Leonie Vaccaro
About me
Professional Identity
I am fascinated by research and data. I love to analyse and find connections and patterns in data. But I am also passionate about art, these two passions contrast each other. But they also have something in common which is that they both are an understanding of the world. Research is about creating an understanding of the world whereas art is about making a statement about the world (or the current society). For me these two combine in design, as I use one to understand the problem and the other to get inspired by and influence my designs. Design however takes a more proactive stance and can be used to envision and discuss the possible future. This fits me well, as I am both curious and critical.
Today’s technology focuses on speed, being panoramic, being prophetic, and being smart. I push back against this. I want the users of my designs to take their time, to think for themselves, make their own decisions, maybe even reflect. I also focus on daily life and on the smaller scale of people’s own environments. I feel that to understand something, it needs to be visible. And if it’s not, then you need to make the invisible visible. Through mapping, visualizing, and making the abstract more tangible for example. For me transparency and privacy are important values. This comes for my upbringing as my parents and grandparents have experience with authoritarian regimes that spy on there own people. This has led to me being sceptical of smart technology.
However I think it is important to look at different perspectives as by looking at the same thing from different perspectives new insights can be gained. Which is why I like hosting or helping at workshops, where participants give their own perspectives on your work. From an earlier age I have notice that different cultures have different values, traditions and rituals, as my parents are immigrants. Dealing with different values and different situations is quite difficult, so it is hard to truly be inclusive. Which is why I find it important that a design is flexible and useable for many types of people in different situations.
I like working in teams, as you have the ability to combine different ideas. The team dynamic also helps me to identify what is needed, as I can better put myself in an observer role. A team also can support one another, give external motivation, combine knowledge and skills, but also check each others work and ambitions. Which is why working in a team pushes me to overcome my weaknesses. Like trying out new methods and pushing me to be more extroverted.
Vision
Every (new) technology has its positives, but also its negatives. I think that designers have the responsibility to question society and even ourselves, on how we should use technology. As technology isn’t neutral, because we shape it. But technology also shapes us, as it impacts how we live [1].
Take digitalisation, for example. At the moment the world is more and more interconnected and digitalized than ever. These recent changes are improving the world, for example researchers are now able to predict the structure of proteins using AI [2]. Which means that new advancements in medicine can be made. In general sorting data and accessing it has become easier due to the internet and the digitalization of information.
However this also has its drawbacks as everything is depended on one another and feels the same. The user has access to infinite information and data. As everything is online, your work, private life, money, and medical data which are all digitized. They’re all accessible through one device, your phone. This technology is integrated in todays society as you need it to open a locker or to authenticate yourself. So, without internet, energy or the physical device, you can’t pay or access your files. That’s why I believe designers shouldn’t only reflect on what they make and how it will be used, but also on the unintended consequences it might have.
Designers have the tools to look at the interaction between people, their environment and technology. Meaning they are able to look at the bigger picture and better question how and if technology should be used. I think the focus should be on what values are important to the designer and society and not just what a technology can do. This way the use of technology gets (re)designed to better suit the user and or society’s needs. Additionally, I believe that technology should not just exist in the digital world but also have a presents in the physical world. Which is again something a designer can facilitate. I strive to make things less abstract for the user, by visualizing, contextualizing and tangiblizing them. Giving the ability to the user to interact with it in a new way.
[1] Donna J. Haraway. 2016. A Cyborg manifesto . University of Minnesota Press. Retrieved from https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduates/modules/fictionnownarrativemediaandtheoryinthe21stcentury/manifestly_haraway_----_a_cyborg_manifesto_science_technology_and_socialist-feminism_in_the_....pdf
[2] Bo Ni, David Kaplan and Markus Buehler. 2023. Generative design of de novo proteins based on secondary-structure constraints using an attention-based diffusion model. Chem 9, (July 13, 2023), 1828–1849. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chempr.2023.03.02