Looking back at my experience, one highlight of my time here in Amsterdam was working with the University of Amsterdam students on a design challenge related to the city. I was put in a team with five other guys who were mostly from various parts of the Netherlands, and one guy who was from Portugal. Communicating and brainstorming with them were surprisingly easy, they were all very engaging and had relevant and thoughtful ideas about our project. Apart from the academic projects, I got many recommendations for things to do in Amsterdam, and we even met up with some of the other team members at a student association event. Some things that did not work out too well was the interviewing sessions, where us as a group could not conduct any interviews. This was mostly due to the unexpected train strike that affected most of the students who did not live in Amsterdam but in different cities. What did work was randomly asking different small business owners to be apart of the interviews after buying their products, whether it be cheese, wine, sandwich, or a nice brunch.
Here are my three takeaways about the design abilities:
- You start noticing things that you normally wouldn’t if you slow down and really observe.
- Once you lose your inhibitions, things become a lot more fun.
- You don’t always need to know what the end product must look like.
The first takeaway was from the noticing scavenger hunt that we did around Amsterdam. For the first time in a long while, in the tram, in the park, or even just eating, I wasn’t consuming content on my phone and was looking at the people around me: I was simply observing. I started to make backstories of those people and what I learned—something I hadn’t truly grasped before—is just how rarely I allow myself to be fully present in a place, and how much richer the world becomes when I do. I also realized how quickly we form assumptions about people, often without even noticing we’re doing it. Many times in engineering design, we are building, making, sketching, brainstorming, problem-solving things actively. Observing without judgment, and simply being curious, opened up a whole new way of seeing. Put the phone down and be present!
The second takeaway was from our prototyping day at central station, where my team situated ourselves in the most busy place in the whole country, asking for trash to keep the streets clean. When we were first started, we were really kind of not into it but it felt like we had to do it for an assignment. After a while it became more fun as people started to engage more, and our confidence boosted. By the end of our time at central station, we truly were not thinking about the assignment but enjoying interacting with the tourists. Not enjoying things because of the fear of embarrassment was something my team shared but I learned that stepping outside of our comfort zone can actually lead to some of the most rewarding moments.
This third takeaway was from our last day visiting DB55, when the founder shared how he did not know specifically what the place will be but it won’t be a simple office place. He didn’t have the answer to all the questions but he took initiative anyways to create a space that could be anything: event venue, theater, concert hall, business dinner, birthday parties, and the possibilities are endless! A lot of the times in engineering design a team has a specific goal and an idea of a model before creating the product. DB55 was truly inspirational in that it was a space shared by the community that started with just an ambiguous vision, not the whole blueprint.
One thing that I learned during the design challenge that was special to Amsterdam was how the city was structured: so many bikes and canals, smaller walking lanes and less cars. This definitely made the last mile delivery crisis more difficult to solve, especially inside the city center. Some questions that still remain unanswered are what are different factors that influence the work environment of the drivers to leave Amsterdam and what can the people of Amsterdam do to help the crisis of the small business owners. One thing I would done differently were to talk to many more more small business entrepreneurs to see if many of them were having similar problems. Some opportunities that I see from this project is helping the small businesses to help incentivize drivers for the deliveries to become more providable and efficient.
I think that I thrived the most during the interviews. I think it was pretty intuitive for me to conduct interviews that will evoke emotions of the interviewee and get to hear the stories that hold a strong emotion to them. I definitely enjoyed working with the University of Amsterdam students a lot and one time that was the most fun for me was the last day when the class did the gallery walk: watching our hard work from the last two weeks come together was a rewarding and enjoyable moment in experience. I think I struggled the most when I was actually getting to conduct the interviews not the interviews themselves. It was difficult for me, at least at first, to get out of my comfort zone, stop being a customer of that service I was at, and ask for a quick interview.
Not related to the course, my favorite part of Amsterdam was the Rijksmuseum where I could see honorable artworks at its grand scale. Another has to be the Heineken Experience where we got to see the brewery that was really used until 40 years ago and got a bunch of great beer. Lastly, going to Zaanse Schans on a beautiful day to see the windmills.
I could give plenty of advice to those coming to Amsterdam next year, but not one realization was more important than this for me: step out of your comfort zone.