BlueHair: Interaction & Product Design

Tag: User Interfaces

  • Easy mobile prototyping with Pixate

    I’ve been looking recently into playing a little bit more with new tools meant for digital designers like myself. Don’t get me wrong, I am perfectly happy with my Illustrator/Visio/Flash combo for all my UI/Workflows/Prototyping needs, but I figured it’s always good to keep your eyes open for new toys. So long story short, while browsing through Google’s Design Blog I came across Pixate (since apparently they were recently acquired by Google) a fairly new prototyping tool for mobile (Android and iOS) which seemed worth a try.

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  • A Window(s) into the future

    A few years back, at the end of a guest lecture at the TU Delft given by Stephan Hoefnagels, Senior UX Designer who worked on the Windows 7 team, I ever timidly raised my hand and asked a question: “Why does windows 7 still works pretty much the same way as Windows 95?”

    Stephan’s answer was quite simple, and it made perfect sense at the time: “Well, we don’t want to break the whole interaction paradigm that people have been accustomed to for the past 15 years, so we make incremental changes”

    …that’s all about to be thrown out the Windows (pun intended 😉 )

    (more…)

  • 360 UI & Interaction Trend Report… this baby is finally done!

    Finally! After a good couple of months of research and analysis, our UI+Interaction Trend Report ’10-’11 is finally finished and ready for our clients to take advantage of it.

    The borders between purely physical products and the digital world are becoming increasingly blurred. Over the last 40 years, with the price and size of components steadily dropping and microprocessor capabilities constantly increasing, products have the potential of becoming more and more intelligent. This translates into new, exciting features for the users, but it also poses challenges for designers on how to manage the added complexity through an easy to use and efficient interface that allows smart products to fulfill their promise of making life a little easier and more pleasurable.

    We at VanBerlo, believe that a proper understanding of the present and  future of people’s interaction with products will create great new possibilities in the world of design and therefore, as part of my work at one of Europe’s leading design studios, I had the responsibility to develop our very first trend report focusing on the world of interaction and user interface design.

    These award winning trend reports are part of VanBerlo’s  360 creative services offer and they focus on providing up to date, global and detailed insights into the relevant trends in product development.

    As a special treat, here’s a sneak preview of some of the content you’ll find in our full, 160 pages long report (including high resolution photos and HD videos) . (more…)

  • Designing the new touch interface language

    Last Tuesday I attended a short presentation at the Delft University of Technology, where Kay Hofmeester (former UX manager for Microsoft Surface) told us a bit about how the Surface team tried to handle the new challenges posed by designing user interfaces under the new touch interface paradigm. I took the liberty to record it to share it with whoever is interested (Kay if you’re out there reading this, I hope you don’t mind ;-)).

    It was a very interesting lecture with some nice and concrete examples of how wrong it is to try to directly translate old user interfaces for new input devices such as touch screens.

    The Spanish speaking pointer and the Italian speaking finger

    In the lecture, Kay explains very nicely and in depth some of the main practical differences between interacting with a classical GUI and with a touch interface, but I’m gonna give it a go with my own metaphor.

    Think of the following scenario. You’ve been speaking Spanish all your life. You know the ins and outs of your language. One day you move to Italy and all of a sudden you find yourself surrounded by Italians. Sure! your Spanish might help you get by to a certain level due to the language similarities, and you (more…)

  • Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic…

    I’ve always been fascinated with magic, the making possible of that which our mind tells us that is “clearly” impossible; those things that we are too puzzled (or narrow minded) to understand. And as I think back to some of the tech I’ve seen so far in my lifetime and the way I perceived it the first time I came in contact with it, I can’t help but agree with Arthur C. Clarke when he said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

    When you think about it, it wasn’t that long ago that we were still baffled by the novelty of technologies like a GPS, a smoothly working multitouch surface or the controls of a Nintendo Wii, and how they had this almost magical quality to them the first time we experienced them, yet thanks to Moore’s law and the ever thriving minds of designers and engineers out there I think that things are about to get REALLY interesting and I can’t wait to see the true magic that is coming our way.

    Here are just a couple of examples of things I’ve come across lately that I’m very much looking forward to, both as a designer and as a consumer.


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  • Why does Apple think that a stylus is a design flaw?

    “It’s like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it.”

    Steven P. Jobs – CEO, Apple Inc.

    I wonder why is it that Apple considers the use of a stylus as a design flaw?

    I understand where Steve is coming from and as an interaction designer I agree that a touch interface should NOT depend on the accuracy offered by a stylus to be usable, but c’mon! (more…)

  • What are tangible user interfaces?

    During the last few days, I’ve been doing a lot of internet surfing at the office in search for good examples of trends in user interface (UI) design for one of our award winning 360 Trend Reports.

    On it’s on, that is already quite a daunting task, as there are so many things out there that it’s difficult to pick and filter everything out. To top it off, there seem to be a lot of overlapping terms to define different types of interfaces which doesn’t make it any easier when you try to organize and classify them.

    But anyway, going straight to the point, one of the most interesting user interface paradigms I’ve come across not only during my search but also during my studies, is the Tangible User Interface (TUI), so I decided to dedicate this post to explaining what they are and to show a few great examples of (soon to be) products which make use of this type of interaction.

    To start up, here’s my definition:

    A tangible user interface is one in which the user interacts with a digital system through the manipulation of physical objects linked to and directly representing a quality of said system.

    The idea with TUIs is to have a direct link between the system and the way you control it through physical manipulations by having an underlying meaning or direct relationship which connects the physical manipulations to the behaviours which they trigger on the system. (more…)

  • New year, new decade, new job, new city… and I get to play with robots!

    It’s being a pretty hectic end/start of the year. As of last Monday (11th of January) I started working as Interaction Designer at VanBerlo Studios, the biggest design studio in the Netherlands and an important player in the European scene of product development.

    As a consequence and after 9 years of my life spent in the little and picturesque town of Delft I had to move to Eindhoven, a bigger city down to the south of the Netherlands, very well known for being the headquarters of technology giants Philips and home of former European champions PSV Eindhoven (I guess I can never wear my Ajax jersey in public around this town).

    The city is not as charming, but the work and the company is absolutely fantastic so far… and I get to play with robots! One of the first projects I’ll be working on deals with robotics and therefore today I paid a visit to the mechanical engineering department of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). (more…)

  • JFTOT: User experience design for a family of industrial lab equipment

    PAC

    Relevant keywords

    Laboratory instruments, User interface harmonization, GIO Award 2013, American Good Design Award 2013

    Design goal

    PAC commissioned VanBerlo with the task of performing a portfolio-wide harmonization of their user interfaces, based on the design and styling developed during a previous project. This harmonization was to be started with the design of JFTOT, the newest addition to their growing family of industrial lab equipment.

    Specific role & contribution

    • Project planning and management, including preparation of quotes and direct communication with client
    • On-site visits and direct communication with developers
    • Initial analysis of the benefits of a UI harmonization
    • Conceptualization and wire-framing for JFTOT’s UI
    GIO2013GoodDesign

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  • Langen: Creating UX guidelines for industrial packaging machines

    Relevant keywords

    Industrial machinery, User interface guidelines, Packaging

    Design goal

    In an effort to bring together the user interface developments of both its European and American branches, Langen Group commissioned VanBerlo to develop a new set of harmonized UI guidelines for its products.

    Specific role & contribution

    • Project planning and management, including preparation of quotes and direct communication with client
    • Organized on-site visits and workshops with the client for an in-depth analysis of the product
    • Responsible for all conceptualization and styling activities
    • Direct communication with developers and support during production phase

    (more…)

  • VIDA Density Meter: UX design for industrial lab equipment

    PAC

    Relevant keywords

    Laboratory instruments, user interface design

    Design goal

    A more user friendly interface was required as part of the latest version of the VIDA density meter, in order to support the less experienced users that PAC is targeting with the new design of the equipment.

    Specific role & contribution

    • Project planning and management, including preparation of quotes and direct communication with client
    • On-site visits and direct communication with developers
    • Conceptualization and wire-framing
    • Overseeing of styling activities

    (more…)

  • Panoremo: A tool to assess the emotional experience of environments

    Panoremo_thumb

    Relevant Keywords:

    Evaluating emotions, environments, services, consumer experience, online application, prototyping

    Design Goal:

    During my Design for Interaction MSc. graduation project a concept was developed that was deemed very interesting and promising for the potential assessment of emotions experienced towards a physical environment. This concept was later developed even further in collaboration with SusaGroup in order to bring it into the market as a fully functional instrument that can aid in emotional design research.

    Methods Used:

    • Early prototyping to perform user testing of working principle.
    • Software development.
    • Usability testing.

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  • 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.

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  • Measuring and evaluating emotions towards physical spaces

    emotional_space1Well, it’s kind’a cool at the deep end of the pool. Two months into my current status as a Master of Science I’m having lots of fun working on a temporary basis (let’s hope that changes soon) with the good people at Susa Group, the company that I worked for during my graduation project.

    And it’s lots of fun because I’m doing something which I really enjoy, and we are working on transforming one of the concepts I developed during graduation into a fully working and marketable tool which hopefully people will be using in a very, very near future.

    It’s still a work in progress, but the idea is to develop a tool that can help in measuring and evaluating emotions towards  physical spaces. This opens up the door to a plethora of possibilities and applications: evaluating an urban environment to know how people feel about their surroundings (emotions in architecture and urbanism), finding out how people feel about that new interior design that you are developing for a new store (emotions in retail design) or identifying the critical emotional points of a restaurant or of a hotel lobby (emotions in experiential services) are but a few of the examples I can think of. (more…)

  • Developing a tool to assess emotions elicited by services – MSc. graduation presentation (Video & Pics)

    [iframe src=”//player.vimeo.com/video/12315079?byline=0″ width=”630″ height=”394″ frameborder=”0″ webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen]

    So… it’s been a little over a week since I did the presentation for my Design for Interaction MSc. graduation project (Developing a tool to assess emotions elicited by services), and since I went off on a short one week vacation right after that, I didn’t have the time to post the video and some photos of the presentation during that time.

    But as I promised some people, today I finally got back and had some spare time to upload everything. So above,you can take a look at the video of the presentation (takes about 45 minutes including the questions round). The file is quite big (around 500 Mb) because I couldn’t (more…)

  • Developing a tool to assess emotions elicited by services

    graduation-presentation-david-guiza-caicedoHi everyone!

    well, it’s almost here… on the 26th of June I will be giving the presentation for my Design for Interaction MSc. graduation project and I’d like to invite anyone interested in the subject to come along to the presentation.

    It will be held at 3:45 pm at the faculty of Mechanical, Maritime & Materials Engineering (Mekelweg 2, 2628 CD Delft) of the TU Delft, in Room F.

    In the mean time, wish me luck finishing up the project!