BlueHair: Interaction & Product Design

Category: Methodologies

  • The delivery of the future (PART V) – An example of Vision in Product Design (ViP) being used

    vip_designing_interaction_levelWith my MSc. graduation project now in full swing, I havent had much time to dedicate to posting things, but I figured that this could be a nice way of clearing my mind, so today I’ll continue with the ongoing series of posts explaining the Vision in Product Design (ViP) process.

    PART 5:

    DESIGNING – THE INTERACTION LEVEL

    By following the ViP methodology, the next step in our process was to think about the interaction level in the future context. In this new step the idea is to identify a number of interaction qualities which are relevant in our attempt to achieve the vision that we conceived in the previous phase, but without thinking of any particular product yet.

    These qualities of interaction will be of great importance for the (more…)

  • Designing the new prEmo – An empirical research on how to improve the emotion measuring tool

    premo2A while back I was working together with Pieter Desmet, an associate professor at the Industrial Design faculty of the TU Delft, in a project aiming to improve prEmo, a tool to measure emotions towards products.

    The tool proved to be very effective, but it still had some points to it that could be enhanced, so that’s why we started working on a newer version of it.

    For anyone interested in this kind of studies, you can download a copy of the final document that I wrote reporting on the steps that were followed, the methodologies used, and of course the results from our study.

    You can download a copy by clicking on the link below:

    PDF: designing-the-new-premo-david-guiza-caicedo-2009.pdf

  • From A to Green: A future vision of sustainable coachworks

    g-combi_thumb

    Relevant Keywords:

    Automotive industry, sustainability, Transportation, Delivery, Coachworks, Future scenario

    Design Goal:

    Combigroep Carrosserieën, a Dutch coachworks producer, wants to extend its potential market following the newest regulations, transportation trends and logistics of the European Union having sustainability as a focus. As a group of 6 interdisciplinary designers the project was carried out from the strategy up to the product interaction and product detail level.

    Project duration and team:

    300 hours, 2 Strategic product designers (Stefanus Heru Prabowo, Ricardo Mejia), 3 Integral product designers (Barth Vrijling, Ana Laura Rodrigues Santos, Marjolein van Houten), 1 Interaction designer (David Güiza Caicedo).

    Methods Used:

    • Vision in Product Design (ViP) was used as a design framework throughout the whole project
    • The context of the industry and our clients position within it was researched and analyzed through stakeholder analysis, competitor analysis and PESTE analysis
    • Interviews and role playing user analysis were used to understand our users and personas were used to illustrate them during the design process.
    • Generated future scenarios
    • Creative sessions were performed to generate ideas during the design process.

    (more…)

  • The delivery of the future (PART IV) – An example of Vision in Product Design (ViP) being used

    vip_designing_context_levelToday is freezing outside and there isn’t the slightest chance that I’m going out there… so in the meantime I figured I can continue with the Vision in Product Design (ViP) example I’ve been writing about lately.

    This is quite a lenghty post, so let’s just jump straight to the point.

    PART 4:

    DESIGNING – THE CONTEXT LEVEL

    At this point, we’ve already reached the designing phase of the process, and we start by defining the future context.

    DRIVING FACTORS FOR THE FUTURE

    Within the VIP process the use of factors is intended to assist the deconstruction of the present world context in order to map probable and predictable features/aspects on a projected future.

    Factors can be divided in four distinctive (more…)

  • The delivery of the future (PART III) – An example of Vision in Product Design (ViP) being used

    vip_deconstruction_context_levelWell, a new year is upon us and so I thought I should make some time free to post the next step of the on going example of applying the Vision in Product Design (ViP) process.

    So here it is…

    PART 3:
    DECONSTRUCTION – THE CONTEXT LEVEL

    The aim of deconstruction at the context level is to try and think about what factors in the original conditions that a product was created for provided a possible reason to produce that particular person product interaction. (Lloyd, Hekker, & van Dijk, 2006) One of the most important parts of this deconstruction consists in the “context analysis” that provides key information to understand the system and the product itself.

    When designers are developing products that function in complex situations, they (more…)

  • The delivery of the future (PART II) – An example of Vision in Product Design (ViP) being used

    vip_deconstruction_interaction_levelIn a previous post I discussed the very first step of the Vision in Product Design (ViP) process, the deconstruction at a product level. On this post, I’ll be showing examples of the next step, deconstruction at an interaction level, and how we handled it in our project to design the delivery of the future. If you havent read it, I suggest you read that one before diving into this one.

    But if you’ve already read it… let’s jump right to it!

    PART 2:
    DECONSTRUCTION – THE INTERACTION LEVEL

    The interaction qualities characterizing the relationship between the Combis and the different users involved with it was analysed though a brainstorming session where the team reflected, with a play role technique, the qualities which can be perceived from the interaction of these (more…)

  • People DON’T know what they want… so why rely on them for innovation?

    [iframe width=”630″ height=”350″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/iIiAAhUeR6Y” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]

    I came across this TED Talk today by Malcom Gladwell called “What we can learn from spagetti sauce”, which I thought was wonderful and I wanted to post it here. Basically, it illustrates why there is no single über-product which will make all of your users happy. People are diverse by nature, so why would one single type of product match them all?

    It also reminded me that some time ago during a marketing course I followed for my bachelor, I had to read this fantastic article by Anthony W. Ulwick called “Turn customer input into innovation” (I know, I know, not the most creative of titles, but a good one  nonetheless), and I’ve been wanting to share (more…)

  • Low-Fi prototyping: Cheap & easy, but damn good!

    Prototyping is an iterative process that allows you to test, evaluate and implement changes to your design during the developing process before arriving to a final solution, and experiential prototyping is no exception to this. The designer is thus encouraged to produce and test prototypes along the whole development process. But since prototyping can be very effort and time consuming, it is important to know what type of prototyping techniques are more appropiate at different stages.

    The concept of prototype “fidelity” is defined by the level of detail used in making it, and dus how closely does the prototype resembles the “real thing”. For example, in software and graphical user interface design, low-fi prototyping can be achieved with simple tools such as paper and colored pencils, with which a quick and dirty sketch of an interface can be drawn on different sheets of paper and be tested (and most importantly fixed) on the run before any code is written at all, and it allows people from other disciplines to be able to collaborate.

    low fidelity prototyping also adds the extra advantage of a quick and unfinished “look”, which will (more…)

  • Designing the delivery of the future – An example of Vision in Product Design (ViP) being used

    In a previous post I talked about the Vision in Product Design approach, explaining what it was about and the benefits of it.

    Since then, I’ve been applying it in a couple of projects I’m currently working on, and I found that the trickiest thing of this approach is to know exactly what it is that you are looking for with it and how to keep in track. So in this train of thought, I figured that it would be interesting and helpful for people not familiarized with ViP to go through each of the phases of the approach while having a concrete example of what should be done and what kind of results to expect from each phase of the design process.

    So as an example, I’ll be using the process that me and my team have gone trough during our Integral Design Project, which is a second year master’s course at the TU Delft involving team members from the 3 master directions (Strategic product design, Design for Interacion and Integral Product Design) working together on a project.

    In our case, our goal was to develop a new, more sustainable product for a producer of truck coachworks (known in Dutch as Combi’s), focusing on their current products for “delivery and distribution”. (more…)

  • Vision in Product Design (The ViP approach)

    Vision in Product Design (the so called ViP approach) is a design framework developed in the mid 90’s by Paul Hekkert, Matthijs van Dijk and Peter Lloyd at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands.

    For those of you interested in innovation and design, my opinion is that this IS the way to go. And apparently a couple of big names such as Audi, Pininfarina, Nokia and Whirlpool also seem to think the same way.

    Here’s the scoop:

    ViP is a design approach that has three starting points:

    1. Design is about looking for possibilities, and possible futures, instead of solving present-day problems.
    2. Products are a means of accomplishing appropriate (more…)

  • Virtual Goals: Technology in the Cruyff Courts

    So, this is the final paper that we wrote regarding our Virtual Goals project. It’s quite interesting to take a look at it to follow the full story of how we developed the concept and how we tested it with various prototyping techniques.

    Here’s the abstract:
    “The Cruyff courts are very popular outdoor, public sports facilities in The Netherlands, but unfortunately they are not as attractive to girls as they do not like playing with boys. In this paper we describe our attempt to apply new technology into these fields in order to attract girls to them without making them less attractive for boys. Various experiential prototypes were built to test our proposals.”

    To read the full paper click on the link below:

    LINK : Virtual Goals: Technology in the Cruyff Courts (PDF)

  • ipNext: Usability testing and redesign of an office phone

    ipNext_thumb

    Relevant Keywords:

    Telecommunications, office environment, user research, usability testing, icon validity testing, redesign, office telephone

    Design Goal:

    The goal of this project was to evaluate the usability of the Alcatel-Lucent IP Touch 4018 office phone and to propose a re-design of the phone according to the findings of the performed tests. The team consisted of 6 Design for Interaction master students of the TU Delft working directly for Alcatel-Lucent, a global telecommunications corporation.

    Project duration and team:

    225 hours, 6 interaction designers (David Güiza Caicedo, Tine Lavrysen, Amine Rhord, Meike Mak, Steven Fokkinga, Marjolein Hartog)

    Methods Used:

    • Product analysis in terms of aesthetics and functionality
    • Online user survey & interviews with experienced users to understand how they perceived the current phone.
    • Usability tests of the current phone with novice and experienced users.
    • Online icon validity test performed with an international sample of people.
    • Interaction prototyping to assess the new interaction model proposed with the redesigned phone.

    (more…)

  • Beerbuddies: Using the personality of cartoon characters to define people’s personalities

    As a part of my Design for Interaction Master’s degree, I took part of a project called Exploring Interactions, for which I was trying to empower bartenders against unwanted behaviour in their bars.

    As a field research, I organized some group interviews with local bartenders and made use of some generative methods (such as collage making) in order to gain more information regarding their context and the interactions involved in their job, specially those regarding the customers and more specifically those involving customers showing some sort of unwanted behaviour. After thorough analysis and fiddling with different ideas, the Beerbuddies were born.

    The BeerBuddies are meant as a tool to reflect the personality and mood of bar-goers through the use of beer coasters with cartoon characters on them. (more…)

  • Context mapping: A look at the advantages of applying generative tools “in situ”

    Generative tools are an excellent means of acquiring information from your users, but it is sometimes
    difficult for the participants of your research to get started with them. And although using sensitizing
    techniques such as workbooks or disposable cameras are great ways of introducing your participants into the subject at hand, when there is a restriction in time these are not easy or desirable to apply.
    In these cases a good way of getting the participants more involved into the subject is by conducting group sessions in the location where the actions are supposed to take place. The surrounding space and objects can trigger the memory of the participants more easily than if they are interviewed in a neutral location, and they get the opportunity to better illustrate their points by re-enacting certain actions in the right place. In situ sessions also have a positive effect in the quality of the (more…)

  • BeerBuddies: Empowering bartenders against unwanted behaviour

    Discover the BeerBuddies

    Relevant Keywords:

    Work, Leisure, Horeca (Hotels, restaurants, cafes), interaction, evident, explorative, involved, dominant, submissive

    Design Goal:

    To empower bartenders against unwanted behavior. The project was performed for the “Exploring Interactions” course, as part of the Design for Interaction Master of Science at the Delft University of Technology.

    Project duration:

    225 hours

    Methods Used:

    • Context mapping research through group interviews and generative methods (such as collage making) with local bartenders to gain rich visual and contextual information from them (field research).
    • Online survey to assess how people perceive the personalities of cartoon characters in terms of dominance and friendliness.

    (more…)