what is it actually like to do design research which has been of great positive influence on my everlasting struggle of finding focus in individual projects. Even though my RDD track choice is confirmed, I am very eager to implement my CDR experiences in future projects, either focussed on design or research.