Vision

As a designer, I am interested in how design shapes the way people experience and interact with the world around them. The products and devices we increasingly surround ourselves with revolve around speed, efficiency, and precision. Navigation apps optimize our routes, productivity tools break our days into measurable outputs, and smart devices promise to automate everyday routines in the name of saving time. Technology has far outgrown human capabilities in these areas, allowing us to increasingly outsource everyday tasks and decisions to automation and artificial intelligence in an effort streamline daily life [1]. 

Yet rather than feeling freed by this efficiency, we often experience the opposite [5]. Time saved is quickly filled with additional tasks, notifications, and expectations, reinforcing a cycle of busyness rather than alleviating it. In this context, productivity becomes less a tool and more an obligation, where the promise of doing more in less time is endlessly pursued, even at the expense of our attention and well-being. As more aspects of daily life are automated, engagement and presence are diminished, and the experiences that could otherwise enrich the monotony of daily life risk merely being reduced to tasks to be completed. In turn, our ability to meaningfully engage with the world around us is gradually lost [1].

Instead of accelerating our lives to keep up with this constant demand, there is an opportunity for design to help move us in the opposite direction and slow down [4]. This perspective aligns with ideas of slow technology [3], which emphasize reflection and meaningful engagement over speed and optimization. It seeks to view technology from a human perspective, because unlike computers and machines, human experience is not defined by efficiency and precision, but rather by presence and perception. By approaching technology from a human perspective, it acknowledges that, unlike computers and machines, human experience is not defined by efficiency and precision, but by presence and perception.

By designing technology with these qualities rather than prioritizing performance alone, it can enhance experience, bring attention instead of taking it, and support autonomy rather than reliance. Additionally, such an approach seeks to reinforce individuality, curiosity, and surprise that is otherwise lost in the monotony of daily life. This is not a call to reject technological progress or return to a less advanced past, but an invitation to engage with technology more intentionally, creating balance instead of becoming caught in an endless pursuit of efficiency. In this context, my idea of slowness refers less to the speed of which we do things, and more to how intentionally and autonomously we engage with everyday life.


Professional identity

As an imaginative product designer, I strive to design products that do not replace human engagement but instead reinforce it. While inspired by a critical design method that questions our relationship with the digital world, my design approach is rooted in an optimistic fascination with technology rather than pessimism and disdain. My goal is not only to highlight issues of how we interact with technology, but more importantly, to offer alternative ways of engaging with it that are more thoughtful and intentional. These are rarely big, revolutionary ideas, but often more modest interventions: products that offer novel solutions to overlooked obstacles, a unique experience to an otherwise mundane situation, or ideally, a combination of both.

While my process often begins with a clear vision and concept, my approach to making is led by curiosity and exploration. Through rapid yet deliberate prototyping and by drawing on my experience in CAD modelling, 3D printing, and a growing proficiency in working with electronic components, I can iterate quickly from improvised prototypes to functional designs. With experience prototyping [1], an early focus on function and use allows me to experience my concepts firsthand, informing the aesthetic expression as the project develops into a finished product with attention to detail in both form and function.

This attention to detail is both a strength and a challenge. My tendency to work independently allows for deep immersion in every aspect of a project, but it can also take too much focus. I have learned that taking a step back and consulting others for assistance or perspective can often strengthen my ideas and help me progress with more clarity. Embracing this balance between focused making and shared reflection continues to shape both my process and my growth as a designer.



References
1.              Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri. 2000. Experience prototyping. In Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques, 424–433. https://doi.org/10.1145/347642.347802

2.              Nicholas G. Carr. 2015. The glass cage: how our computers are changing us. Norton & Company, New York, London.

3.              Lars Hallnäs and Johan Redström. 2001. Slow Technology – Designing for Reflection. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 5, 3: 201–212. https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00000019
4.              Carl Honoré. 2005. In praise of slow: how a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed. Orion, London.

5.              Gilly Leshed and Phoebe Sengers. 2011. “I lie to myself that i have freedom in my own schedule”: productivity tools and experiences of busyness. 




Slow Down, Look Up

  • FMP – Final Master Project2025

In an urban culture driven by speed and efficiency, navigation technologies often reduce attention and reliance on intuition. Offbeat is a haptic navigation device that replaces turn-by-turn instructions with directional cues, encouraging users to look up, explore, and move through the city with greater presence and rather than precision. Through user observations and interviews, the design process was grounding in the experience of walking in urban environments.




How to Notice

  • M2.1 – Preparation FMP2025
In a culture driven by speed and constant stimulation, this project explores how technology might support presence rather than distraction. Alongside the Drift Compass, it introduces the Periphery Camera and Around Sound Player, as alternative speculative devices that point to overlooked visual and auditory details, encouraging curiosity, attentiveness, and a more intentional relationship with everyday environments.





Designing for Deceleration

  • M1.2 – Project 2: Design research2024
This design research explores slow technology as a design approach for fostering mindfulness within everyday urban navigation. Designed from a critical perspective on modern navigation methods, the Drift compass promotes presence, curiosity and playfulness. As a “slow” navigation device, it indicates direction without prescribing a route, users are encouraged to explore and choose their own path.





ShellCRAFT

  • M1.1 – Project 1: DesignGroup project
    2024
We presented an immersive performance as the fictional corporation ShellCRAFT, centered on breaking as both an act and critique. By destroying a digitally fabricated 29-layered sculpture, reflecting the 29 eggs and the 580 hours the chicken invested in producing the eggshells, the work exposes the imbalance between valuing human labor and exploiting non-human effort. 





CircaRythm

  • M1.1 – Project 1: DesignGroup project2023
CircaRhythm and accompanying Circalamps was designed as an AI-powered sleep awareness system designed to support healthier circadian rhythms. Using tangible light-based feedback and user input, it visualizes sleep cycles through nonobtrusive devices. Rather than optimizing sleep through control, it encourages reflection, awareness, and gradual behavioral change.





Parametric Design

  • Built Environment course2025
Through the design of a student accommodation and event area using data-driven parametric inputs, this course strengthened valuable skills in the creative industry in terms of 3D modeling and parametric design using Grasshopper. Understanding and applying fitness functions to find optimal solutions, this course gave me insight the attention needed in various aspects of larger scale designs in order to balance both creative, structural, and business-related decisions.  



Interactive Materiality

  • Industrial design course2024
By exploring aesthetic material qualities through technically actuated expressive interactions, this project employed creative methods such as experience prototyping, giving me insight into how material and interactive qualities can reinforce one another in aesthetic experiences. The resulting design, MÆSH, reveals moiré patterns in layered rubber mesh, allowing visitors to explore flickering visual effects through spatial interaction and variable adjustment.



Designing User Interfaces with Emerging Technologies

  • Industrial design course2023
This course introduced me to coding algorithms and integrating electronics in ubiquitous interface design, including ArUco marker–based computer vision embedded in physical objects. This was reflected in the design of a soft, shape-changing interface using magnetic actuation to provide visual and haptic feedback for smart home applications.



Design for Behavioral Change

  • Industrial design course2023
This group work applied various behavior change technique and behaviors in the design of an intervention addressing peer pressure in the drinking culture among young people. Through concepts such as intrinsic motivation and self-determination theory, this gave me some of the building blocks needed to understand how to inspire rather than enforce change in users that can evolve to chang on a societal scale.