BlueHair: Interaction & Product Design

Tag: TU Delft

  • 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…)

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

    vip_designing_product_levelHere’s the sixth and final post of the ongoing series explaining the Vision in Product Design (ViP) process. It includes some very nice illustrations of the delivery truck we designed for the future.

    PART 6:

    DESIGNING – THE PRODUCT LEVEL

    Once you reach the product level once again, you use the information from all the previous phases of ViP, specially the vision which you created, and the interaction qualities you intend to have with your product, and you finally start designing the product (or service) itself.

    This is probably the phase of the process which will be closest to home to designers, as here’s where you start giving shape to the cloud of ideas that have been generated so far, and you finally (more…)

  • 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…)

  • 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…)

  • Hema themed Internet Explorer

    Hema Internet explorerAs part of a visual design exercise at the TU Delft, we were given the following assignment:

    “Hema has signed a contract with Microsoft and will be the first to launch its Hema own brand Internet browser onto the market. The browser will be an Hema version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. The contract does not allow Hema to make any modifications to the technology used or the functions provided by the browser. By enforcing these restrictions, Microsoft wants to ensure that consumers are aware that they are using a Microsoft product. As Hema does not specialise in software, it has no objections to the restrictions. The company sees no future in software that has been developed by a warehouse. On the other hand, the company has years of experience successfully marketing well-known products under Hema’s own label.

    Assignment A: Design the graphical user interface (GUI) for the Hema browser, based on the functions provided by Internet Explorer 6. Do not waste time altering any of these functions! (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…)

  • 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…)

  • 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: 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…)

  • 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…)