Present

As of January, I have just completed my social design internship with de plannenmannen where I set out to explore a role I see for myself in the future: a designer working in a small team to collaborate with clients to design and build physical things with meaningful impact. In this internship, I accomplished three goals directed at my design process, philosophy and technical skillset. As I am attracted to handcrafting and consider a future in furniture design, I practiced woodworking on small and large scales. I challenged myself to work with and create using digital tools, learning to 3D model in an iterative way. I studied their workshopping techniques and participated in client work to better understand how co-creation is used professionally, learning strategies to balance the roles of designer and client with the creative and productive goals of a project. Having struggled in the past to resonate with the meaningfulness and impact of my projects, I engaged them on how they consistently achieved clean and affective concepts. This taught me about the concept of a design intervention, which I now refer to frequently, and how research on the system - in other words, exploring the identities, cultures and environments of the clients - informs what interventions are necessary and how to implement them.