I spend a lot of time working on my projects and assignments , but obviously there’s more to me then

1. Hello and welcome to my showcase. My name is JoosHuys and I’m currently a B1.1 student Industrial Design at the University of Technology Eindhoven. All the information in this showcase is divided by past, present and future. To go further, select one of them.

2. I spend a lot of time working on my projects and assignments, but obviously there’s more to me then just my education. In this section you’ll find all the information on my time before Industrial Design, my hobbies, interests and my characteristics.

3. Present would mean just this instance, if I would take it quite literally. In this case, present is bigger than that. It consists of all the things I’m working on right now and everything I’ve done since I started with this education.

4. To me, the future means everything I want to achieve in this semester, in my education and in my life.

5. A good designer should know his strengths and weaknesses. He’s got to be able to express these characteristics to other people, without any shame or fear of being seen as a bragger. I’ve taken a good look at myself to define my strengths. I love challenges, especially exceptionally hard challenges. What drives me in such a challenge is the idea that you’re one of the few people who do something really hard. It gives me a good feeling that I can do something that not many people can do. In some way it makes me feel exceptional. Some examples are my cartoon, Masevillians and challenges in games like World of Warcraft and Runescape. If feel challenged by a project or assignment or if I feel like I have to prove something to myself, I usually put as much time or effort into my work as I possibly can. This goes hand in hand with my persistence. Mostly, when I start a project, I finish it. I don’t feel good about myself when I leave a project. In the back of my mind I can’t let something like that go. Overall I am a hard worker, as long as I believe in what I’m doing. I could really notice the difference between 2009-2010 (Bouwkundefirst year) and 2010-2011 (Industrial Design B1.1). During my first year Bouwkunde, I just did what I was supposed to do. Nothing more, nothing less. I didn’t see any fun or challenge in it all. This year I can see the fun and the challenge in trying to be the best I can be. I don’t mind sacrificing a lot of spare time to do extra work, because I know, along the way, I’m proving myself. Even though it’s a little bit different from my other strengths, I can’t forget to mention my drawing skills. I’ve always liked to draw and have always practiced drawing. I can draw most things pretty accurately, but always in my own style. I have already noticed in the first semester how much I can use drawing to express my ideas.

6. What goes for strengths, can be said for weaknesses. A good designer should know that he’s not perfect and admit that there’s always things he can improve on. He might also have bad characteristics, that can’t be solved or improved. By knowing and reminding himself of these characteristics, a good designer can operate a lot better. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of my weaknesses, is my stubbornness. Whenever I get an idea or when I have a strong opinion about something, I can listen to everyone saying the opposite or having a different opinion, but in the end I’ll stick to what I think. This is because I usually make decisions very easily. In addition I usually stick to the first idea that comes to mind. When another idea or option is presented, I’m not really listening anymore, because I’ve already taken my decision. I can’t forget to mention my problems with programming and technology. One might call this a lack of experience or knowledge, but I know that I have always struggled with topics related to programming and technology. I’m very good at understanding things that I can perceive, but technology is very abstract and has a lot of rules that you just have to accept. I’m making progress in understanding technology and programming, but it takes me more effort and time compared to the average person. I’ve learned that keeping an open mind is very important and thus that I should think about every idea and make a fair decision. Because of my stubbornness this is always pretty hard for me.

7. In this section, I’d like to step away from projects, assignments and other education-related stuff. Through my hobbies and interests, I want to communicate who I am, my identity. Each of the three icons below will bring you to a page with more information on the subject. Of course I do more than just work on Masevillians and play Basketball. I hang out with my friends and watch television, like any other 19-year old guy. For this showcase I won’t clarify this part any further.

8. On March 11th 2010, I started with a cartoon series with a good friend of mine, Luc Muijrers. The series is about four boys, Tyler, Josh, Maximus and Ryan, who live in Maseville. They go to high school, where they get bored a lot. That's why they have to make their lives more exciting for themselves. A lot of stuff they do is not legal, so hence the name, Masevillians. The series is created using stop motion. Everything that’s used is drawn by hand and colored by hand. For every frame that we need, we take a picture. The first episode was 14 minutes long and took over 2200 pictures to complete. We’re still working on the second episode but so far we have taken almost 1700 pictures for this one. Obviously it takes a lot of time and effort to make episodes this way, but to me that’s only positive. I really enjoy working on everything: Drawing, coloring, cutting, taking pictures, putting the frames together on my computer, recording the voices, adding sound effects and especially working on these things together with a lot of fun and laughter. I especially like the challenge and enjoy the satisfaction at the end. I’ve put 400 hours of work in the first episode, but the feeling when it was finished was worth everything.

9. I couldn’t imagine living without exercising or doing sports. For some reason I always feel a bit dull when I haven’t practiced for a week or longer. I have to keep sporting regularly to feel lively. As a little kid I didn’t really exercise at all. About eight years ago I started playing basketball for BC Dunatos (Meerssen, Limburg) and from that point on over the years I became more and more active. Even though Industrial Design takes a lot of time and I rarely have spare time to practice on the driveway or watch full NBA games this year, I will pick these things up again when I have more time in the future. Because of my background with basketball, I’m always interested to sports and sports-related things. In the future, I might do a sports-related project if the opportunity presents itself.

10. I didn’t graduate from high school in 2010 like most of my B1.1 co-students at Industrial Design. I graduated one year earlier and spend last year studying Bouwkunde, also at the TU/e. I now know that I started that education with the wrong attitude. The whole year I looked at everything I had to do for my study as obligations and not as things I did because I liked doing them. I also really didn’t like following lectures, but this was also mainly because of my bad attitude towards my education. At the end of my first year I had twenty-eight study points in total, which was not enough to get my BSA (Binding Study Advise). I could still get two more study points with the extra exams in August, but that was still one and a half months away. I had plenty of time to do research on other educations if I would not pass my exams. I discovered Industrial Design, an education that I had actually barely heard of before. From the start I had a really good feeling about it and in the end, I decided that, no matter how my exam would turn out, I would switch to Industrial Design. I passed my exam and got my Binding Study Advise, but like I had decided, I started with Industrial Design later in August 2010. I’ve never really looked at my Bouwkunde-year as a lost year. It has really been a good learning experience for me, mainly about my attitude towards an education and how important it can be. Also it has given me a bit of experience in designing.

11. From here on you can navigate through my projects, or rather through my only project at this point. I will give a short description and a reflection about the project. My improvements in certain competency areas can be found under the competency areas page. To go further, select the button below.

12. DPE28 Tweeting @ ID, B1.1 The goal of this project was to design a device that supports an activity at the ID department using Twitter. We’ve designed the Tweetest, a device that supports user-testing. In the course of this project I have learned a lot of things. I’ll discuss the most important learning points. First and foremost, I’ve learned a lot about idea generation. I’ve already used a couple of new idea generation techniques in my project group and have seen how I should approach concept development. In addition I’ve learned the importance of keeping an open mind to generate more ideas and also more versatile ideas. Even though I’ve learned a whole lot about electronics in the assignment ‘Introducing Electronics’, my improvements can also be linked to my project. In my project I have built a couple of circuits, some bigger than others, while I understood what the components and the circuits would do. Another area of improvement is my knowledge about Adobe Photoshop. At the start of this semester I had no knowledge or experience with this program. Through the semester I’ve learned the basics, and at this point, even though I still use the basic options, I use Photoshop frequently. Finally I was very lucky to be put together with Harm van Hoek, Willem Horsten and Roy Gevers in my project group. We’ve been a real team for the whole semester and worked without quarrels or tension. A bad team can be very useful to learn from, but a good team can certainly be used as a good example in the future.

13. On this page you can select any of the assignments I’ve done so far to get more information. I will give a short description and reflect on the assignments. Like my project, you can find my competency area improvements under the competency area page.

14. DG000 Introducing Competency-Centered Learning Through this assignment, as the title already says, the competency areas and the competency-centered learning system was introduced. I’ve gained a basic understanding of all the competency areas, a bit of knowledge to further built on. In addition I’ve determined how developed I am in all the competency areas. The self-directed and continuous learning system was also introduced. It was very important for me to learn how this system worked, since learning by self-reflection is the whole point of this education. At the end of DG000 I could conclude that I had chosen the right assignment at the start of the year. Integrating technology was my worst competency area and was a good choice to start developing first. Furthermore I have set some goals to improve the other competency areas.

15. DG220 Introducing Electronics My knowledge of electronics before this assignment was practically nothing, which is the reason why I’ve chosen DG220. I’ve struggled a lot throughout this assignment. This was, mostly, because a lot of things are logical or self-explanatory for the average electrical engineer. I started with this assignment without any basic knowledge on electronics, so nothing was logical or self-explanatory for me. Slowly but steady, I started to get some basic knowledge on electronics to built on. The lectures were quite confusing for me, but I got the idea after the practical assignments and building blocks. I spend a lot of hours on them, probably more than the average person would need, but I really tried to understand every bit of them, which was quite difficult for me. For me a method, with more explanations and less figuring it out for myself, would probably be better, but either way I’ve gained a lot of knowledge on electronics and have created a foundation to further built on. The most important things I’ve learned are basics, like the different electronic components and functions, and using the multimeter. In addition I’ve learned where I need to go when I have problems figuring something out for myself, namely the E-atelier. *Text is partly the same as my personal reflection in my DG220 booklet

16. DG206 Manufacturing Technology When I had to choose two assignments, I had some problems signing in. I got into my obvious choice, introducing electronics, but for my second choice, I didn’t have so much time to do research. I didn’t really have a reason to do this assignment. I would call it a random choice. What I noticed was that the most people who followed DG206 were not first year students. The assignment is about manufacturing techniques, so it is not necessarily that useful for a B1.1 student, because a lot of pretty basic manufacturing techniques are used at the start of this education. Nonetheless, it was useful for me to learn about the broad variety of manufacturing methods. Before this assignment I barely ever thought how products were produced, but now I realize that everything that you design has to be manufactured. The main point of this assignment wasn’t to know all manufacturing techniques by heart, but to know that there are a lot of ways to shape or cut material. In addition a designer should simply be able to quickly find information on a manufacturing technique whenever he needs it.

17. Here you can easily see my improvements since the start of the year for every competency area in one graph. The way this page works is pretty basic. For this graph, I’ve assumed that the assignments and my project have occurred in a certain order and not simultaneously. Just click on a project or assignments to see my improvements since the last project or assignment. At the start of this year I obviously had very little knowledge about all the competency areas and what they even meant. I did have a little knowledge about Ideas and Concepts, Form and Senses and User Focus and Perspective from my Bouwkunde-year. In addition I also had quite some experience on Teamwork and Communication.

18. DG000 Introducing Competency-Centered Learning During this assignment I’ve developed in all competency areas, especially Continuous and Self-Directed Learning and Teamwork and Communication. The main point of this assignment was learning to learn by reflection. In addition the competency days were mostly done in groups, so I’ve seen a lot of different kind of groups, which was good for my development in Teamwork and Communication.

19. DPE28 Tweeting @ ID As the graph shows, I’ve mostly focused on a couple of competency areas throughout the Tweeting @ ID project. Integrating Technology, Ideas and Concepts, Form and Senses and Teamwork and Communication have been the main areas of improvement. Besides my focus on electronics in my assignment, I also wanted to apply my knowledge in my project, which I think went pretty well. I’ve also learned a lot of new idea generation techniques and have learned new methods to present my work (e.g. Adobe Photoshop). Teamwork and Communication wasn’t really my focus in this project, but because of all the time spend in a project group, I’ve gained a lot of experience in this competency area as well. In the first part of the semester I’ve reflected in my dummy every day. In the second part I barely did this anymore. In the second semester this year I’d like to change this.

20. DG206 Manufacturing Technology I have to say it’s pretty hard to assign my developments for this assignment to different competency areas. I could say that manufacturing techniques is just about integrating technology, but the things that were discussed in the assignment, applied to a lot more competency areas. I’ve developed the most at Integrating Technology, but in this case it’s better to speak of overall development.

21. DG220 Introducing Electronics The developments of this assignment are very specific. I have only improved at the competency areas, Integrating Technology and Descriptive and Mathematical Modelling. Development at Integrating Technology was my goal for this assignment and I did learn a lot about electronics. In addition, I had to make a lot of models for the report and try to imagine electronic circuits. This way I drew up what I thought was going on in a model, which was very useful for Descriptive and Mathematical Modelling.

22. There are three aspects that I want to design for. First and most importantly I want to make life more fun for people. I want to design things that are entertaining or provide fun activities for people. In addition I want to create interaction of the user with the design. I want to do this by combining it with entertainment. Finally I want to create beauty with my designs to improve the experience of my designs. In short want to make life more enjoyable for people, not to be mistaken with making life easier. I think that just making more and more devices that allow people to sit back on the couch and operate everything in the house without moving, just leads to laziness. In the end it might be handy having to do as little inconveniences as possible, but together with the large amount of unhealthy food consumed these days, this is a big reason why a lot of people are overweight and unhappy. This is not exactly what I’d like to accomplish with my designs. During the Dutch Design Week (DDW) I made a video about my vision on designing. This video can be found by following this link: Finally it’s important for me to develop a personal identity. At this point I’m not really sure what my identity is. I do know that my favorite competency area is form & senses, since I really like drawing and making things by hand. It’s important for me to develop a clear identity in the future.

23. In my first semester I had determined that my worst competency area was Integrating Technology. As a result, I decided that it was my main goal to improve at this competency area. I feel like I have accomplished my goal and in addition, I’ve improved quite a lot in the other competency areas as well. In the upcoming semester, I want to focus on the competency areas that I’ve improved the least so far. Those are User Focus and Perspective, Social Cultural Awareness, Designing Business Processes and Design and Research Processes. Between those four I want to mainly focus on User Focus and Perspective. I want to sign up for the assignment UFP basics and a second assignment about any of the other three competency areas. I’m not sure what kind of project I want to take for the second semester, but I am sure I want it to a project from a different theme then Discovery & Learning.