A bit about me...

My name is Astrid van Roij-Lubsen. I work as a concept developer at Waag Society - an institute for art, science and technology. I have a background in Industrial Design Engineering and in the past five years I have been working at the intersection of product design and interaction design. My goal is to come up with solutions that really fit into peoples lives, and therefore I apply a lot of user-centered design techniques in my projects. In my work I find it very useful to make prototypes, because it helps to externalize my thoughts and to trigger creative solutions. With this course I want to enhance my skills in rapid prototyping and learn the basics of electronics design so I will be able to make basic interactive prototypes. I am convinced that these skills will empower me in the creative process. In the creative research section you can read more about my reflections on the role of prototyping in the creative process.

Apart from making things at work, I like to create things combining old and new techniques. In the picture below you see an animal-alphabet-book-and-memory-game for my little nephew, in which I combined hand drawing, painting, photography and vector drawings to make the images.