The time we live in is a unique one. The world around us is changing faster each day. When designing the world of tomorrow, we designers have a crucial role and should approach it responsibly. In 2015 the United Nations gave us a clear path of improvement by listing seventeen global goals for sustainable development (THE 17 GOALS | Sustainable Development, 2015). These can be classified into two main directions of development. The first is tending to the earth we live on. There is only so much time left if we don’t start caring for our planet. As Bio-Architect Neri Oxman beautifully states: “We should start to mother, nature.” (Dadich, 2019). The second path of development that is important is tending to the people that live on the earth. While we are collectively more wealthy than ever, there are still many people living in horrible circumstances. Causes include overpopulation, uneven distribution of food and other resources, insufficient medical care and lack of education. These are problems that need solving if we want to raise the standard of living globally. Especially the latter path needs more attention as this can directly impact the former. When living in poverty and lacking education, survival is more important than tending to the earth. By raising the standard of living in less developed countries, sustainability will ultimately be on the global agenda. I hope to raise the standard of living in lesser developed countries in the future. A large and often overlooked group of people living in poverty is people with disability and especially disabled children. Research shows that approximately one-third of the worlds disabled population is children (Cameron et al., 2005). I got to experience this first hand with the deaf kids I worked within Vietnam. Because of poor relatives, they have no chance to go to school where they would learn either Vietnamese or sign language, resulting in them not being well versed in either.

I imagine helping those kids is by direct co-operation with the communities. Using methods like Participatory Action Research, 2nd and 1st person design perspectives and Co-creation, meaning being a part of the community you work in rather than a “White Saviour” coming to fix their problems. I especially want to focus on children with sensory impairments as they are often competent enough to participate in society, and the way they cope with their disability intrigues me. Through design, I want to better their standard of living. I want to tell their story and inspire people to take action, using my passion for filmmaking.

Can we stretch the boundaries of what vending is? This is one question we wanted to answer during the course Matter of Transformation. By looking into the papers of three different philosophers we contested the traditional way of looking at vending machines as a simple input-output system. Based on John Dewey’s criticism of the reflex arc we developed a machine where the outcome of vending was not predefined. The contesting view of Suzan Oyama on nature vs. nurture gave us the idea to create a machine that evolves over time due to the way it is used. Ludger van Dijk made us create an ecosystem in which men, machine and environment constantly influence each other through co-dependency. By combining all these philosophic views we created Kluwen, a transforming vending machine in the everchanging non-defined ecosystem of the Wearable Senses squad.

During the course of this quartile, I got quite familiar with the concepts of the three philosophers and was able to reflect on them in the design of a vending machine. But most of all I learned to look differently at design as a whole. In a mostly dualistic society, it is extremely hard to think out of these confines of input-output systems. But In a world where it is increasingly difficult to design something new, it is almost mandatory to try and adopt these new ways of viewing design. I learned about the interwovenness that is the triangle of influences of design. In easier words, I got to see how not only the user influences design but how much user, product and environment influence each other. As a final thought, I will keep in mind the concept of affordances. However you design something, it will always afford different use, especially in our exponentially rapid changing world. It is up to us as designers to use this in favour of our design.