Who am I?
Professional identity
I am a designer driven by a passion for psychology and behaviour change. I am fascinated by the human mind and enjoy unravelling people's behaviour and motives. I embrace opportunities that push me outside my comfort zone, and I am eager to study and acquire new competencies, if necessary, to meet the stakeholders' values. For instance, I learned to use the PHP framework Laravel to meet the privacy and security standards of the care facility I cooperated with. I do not hesitate to seek out to experts to acquire these skills as I believe that collective expertise leads to the most effective solutions.
With my front-end and back-end development expertise, I can build dynamic prototypes and tailor them to end users' needs. It enables me to make quick changes and follow an iterative and co-creation process with my end-users during the design phase. Moreover, my technological skills extend to the physical context, where I can build long-lasting prototypes to deploy designs for long periods. Only once people get comfortable with a product the experience of people can be discovered.
During the deployment period, I gather contextual data and interview data, and combine these to analyse the user's experience from different perspectives, as one can unravel more insights where the other stops. Using my technical skills, I can quickly make new data representations, interact with these and use them to enrich my interviews.
I make an effort to adapt not only my concepts but also my research methods to the target group. For instance, for one target group, a semi-structured interview might be ideal, while another might need reassuring tools to express themselves. I have a calm and open personality which helps me to make people feel comfortable to share valuable insights during interviews.
In summary, I am an analytical thinker and designer with extensive technological competencies, interested in psychology and behaviour change. I seek to collaborate with both experts and end-users to create solutions with societal impact.
What do I envision?
Professional vision
I see a gap between behaviour change literature and created design solutions. These designs are often targeted at people already in the so-called 'Action' phase and thereby neglect people without intention of change. I believe that behaviour change solutions should grow with the user instead of pushing them in directions they are not ready for. To achieve this, we as designers need to better understand how we can evaluate people's stage of change to present the right content.
With current advancements in technology, I consider a mental health care system that provides one 1-hour session every week as old-fashioned. With the growing waiting lists for mental healthcare [1], I believe that applied behaviour change theory, combined with new technologies, can extend care to the home environment. In this way, people can be supported continuously instead of periodically. Additionally, designs following these combined principles can promote patient involvement and co-responsibility.
However, active collaboration with experts, professionals and patients is needed to create fitting design solutions that are adaptable to the ever-changing needs of health care. I believe that designers should not design a 'one-fits-all' solution but rather design tools that can be carefully adapted to personalities, behaviour change states and client-caregiver relationships. Furthermore, whilst I mainly focussed on the healthcare field during my master, I believe that behaviour change theory can be applied to other fields, such as education and sustainability, where similar adaptable solutions are. I hope to further explore other fields during my career as a designer.
[1] Waiting times in mental healthcare - Social Determinants of Health - Public Sector - Insights and publications - PwC: https://www.pwc.nl/en/insights-and-publications/services-and-industries/public-sector/social-determinants-of-health/waiting-times-in-mental-healthcare.html. Accessed: 2023-06-20.