MATHIAS VERHEIJDEN
Industrial Designer | Emerging Technologies
Hi! Welcome to my portfolio website. Here you can view a selection of my projects and my TU/e Industrial Design Portfolio.
Identity
As a designer, I am a user-centered technologist and storyteller. In my work, I aim to turn increasingly complex emerging technologies into simple everyday narratives, embodied in innovative products and services. Therefore, my projects aim to bridge the increasing gap between rapid technological developments and potential users who seek value instead of features. While doing so, I strive to create designs that improve, yet respect current practices. This is why I strive for collaboration in both my designs and design processes by including stakeholders in the loop, allowing them to maintain ownership over their experiences. Within this process, I value honesty, transparency, and empathy.
Being a ‘thinker’, I like to work from the details to get a deep understanding and identify relationships to see the bigger picture. I do this by working
from why, to what, to how. This starts with a robust skillset to engage with stakeholders through carefully designing and using appropriate methods and tools. On the other hand, my strong proficiency in practical and digital realization skills allows me to
quickly and iteratively test, explore, and realize the envisioned experience at a convincing level. Paired with my undeniably perfectionistic character, this allows me to construct creative and coherent concepts in which I value
attention to detail, simplicity, and coherence.
Finally, I enjoy multidisciplinary collaborations that broaden the creative space and increase learning opportunities. This is why I usually work in a vision-based manner that constructs the overarching goal and direction for the project to create alignment within the team. In this, I usually take a leading role in which I am eager for other perspectives, offering a critical attitude and maintaining a healthy work atmosphere. To this end, I am straight to the point, and encourage others to be so too.
Vision
Never before have we seen such a rapid rate of technological advancements as today. Although this allows us to envision promising futures, many new products and services are becoming increasingly complex, especially with the introduction of technologies like (generative) AI. With this technology push, a gap emerges between human needs and technological implementations, resulting in missed opportunities and solutions of which the benefits are unclear. In their use, therefore, users are slowly excluded from the interaction and decision-making process, causing them to lose control over their own experiences and practices. In other words, collaboration is becoming automation.
As designers of the future, we should therefore develop and maintain a solid technological understanding that allows us to identify the hidden opportunities within these emerging technologies. This means deeply understanding the technology itself, as well as different stakeholders and their values, to develop graspable design narratives embodied in appropriate form, function, and interaction. Simply put, designers should create products that enhance our lives and not become our lives. We should maintain ownership of the experience and let technology be an extension of our own capabilities. Only then can the user’s understanding and appreciation grow along with the rapidly evolving technology, making products more sustainable and users more resilient.
Despite this challenge, designers should recognize and familiarize themselves with the enormous potential that new technologies like AI, AR, or VR bring along. They allow experiences that were not possible with traditional design materials and change the toolset of the modern industrial designer. The somewhat negative stance towards non-tangible interactions in this industry should therefore change. At the same time, new technologies like these also raise new ethical, moral, and environmental questions and concerns. These concerns are not only present within the design industry, but have become a broader, societal discussion. Therefore, designers should further investigate and develop themselves in these directions to ensure a more holistic and responsible design and development process.
