Arya Gupta — Portfolio

ARYA
GUPTA

Industrial designer learning to combine product, technology and physical making.

Industrial Design — TU/e

Second Year — 2025/26

Portfolio — DLB385

Student No.1824791

DepartmentIndustrial Design

SquadFuture Mobility

FocusProduct Design & Technology

I am a realist and a rational designer, focused on making product design, technology and physical making meet. Over the last two years at TU/e Industrial Design, my professional identity has gotten a lot clearer. I started out working mostly using my own instinct, and gradually learned that instinct needs to be tested, iterated on, and backed up by actual user feedback before it actually means anything.

My strengths are in hands-on making and 3D realization. I enjoy working with Blender, Arduino, woodworking and physical prototyping, and what I enjoy most is the process of turning a concept into something tangible that can be tested. I break problems into parts to find the constraints early, and work toward solutions that are realistic rather than just interesting on paper.

My second year during the bachelor changed how I think about working with others. I have always been more comfortable working independently, but through recent projects, I started understanding that good team design means communicating decisions clearly, stepping up when things go wrong, and making space for the people around you.

In year 1 I was someone who could execute well independently but struggled to bring others along. By the end of year 2 that had shifted, not completely, but enough that I can see the difference in how projects ran and how teams responded to me.

I am a technical designer who builds things that work, and I am actively trying to become someone who can lead others while doing it.

Arya Gupta — Industrial Design student at TU/e

PeacePod — high quality render made in Blender

My vision is to work where technology and product design blend: things that solve real problems, are technically sound enough to be manufactured, and make people's relationship with technology better, not more complicated.

That standard comes from where I started. Growing up in Leipzig, I was surrounded by an engineering culture that took "does it work" seriously before it took "does it look good”, and my courses from my Industrial Engineering year before switching to ID reinforced that: a product that cannot be built or produced reliably is not a design yet, it is an idea. My internship at Maegerle, where I wrote a data compiler and modelled machine parts in ANSYS, taught me the same lesson from the technical side.

My project on experience design: “Wake / Death” changed what I think that functionality is for. Building something that deliberately manipulated how someone felt, through sound, light, and darkness, made me realize products shape behavior whether the designer intends it or not. My direction now is not to just make it work, but make it change how someone interacts with the technology already in their life.

That connects to a trend I see around me: consumer tech is increasingly designed to be replaced rather than lived with, and complexity gets added faster than usability keeps up. I am interested in the opposite move: small, well-made tools that sit alongside existing technology rather than adding more things to manage, the space between a peripheral and an assistive tool. This is also why I'm watching AI-assisted design workflows: the next generation of assistive products will adapt to a person, not the reverse, and I want to understand that shift before designing for it.

Bringing this to reality is what I want to accomplish in my year 3. I am using Digital Craftsmanship and Exploratory Making to get from Blender models to physical, testable prototypes faster, since my projects such as PeacePod and Step into the Rhythm showed me that gap usually costs me the most time. I want to run user interviews about where people's current devices frustrate them, so the concept solves something real, not assumed, and a low-fidelity, testable prototype by end of year 3, because a render isn't the same as something held and reacted to.

I want to be the designer with enough technical depth to build things properly, enough design sense to make them worth using, and enough business awareness to understand why it matters.

Growing up in Germany definitely had an influence on me, especially with how big the automotive world is there. I think that kind of environment quietly pushed me toward the more technical side of things from early on

After the IB I joined TU/e in Automotive Technology and Industrial Engineering before realizing I did not want to pick between the technical or the business side. Instead, I wanted to combine both which is what led me to Industrial Design.

A short internship at Maegerle in Switzerland, writing a data compiler and modelling machine parts in ANSYS, confirmed product design was the work I wanted to keep doing.

During my first year at ID, a hybrid board game project got me into physical prototyping and workshop making for the first time. CBL2 pushed into electronics and autonomous systems, building a robot companion with Arduino, woodworking, and coding. I finished year 1 knowing how to make things and finish projects.

Final demo day exhibition of year 1 CBL showing a car buying guided board game

High quality render in Blender created while testing lighting and textures

CBL1 — Year 2

Let Us Cook

This project was my first real lesson in putting user needs at the center of every decision. Pivoting to toddlers meant rethinking everything, from making utensils safe enough for small hands to ensuring the interaction was age-appropriate and genuinely engaging. It taught me that designing for a specific user is not a constraint, it is the whole point. Accommodation is not compromise, it is what makes a design actually work.

View Project ↗

DZC30 — Year 2 Q3

Step into the Rhythm

Building the demonstrator took far longer and involved far more small decisions than the design phase did. What stood out most was the evaluation — we had prepared a full pitch but it turned out to be unnecessary. The professor watched other students interact with it and was impressed enough that the work spoke for itself. Things did not go exactly to plan, but they went better. That is probably the best outcome a prototype can have.

View Project ↗

Experience Design — Year 2

Wake / Death

This project changed how I think about what design is for. We started out building a relaxation device and during the process realized the enclosure felt more unsettling than calming. Rather than fighting that, we leaned into it and pushed toward something deliberately confrontational, a simulated death experience. That decision forced a level of ethical thinking I had not encountered before, balancing the intention to provoke reflection with the responsibility not to cause genuine distress.

Watch Demo ↗

CBL3 Future Mobility — Year 2

PeacePod

PeacePod is where my Blender work finally felt intentional rather than exploratory. Leading the renders meant making real decisions about form and lighting before anyone touched a physical model, and the feedback we received on the renders at demo day made it clear that the time invested had paid off.

Multidisciplinary CBL — Year 2

Ladywood

Working alongside students from outside ID on a canal-side residential concept, I found my teammates read "stakeholder" as shareholder, not user. Building personas and a stakeholder map to argue for real human behavior over business positions was a different kind of teaching moment than anything inside my own discipline.

05Present

Expertise Areas — Goals & Growth

In year 1, my approach to creativity and aesthetics was mostly exploratory. I was learning tools, trying materials, figuring out what worked. I did not yet have a strong sense of design language. Aesthetics felt like something you added at the end rather than something that drove decisions from the start.

Year 2 changed that in a few concrete ways. The clearest example is PeacePod, the CBL3 Future Mobility project I am currently working on. Almost all of the 3D renders for the project are mine, made in Blender, and for the first time I was not just modeling to visualize. I was making deliberate decisions about form, proportion, and surface finish.

The physical side grew too. In Step into the Rhythm I worked on building the actual demonstrator, cutting and shaping the translucent top plate, folding the LED strip, assembling the wooden base. That hands-on process taught me something that modeling alone could not: how material choices communicate intent.

The Wake / Death project showed me that aesthetics can come from discomfort as much as harmony. The final Death Experience installation was visually stark and deliberately unsettling, and that was a valid and intentional aesthetic choice. It expanded what I thought design could look like.

Across these projects I stopped treating aesthetics as decoration. Every material choice and form decision carries meaning and shapes how someone experiences a product from the first time. It is the same realization that drives how I work in Technology and Realization

Blender render exploring lighting, texture and material for CBL 3 PeacePod

User testing during final demo day for the Step into the Rhythm game

Background lighting setup in Blender — learning how light shapes feeling, not just visibility

Google UX Design certificate finished in January 2026 on Coursera

Building topology for the Ladywood scene — realization work behind the renders

This is where I feel most at home. My approach to technology and realization has always been hands-on. I learn by building, breaking things, and figuring out why they broke.

The clearest example from year 2 is the Step into the Rhythm demonstrator, where I worked on soldering the electronics, setting up the Raspberry Pi, and wiring the LED strip. Getting all of it to work together under time pressure taught me more about real-world making than any controlled exercise.

The Wake / Death project used technology in a completely different way. An LED strip pulsing like a heartbeat, sound synchronized to the rhythm, and a darkened enclosure isolating the participant from everything outside. The technology was not the point but it was what made the experience possible, and tuning the experience carefully enough to feel genuinely unsettling without being harmful was harder than I had originally expected.

Outside of the degree, I built and tuned my own PC, explored GPU undervolting, and have been continuously working in Blender and Bambu Studio for 3D printing, learning slicing configurations, support strategies, and how printing orientation affects part strength.

I also completed the Google UX Design certificate, adding formal UX research and Figma prototyping to my skill set.

Even when the outcome was aesthetic or experiential, as in Creativity and Aesthetics, there was technical reasoning underneath it, calibrating the LED timing in Wake / Death was a design decision as much as a technical one. Going into year 3, I want to use AI-assisted workflows the same way: a tool for iteration, not a shortcut past it, so computation stays in service of the same standard that shapes everything else I build, so it's iteration, not automation of the decision itself.

Testing of components used for the Step into the Rhythm prototype before soldering

Balance sheet and comparison for different expansion strategies, revenues plotted on a graph for Business Innovation Methods

Image taken from slide presentation I gave during my first student mentor session where I introduced myself

My foundation in this area came from my year in Industrial Engineering before ID, which gave me early exposure to product lifecycles, market positioning, and how design decisions change into cost and production. That background has stayed useful even as my focus shifted mostly into design.

In year 2, the Design Innovation Methods course brought me back to this expertise area. Framing a design concept inside a Value Proposition Canvas and creating balance sheets to justify it felt unfamiliar at first but ended up being useful in making pitches suggesting change.

Outside of the degree, I spent the full academic year as a student mentor for two groups of first-year ID students. Running structured sessions, giving portfolio feedback, and helping students navigate their first year taught me more about communication and leadership than most of my course projects did.

My goal is to launch a product before I graduate. The business awareness I am building now is the foundation for making that happen. It is the same lens that keeps the user research in User and Society tied to a real market, not just a real use

User & Society is the expertise area that has grown the most visibly across my two years because it is the one I initially treated most like a checklist. I was applying it but verifying at the end rather than letting it drive decisions from the start.

Year 2 forced a genuine shift. The Wake / Death experience design project was the starkest example. Designing a simulated death experience using synchronized sound, light, and vibration meant I had to question the boundaries of U&S. Where does discomfort become distress? Is that always a bad thing and how can I take advantage of it?

Step into the Rhythm added a different dimension. Designing for spontaneous public interaction meant the user had not chosen to engage and might only stay for thirty seconds. The summative evaluation with fourteen participants showed clearly where our assumptions about collaboration and intuitiveness were wrong. Watching people interact with something I helped build and seeing where it failed them is a different kind of learning than any course assignment.

In the Ladywood multidisciplinary CBL project, working with students from outside ID, I found my teammates understood stakeholder as meaning shareholder. Building personas and a stakeholder map to explain why user-centered design starts with real human behavior rather than business positions was a different kind of teaching moment.

Across these experiences U&S has moved from something I verify at the end to something I lead with from the start. That is the shift I am most happy about from year 2.

Persona created to exemplify a typical user who our team is designing for in multidisciplinary CBL, created by me in Canva

Creating the internal visuals of the Wake / Death experience using LED strips and black paint to ensure complete darkness during the experience

At the start of year 2 I set four goals: leadership, 3D design and prototyping, physical making, and decision-making speed. Three moved. One did not as much.

Leadership improved most visibly through the student mentor role. A full year running sessions for two groups forced habits I had been avoiding, listening before responding, giving feedback that lands, keeping things moving without taking over. I would not have developed those without that role.

3D design and physical making both shifted in ways I did not expect. Building the Step into the Rhythm demonstrator taught me that physical making has its own logic that digital work cannot replicate. The material pushes back and that resistance of the material is something I can use.

Decision-making speed is where I fell short and I want to be honest about it. I confuse thoroughness with indecision. The fix is not caring less, it is learning to trust earlier conclusions. That stays on the list of goals for year 3.

Start of year — PeacePod, early Blender work

End of year — Ladywood canal render

Same tool, a year apart — lighting, material, and composition all got more deliberate between the two.

Leadership & Communication

Achieved through student mentoring and ownership of the physical build in Step into the Rhythm. Clear progress from year 1.

3D Design & Prototyping

PeacePod Blender work reached a new level of intentionality. Better connection between digital form and physical output.

Physical Making

Built the Step into the Rhythm demonstrator from scratch. Soldering, electronics, woodwork all done under real time pressure.

Decision-Making Speed

Not yet achieved. Still a recurring blocker. Carried forward as a primary goal for year 3.

Going into year 3, my direction is clearer than it has ever been. I am planning to continue in the Future Mobility squad and deepen my involvement in mobility and product design at a more advanced level. The squad aligns well with where my interests and skills are strongest, technically complex products that exist in real-world contexts and have to perform for actual users.

For electives I have chosen Digital Craftsmanship and Exploratory Making, both of which directly address gaps I identified this year. Digital Craftsmanship pushes the connection between digital design and physical output further, which is something PeacePod and Step into the Rhythm both showed me I need to develop. Exploratory Making gives me space to experiment with materials and processes in a less structured way, which I think will complement how I already work. There is a third elective I have not decided on yet, but I want it to sit on the business or research side to round out the technical focus of the other two. I am also drawn to anything that integrates AI into the design process, not as a replacement for design thinking but as a tool that speeds up ideation and testing.

Beyond courses, I want to stay connected to real making. One of the things year 2 taught me is that the most useful learning happens when there are actual constraints, a deadline, a material that will not behave, a user who does not understand what you built. I want to keep putting myself in those situations rather than just designing in controlled settings.

The goal I set before graduation, launching my own product, is still the one I care most about. Year 2 showed me what that requires: user research to validate it, business framing to position it, and technical depth to make it work. I feel closer to having all three than I did a year ago.

Goals for Year 3

1
Independent Research Skills
Develop stronger ability to drive design decisions through self-directed research rather than relying on course structure.
2
Speed & Confidence in Making
Commit to decisions faster in physical prototyping and reduce time spent over-refining before testing.
3
Collaboration & Team Leadership
Continue growing as a team leader, building on mentoring experience and project ownership from year 2.
4
Personal Product Concept
Take a first concrete step toward launching my own product, whether that is early ideation, market research, or a working prototype.

High quality render of PeacePod from CBL3 featured in a custom modelled city environment

Emaildesignedbyarya@gmail.com

BachelorIndustrial Design — TU/e

LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/designedbyarya

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