BlueHair: Interaction & Product Design

Tag: Context Mapping

  • Mingling with the Dutch UX Design community at UXCampNL 2016

    uxcampnl

    This past weekend I felt like mingling with my peers of the UX design community and check out what they’re up to, so I decided to attend this year’s UXCampNL in Eindhoven. The event, as they put it themselves, is an “unconference born from the desire to bring together the industry and academic communities to share knowledge in an open environment”.

    Unlike a traditional conference, UXcamp is shaped by the attendees themselves. Anyone willing to contribute and learn is welcome to join and give a talk, workshop or start a discussion.

    So here’s my take on how things went down…  (more…)

  • So… what IS design for interaction anyways?

    I’ve been meaning to make a post here about what we define as “Design for Interaction” at the TU Delft, but since I just came across this video, my life was made soooo much easier, because they explain it beautifully. So, there, for anyone wondering what exactly it is that I and my fellow DfI’ers do, here’s a perfect explanation 🙂

    Thanks to Niels van Hamersveld and Pieter Desmet for the great work producing the animation.

  • TOKENS: Books and libraries of the future

    [media id=12 width=600 height=450]

    I’ve already made a post before talking about the Personal Area Libraries, one of our concepts in our attempt to design the books and libraries of the future. Today it’s time to show our second concept, the Tokens. You can see the results of our initial research by visiting the previous post so that you can understand why we came up with this concept, but in the mean time and just to give you an idea, here’s the vision we developed as a starting point:

    “In a world full of volatile digital media, people feel distant and unconnected from their reading material. It’s so easy to copy and distribute media that its very possession has lost its value.
    We want to bring this value back to the people.”

    So here it goes:

    THE READING MATERIAL:

    The reading material is independent of the eReader itself. It is carried individually (more…)

  • Personal Area Libraries (PALs): Books and Libraries of the future

    [iframe src=”//player.vimeo.com/video/11309766?byline=0″ width=”630″ height=”473″ frameborder=”0″ webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen]

    As part of a project for the TU Delft and together with my good friends Job Greefhorst and Amine Rhord, we set out to design the books and libraries of the future. We followed some context mapping techniques to understand the domain of reading in general as a first step for our process. I will explain the process in a later post, as it was quite interesting and it will give me a chance to explain some of these context mapping techniques in greater detail, but in the mean time, I’ll just stick to the results of our research which are more than plenty for a single post, and of course I will show you one of the two concepts that we came up with (the other one will also come on a later post).

    So let’s get started…

    THE READING DOMAIN CONTEXT

    We wanted to know what people thought of their books, how they stored them, why they liked them, why they (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…)

  • 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…)

  • EVOthing about interaction design

    I helped Evi to make a few minor adjustments to her site recently, and with a tweak here and there, I have to say that it really looks fantastic! This is trully one of my favourite websites. A very nice and clean design: Simple, beautiful, elegant and playful at the same time.

    The website, of course, is Evi Malisianou’s portfolio site, an interaction designer from the TU Delft with a background in interior architecture and product design. On it, you will find a bunch of her very inspiring projects (would love to have a few of those on my own portfolio), along with pictures, videos and detailed reports of her work.

    If you are into quality interaction design (with a strong background of user centered research), you should definitely take a look at her website: www.EVOthing.com

  • PALS & Tokens: Conceptual design for books and libraries of the future

    PALS_thumb

    Relevant Keywords:

    Reading, books,  future scenario, conceptual design, context research

    Design Goal:

    As part of a design exercise at the TU Delft we were asked to research the domain of books and libraries and to propose a concept design of how these would be like in a future scenario. The focus was laid on the concept and interactions rather than on technical details of the products.

    Project duration and team:

    75 hours, 3 interaction designers (David Güiza Caicedo, Job Greefhorst, Amine Rhord)

    Methods Used:

    • Vision in Product Design (ViP) was used as a design framework throughout the whole project
    • Cultural probes
    • Creative session
    • Presentation videos

    (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…)