Since the digital introduction day I attended as my first class as a student on this programme, I’ve been by far the most excited for the Design Thinking and Maker Culture course, and it’s lived up to my expectations.
It’s exactly what I felt like I was missing during my bachelor’s degree: the chance to really apply what we learn!
The course primarily focussed on introducing us to the concepts of design thinking, critical making, design ethnography and digital ethnography. Through our lectures, tutorials, skills meetings, podcasting, and the design sprint where my group design-thunk our way to a concept together, it’s difficult to choose which concept or method I’ve felt has been the most beneficial to me – but what I enjoyed most was definitely the feeling of accomplishment from designing our group’s project, Scamplify.
Our brief for the design sprint was “MAKING A DIFFERENCE: (HOW) CAN DIGITAL MAKING CHANGE THE WORLD?”. We were invited to use the process of either design thinking or critical making to create our product, and we chose design thinking; it felt natural to each of us that we should begin from a place of empathy when thinking of ways to “change the world”.
The process began with a discussion between ourselves about the issues that we, and others we know, have faced when looking for student housing in Maastricht. I, personally, was sleeping on couches without a home for my first three weeks in the city, and two other group members were commuting up to four hours each day to come to classes because the housing situation here is so dire.
I had the idea to write posts on groups dedicated to housing and student community in Maastricht, to see if anyone had similar stories to share. What followed was a LOT of people reaching out to talk about the ways they had been scammed on their search for housing, with some losing up to 900 euro to false landlords who blocked them as soon as the deposit money was sent.
What we defined as the root of the problem was the lack of consequences for housing scammers. From there, we made a mindmap of all our ideas on how to best articulate and potentially solve the issue. We wireframed an online forum, Scamplify, where victims of housing scams can discuss their experiences and “name and shame” the landlords who exploited them. The idea is that people who are looking for housing can search their potential landlords on the forum to see whether or not they’re trustworthy.
Could Scamplify change the world? Maybe not, but I think it has the potential to flip the script on the exploitative housing market in Maastricht today.
In fact, it’s clearly an issue that has been on a lot of people’s minds! Just today, walking through the city, I came across an installation piece for Finn Schremmer’s short film, “Dutch Girls Only”, which deals with the same issue. It’s well worth a watch, and I found it to be quite a coincidence! All in all, it shows how the discussion on the housing situation in Maastricht is gaining traction, and hopefully it will lead the way to change. Watch it below: