BlueHair: Interaction & Product Design

Tag: Papers

  • 5 principles of service design thinking

    I’ve been in contact with Marc Stickdorn ever since my MSc. graduation project, as he is an expert in service design. Well he is now working on a new book project along with some of his colleagues in which they will deal with basics, tools and service design cases.

    The interesting part of it is that the project is getting the service design community involved as co-authors of the book so to speak, and as such the book is meant to be a reflection of what “the scene” thinks.

    In order to get some feedback on the first sneak preview of a few pages from the introduction of the book called “5 principles of service design thinking“,  we at SusaGroup worked together with Marc and his colleagues in arranging a special Panoremo setup which could be used by service designers to give their feedback on the content and the layout of the upcoming book’s sneak preview pages.

    If service design thinking is your thing, I suggest you drop by at www.susagroup.com/marcstickdorn to give Marc your own feedback. (more…)

  • Cradle to Cradle: Hype or hope?

    c2cI’ve been meaning to make a post about Cradle to Cradle (C2C) for a while and last week we had a mini-symposium about it at the TU Delft with the attendance of Michael Braungart, one of the original C2C advocates, so I figured that this was the perfect excuse to get down to it.
    So, to get started, let’s explain the C2C concept a little bit, and the best way to explain Cradle to Cradle is to first explain what Cradle to Grave means.

    Until not so long ago, our production paradigm was focused on manufacturing products as cheaply as possible which would be later discarded into landfills (in the worst case) or burned up for energy (in the best case), meaning that we were producing or processing materials (cradle) which would later be rendered useless because they were being buried or destroyed (grave) (more…)

  • Creative Sessions: Playing with serious stuff

    Creative Session photos (11)A creative session is a gathering of people who, following some steps and rules shaped by a facilitator (or organizer), let their creativity loose. Working together, in one or more teams, they eventually generate ideas for the subject matter in question. The session doesn’t need to have very strict guidelines in order to work. As long as it is well organized most likely creativity and inspiration sooner or later emerge (Grudin & Pruitt, 2004).

    I have participated in a couple of creative sessions and always found them extremely useful as a means to let your mind go free and be creative in solving problems or in generating ideas and so I wanted to share with you the process that I followed while organizing one such activity during my Design for Interaction MSc. graduation project in which we were dealing with emotions in hotel environments. (more…)

  • Differentiating emotional hotel experiences (EuroCHRIE 2009)

    EuroCHRIE 2009I’m finally back home after attending the EuroCHRIE 2009 conference in Helsinki for a few days, and I have to say that it was quite an interesting experience for me, since it was not really in my professional field as a designer, but it did have to do with what I’ve been working on for the past few months first as part of my MSc. graduation project and now as an interaction designer/researcher for SusaGroup.

    The conference dealt with experiences in the hospitality and tourism industry and I was actually there presenting a working paper which came from a small exploratory study I conducted at the early stages of my graduation project with the aim to identify what type of emotions people felt the most in a hotel environment and towards what exactly. (more…)

  • emoments: Developing a tool to assess emotions elicited by services

    emoments_thumb

    Relevant Keywords:

    MSc. Graduation project, evaluating emotions, services, consumer experience, hotels, mobile application, prototyping

    Design Goal:

    Various methods are available for measuring emotional responses elicited by products (design) or human-product interaction. Up to this point however, no instrument was available that could be used to assess emotional service experiences. The aim of the project was to extend the possibilities of assessing emotions to the realm of experiential service design. As a case study for the project, the focus was laid on the `hotel experience’, that is, the experience of a guest while staying at a hotel.

    Project duration:

    5 months (full time)

    Methods Used:

    • Thorough literature research to become acquainted with the project domain.
    • Online survey to identify the most common types of emotions experienced by hotel guests and the stimuli associated with these experiences.
    • Creative session organized with a panel of users and designers to generate ideas.
    • Early prototyping to perform user testing of concepts.
    • Creation of wire-frames and navigation flow-charts to define the software’s architecture.
    • Hi-Fi prototyping of final concept.
    • Usability testing.

    (more…)

  • The delivery of the future: From A to Green

    gcombi_complete

    I’ve been quite busy the last few weeks working on my MSc. graduation project, and so I haven’t had much time to do any new updates here, but since a while ago I found out that one of the projects I worked on had been published on the website of the European Commission for Transport, I figured that was worth a mention.

    As I’ve showed in previous posts, I worked together with a group of colleagues in a project developing a new concept for delivery trucks of the future. My posts were focusing mainly on the application of the Vision in Product Design approach (ViP), which was just but a part of the project.

    Later in the process, this vision and future product which we had designed was translated into a product that could be introduced to the market in the near future and it had a strong relation to the Civitas initiative sponsored by the European Union (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…)

  • 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…)

  • 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…)

  • VirtualGoals: enhancing the playability of football through the use of interactive technologies

    Johan Cruyff foundationRelevant Keywords:

    Football, interactive technology, prototyping, user testing, wizard of oz.

    Design Goal:

    At playgrounds, the sport courts are very popular and are used intensively for playing football. It is however strange that these sport courts are hardly used by girls, despite the strong growth in the popularity of girl football in the last few years. Our design goal was to develop an interactive installation for sport courts and in particular the Cruyff courts. By adding interactive technology to the game of football we want to enhance the playability of the playgrounds.

    Project duration and team:

    120 hours, 3 interaction designers (David Güiza Caicedo, Nouschka Tijdeman, Ferdinand van Oostrom)

    Methods used:

    • Experiential prototyping
    • Wizard of Oz prototyping
    • Mid-Fi prototyping
    • User testing

    (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)

  • 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…)

  • 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)