Are you passionate about Design Research and Design Methodology? Do you love writing about experiences in designing for and with underserved or novel audiences? Are you inspired by designing in the medical context and having a direct impact on quality of life for many patients? This Postdoc position will allow you to do all this in close cooperation with design researchers at Industrial TU/e and Philips Experience Design and other societal partners.

Over the last decade, designing with data and AI has become an important pillar in the repertoire of designers, who research or practice design in various domains from healthcare to industrial manufacturing. At the same time, this is a sweet spot for academic collaboration with industry as tools and methods overlap, and design research is increasingly recognized as a strategic advantage in industrial innovation processes. This provides a rich context for design research into methodologies and impacting the design landscape structurally. The Postdoc position offers resources and collaboration with over 20 academic and industrial design researchers to research, document and further develop methodological insights around Design Methods for Data and AI. In addition, we aim to connect experience design methodologies to innovation management, data science and AI-supported decision making. This involves Data-enabled Design, a method that has been successfully applied in Philips Experience Design for several years already, and working towards domain-specific extensions of the method, researching its application in other industrial segments, and connecting data design stakeholders in society.
A concrete goal for this Postdoc is to set up an effective design research agenda across several PhD trajectories, with the above-described stakeholders. Next to that, the Postdoc position will be connected to the Eindhoven MedTech Innovation Center (eMTIC) and the Eindhoven AI Systems Institute (EAISI). These networks provide further access to experts in medical technology and clinical practice, as well as AI, ML and HPC expertise. 

The position is offered in the Future Everyday group of the Industrial Design department of TU/e.

The Department of Industrial Design (ID) is one of the nine departments of TU/e and has an internationally leading position because of its core commitment to research through design (RtD) and its strikingly original conceptual work. ID's ambition is to be recognized as one of the top departments in the world that conduct exciting research in the intersection of Design, Technology, Human-Computer Interaction, and Social Sciences and Humanities. In particular, the department aims to inspire and educate a new generation of design engineers who can contribute with their novel designs, their fluency in AI/ML algorithms and data, and their academic critical questioning, to the imminent and complex societal challenges our world is facing nowadays.

'Future Everyday bridges the gap between emerging technologies and people's everyday life.'

The Future Everyday cluster is a highly ambitious community of design researchers, concerned with understanding, exploring, and shaping an everyday life of individuals/small groups that encompasses the new reality of living and working, in spaces that are becoming more responsive, continuous and experiential in the future with emerging technologies. Currently, we focus on designing with technologies such as internet of things, wearables/soft things, small/local data, machine learning --- and designing for aesthetics in an everyday life with all the nuances and subtleties that are inherently dynamic, ever-changing and shaped by personal and collective values, needs and desires. We seek to better understand how to create the right conditions --- over time and space --- to allow human-technology relationships to grow and adapt to future situations.

• PhD in Industrial Design, HCI, Interaction Design, Design Management, Innovation Science or Management, or a comparable domain.
• Ability to conduct high quality academic research, demonstrated for instance by a relevant PhD thesis and relevant publication(s) on Design Research, Design Methodology, and Design Theory.
• Ability to communicate and cooperate with various industrial and academic partners and stakeholders, shown by relevant prior experiences and/or positive evaluations of these efforts.
• Experience/Affinity with strategic direction setting, building, and maintaining a strong design research roadmap.
• Excellent mastering of the English language, good communication and leadership skills. Note that there is no Dutch language requirement.
• Be a team player and able to work in a dynamic, interdisciplinary context.

• A meaningful job in a dynamic and ambitious university with the possibility to present your work at international conferences.
• A full-time employment for 2.5 years, with a possibility for extension given excellent performance and acquired funding.
• You will have free access to high-quality training programs on general skills, didactics and topics related to research and valorization.
• A gross monthly salary and benefits in accordance with the Collective Labor Agreement for Dutch Universities.
• Additionally, an annual holiday allowance of 8% of the yearly salary, plus a year-end allowance of 8.3% of the annual salary.
• A broad package of fringe benefits (including an excellent technical infrastructure, moving expenses, and savings schemes).
• Family-friendly initiatives are in place, such as an international spouse program, and excellent on-campus children day care and sports facilities.