asli demir
designer // engineer // creative
Hello,
My name is Asli.
I craft physical artifacts that question how our lived environments can flow with who we are, what we want and what makes us feel fulfilled.
Every physical object calls for an interaction, a story that plays out in relation to it. This is my starting point in design. My work examines interactions with everyday products and their impact on wellbeing, future and culture. I focus on technology as a toolkit to design tactile, evocative, and rich experiences our senses crave to offer us.
Recently, I graduated from the TU Delft Integrated Product Design Masters. For my graduation project I worked with Ossur on developing a framework to investigate children's prosthetics from a psychological wellbeing perspective. Previously, I studied mechanical engineering at MIT, where I was a part of the Formula SAE team as a battery design engineer.
In design, emotions emerge as a transformative force in enriching our increasingly digital lives with their capability to inspire tangible products rooted in the concerns of their stakeholders. This is exceptionally important in today's environment, where technology and the digital landscape is evolving more rapidly than ever.
In the explosion of capabilities of technology, our touchpoints largely consist of managing eye strain and the unease of endless feeds. We are detached from thoughtful, emotional, and rich experiences our senses crave to offer us. I am passionate about studying, questioning and creating the future of how people connect with the world to make people feel at ease and empowered in physical & digital spaces.
Design research helps me connect key drivers of stakeholders with the context and each other, orienting myself in the domain. Design always has agents, users, people it impacts. Bringing in methods from positive psychology helps inform the motive hierarchies of the people involved to understand priorities, tradeoffs and dilemmas in the context at hand.
My multidisciplinary background creates an extensive base to draw from as a starting point, but I believe the true impact of research lies in how and with whom the information is communicated. I place great care in how I analyze and present my findings, such as in data visualizations, metaphors, analogies, collages or stories that reflect the context.
Methods I prefer: interviews, observation, autoethnography, cultural probes, contextmapping, rituals, lifestyle research, clustering, journey maps
My background in mechanical engineering equips me with the essential skills to understand and predict how the tangible world behaves. This expertise forms the cornerstone in my transdisciplinary approach to design. I don't view engineering as the study of what exists, but as a toolkit for shaping novel designs, I put my engineering knowledge to work to enable specific effects or experiences early on in the ideation process. My distinctive contribution lies in my ability to bridge theory and practice, leveraging engineering practices to drive innovation and break down complex design challenges.
Being involved in the MIT Formula SAE team allowed me to practice the theories I was learning in real time. Collaborating with a passionate and talented team, I translated theoretical concepts into tangible outcomes, determining critical requirements and timelines to build our electric vehicle on time. These experiences were invaluable, laying a strong foundation for my design engineering work in research and technology driven companies like Apple and Tesla.
I often use: Mechanics of materials, design for manufacturing, simulations and numerical models, fabrication, CAD, instrumentation, electronics
Conceptualization is where the problem space is articulated by reframing the issue and opportunities at hand to showcase the possible values. For me, it means moving between abstract and concrete ideas and general and specific concepts to distill the overarching themes and steer the design work.. Even when working on technical, physical concepts, recognizing the experiences they afford facilitates an experience-driven approach.
Embracing chaos is integral to this step. A lot of the methods I use define, balance and control chaos to widen the opportunity space and build on the niche perspectives that emerge from the research stage.
Methods I use: brainwriting, analogies and metaphors, interaction vision, narratives & journey map , generative visuals (memetic/lifestyle collages, sketches), co-creation, persona, extreme characters, list of requirements
I view product embodiment as a challenge to determine the best ways to convey an experience aligned with the vision of the product. Utilizing methods and manufacturing knowledge from my engineering training, I inform the construction and details of the product that best reflects the intended user experience.
Methods I use: CAD, prototyping, sketching, CMF, moodboards, user evaluation
Prototyping holds a critical place in my design process to realize ideas rapidly to weigh their feasibility, viability and desirability. For me, prototypes often serve as probes that express different dimensions of the concept at hand. Prototypes built to the fitting fidelity serve as practical tools for conducting usability tests or inform the mechanical properties and behavior of the design. Ultimately, prototyping is not about the act of building, it’s about building the correct artifact to answer the pressing questions that enable the design to move to the next stage. With experience in a wide range of prototyping methods, my strength lies in quickly finding the right match between the questions and the best ways to answer them.
Often use: programmed and manual machining, Arduino sensor integration, casting, injection molding, composites manufacturing, 3D printing, lasercutting, screenprinting, knitting, embroidery, crochet...
Experiencing the interaction is the best way to understand and measure the impact of design. Determining the right visuals clarifies the intended choices made at each stage of the design, communicating the vision and qualities of the final product without a product present. Presenting the design in context frequently is a core part of my design process, which allows me to align with stakeholders before a prototype can be built, and iterate quickly through alternatives.
Methods I use: Sketches, narrative, video, audio, renders
RECOGNITION FOR MY WORK //
2023 Dutch Design Week
2023 Circular Product Design Workshop in Politecnico Milan for IDEA League & Maker Faire Delft
2022 Review of Thesis on Tijndrift Positieve Psychologie (Dutch Journal of Positive Psychology)
2019 MIT DeFlorez Award for Outstanding Ingenuity and Creative Judgment
2017 2nd Place in Formula SAE Electric Competition as part of MIT Formula SAE
2017 Code Collage: Tangible Programming On Paper with Circuit Stickers
Qi, J., Demir, A. and Paradiso, J. A. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1970-1977. 2017
