Final Bachelor Project Reflection.
The past semester I have spent my time researching nutrition and machine learning with the goal of developing a tool to combat hospital malnutrition. This project allowed me to explore the integration of technology in healthcare; merging my interests in machine learning, making interactive technologies and healthcare to create innovative solutions.
My initial goals for my Final Bachelor Project (FBP) included expanding my knowledge and skills in either realising technologies through mechatronics (T&R) or in machine learning and artificial intelligence (MD&C). When presented with the case of using machine learning to assist people with their eating habits, I immediately drew inspiration from my other projects involving digital twinning in healthcare. This project aligned perfectly to my vision. It provided the opportunity to help people that are disabled in their ability to eat enough through the technological topics that interest me.
I began my project by researching the case, and identifying the values of the stakeholders involved. As I was following Design Innovation Methods at the same time, I easily applied business principles to this part of the design process, which greatly developed my expertise in business & entrepreneurship. While I have never been particularly drawn to traditional business roles, especially when involving designing for profits, I recognize the value of using business methods to elevate design. I used these skills to analyse the existing market and understand the values of my stakeholders; both patients and healthcare professionals.
Scoping the project presented a challenge for me, as I have always struggled making definitive decisions and assessing whether a task is within my capabilities and time constraints. This phase of the project revealed my weaknesses when it comes to the design research process, prompting my personal development. At certain phases of the project, I focused too much on my learning goals instead of finding the project’s overall value and placing my learning goals and my process within that. Research-focussed projects involving design like project 3 suit my natural process slightly better. Through this process of self-discovery, I eventually found my way to a more realistic project scope.
One of the original goals of the project was to create my own machine learning algorithm or, at the very least, understand how to develop one. This was hard to do without any prior knowledge, and I very soon met my limits. Nevertheless, I learned a substantial amount about how machine learning works, primarily through the analysis of existing digital twins related to the project. This significantly improved my skills in math, data & computing, especially as I was starting from zero. Additionally, I still managed to incorporate this information and what I learned during Making Sense of Sensors and Intelligent Interactive Products into an overview of how the product could use real-time data from sensors I had never seen before to develop nutritional advice.
Before this project, I was already well-versed in the user & society expertise area, as it has been applied in all past projects and quite some of the courses and electives as well. During the project I did explore some user insight gathering I have not used before, like using magic machines in collaborative workshops for brainstorming and interviews with experts.
Exploring ideas through magic machines taught me a lot about ideation techniques, their outcomes and about myself within the frame of creativity and aesthetics. Especially in an individual project, I tend to struggle to open my mind to new ideas. A perfectionistic need to know all my limitations in the design before starting with ideas holds me back. Magic machines provided the total opposite to this mindset and really helped me. It got initially introduced to me in project 3, where it was adjusted to be solely sketching-based. Getting people to come up with bizarre ideas with no limits but imagination, and afterwards thinking about how I could make this happen, was very natural to me and helped me open my mind to many more creative solutions.
Through the process I struggled with planning and process a lot. Especially through ideation and conceptualisation I got stuck whenever I did not know what the next steps should be, dragging out parts of the project that later did not do much to contribute to the result. The freedom and self-directedness of the final bachelor project left me unstructured and paralysed with indecisiveness at times. During my internship, where a similar situation occurred, I learned the solution to this situation is getting input from others on the project and what I am doing, but implementing this can be hard for me. Simplifying this process for me is going to be a goal to work on for the future.
The final stretch of the project is the part that I tend to like the most, which is building the prototype. I love the intricate puzzle that is technology & realization. I love working with inputs and outputs to create the functionality I am looking for. I like making things move: this doesn’t even have to mean in the physical sense. I just love creating new pathways of: when this happens, now something totally artificially created will happen.
To build the prototypes of this project, I used all the experience built up through the prototyping of all projects in the past and even to building things as creative expression before the start of the Bachelor’s programme. As I did Designing Connected Experiences during the start of the project, I took quite some inspiration from its principles to create the prototypes.
I even explored a little bit of coding-with-AI I learned in Digital Craftmanship, although that did not get to a point where it could be demonstrated, so was left out of the prototype. It was meant as a part of the mobile application, which became a simple mock-up instead, although the thought that went into it were mostly backed up by experiences from my internship and Digital Craftmanship as well. I liked to think about the data visualisation aspect of the prototype, but as I did not have the time to validate choices in this aspect, the mock-up was left fairly simple.
In conclusion, this project has resulted in a large development of me as a designer. It has broadened my technical expertise, deepened my understanding of ideation techniques and how to integrate users into a project, and honed my problem-solving skills. Moving forward, I am more equipped to tackle complex challenges and create innovative solutions that make a meaningful difference in people's lives. This experience has reaffirmed my commitment to using technology to address societal issues and has set a strong foundation for my future career in design.