Looking back at my Bachelor, I am grateful to have grown significantly as both a designer and a person. I chose Industrial Design at TU/e for its mix of creativity and technology and the freedom to shape my own path which was valuable, since at the time I did not yet know where my interests lay. In the end, exploring each expertise area gave me a strong foundation and a more holistic approach. Below I describe that development and the key learnings that shaped me.

In my first year I learned the basics of the design process and fundamental professional skills: teamwork, presenting, prototyping and academic writing. I joined the Soft Materials squad for Project 1, having never worked with fabrics, and discovered it wasn't my passion. Instead I became interested in applying AI in design and in behavior change, and increasingly aware of how to integrate sustainability into design. In my second year I joinedthe Vitality squad (sub-squad In Touch with AI) for Project 2, where we created Mindsketch, a digital art journal helping users express rather than bottle up emotions. This taught me the necessity of a viable business proposition, which we forgot to make, and how to integrate user perspectives with the right methods.

I then joined the Artifice squad to deepen my AI knowledge, developing a speculative project on how designers could navigate a future with AI, later exhibited at Dutch Design Week. I discovered that speculative design projects suit me less, as I am more motivated by concrete problem spaces with tangible impact. By this point my interest in entrepreneurship was growing through other courses I had followed. An exchange at CODE University of Applied Sciences in Berlin proved pivotal, helping me re-discover this interest, particularly social entrepreneurship, and understand how innovation and business can address societal challenges.