Picoo’s plan to get kids outside to play

In 2001, fresh out of completing her degree in mechanical engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE), Iris Soute did what any burgeoning engineer would do – she went looking for a job in the industry. But after serving a few years as a software engineer at Philips, one thing was clear. “The industrial side of engineering just wasn’t for me. Philips is great it was cool to see all the machines moving with nanometer precision,” says Soute. “But it really didn’t appeal to me. I missed the human element.”

Looking to get back to working with and around people, Soute opted to shift back to academia where she enrolled in TUE’s PDEng program for user-system interaction, more commonly known as user experience (UX). It was in this program where she received a design project challenge that would change her professional trajectory. Her task: to design and create something that people could actually use. One stipulation, however, she only had ten weeks to complete it.