My development in business and entrepreneurship has mostly been happening via extracurricular activities. As I approach design from a future oriented post-humanistic perspective, the implementation of business and entrepreneurship in designs is more complex of a relationship based on the nature of the feasibility of a future that is not yet imagined. But this expertise area being within my considerations also allows my designs to still stay connected to the real world as I sometimes go ahead and design within my own realities.
Within the Design Innovation Methods course, I learned how to understand and analyse the tools I would need to set up a business related to design. I later utilized design principles I learned in this course to construct my photography company in the ways that I would approach customers, set up my projects and deal with them.
In an external project I am developing with my friends from TU Delft, we are planning to bring a novel approach to nightlife management via a companion application and especially the skills I learned from the courses Design Innovation Methods and User Centered Design have helped me manage the stakeholders and their roles, needs, and requests better within the initial concept development.
Last year I embarked another journey in my professional career, namely starting my photography business. I had to put many of the skills I learned within TU/e to test while trying to build my own brand. I had to manage people, stakeholders, my personal vision and style all at once. I also had more responsibility based on time to other parties which has also allowed me to improve a lot on accountability. I also had to see where I am placed within the market of other freelance photographers and adjust who I am targeting accordingly.
Within un-compliant mechanisms, I especially wanted to make this project feel like an actual product rather than a prototype. Therefore within every step of the design, there was a reference to what already existing competitors were doing in the smart home appliances market. With the course Trends and Forecasting, I learned how different design paradigms worked and how we can predict the future via some educated "fortunetelling". This skill therefore allows me to speculate around the future.
In the future, as especially when I graduate, I will have to work with more clients with feasibility concerns and business perspectives. I plan to implement learnings from my extracurricular activities with the courses I had in the TU/e to grow my professionalism and find out what specialties in the business world that my skills and values as a designer I could introduce.
One specific plan is, I'm planning on setting up a small design consultancy project with a friend of mine mainly circulating around approaching young startups who are about to become scale-ups and offering them future proofed design consulting. In the setting of the business model of this project, the Design Innovation Methods course was especially prominent.
