Creativity & Aesthetics

"Creativity and Aesthetics" is one of my leading areas of expertise. At a young age it was manifested in my interest in photography and history of arts, followed by few designs of lamps and products developed before starting my professional education. Finally during my master studies in Eindhoven I learned how to name my skills and knowledge, structure and explore it even further.

In my research phases, I use many creative ways of user studies, such as Design Probe, Photosafari and Bodystorming (Momentum Project). Also when designing tasks and working sheets for the users, I try to keep them aesthetically pleasing and playful so they will remain fun to fill in and interact with (e.g. Individual Task Sheet for Miural validation). I believe that collecting scientific information does not have to be boring and stimulating creativity within participants can benefit the quality of outcomes. 

I know how to structure and stimulate my ideation. In architecture studies I used to rely on individual brainstorming - drawing at least 6 possible solutions before deciding on any, which resulted in ease of producing many diverse solutions for one problem. However while working in the team this is often not enough. To facilitate it I turn to alternative methods like co-creation sessions with a focus group (QmA Project), ideation around values with Moral Agent cards (Miural), Morphological Chart and Harris Profile (Reload Booth) to assess solutions or ideating around concepts with 3 random categories (material-inspiration-area of use). I see a lot of potential in ideating through play with materials and lo-fi prototyping (Miural) and I try to use this approach in my designs as well.

In the projects, I explored different styles and inspirations. Each product has its unique final style and shape, but they were unified with my individual aesthetic. Momentum has a very orthogonal shape inspired by Bauhaus and modernist style. It has a simple color palette and a very architectural approach in shape giving, using a repetitive module. Reload Booth on the other hand was designed to fit into the modern style of Ahrend and should blend with their product lines. That is why I decided on fabric typical for them, round corners as in Charge Collection and tufting to recall furniture from Embrace Collection. Miural also was designed to reflect the client's brand but only in materials used - light wood and gray felt. However, the structure of it and its interaction were inspired by Shoji walls and origami structures taking inspiration from Japanese culture.

I explored creativity also in User Experience and interaction aspects. During my studies at TU/e I learned  how to build tangible interfaces for IoT applications, with a focus on embodied and rich interaction. I gained knowledge about implementing affordances in the product and how to understand them. For IoT course we developed a tangible artifact to operate light and temperature at home with possibilities for the system to grow and gain new functionalities. The course certainly influenced my way of looking at objects and what I understand from their shape as a designer and user.