“ PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
PLAN Guangyu Chen
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“ PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY ” Name: Guangyu Chen Student Number: 1281089 Origin: Chinese Personality: Decisive Loves: Sing, Guitar In the past, I imagined many things about what I can do in the future. I once wanted to be a professional singer. I found a job, sang in the bars and also participated in many singing competitions. But I know that the possibility for me to become a star is quite rare. Later I finished a civil engineering bachelor in China. And worked for one year as a general layout engineer in an architecture institute. I developed conceptual drawings into construction drawing. But gradually an industrial design institute near my company got my attention, I got to see some of their work. And I felt that I wanted to learn something about design, especially the ‘little design’. Architecture projects are too big and lasts long,
however, industrial design focus on the products or the services. I prefer to spend my energy in doing smaller things rather than doing big things like constructing buildings. Since I didn’t see myself doing this my entire life I decided to quit this job. Quiting my job and applying for the Bachelor Industrial Design at the TU/e was a big decision I’ve made. During study here in TU/e, I gradually found my working pattern. I prefer activism comparing with idealism. I admire decision makers who can jump out the current working situation like they are not involved in it and make decisions rationally. So as a designer in the future I can already tell that I wouldn’t do pure art design. Function and preciseness are the aspects I would pursue. I also found that my working routines are a bit different from others. There are a lot of people like brainstorm before preparation, I personally prefer prepare things before brainstorm, because I believe the more pre-knowledge you got the more connections you can build between things, and that’s also the purpose of the brainstorm. To sum up, I think I’m a strong executor. When there’s the goal I would go fully for it.
“ GOALS & COMPETENCY ”
1
“ CREATIVITY & AESTHETICS ” I had some pencil sketching experience when I was in middle school. After dropping it in high school, no progress simply meant regression. Now when I try to sketch again, I feel I have to learn everything from scratch again. Therefore I conclude practicing frequently is important for me. By watching the youtube channel called ‘one sketch a day’ once every 2 weeks I will try to improve my sketching skills. I would like to make one detailed sketch(including frame and mark) every 2 weeks until the end of the semester to see if I have improved. I can also check my progress when handing in the portfolio at the end of this semester. GOAL : - One sketch (a complete product) every week before Thursday. - Be able to present products with at least 1 sketch in project 1. - Visit at least 1 design exhibition this quartile to get inspiration.
2
“ TECHNOLOGY & REALIZATION ” I used CAD frequently during my major civil engineering, but didn’t have much experience on other adobe software like Ps and Id. I had attended Ai and Id workshop in 2nd quartile and developed my skills in these graphic software. Until now I’m already pretty good at many adobe softwares like Au, Pr, Id besides Ps and Ai, so I have more ways to present ideas. I found our faculty put a lot value of using Arduino or Teensy in the product. The physics part is not hard for me, but I need to put more efforts on programming and building circuits. GOAL : - Do the video-editing part in project 1. - Use Arduino and Teensy in Project 1.
3
“ USER & SOCIETY ” Last quartile I chose the elective course Human Factor besides UCD. The course Human Factor was quite useful for me since it provided me more principles about usability l. Until now I tried several ways for user test like questionnaire, TA(think aloud) and Wizard of Oz methodology. I will use these knowledge and experience during project 1. GOAL : - Do 1 user test on at least 7 people after each version of prototype.
4
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BUSINESS & ENTREPRENEURSHIP
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In the year 2016, I actually tried a little business, although not very legal: Selling graduation and course thesis. I asked some good students to write articles for me and sold them to those’ lazy students’ who don’t want to write their own essays. I pocketed the difference. After did it for 4 months I quite, because of communication problems with the ‘lazy students’ parts. And I learnt from this experience that negotiation is crucial in a business. In TU/e I had the course business design, I think I got a bird view of business procedure, which was very thought-provoking. And I also chose another business course in quartile 4. GOAL : - Read a marketing-related book this quartile. Making sure 2-hours reading time every weekend.
5
“ MATH, DATA & COMPUTING ” I already finished a bachelor of civil engineering, so the scientific subjects like Math and Physics are easy to me. But I didn’t have coding experience before. So I would put some more attention on programming courses. By following a youtube channel ‘ Code Training ’ 2 hours every week, I hope I’ll be better on Java.
GOAL : - Following a youtube channel ‘ Code Training ’ 2 hours every week for Java language.
“ MY VISION ”
I’m from China. And in my generation the government introduced the one-child policy. This made the number of our generation declined greatly, and with our parents all reaching the retired age, a big problem gradually occurred in China: Not enough youth workforce to support the huge elderly health care industry. Unlike Netherlands, Chinese government is not able to take care of all the retired people. So those old people can only live on their past savings or totally depend on their children, which will be a big burden for young people. And I’m one of them. I will face the problem of taking care of my parents in the near coming years. By developing elderly-friendly products or services, I want to solve this problem to some extend.That’s also one of the reason I chose to study industrial design.
“ THANK YOU “