I am an assertive, critical, and inquisitive designer. Others have described my attitude as open, collaborative, and inspiring. I apply elements of participatory, speculative, and critical design. Therefore, my design approach can be defined as speculative social design. My design drive stems from a desire to explore, create, and share. I enjoy immersing myself in complex societal issues, expanding my understanding through making, and sharing my designs with peers, experts, and the general public.

I like to explore complex contexts through situated fieldwork, utilising my social skills and adopting a curious, humble attitude. My processes are iterative and open-ended. I do not follow a fixed order of phases or activities. Instead, continuous reflection on action guides my design choices. Next to my design process, reflection also plays a vital role in my designs. I often aim to trigger or facilitate critical reflection through creative collaboration, speculation, and the experience of alternatives.

In different settings, I consciously reflect on the role I take as a designer. When presenting or demonstrating, I often take a performative role to set the scene and draw people into speculation. During interactive sessions, I take on a facilitating role. In doing so, I remain aware of two extremes described by Manzini (2015). On the one hand, I risk becoming a ‘big ego’ designer, imposing my vision and leaving too little room for others’ input. On the other hand, I avoid becoming merely an administrative facilitator or ‘post-it’ designer. I apply openness, reflexivity, and responsiveness, while drawing on my critical and creative designerly perspective to steer clear of these extremes and create constructive, inquisitive atmospheres.

Speculative design plays a central role in my practice as a means to explore and expand my knowledge of, and attitude toward, complex societal challenges. My designs challenge the status quo, express my questioning or understanding, and contain inherent participatory affordances. They do not impose my perspective on others; instead, they provoke reflection, invite dialogue, and encourage the sharing of diverse viewpoints, deepening others’ understanding and my own while facilitating collaboration.

I aim to bridge the gap between niche and mainstream through speculative social design. In presenting performative speculative designs, I seek sensitivity in navigating the nuanced line between the ridiculous and the provocative, while remaining familiar and realistic. I apply technology to make concepts experienceable and tangible, providing something to discuss, question, or reflect upon. Within this, aesthetics play an essential role, shaping how people perceive, understand, and interact with my designs.

Like my design process, my design outcomes are often also inherently iterative. I strive to create designs that facilitate iteration: designs that can be built upon, appropriated, and adapted to diverse contexts or goals. Through creative and interactive means, I invite people to validate assumptions, share experiences, and reflect on their own positions. I use creativity as a means of empowerment and to facilitate connections, feeding new insights back into the design process and informing project outcomes.

My desired professional identity builds on this foundation and reflects my vision of the future role of the designer. I believe designers should have an explorative yet committed attitude: daring to fail, diving deep into complexity, and uncovering unexpected insights. They should trust their designerly intuition and curiosity but balance this with research, theory, and openness to other perspectives. Therefore, more continuous and strong implementation of theory is something I want to further develop.

Ultimately, I believe that collectively tackling complex societal problems requires open, honest, reflective, and imaginative exploration among people from across society. Therefore, I design to support imagination, collaboration, and reflection. By connecting people through creative, sometimes ridiculous interventions, I seek to create spaces where alternative futures can be imagined, discussed, and shaped together.