As our time in Amsterdam is coming to an end, it’s fun to look back at all the adventures we’ve had here. One of the most exciting moments was meeting our teammates from the University of Amsterdam. I still remember entering the lecture and being greeted with a warm welcome. All the students were very kind and happy to share what spots they liked best around the city.
My specific group was very invested in getting to know us and were also invested in the project which made working with them a great experience. When I first heard about the design challenge, I remember looking forward to working on a project that was a serious issue for students. Our general topic was improving the mental health of college students, but we focused on the housing crisis in particular. As they shared their personal experiences with housing at the university, I understood immediately how big of an issue it was. Many of them described the process of finding housing taking up to a year. One of my friends told me their landlord unexpectedly kicked them out when the homeowner decided to move before the contract ended. They originally signed a sketchy contract because they had no other choice for housing and ended up getting in a bit of a pickle.
If I could change one part of working with the group, I wish that they didn’t have a solution already planned out when I joined. Before telling me what the problem we were working on was, they already told me they wanted to possibly create an app like tinder but for matching students with other students for housing.
Beyond working with the group, I learned a lot about noticing, sensing, and experimenting. For one, I appreciated working on my interviewing skills. I thought the exercises with interviewing random people helped prepare me for the group interviews. I enjoyed thinking about questions that were more open ended. In addition to interviewing skills, I also learned how to become more specific in who our target was. In past courses like engi120, we were given a client already along with the problem. Being able to come up with the problem along with the target audience was a good skill to learn. I appreciated the more entrepreneur mindset.
I also learned that you shouldn’t go into a problem space with a solution already in mind. Although we were also told this in ENGI120, I think this point was emphasized more throughout the process and I also saw firsthand how having a solution early on can mess with the creativity of solutions post interviews.
One thing that was unique about being in Amsterdam for the design challenge was the application of the problem. Although housing is an issue all over the world, I had to put aside my own experiences with housing at Rice to understand the crisis at UvA and other universities in the Netherlands. I also think that the Netherlands has a much greater emphasis on sustainability than the US. It was interesting thinking of solutions from that perspective and paying more attention to the impact that solutions have on the planet.
Overall, I think there are still many questions about whether the housing crisis is something that can be helped at all without simply more housing provided in the city. Our solution ended up focusing on matching students with other students like tinder so we could improve the stress of getting along with who you’re living with, but we didn’t try to increase the number of apartments available. If we were to do this project again, I think we should have spent a bit longer on brainstorming solutions for mental health more broadly before deciding to focus on the housing crisis. It may have led us to a more realistic solution that we could tackle without needing major help and funds from outside sources.
I still think that this idea has potential to help students moving forward because a good roommate could mean you stay longer wherever you are instead of having to move out and start the process again sooner. I also saw a lot of excitement around the idea when we spoke with university students in Amsterdam. My only worry is that apps have been tried before and are now no longer functional. If we had more time, I would also want to interview the founders of that app or send them an email to ask why it is no longer running.
In general, I loved being able to work with the university students. I thrive when I get to meet new people and start to understand where they are coming from emotionally. It was great to make new connections! I also really enjoyed the interviews and was able to practice empathy to try to understand where people were coming from and why they were not happy with the current process. I think one of my strengths is being able to read people and know when to dive deeper in conversations. This aspect of myself helped with interviews and knowing what people truly meant when they answered our questions.
I generally struggle the most with moving from one step to another quickly. I love thinking things through fully and planning out next steps before jumping in. I actually appreciated that the process went by fast so I could step outside of my comfort zone and take things as they went.
The highlight of the asynchronous activities was generating ideas for housing while in a museum. I thought it was funny that the prompt happened to be what I was working on for the main project and I also enjoyed being in a creative space while working.
My favorite part of my time in Amsterdam is very hard to pinpoint because I genuinely loved everything we tried. The food was 110% FABULOUS. We got stroopwafles, fries, stuffed grilled cheese, lots of pizza, chocolate cookies, Dutch pancakes, and so much more great food. I also loved just walking around, exploring the canals on a boat tour, going through the MOCO museum, shopping in the flower district, visiting a beach nearby, and seeing an F1 racetrack in Zandvoort.
visiting the F1 track
scenes from the canal cruise
My biggest advice is to embrace everything that Amsterdam has to offer. I also would recommend biking around the city because we didn’t get a chance to but it seems very fun! Also make sure to eat fries every day and try all the different sauces. You can never have enough fries, yes they are that good and different from fries in Houston.