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profile
Halo semua! Meaning “Hi everyone!” in Indonesian. I’m Jonathan Christopher Jayakusuma, but Jochris is fine. I’m from Tangerang, Indonesia, a growing district just outside the capital city Jakarta. It is quite a big, bustling and continuously developing city and it is the home of lots of new Indonesian start-ups, shopping malls and cool residential areas. I’m currently studying ICT & Business at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, in Eindhoven.
Choosing to go to Fontys felt natural to me because it had the major that I wanted to do, ICT & Business and it is situated in Eindhoven which for me is like the Silicon Valley of Europe. Then when I had to choose which minor program I wanted to follow, I chose for Embrace TEC. I made this choice because I heard so many good things from friends about this minor and what you can learn here. Also the feeling that the Pulsed living room has is a big plus for me.
By choosing this minor I want to unleash my potential and that’s why I chose to follow the Company Adventure Track. This track offers the experience of how it is like to be a professional and to work in and with companies. They offer a wide range of companies in different industries that you can choose from. Together with my sis Carolina, I ended up working with the world’s largest logistics company, DHL. One thing that is also cool is that for someone coming from ICT & Business I now have. through this minor the opportunity to work in the logistic industry. How cool is that?!
Come take this adventure with us and follow our journey!
expectations
This week we get to know the track ambassador even better and see what expectations they have of the minor and the track.
project
Hi there, it’s me again, Jonathan! The project has already started and it’s going strong!
To begin with, we are aware that the world is currently in a strange situation with the COVID-19 pandemic and it is a difficult time for everyone. This pandemic has impacted not only our personal but also also our professional relationships, which is the case at DHL Netherlands. For that reason, the goal of our project is to increase the emotional engagement of its employees. And to ensure that we are executing this project well, these past weeks, Carolina, Dongdong and I have done a full planning of the project. And we have also done some research regarding the IT tools that the employees are using. I believe we already made a good start!
Moreover, we have done an interview with one of the stakeholders and are planning to do a couple more with the others. And after that, we are going to distribute a questionnaire to all the employees. With these actions, we hope that we could receive more insights and views, so we can prepare the most suitable outcome to meet the goal of the project! Additionally, we are currently building a prototype of the final deliverable of the project, so it could suit the expectations of all the stakeholders. So far, I really enjoyed working with the group and the stakeholders at DHL, they are really friendly and supportive. In the coming weeks, I am going to give my focus more in this project since right now my focus is divided between this track and pulsed for good.
deepdive: professionalisation
What does professionalization mean and what are the intended learning goals of this within the CA track?
Sandra & Stella
track owners
Professionalization is the process through which the student develops a professional attitude within an internship or working context with a company. Within the Company Adventure track students learn to interface with different stakeholders outside of the school environment and how to communicate properly with supervisors, colleagues and clients
They learn to take into account deliverables and client requests and to align his/her design-based working knowledge with the necessities of the stakeholders to create added value for the company.
As a professional, we expect the student to develop a pro-active attitude, the ability to work independently (whilst also being able to ask for input and direction when needed) and the ability to take into account the different viewpoint of the stakeholders involved.
Working as a project intern for DHL has been a lot of fun yet productive at the same time. I have gained lots of valuable knowledge on how to work as a professional in a large company. There are crucial experiences that I truly enjoy, for instance, interacting with different head of departments within the company. The interaction consists of setting up a meeting, presenting our ideas to them, professional emailing and interviewing.
On the other hand, there are also down moments, in a large company like DHL, it is really hard to set up a meeting or an interview with these stakeholders, especially the higher ranks, since we have to adjust our schedule with them (which sometimes clashes). Furthermore, they also sometimes cancel the appointment due to other circumstances which delays the project. However, the situation where I think I acted really professional is the interview and when I always remind them that the project has a limited time and push them to find a slot (it is always a success): sometimes during the lunch break or near the end of the office hour.
deepdive: deliverables
Can you tell us why it is important to set deliverables for a project and align this with the company’s expectations and satisfaction?
Sandra & Stella
track owners
In every project it’s important to know your starting point and your desired outcome: it gives you direction and purpose throughout the execution of it. Within the Company Adventure track we make use of open-ended challenges, which means that the outcome is not predetermined and allows the student to explore multiple content areas.
Defining deliverables, especially for an open-ended challenge, is a complex task, mostly influenced by time constraints and technical feasibility. By using a design-based working process the student gathers insight into the need/problem of the company and the requirements from the stakeholders. We teach the student to define their own challenge and deliverables based on these insights.
The overall goal is always to create an added value for the company, it is extremely important that the student constantly aligns their vision with the expectations from the company.
Deciding on what the final deliverables of the project will be is not as simple as it seems. After we had executed what we called ‘research phase’ that consists of interviewing the key stakeholders and forming and handing out a questionnaire to the employees, we then began to ideate on what is the final deliverables will look like. We had a couple of ideas such as making an extensive final report and a short video. However, after we asked opinions from different people within and outside the company, such as the stakeholders, teachers and fellow students and taking the limited timeframe of the project into account, we then decided to do an engaging infographic instead. Managing the expectations and satisfaction of the company can be quite tricky, but as a team, we always do a weekly project update meeting with the company tutors every Thursday and Friday to tackle this matter. On Thursday it is mostly letting them know what we have achieved and on Friday it is about what are the steps we should take in the coming time. And it goes flawlessly!
deepdive: design-based working
Can you tell us how design-based working is beneficial for any professional? And why do we emphasise so much on this aspect in our education?
Sandra & Stella
track owners
The world and our society are both changing fast, making us face new and complex challenges for wicked problems. Most (smart) companies are learning to adapt to this change and many agree that human-centred development is key to this adaptation.
That is where design-based working comes in as a tool to iterate and come up with new solutions that focus on what’s most important for the users. Through the steps of design-based working, the students acquire a systematic approach to walk through a design and development process, from ideation to functional prototypes. They learn to “think outside the box” and to look at problems from different perspectives, identify requirements and define their own design criteria. As well as learn to develop new products based on constant interaction with the stakeholders and make iterations based on (lo-fi) prototyping and user-feedback.
Design-based working is one of the key things that we learn during our time at Embrace. And because it is an effective and an efficient way of working, we also implemented it on our project. The way we implemented it is by executing all its different stages on the timespan of our project. We started by emphasising on the project where we discuss the problem with the company mentor and brainstormed together. An in order to get a deeper understanding and more insights, we had an interview with managers from different departments and distributed a survey to their employees.
After that, we defined the goal of the project and the final deliverables. Next, we did an ideation session to come up with creative solutions for the deliverables where we decided it would be a digital infographic. Then, we made the prototypes of the final deliverables, which is the infographic and the final presentation, and tested it with the user to see if they have feedback. And finally, we delivered the final version.
The design-based working really helped us with the approach of this project since it makes us not only focus on what is given by the stakeholders, but it allows us to be more creative. It also forces us to think out of the box, so we can find a better, more efficient and more effective solution to overcome the problem.
reaction & reflection
coming soon!
