M2.2 Master graduation - Philips Hue Controller

Assignment

In my Final Master Project, I combined my fascination for light and tangible interaction. I saw a benefit for a tangible interface for Philips Hue and approached Signify to pitch my project. Signify became enthousiastic as well and together it became our mission to ‘Design a tangible light controller which offers more control freedom with an intuitive and low effort interaction’!

About the project

The controller called 'Hue moment' received a lot of positive comments from users and colleagues and therefore we proceeded the project to file a patent and to identify the roadmap possibilities. As a consequence I have to be cautious with revealing information and images. I still have to discuss with the business department and my manager which information and images I can reveal. In result, the shown information is still limited.

Personal focus & learnings

The project required my knowledge and skills in physical design and prototyping of my Bachelor while it required my experience in user interaction and research developed during my master. The project focused a lot on Tangible Interaction, user tests, prototyping, and programming.

Supervisors: Paul Thursfield, Laura Taylor

Coach: Harm van Essen

Philips Hue Luminaires

Assignment

After a while I became so fascinated in lighting and Hue in particular, I wanted to design luminaires myself for my own apartment. Since Hue offers a lot of richness through its colour, I wanted to utilize this (colour) richness more in the luminaire. All the designed luminaires, therefore, have in common that they lit up in the colour of the bulb.

About the project

Philips Hue makes it possible to add coloured lighting in your home which allows users to create a nice ambience in their house. Luminaires play an important role to create such an ambience. When designing my luminaires I wanted to enhance the ambience even more by "painting" the luminaire in the colour of the actual setting.

Personal focus & learnings

I ran this project mainly because it was fun to create my own luminaires. Nevertheless, it taught me about creating nice light effects, how to use proper translucent materials, and it was a fun way to make use of my prototyping skills.

Individual project

M1.2 Shared Light Controller

Assignment

This research project had the goal to research the tangibility’s influence in a multi-user context.

About the project

At the moment, most of the commercially available systems are controlled by mobile phones (van de Werff et al., 2017). Mobile phones are offering highly personalized interaction (van de Werff et al., 2017) and are therefore not ideal for shared interaction. Tangible interfaces showed that they could have a positive influence on collaboration (Hornecker & Buur, 2006). The hypothesis was that a tangible interface would have a positive effect on the shared use amongst the users. To answer the research question, a digital and a tangible controller were designed and installed in an open office plan in the university. The 18 participants could control the office lights with both controllers and could adjust the light in terms of brightness and light temperature. Due to the short time span and a relatively low amount of users, the results were not significant. Nevertheless, users recognized that it stimulated conversations, enhanced the accountability and lowered the interaction's threshold.

Personal focus & learnings

Since I had to program the interfaces to enable them to control the office lights, I learned in terms of programming. The physical control used sensors to transform physical movement into data, which was wirelessly sent with a radio signal towards the lighting, allowing the lights to change the setting. It was my first research project and it taught me a lot about doing user tests, analyzing data and to apply the method ‘Research-through-Design’.

Coach: Harm van Essen

M1.2 Designing Intelligent Interaction

Assignment

The assignment of this project was to design an intelligent product by making use of learning algorithms. As a team, we chose a social focus and playful approach.

About the project

We designed a physical active multiplayer game called Twist-it which uses game-balancing. The idea for reducing the difference in skill levels is to lower the threshold for less advanced players who otherwise might have felt obliged to participate due to their low skill level. By motivating these persons, we want to stimulate them to keep physically active. The product which is inspired upon the game Twister would be about the same size as Twister. To make the project feasible, a smaller version of the game, played with only one hand, is prototyped and tested. This game is balanced according to the player's skill level using a supervised learning algorithm in the design. The intelligence is programmed using Neuroph, Arduino and Processing. Based on the skill level of the particular user the product would assign moves matching the individual player’s level. The hardware is made by use of a laser cutter, a 3D printer and making pressure sensors by ourselves. An Arduino Mega 2560 is used to run the game

Personal focus & learnings

For me, it was most important to learn the possibilities and benefits of using learning algorithms. As a designer, I would never become an expert in intelligent systems like a Computer Scientist, but when designing for interfaces it is important to know how these systems can support your design and when you need such a system. To realize an intelligent product, I can work together with an expert to realize it.

Team members: Jelle-Jan de Groot, Vera Losse, Daniel van Pel

Coach: Emilia Barakova

M1.2 Rich interactions in IoT

Assignment

Design two IoT products which are designed in terms of (tangible) rich interaction.

About the project

Rich Interaction is a design direction which focuses on realizing a meaningful and rich interaction by using tangible interaction and by considering affordances. A well designed rich interaction explains the interactions purely by its physical state which gives hints to operate it. The interaction doesn’t require explanation, either in the form of logos or symbols. (Frens, 2006)

In this project, we designed two different products: the Rich Music Box and the Rich Message Device. The Rich Message Device (image 3,4)  is designed to bring sending and receiving a digital message to the next level by offering a richer interaction. The Rich Music Box (image 1,2) allows the user to play and control songs and playlists from the phone in a richer way with the speaker. The user first has to place his phone in the Rich Music Box. When doing so, his playlists will automatically appear. Another playlist can be chosen by shifting the mobile to the left and to the right. The round brown knob can be used to scroll through the songs in the playlist. To play the song the brown knob has to be pulled literally to the grey sound boxes. Pulling it back will pause the song

Personal focus & learnings

In this project, I was introduced to design for rich (tangible) interaction. From the start, I became fascinated about the subject and I saw it as the ideal way of combining my strengths of both studies.

Team members: Senne Friederichs, Ferdi Zwaan

Lecturer: Joep Frens

Pre-Master - Log

Assignment

Design a new way to help Narcolepsy patients log during their daily life, so doctors/experts can better help their patients.

About the project

Narcolepsy is a rare chronic sleeping disorder that involves falling asleep during the day, excessive sleepiness, disrupted night sleep and other symptoms, which interfere with living an ordinary life. The disease differs a lot per person which makes a personalised treatment necessary. Therefore, patients are asked to make notes so they can get personalised advice and treatment. Unfortunately, nowadays such methods are requiring a lot of time, are often forgotten and are not about subjective data which is more interesting according to one of the contacted experts. That is why we designed Log. ‘Log’ is standing on the patient ‘s night stand and gathers subjective data in just a few steps. At the end of the day, the patient can rank how he or she felt according to the most important five symptoms by adding blocks. The more severe the symptom felt the more blocks the user adds. After adding the blocks, the person only has to press the button to send the data to the experts. The physical presence of the device works as a reminder and simplifies accessibility as well.

Personal focus & learnings

At the TU Eindhoven, they are used to an iterative process. For me, this was the first project I came in contact with such a process. In the first iteration, we came to an idea which didn’t match the expectations of the client at all, but by gathering this insight in the early phase we could easily change direction. I learned that this iterative approach can help to get earlier feedback to guide the project. During this project, I became responsible for all the electronics and programming, which was the first time. It taught me a lot about working with shift resistors, magnet sensors and LEDs.

Team members: Fenna Dam, Femke Kaskens, Janna van Rosmalen

Coaches: Loe Feijs, Linkai Tao

Pre-Master - ePlant

Assignment

Design a product to your choice which requires electronic components and programming.

About the project

We started this project with brainstorming about interesting directions. It turned out we were both interested in making the combination of nature and electronics, and so we came to the promising idea of creating an automatic greenhouse. A project which was besides promising, a challenging one as well. After this decision, we needed to get a better understanding of what plays an important role to create an “ideal” environment for the plant. In reaction, we arranged a meeting with a biologist who told us that the following factors take a significant role: light quantity, soil humidity, air humidity, air temperature and the amount of nitrogen in the air. Based on the conversation we decided to implement all those parameters in the concept and found solutions to realize them, by taking differences per species in account as well. After defining the concept, we tried to implement all those in the prototype but this was not feasible. Nevertheless, we were able to build a 'Prove of concept' prototype which was able to control the light quantity, soil humidity and air humidity. The prototype measures the level of each parameter with sensors and adjusts it with LEDs, a water pump and a moisture sprayer.

Personal focus & learnings

This project was intended to teach us the basics of programming for Arduino. Since my team member had already quite some experience, we took it a step further and designed and built a more advanced prototype. Nevertheless, it was my first contact with Arduino, and it taught me a lot about programming and electronic components.

Team member: Tobias Hoffmann

Coach: Peter Peeters

B4.2 Bachelor Graduation - Batavus Chain Drive

Assignment

Design a new chain drive and guard for the Batavus family. The project mainly focused on the technical aspects of the product.

About the project

The chain drive is highly susceptible to wear and tear and therefore requires a lot of maintenance. In reaction, a chain guard is mounted on the majority of the (Dutch) bikes. Despite these guards, it still requires a lot of maintenance to assure a long lifespan. While neglecting this, it will still reduce the chain’s lifespan, increase the pedal resistance, and require tensioning the chain more often. The current chain guards are also limited to assemble on the broad Batavus collection and require a lot of assembly operations. The project started with extensive research by doing user tests, interviews, questionnaires, and market research to get familiar with the current problems and the Batavus identity. To create a Plan of Requirements, a SWOT-analyses was used to analyse the results. These requirements were used to guide the ideation phase, which led to plenty of ideas. Which were thereafter arranged in a morphologic map, which simplified the selection process of combining solutions into four concepts. The concepts were elaborated and in continuation assessed together with my colleagues from the R&D department. Thereafter the chosen concept was designed in more detail, and realized by means of a 'Prove of Concept' and a CAD model to show the concept's design potential. Batavus sees potential in the project and therefore, the tehnique cannot be shown.

Personal focus & learnings

In my previous project, I had difficulties with scheduling. Therefore, I was driven to do things differently. The project taught me how to work more structured and showed the advantage of it.

Supervisors: Rutmer Tjeerdema, Onno Kramer

Coach: Peter van de Graaf

B3.2 SolidWorks Surface Modelling

Assignment

Build a spaceship which contains organic surfaces in the program SolidWorks.

About the project

SolidWorks is a program known for creating 3D models, in most of the cases by means of using extrusions instead of organic shapes. However it is possible to create them, but it is more difficult than it is in several other 3D CAD modelling programs. For this assignment, a 2D picture was given since this assignment was really focused on learning to use ‘surface’ features. To get a good feeling of the 3D shape of the spaceship I started with making 2D and 3D hand sketches from different perspectives. Followed by making the CAD model. This spaceship contains seven different surfaces, created with the help of using multiple different features.

Personal focus & learnings

Although this was the first time I ‘seriously’ used these surfaces features, it was a great and successful introduction. It successfully taught me the most important features and tricks to apply surfaces in a CAD model.

Lecturer: Bas Lodeweegs

B3.2 International POLE Project

Assignment

Create a future vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) in order for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, translated into an exhibition piece.

About the project

Already from the start of the project we were determined to focus on the user of IoT. Although the technique will change a lot, we were from the opinion that our ‘humanity’ should remain the “same”. Based on our vision we explored and researched multiple IoT related directions. After evaluating these different directions we became most fascinated by the ‘loss of people their privacy’. We exhibited this vision in an interactive way. The visitor could sit in a chair and do a survey, starting with choosing one of the three personas. Thereafter the user went through a fictional scenario of the persona and had to make choices which would affect the persona’s their privacy. According to their answer, the visitor doing the survey would become more or less visible on all tv screens placed all over the exhibition. The (total) exhibition from our and the other teams was visited by several important visitors, even Barak Obama brought a visit! The four other Windesheim students from the other teams and I were thanked for our commitment to Windesheim with the ‘Green Dot’ price! A price which is given by Windesheim for exceptional results

Personal focus & learnings

This project was probably the most exceptional one from all I ever ran. Mainly since the group existed out of people who were living all over the world and had different disciplines. At the same time, we mainly worked separately on the project and communicated mainly via Skype. This extraordinary project mainly taught me how to work together with other nationalities and disciplines while working together from a long distance. Besides, it was just really fun, and exciting to work together for several months from a long distance and together for two weeks on exceptional places in Switzerland.

Team members: Ephraim Ebertshäuser, Mirjana Jaksic Jelic, Lars Kessler, Fernando Lozano,Shreeyeh Rajan, Pablo Speck

Coach: Anne van der Graaf, Claudio Monterrubio

B3.2 Designing for Gender

Assignment

For this assignment, everybody received a scent sample of a female perfume. Based on the smell, we had to design a matching perfume bottle (without knowing the original). After designing the female bottle, we got the assignment to design a male version.

About the project

After smelling the sense the project continued with creating a mood board. The perfume I got was really sweet, but powerful as well. Based on these insights I created a mood board which I could associate with the perfume. Since the colour red is sweet and powerful, I associated the perfume with this colour. I associated the colour as well with friendliness – probably due to the sweetness – which I continuation related to round and soft objects. In reaction, my mood board contained mainly red, pink, and round objects. Additional to the mood board a persona was requested. When I smelt the sent it was like I saw one of my friendly female neighbours. A female from 50+ years with a strong own opinion. The mood board and the persona were based on the extrovert and friendly approach of the sent. On top of these insights, gender-specific design “rules” were taken into account. As a result, the female bottle contains roundish, curvatures, a pattern and the dominant reddish colour. In contradiction, the male version is more robust, and sharp while the main shape remained roundish.

Personal focus & learnings

This course made me better realize the importance of gender-specific design and how apply it. Women are generally speaking more attracted to roundish and soft shapes, and patterns. While a man generally speaking appreciates a more straight, sharp and technical look. The course also supports me to create gender-neutral designs.

Lecturer: Rosemarijn Konter

B3.2 Drawing by Tablet

Assignment

Design an alarm clock with the help of Photoshop and a drawing tablet.

About the project

Hand drawing is a good tool to communicate your ideas. Especially when you want to do so quickly. When the idea becomes more concrete, but not that concrete to make a 3D CAD model drawing,  Tablet sketching is a good alternative. The drawings can be more detailed than in a hand drawing which strengthens the communicability of the idea.

This course was for me an introduction to the tool ‘Tablet drawing’. The course taught me the most important features and tricks to create realistic sketches. I first started with sketching plenty of ideas. After doing so, I picked the most promising ones and elaborated on those. As a designer, I am characteristic because of my journey towards simplicity. I liked the basic shape of the triangular extrusion and continued until I found a simple but exciting design. In the final sketch, a lot of attention has been spent on creating the right construction which resulted in a realistic perspective. Continued by, providing the alarm clock with different structures to give the render the look and feel of a realistic product. The structures are used from a flat picture and are changed in perspective and wrapped to the shape of the product.

Personal focus & learnings

This course taught me a lot of tricks and features to create a realistic sketch in a much quicker way than creating and rendering a CAD model. A tool what I would like to use way more often!

Lecturer: Bas Lodeweegs

Drawing by Hand

About the project

In the first two years, I spend a lot of time in learning sketch techniques and tricks. In my internships, I was (among others) appreciated due to my capability to communicate with the help of my sketches. Unfortunately, most of those sketches can’t be shown on my website due to confidentiality reasons. In result, you mainly see sketches from my first two years.

Personal focus & learnings

Sketching is one of the aspects as a designer I desire the most. On the one hand, it is an important tool to engage my creativity, but it is as well a very valuable tool to communicate my ideas to colleagues and other stakeholders (e.g. clients or users). I mainly prefer to use hand sketching in a way to communicate the idea quickly. If it requires more detail, I prefer using a drawing tablet to support my ability to do so. When even more detail is required, I like to use my (probably even better developed) skills in CAD modelling to quickly prototype or render the product.

Lecturers: Ton van Raamsdonk, Stefanie Klein