BlueHair: Interaction & Product Design

Blog

  • 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.

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  • Baaramee: Interacting with a 3D island in Dubai

    Baaramee_thumb

    Relevant Keywords:3Dsolutions_logoThe_world_Dubai

    Graphical user interface, 3D environment, single point touchscreen, communication & marketing

    Design Goal:

    For the marketing and communication efforts of Baaramee, one of the islands of The World project in Dubai, an interactive 3D environment was conceived to allow possible investors and buyers to visualize and interact with the project. I was asked to develop a graphical user interface with which users could interact with the system through a touchscreen interface.

    Project duration:

    100 hours

    Methods used:

    • System flowcharts to communicate with programmers
    • Interactive concept presentation to communicate with programmers and management

    (more…)

  • Club Alpine Mulhouse – CTC logo

    The Mulhouse fraction of the french Club Alpine asked me to design a logo for a new campaign they were implementing called the Cellule Transport en Commun – CTC (Shared Transportion Cell), which encouraged their club members to use shared transportation means to the climbing trips organized by the club.

    I made these two proposals. The first one is a playful reference to the word cell in a biological sense, while giving it a transportation connotation by the shape of a bus being recognized within the cell.

    The second one was more to the point and was inspired in traffic signs.

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  • Bill Buxton: Product design by sketching user experience

    I assume that everybody at the TU Delft heard from the presentation that Bill Baxton (Principal researcher Microsoft – http://www.billbuxton.com) has done on monday (nov 19) at the Industrial Design faculty, entitled “Product Design by sketching user experience”.

    For those of you who missed this very interesting lecture, I recorded it and placed it on the internet for you guys to watch. Video quality is not optimal, but it’s more about the story being told than anything else, so for that goal it’s good enough.

    Click on the READ MORE link beneath to  see the video. (more…)

  • Weirdest pregnancy icon I have ever seen

    I dont know if it looked disgusting, weird, ugly, or what… but I found an icon that I assumed was representing a pregnant woman on the floor of the preferential parking space at a local supermarket in Athens, and I couldnt resist the impulse to take a picture of it and save it for posterity.

    Enjoy!

  • Mexico2 – Logo

    Mexico 2 was a proposed new business citadel to be constructed in the heart of Mexico which would become a new focus of economic importance for the whole of the Americas.

    At 3D capacity, we were approached to work on the visualization of the project and as part of it I designed this logo. It is based on the idea of the new citadel being a focus point of the Americas and as can be seen the X is an abstraction of a map of the entire continent. The number 2 is placed as superscript to show that Mexico 2 is not merely seen as a second version of something but as an exponential enhancement of the current status. The colours used are the national colours of Mexico (namely red, white and green). The X2 can also be used as a separate image that still conveys the proposed message without including the text Mexico on it as can be seen to the left.

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  • EVOthing.com – Evi Malisianou’s design portfolio

    Evi Malisianou is a very talented greek interaction designer and together with her we designed and set up her online portfolio at EVOthing.com
    The website’s design is quite simple and clean, giving a nice and playful overview of the projects she has worked on. It is made entirely in flash but easy to update by editing a simple text file to add new projects.

    EVOthing - 01

    (more…)

  • 3D capacity – Flash based project management system

    This is a project management system that I put in place for 3D capacity‘s website. It is made in flash supported by xml files containing the project data. With it, it was possible to keep all the relevant information (delivery dates, contacts, file folders and communication) in a single place for both 3D capacity staff, as well as for the clients.

    By clicking on the screen-shots below you can see a demo of how it works (except for the possibility to save data which is not supported).

    (more…)

  • Club Alpine Mulhouse – T-shirts

    The Club Alpine Mulhouse asked me to design a T-shirt for the club which can be used by club members during the different outdoor activities that are regularly organized.

    I designed this T-shirt which can be made in two different colours:

    (more…)

  • Icons for various applications

    Over the years, I’ve designed a series of icons for different applications, such as being used within websites or graphical user interfaces. This is a collection of some of them.

    Icons 01 (more…)

  • DreamWhipper: Complete product development of a hand powered cream whipper

    DreamWhipper_thumb

    Relevant Keywords:

    Product development, household, manufacturing, technical research, technical development, prototyping

    Design Goal:

    As part of a design exercise at the TU Delft, we were given the task to use a 1928 patent of a cream whipper as a starting point for our design case. We were to use the patent as much as we could and translate the design of the cream whipper into our days in terms of production, assembly, materials, styling and features.

    Project duration and team:

    250 hours, 6 industrial design engineers (David Güiza Caicedo, Wouter Drost, Roos van Rhijn, Erik Jansen, Marie-Louise Brantjes)

    Methods Used:

    • Product analysis
    • Technical research
    • Brain writing
    • lo-fi prototyping
    • 3D modeling and Rapid prototyping
    • User testing

    (more…)

  • Assesment of existing tools for the measurement of emotions and their application in consumer products research

    A while back, and as part of my bachelor for Industrial Design Engineering at the TU Delft, we performed a research project in which we took a deeper look into the world of measuring emotional responses, and reported our proceedings and findings in a scientific paper. We also performed a field test with two of the most promising tools that we identified in order to have a better understanding of how they work and how they could be improved. These tools are PrEmo (developed at the TU Delft) and the Geneva Emotions Wheel (developed by the Geneva Emotion Research Group)

    If you are interested in this field I highly recommend you take a look at it.

    Here’s the abstract:

    “This paper introduces the subject of emotions in consumer products research; what are they, how to define them and most importantly, how to quantify and qualify them. A brief background research is made to clarify the concepts involved and to identify existing tools to measure emotions. Furthermore, a small field research was performed to test the validity that two of the most promising tools have on the field of consumer products research.”

    To download a PDF version of the study’s report or the poster, click in the links bellow.

    LINK 1: Assessment of existing tools for the measurement of emotions (PDF)

    LINK 2: Poster (PDF)

  • 3D capacity’s website

    3D capacity is a company specialized in the field of 3D visualizations. I was given the task of developing their website, which should include a log-in system and a project management system.

    3Dc - 01

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  • Imagine – an exercise on visual corporate identity

    Imagine - 01During a course at the TU Delft as part of my Industrial Design Engineering BSc., we were asked to work in a design assignment in a group as if we were an actual design studio working for a given client.

    As part of the exercise, we had to develop a corporate identity for our studio and use it at all times during the course’s process.

    I designed a logo, website, powerpoint starting screen, business cards and even a promotional gift (a mug).

    (more…)

  • VirtueleMaquette.nl – Logo and website

    The Virtual Maquette (virtuele maquette in Dutch) is 3D capacity‘s main product, and they wanted to make a simple separate website with a logo of it’s own, in which they could show the benefits of the virtual models through a presentation video.

    (more…)

  • The Puma monk

    A couple of days ago, I decided to go with Evula to one of Holland’s main spring atractions… the Keukenhof gardens. Filled with thousands and thousands of blooming flowers of any imaginable color, it was quite a spectacle to see.
    But what caught my attention the most, were not the tulips, or the orchids, or anything of the like… it was this Buddhist monk, who’s “lifestyle is shaped so as to support his spiritual practice, to live a simple, happy and meditative life, and attain Nirvana”.
     
    Wikipedia (the new “Holy bible”), tells us that the robes of a Buddhist monk come from “the idea of wearing cheap clothes just to protect the body from weather and climate…. Since dark red was the cheapest colour in Kashmir, the Tibetan tradition has red robes. In the south, yellow played the same role“.
    Pay close attention to the fact that they DO NOT mention ANYTHING about the shoes… so our monk decided to follow his vouws in style, with some very cool Pumas that match his ‘raggedy-poor-man’s-robes’