VISION

"The future I envision is driven by the ability to shape technology into warm, responsible, and implementable solutions that strengthen people’s connection to themselves, others, and their environment."

Warm technology | Hybrid designer | Value-based development | Real-world impact

I envision the future as a balance between technological and ecological innovation, with both humanity and nature in a central position. Philips’ co-emerging futures Immortalia and Habitania inspire this vision [1]. IMMORTALIA represents a techno-optimistic future in which emerging technologies such as AI and robotics enhance human capabilities and well-being [2]. HABITANIA prioritizes eco-centrism over anthropocentrism, positioning collective well-being, social connectedness, circularity and shared responsibility as the guiding principles. These scenarios reflect an emerging tension between the ambition to push technological innovation, and the responsibility to shape this innovation around human needs and ecological boundaries.

WARM TECHNOLOGY provides a practical lens for me to connect these futures [3]. This person-centered, inclusive design approach prioritizes meaningful experiences and social-contentedness over purely functional or efficiency-driven technological solutions. I interpret warm technology more broadly as a value-driven lens for deciding when and how technology should be introduced into people’s lives. By designing with technologies that are not only efficient and practical, but also human-value focused, I believe innovation can truly enhance quality of life without unnecessarily disrupting people or ecosystems.

However, any future vision becomes achievable only when its principles can be realized, implemented, and sustained within current real-world economic systems.

Creating real impact in people’s everyday lives requires the ability to translate abstract ideas into tangible, feasible, and manufacturable products or services that people are willing to adopt.

My work on The Compass and my role as Product Owner at Aumens strengthened this belief [4]. The Compass showed me how technology can support core human values, while my role as Product Owner added another layer to this understanding by showing how funding, manufacturability, stakeholder collaboration, and adoption determine whether meaningful concepts can actually reach people’s everyday lives. In this sense, I see implementability as inseparable from value creation, as products that fail to align with technological constraints, user adoption, or economic realities rarely achieve lasting societal impact [5] .

From this position, I see my role as a designer as inherently HYBRID: on the one hand, I explore emerging technological possibilities through the lens of warm technology; on the other hand, I act as a systems thinker, shaping the conditions under which production can function sustainably [6] .

I bring this vision into practice by translating human values into interaction principles, system logic and implementation choices. Rather than asking only whether technology is possible, I ask whether it is understandable, responsible, feasible and adoptable. The Compass is my first concrete step in this direction, using warm intelligent support to help people living with dementia walk outside more independently, while strengthening dignity, autonomy and social connectedness.

REFERENCES

[1] R. Brand, “Co-Emerging Futures: A model for reflecting on streams of future change,” Philips Design, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2013. [Online]. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333972702. Accessed: Jan. 6, 2026

[2] “MIT: ‘AI kan nu al 12% van VS-economie overnemen,’” Emerce. Accessed: Jan. 07, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://www.emerce.nl/nieuws/ai-kan-nu-al-12-vseconomie-overnemen

[3] W. A. IJsselsteijn, A. I. M. Tummers - Heemels, and R. G. A. Brankaert, “Warm Technology: A Novel Perspective on Design for and with People Living with Dementia,” in HCI and Design in the Context of Dementia, R. Brankaert and G. Kenning, Eds., Cham: Springer, 2020, pp. 33–47. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-32835-1_3.

[4] “Het Kompas dat altijd naar huis wijst,” Aumens. Accessed: Jan. 06, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://aumens.com/

[5] S. Hostettler, “From Innovation to Social Impact,” in Technologies for Development, S. Hostettler, S. Najih Besson, and J.-C. Bolay, Eds., Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018, pp. 3–10. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-91068-0_1.

[6] E. Basirati, “Hybrid Design vs. Product Design: How the Discipline Evolved,” Medium. Accessed: Jun. 12, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://medium.com/@e.basirati/hybrid-design-vs-product-design-how-the-discipline-evolved-ac04c9bb7d85

My design principle:

"A good concept is only half the battle. If it cannot be manufactured, scaled, and integrated into a real business model, it cannot help anyone."

Hybrid designer | Value-based development | Collaboration | Product Owner

Moving forward, I want to grow as a Product Owner in preventive care-tech or assistive technology, where I can use my ability to switch between users, experts, technology and implementation to guide warm emerging-tech products toward real-world impact

“Tigo presents himself as professional, eager to learn and flexible, with clear and direct communication towards stakeholders.”

~ Dennis van Melick, Lead Product Developer PEZY, 30/04/2026

Many technologies in this field focus on safety or monitoring, while I see opportunities to improve quality of life through re-enablement by focusing on what is still possible.

However, this context is complex, as it requires understanding vulnerable users, ethics, care systems, technology and implementation simultaneously. My strength lies in connecting these layers into one coherent direction where I act as a systems thinker. Bridging these layers comes most naturally to me through close collaboration, where my collaboration style is open, inclusive, and opportunity-oriented. I pro-actively involve people early, check in regularly, and use conversations to understand what is at stake from different perspectives. This also became visible in my role as Product Owner at Aumens, where Vincent Eurlings and I oversee the industrialization process of The Compass and work together with engineering and industrial partners such as PEZY and Vention [2], [3]. In this role, this way of collaborating helped me create shared ownership and keep momentum by translating constraints into concrete next steps.

I asked PEZY to evaluate my work style as a PO after two months of working together and they recognized my clear stakeholder communication, flexibility and technical understanding, while also pointing out that my next step as a Product Owner is to take more ownership in structuring communication, decision-making and project direction.

Before entering Industrial Design, my Bachelor in Artificial Intelligence shaped my curiosity for emerging technologies and developed a techno-optimistic perspective. At that time, I believed technology would play a dominant role in shaping the future. Therefore, earlier in my design development, technology often functioned as the goal itself. However, during my masters, especially through designing for dementia care, I learned that technology only becomes valuable when it is understandable, respectful and realistic enough to be integrated into everyday contexts.

I therefore position myself as a HYBRID DESIGNER who connects user research, technology, interaction design and implementation into one coherent design process, aiming to create real-world impact [1]. My design approach is shaped by a recurring question: when does technology genuinely add value to people’s quality of life, and if it does, how can it be designed in a way that is realistic enough to be adopted, produced and sustained in the real world? This connects directly to my vision, in which technology should not alienate people, but help them remain connected to themselves, others and their environment.

A central part of my identity is what I describe as VALUE-BASED-DEVELOPMENT. For me, this means balancing user and societal values (U&S), technical feasibility (T&R), and manufacturability and business implementation constraints (B&E) throughout my design process. I see these perspectives as continuously informing each other, and it requires integrating insights from behavioral psychology, material ecology, entrepreneurship, and emerging technologies throughout a design process. Within this approach, data-informed analysis (MD&C) helps me make user needs and system decisions more explicit, while designing for the aesthetics of interaction (C&A) helps me translate these insights into experiences that feel understandable, meaningful and therefore easier to adopt. For me, design value is therefore not defined by user experience alone, but by whether people are willing and able to integrate a solution into everyday life.

My FMP proved to be a great design case for this approach, as dementia care shows how much value technology can still add when it is designed around people’s lived experience.

PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

“I am a hybrid designer who turns human values into warm, tangible product-service systems that people can understand, adopt and integrate into everyday life.”

REFERENCES

[1] E. Basirati, “Hybrid Design vs. Product Design: How the Discipline Evolved,” Medium. Accessed: Jun. 12, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://medium.com/@e.basirati/hybrid-design-vs-product-design-how-the-discipline-evolved-ac04c9bb7d85

[2] “Work | PEZY.” Accessed: Jan. 06, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://www.pezy.com/work/

[3] “Vention: Pioneering Smart Product Development.” Accessed: Jan. 06, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://www.vention.nl/