Starting a PhD

Today is the first offi­cial work day of my new doc­tor­al researcher posi­tion at Delft Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy. After more than two years of lay­ing the ground work, I’m start­ing out on a new challenge. 

I remem­ber sit­ting out­side a Jew­el cof­fee bar in Sin­ga­pore1 and going over the var­i­ous options for what­ev­er would be next after shut­ting down Hub­bub. I knew I want­ed to delve into the impact of machine learn­ing and data sci­ence on inter­ac­tion design. And large­ly through process of elim­i­na­tion I felt the best place for me to do so would be inside of academia.

Back in the Nether­lands, with help from Ianus Keller, I start­ed mak­ing inroads at TU Delft, my first choice for this kind of work. I had vis­it­ed it on and off over the years, coach­ing stu­dents and doing guest lec­tures. I’d felt at home right away.

There were quite a few twists and turns along the way but now here we are. Start­ing this month I am a doc­tor­al can­di­date at Delft Uni­ver­si­ty of Technology’s fac­ul­ty of Indus­tri­al Design Engineering. 

My research is pro­vi­sion­al­ly titled ‘Intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty and Trans­paren­cy of Smart Pub­lic Infra­struc­tures: A Design Ori­ent­ed Approach’. Its main object of study is the MX3D smart bridge. My super­vi­sors are Gerd Kortuem and Neelke Doorn. And it’s all part of the NWO-fund­ed project ‘BRIdg­ing Data in the built Envi­ron­ment (BRIDE)’.

Below is a first rough abstract of the research. But in the months to come this is like­ly to change sub­stan­tial­ly as I start ham­mer­ing out a prop­er research plan. I plan to post the occa­sion­al update on my work here, so if you’re inter­est­ed your best bet is prob­a­bly to do the old RSS thing. There’s social media too, of course. And I might set up a newslet­ter at some point. We’ll see.

If any of this res­onates, do get in touch. I’d love to start a con­ver­sa­tion with as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble about this stuff.

Intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty and Trans­paren­cy of Smart Pub­lic Infra­struc­tures: A Design Ori­ent­ed Approach

This phd will explore how design­ers, tech­nol­o­gists, and cit­i­zens can uti­lize rapid urban man­u­fac­tur­ing and IoT tech­nolo­gies for design­ing urban space that express­es its intel­li­gence from the inter­sec­tion of peo­ple, places, activ­i­ties and tech­nol­o­gy, not mere­ly from the pres­ence of cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy. The key ques­tion is how smart pub­lic infra­struc­ture, i.e. data-dri­ven and algo­rithm-rich pub­lic infra­struc­tures, can be under­stood by lay-people.

The design-ori­ent­ed research will uti­lize a ‘research through design’ approach to devel­op a dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence around the bridge and the sur­round­ing urban space. Dur­ing this extend­ed design and mak­ing process the phd stu­dent will con­duct empir­i­cal research to inves­ti­gate design choic­es and their impli­ca­tions on (1) new forms of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry data-informed design process­es, (2) the tech­nol­o­gy-medi­at­ed expe­ri­ence of urban space, (3) the emerg­ing rela­tion­ship between res­i­dents and “their” bridge, and (4) new forms of data-informed, cit­i­zen led gov­er­nance of pub­lic space.

  1. My Foursquare his­to­ry and 750 Words archive tell me this was on Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 16, 2016. []

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Kars Alfrink

Kars is a designer, researcher and educator focused on emerging technologies, social progress and the built environment.

2 thoughts on “Starting a PhD”

  1. Hey Kars, con­grats on this excit­ing new step!

    When I read this part of the abstract: “to inves­ti­gate design choic­es and their impli­ca­tions on (1) new forms of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry data-informed design process­es,” I thought it would worth­while look at this the oth­er way around, i.e., “to inves­ti­gate (1) new forms of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry data-informed design process­es and their impli­ca­tions on design choic­es”. To me it seems that chang­ing the design process will lead to dif­fer­ent design choices…

  2. Thanks Peter!

    Your approach could also work but the way this is intend­ed is to start from empir­i­cal obser­va­tions of choic­es peo­ple have actu­al­ly made and to then try and under­stand what that means for the more con­cep­tu­al lev­el of design processes.

    Your approach could also work but a process is to some extent always some­thing of a the­o­ret­i­cal con­struct, I think. It doesn’t real­ly ever exist in its pure form.

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