Defining a Professional Identity
During the class in Wednesday, we were asked to define our own skills, knowledge and attitudes. Seen below is a first draft of this overview that came to be in the class. It maps several skills and interests agains a two-axis matrix, defined by both proficiency and passion. Within the plotted points, a further differentiation in categories can be found. The arrows hint at professional development opportunities.
First draft produced in class.
Sharpening the profile
Upon further investigation several points for optimization could be seen in the visualization. In the following days, an improved digital version of this chart came to be.
The arrows represent improvements aimed for in the context of the master program.
Reflecting on complementary profiles
During conversations with classmates it became evident that complementary skills were important in achieving formal success in a future project. But another criteria clearly stood out for me: The crucial matter of not only complementing skills but also complementing personalities. In many conversations, the synergy between working in a more conceptual way versus working in a more spontaneous way played a important role. Since I personally consider myself more a conceptually strong person, I benefit enormously from intuitive, more hands-on project partners at my side, especially in the heat of a project's execution. That was one of the most important takeaways for me in the last years – and this week's conversations doubled down on this.
An example of a complementary profile, after flipping the initial diagram.
Course structure and connected goals
An overview of the desired skills, knowledge and attitudes associated with each course module can be found here: MDEF course structure and connected goals.
Draft for a Personal Development Plan
To summarize all of the above, including the reflection on the future curriculum and my conversations with classmates, it becomes clear that the next nine months offer a plethora of opportunities for self-improvement. It even offers so many possibilities that one inevitably has to be guided by the personal motivations for studying MDEF, otherwise it will feel both too overwhelming and lacking focus. I prefer to carefully select a few main topics and deeply dive into them in the course of this study. Which topics these are exactly depends of a lot of factors; further I am holding myself back from settling on these main focus points too early in order to avoid excluding some interesting opportunities I might not have seen before. Reflecting after week one of the curriculum, some of these focus points could include: AI, sustainability, fabrication, biomaterials, blockchain and music.
In terms of sharpening my professional profile, my motivations are not guided by a specific career ambition. I do not aim for a certain job profile after the master degree, instead I'm hoping this degree allows me to further grow as a design generalist and enables me to work in a more speculative, experimental and multidisciplinary way than before. In that sense, I perceive this study much more as a creative open-ended experimental field than a stringent and fixed professional training. If everything goes well, it will enable me to sharpen my portfolio as a designer, who can actively shape the way we interact with technology in the next centuries.