Completing my Bachelor’s in Industrial Design provided a solid foundation in aspects such as physical manufacturing techniques, prototyping and iteration, user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) basics, design research, and standard user evaluation methods. However, I felt that I had only scratched the surface of what design could signify in broader societal, academic, and ethical contexts. I wasn’t ready to enter the professional world just yet. I sensed that a deeper layer of reflective practice, critical engagement, and responsibility could be attained through continuing a Master’s.

Within my endeavor of completing this trajectory, I set the personal goals of exploring the deeper layers of my design philosophy, in which the core TU/e master course Constructive Design Research and User experience theory & practice provided essential foundations. By delving in the evolution of the term ‘user experience’ over time, tracing its historical trajectory, future development, and understanding the key elements a prospective designer should consider, the foundation of my vision could be established with more rigor and intentionality, reinforcing the importance of responsibility in design by integrating the subconscious mind as a fundamental design dimension. Additionally, Constructive Design Research introduced me to a novel academic design inquiry context, in which I gained the initial opportunity to write a research paper that introduced me to the deployment and evaluation of design research probes, specifically intended for an external client: The Bike Kitchen, located at the UvA in Amsterdam.

Moreover, during my Master’s, I had set the goal to dive deeper into the intersection between health and design, exploring what it currently entails, what this intersection has to offer, and whether it could become a meaningful direction for my future professional practice. Given my interest in expanding knowledge within the expertise areas ‘User & Society’ and ‘Technology & Realization’, I deliberately chose to follow the Research, Design & Development track, as it offered potential for integrating critical inquiry with hands-on exploration, while being a natural fit to my Professional Identity as well. Although both expertise areas had already received emphasis during my Bachelor’s, where I distinctly chose tasks that required technically realizing concepts, my intention during the Master’s was to move beyond physical realization alone and explore how interconnected systems, digital platforms, and emerging technologies could be meaningfully designed and implemented in human-centered contexts.

While the first year Master’s projects ‘Tobbe‘ and ‘Minimed’ leaned more evidently towards U&S, the chosen course A Designerly Perspective on IoT allowed me to dive deeper into T&R, specifying how rich and embodied interaction in IoT systems can be leveraged, and how connections between centralized and distributed technical networks and user experiences can support more natural and intuitive human interactions in the IoT context. Building on this foundation, the second year of my Master’s allowed me to further integrate and emphasize both expertise areas, culminating in the M2.1 project at the company smartQare in Eindhoven, where a clear highlight in all aspects of my learning, interests, and ambitions through actively applying my vision meaningfully converged.

The project at smartQare provided me the opportunity to redesign a desktop interface for their patient-worn viQtor device, transforming continuous patient monitoring into an intuitive Natural User Interface tailored for nurses in the General Ward. Within the project, the principles of User-Centered Design stood central, incorporating contextual inquiry to deeply understand users’ needs, alongside iterative testing and preference assessments to guide the design process. Moreover, in order to meaningfully incorporate the subconscious mind in alignment with my vision, a specific emphasis was placed on uncovering the user’s mental model concerning the development of interface design. This involved gathering insights into subtle cognitive patterns such as commonly used verbal terminology, the current manner in which vital signs are interpreted, recognizable visual cues like elements of nurse attire, and established communication reference points. These insights were used to ensure that the UI aligned not only with the functional needs of nurses but also with their implicit knowledge, habitual perceptions, and context-specific interpretations, ultimately allowing for the creation of a more seamless and cognitively aligned user experience within their daily hospital environment. 

However, upon reflection, it became evident that while the smartQare project was guided by the intentions of a User-Centered Design approach through the designer’s perspective, the final outcome was influenced by a technology-centered practicality, or rather a ‘technology-first’ approach. Existing technical devices, such as computers on wheels, monitors, and displays with their current capabilities, were imposed on the design solution, operating under the assumption that users should adapt to the systems rather than the other way around. In addition, this setup requires nurses to engage in focused interaction every time they interpret information from the system, without providing supporting context or cues between these isolated moments.

As a result, the opportunity arose for the Final Master Project to address the issue of alarm fatigue that has been persistent for decades in achieving effective situational awareness through a humane manner of interpretation that is grounded in human-centered design. At its core, the following inspirational insight from Steve Jobs served as a leading perspective, which I believe is explicitly relevant to the hospital alarm management context today [1]: