Peeking into our integral product development process with Nathalie!

Nathalie studied Industrial Design in Eindhoven and after that did Psychology in Utrecht. After this, she started as a functionality intern at MMID just a bit longer than a year ago. In her free time, she likes to do a lot of sports, such as surfing, running and bouldering. But she also loves to do crafts and build things, to give products an extra useful function, such as a cabinet into stairs.

The reason why she started working at MMID was that she liked how practical focused we are, and conceptual focused. At MMID we do not stop at the concept, we finish with the result. All these steps in between attracted her, including the User Experience aspects.

After her internship was completed, Nathalie stayed at MMID and became a UX designer. She is currently working on writing usability plans for processes from MMID. Next to that, she is working on different projects for clients where she looks at how to take all the users into account in their concept and how to improve their user experience.

One of the projects she is most excited about, she is already working on since her start at MMID. She knows this project inside out and she can work on many different aspects: functionality, drawings in CAD, talking about it with clients, suppliers and users and very specific stuff such as looking up the requirements for injection moulding parts. She can put in a lot of effort and passion in this project, whilst learning a lot within the whole process from other experts.

A regular day at MMID for Nathalie starts with a 30-minute cycle to Delft, after which she always opens the door with a lot of excitement. She starts up the computer as well as herself by making a cup of coffee, has a little chat with some colleagues and then starts working. During the day she has meetings, works in SolidWorks, does some brainstorming, and often works in the workshop. She saws things, clues things together or she plays with water. Then she has (a sportive) lunch with colleagues after which she can continue working freshly. The fun part about this she finds is that in every little step of her day the design process is included. From start to end to be at home, she never stops thinking about it.

When Nathalie tells someone about her job, she would say: ‘I am a product designer at MMID, where we make every product that the client wants, as long as it is ethical. Which product doesn’t matter, we (MMID) know about the design process and the client is the expert in their product field.’

If Nathalie would describe MMID in 3 words, they would be: “Goal-oriented, Collaborative and Passionate”.

Goal-orientated because: we do everything with a purpose, we want to get there, we are going for the goal and are very aware of how we want to get there, we know what the process should be and what we must do to reach our goal and to deliver a product which we believe in for a 100%

Collaborative because: it is so much fun and interesting, both within the company as well as with external affairs. First, when we work with a client we see them as the expert, they know everything in their discipline, we know about our discipline, and we merge this together by collaboration. We have the same goal: deliver a product that fits with the user. To come there, we need to work together with a lot of stakeholders, such as working together with suppliers; they know what we can make and how they make it. By working together with users, we know what they need. And together with stakeholders as well as all the involved colleagues we reach the goal, everybody should be happy otherwise it doesn’t work.

Passionate because: everybody at MMID really loves their job, since everybody shows a passion for what they do. You know it because not only during their job they are designing, but they also spend their free hours designing. Everything they do at work they also like to do at home, so they like to work on their passion all week long. And next to that, we do sports together, help each other out with projects and inspire each other every day.