Present

While normally I would ground my work in either Technology & Realization or Creativity & Aesthetics. My B31 internship was grounded in User & Society. Grounding is the basis of my work, while some projects might also correlate with C&A, or Technology & realization, etc. There is a core theme behind it all, where every project or assignment will have something that relates to that expertise area. These 9 months I have really started to value U&S more. I believe it’s necessary to get to framing a well-defined project in a societal problem. However, only framing and creating awareness is not something I’d want to do, creating solutions is what matters more than only statements.

The pink signs case had the core design restraint being safety above all else. Road signs, especially temporary road signs need to be recognizable into easily understanding the sign. This improves safety by allowing there to be more reaction time after reading the sign. While pink signs can work, they are less visible, reflective and readable which makes it more dangerous and can cause accidents where pedestrians / cyclists end up in the workspace or construction site.

It was interesting to also see overlap in with ID, during the internship. For the workgroup pedestrians and cyclists was one of the goals of the group to implement STOMP into the guidelines. in Dutch STOMP stands for: Stappers, Trappers, Openbaar Vervoer, Mobility as a Service (MaaS) en Personenauto’s, in English this means pedestrians, cyclists, public transport, MaaS, and cars. The order of which they appear is also how much they should be prioritized. The goal effectively translates to making the guidelines more human-centric than car-centric. This could easily be applied into a project for the smart mobility squad, there is a lot of overlap by putting the pedestrian and the most vulnerable participant at the top priority.  

CROW is built on sharing and seeking knowledge, stakeholders are important to the core process of making these revisions. I knew this coming in, and have interacted, worked and collaborated on my work during this period. This was quite central of my development of this internship throughout. My internship coach would also take me to visit stakeholders and look around, ask questions. Which was the set-up for a big achievement in my development.

My biggest achievement during this internship was stepping out by myself and going on location to interview a stakeholder. I like to be very self-sufficient and reaching out to others is something that I am not so eager to do. It’s an element of myself that I want to change or in the very least reframe. Accept who I am and find ways to make my flaws work. During this internship, I set my first step towards that. I am proud of doing that and want to challenge myself to do more of it during my FBP. Interviewing stakeholders, reaching out to organizations for visits or advice.