Design engineer
Product development · Design and user research · Innovation consulting
I am a product development engineer. I just finished my MSc in Design and Innovation at DTU, after a BEng in Process and Innovation.
What I am best at is the early part of a project, where nobody has framed the problem yet. Working out what actually matters to the people involved, and then getting it to something physical you can put in front of them and test.
I spent six months as a design intern at the LEGO Creative Play Lab in Billund, and I currently work at SAP in Copenhagen, where I help engineer demo projects.
I am looking for product development, consulting, design or innovation work in Denmark.
Help me become a better candidate by answering this short survey.
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Portrait of Patrick Guldager Heen
Selected projects
37 projects in total/images/drone-immobilisation/hero.webp
Rendered concept visual: an interceptor drone approaching a target drone entangled in cord under a parachute
Biologically inspired drone immobilisation
Sole author, designed, built and ran all 109 experiments
Finding the most effective way to stop a drone, through 109 experiments
Master's thesis. Illegal drone incidents in Denmark rose from 62 in 2023 to 206 in 2024, however Danish police still have no local counter-drone tool other than a firearm, and this means that they usually decline to act, since the available response is either too slow or disproportionate to the threat. I interviewed 11 people across the Danish police, military and emergency management and mapped 373 quotes into an affinity map in order to establish what a usable tool would actually have to do, and then ran 109 experiments against a spinning propeller in order to find out what physically stops a drone without destroying it. The answer turned out to be a frayed rope, with five out of five instant stops on the rig, confirmed against a drone in free flight.
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Light pillar standing on grass at night, casting a warm pool of light downward and a blue zone glow upward
HappyLight
Team of 7, stakeholder mapping, interviews, data analysis
Off-grid wayfinding light for festival campsites
A three-module off-grid light pillar built from recycled zinc drainage pipe, which runs 48 hours across a 7-day festival on one charge, sets its own colour by GPS in order to match the festival's zone map, and installs by an untrained volunteer with an earth drill. This lands at 156–269 DKK per unit at 1,000 units.
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Receiving the third-place award at DTU Green Challenge, holding the framed prize plaque
CETO Innovation
Team of 7, industry outreach, market model, customer validation and forecasting
Predictive maintenance for district heating networks
A predictive maintenance SaaS for district heating networks, taken from a course concept into the DTU Skylab incubator, with roughly 3 M DKK in annual saving for a medium-sized utility, a 320.85 M DKK addressable market and third place at DTU Green Challenge.
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Two-player catapult game assembly with the slotted crank mechanism visible
PultMaster 3000
Team of 6, joint CAD, 3D prints, tolerance stack-up, testing
Tolerance-driven mechanism design
A slotted crank mechanism with a 5/8 gear reduction converting rotation into controlled translation, designed to a tolerance scheme and then built and measured in order to check whether the scheme survived real manufacturing variation.
Experience
Employment & ventureThe LEGO Group
The LEGO GroupDesign Intern · Billund
Six months in LEGO's Creative Play Lab developing and testing original play concepts. My concept was selected for further development, ranked first out of 41 pitches, and first among the concepts from seven other design interns.
SAP
SAPStudent Engineer, Customer Engineering (IXP) · Copenhagen
Scrum Master on an internal UI project, where mapping the AS-IS process together with its users cut the workflow from 10 steps to 7. Furthermore I built an integration connecting SAP Analytics Cloud, Datasphere and Digital Manufacturing, and provided technical support across 20+ live corporate events.
CETO Innovation
CETO InnovationIndustry & Partnerships · DTU Skylab Incubator
Seven-person venture building predictive maintenance software for district heating. Third place, DTU Green Challenge.
Makerværket
MakerværketStudent Assistant, Rapid Prototyping Lab · Frederikssund Gymnasium
I ran Makerværket, the school's rapid prototyping lab, instructing students in 3D printing, laser cutting and assembly, and I designed 10+ original builds alongside the illustrated step-by-step instructions that people actually used.
Education
Technical University of Denmark
Capabilities
What I can do, and where I proved itCAD & technical documentation
PTC Creo Parametric · 3ds Max · SOLIDWORKS · Siemens NX · Autodesk Fusion · GD&T · tolerance stack-up · robust design · engineering drawings · mechanical design · rendering and visualisation
Prototyping & manufacturing
rapid prototyping · FDM 3D printing · laser cutting · milling and turning · material selection · design for manufacturing · design for circularity
User research & testing
user-centred design · UX research · qualitative interviews · usability testing · think-aloud testing · ethnographic observation · survey design · affinity mapping · personas · wireframing · service blueprint
Concept development & process
product development · concept development · problem framing · double diamond · design thinking · requirement setting · concept selection · Pugh and weighted decision matrices · design of experiments · Build-Measure-Learn · biologically inspired design
Business & facilitation
business case · market analysis · unit economics · cost modelling · process improvement · AS-IS / TO-BE process mapping · product configuration · stakeholder management · workshop facilitation · project and risk planning · Scrum
Programming & electronics
Python · Kotlin and Android · Arduino and ESP32 · embedded electronics · PCB design · CAN bus and OBD-II · systems integration · SAP Analytics Cloud
Also documented
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Peugeot iOn parked in a carport, the car ChargeMate reads over Bluetooth OBD-II
ChargeMate
Team of 2, wrote all software: OBD-II, threading and charge planning
EV charging planner reading live battery state over CAN bus
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Tacton configurator screen for selecting a mountain bike's gears and brakes, with live price and weight totals
Mountain bike configurator
Team of 6, process flows, class diagram, PVM engineering view
From manual quotation to a Tacton configure-to-order system
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Presenting the innovation framework findings in a meeting room
Implementing a Radical Innovation Framework at GEA
Team of 2, everything done jointly, from the interviews to the framework
Why radical ideas stall inside a large manufacturer, and what to change