Scroll through the page to learn more about my FMP, how the expertise areas are integrated and my growth.
FMP
'Doen of Waarheid'
‘Doen or Waarheid’, 'Truth or 'Dare', was designed in close collaboration with the care and well-being organisation Surplus. In the Netherlands, every municipality is obligated to provide basic care to its inhabitants, which is provided by the well-being part of Surplus. The clients receiving this care face a problem in one of their ‘areas of life’ and have a significant level of self-sufficiency. Currently, these clients are treated by one-on-one conversations with a social worker. However, the time in-between sessions slow down the progression and is currently underutilised. ‘Doen of Waarheid’ extends the existing trajectory to the home of the clients in a playful way by triggering them to perform ‘Truth’ or ‘Dare’ challenges created by their social worker. The concept consists of an online platform and a physical prototype. The digital platform can be used by both the social worker and the client to remain connected in-between sessions.
The past projects and courses helped me develop my professional skills to improve collaboration and communication with Surplus and stakeholders, develop my technical skills to create fully experimental prototypes and my user and society skills to carefully interact with the vulnerable target group and select appropriate research methods.
how does my FMP connect to me?
Connection to my Identity and Vision
I am grateful that I was able to collaborate with Surplus to express my identity and vision to its fullest during my FMP. The project pushed me out of my comfort zone but taught me about designing for vulnerable target groups. It allowed me to pursue my the vision of extending care to the home environment that I already developed during the Bachelor. Additionally, I could use the methods I love the most and analyse the effect with both contextual and qualitative data. The realness of this case made me grow as a designer in all the expertise areas and prepared me for my design career after graduation.
Using my expertise
How the expertise areas are integrated
Click on the different circles to learn more about the expertise areas. (Please try another browser if the image is not appearing)
Development
Professional skills
During my master, I strongly developed my collaboration skills. During my individual projects, I worked with relevant stakeholders and companies. This allowed me to actively involve them in my design project and design for societal relevant cases. Whilst it adds value to the project, it also requires the necessary planning and organisation skills. I had to learn how to take the lead in my design project by actively approaching stakeholders when input was needed during the project, where I was more hesitant at first. Besides that, I learned how to prepare digital and physical prototypes for long deployment periods (2-6 weeks) and that long testing periods are needed to ensure the prototype's quality. Additionally, throughout my collaborations, I developed my communication skills as different ways of communication are needed for different target groups and stakeholders. Clear communication was essential to get and keep partners with vulnerable target groups on board.
Additionally, working with a vulnerable target group asked for an extensive Ethical Review to reduce the risks for the clients. By going through this for my FMP I learned far more about data security, back-ends and study setups than I would have with low-risk target groups. This knowledge will help me to pursue future projects in this field.
Surplus & bureau moeilijke dingen
External validation
This section highlights some quotes from my client Surplus and external experts. Besides that, in the video one of the social workers explains 'Doen of Waarheid' in her own words.
"The results of the study are interesting and positive. We see that clients are more active in their counselling process between appointments, feel more seen and it encourages the social worker to reflect in favour of a neutral professional attitude. (...) The experiment and research has been so successful for us that we are working on further development."
- Daniëlle Ritsema (Surplus), see the complete paragraph
"Managing stakeholders along this fine balance is a design trait that is very hard to train for during the studies. It feels like Emma has a natural talent for this due to the fact she wants to quickly make things that have meaningful impact and align with the priorities stakeholders might not even know about themselves."
"The project ‘Doen of Waarheid’ by Emma has exactly this scaling that is often so hard to pull off: multiple prototypes that can break, multiple users that use the same web-based system at the same time, etc."
- Pepijn Verburg (founder of Bureau Moeilijke Dingen), see the complete paragraph