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…)
I’ve talked before about the Virtual Goals project that I worked on a few months back, and in this post I’d like to talk a bit more about one of the techniques that we used during the project: Wizard of Oz prototyping
This technique (named of course after the famous book by L. Frank Baum) is in my opinion one of the most powerful ways of experimenting and developing user interfaces dealing with smart systems, because it allows you to test even when there is no smart system to start with!
The idea is fairly simple: you make a prototype in which all of the actions which will eventually be attributed to the computer system are actually performed by a person.
Let’s illustrate with an example; let’s say you want to make a system that recognizes (more…)
With 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…)
A 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:
I haven’t published much lately, due mostly to the fact that I started with my graduation project. But OK, it was time to get back on this, and what a better way than to ask for help with the project itself!
For my MSc. Graduation project, I’m conducting a small study regarding the emotions you experience while in a hotel, and I’d like to ask your help remembering some of the times that you have stayed in a hotel and tell me some of the things you’ve experienced by using the following online survey: www.bluehaired.com/hotel_survey
It can take as little as 5 minutes to help a bit and I will really appreciate your time and effort.
If you have any questions or comments regarding the study or what I will do with its results, I’ll be glad to answer any doubts, so just drop me a line.
And if you are curious as to exactly what I’m doing with my project, you can take a look at my proposal which is in the PDF below.
[UPDATE: you can now actually find the results and a scientific paper regarding the study HERE]
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).
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.
Today 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…)
I came across this video the other day, and thought that it would be interesting to publish it here too. It’s a look at Bogota (Colombia), my home town, and it’s current developments from a sustainability perspective.
The video itself is quite interesting and it portrays the work done on the city during the past decade and how it is meant to boost Bogota towards a more sustainable future. Having experienced the city and the new infrastructure first hand, I can honestly say that the video is a bit idealized, and that not everything is as pretty (more…)
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…)
In 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…)
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…)
Prototyping is an iterative process that allows you to test, evaluate and implement changes to your design during the developing process before arriving to a final solution, and experiential prototyping is no exception to this. The designer is thus encouraged to produce and test prototypes along the whole development process. But since prototyping can be very effort and time consuming, it is important to know what type of prototyping techniques are more appropiate at different stages.
The concept of prototype “fidelity” is defined by the level of detail used in making it, and dus how closely does the prototype resembles the “real thing”. For example, in software and graphical user interface design, low-fi prototyping can be achieved with simple tools such as paper and colored pencils, with which a quick and dirty sketch of an interface can be drawn on different sheets of paper and be tested (and most importantly fixed) on the run before any code is written at all, and it allows people from other disciplines to be able to collaborate.
low fidelity prototyping also adds the extra advantage of a quick and unfinished “look”, which will (more…)
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…)
PrEmo is a tool to measure emotional responses towards products, originally developed by Pieter Desmet at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the TU Delft. It uses animated characters to portray a certain number of emotions, which a person can use to describe in a non verbal way the kind of emotions that he feels towards a product.
I had the chance to work in a research project in the past in which I compared this tool to a more semantic tool (the Geneva Emotions Wheel) which gave us some very good insights into how this tool could be enhanced. Together with Pieter Desmet, it was decided that a follow up project was needed in order to make a newer version of the tool with the findings of the first study as a basis.
I you are interested in helping out with this study, please visit www.bluehaired.com/premo and fillin our questionnaire. Here you willbe able to see the evolution of the original tool and give us some feedback about it.
And of course, if you are interested in the results or the study in general, you can always drop me a line and I’ll be happy to give you more information.
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:
Design is about looking for possibilities, and possible futures, instead of solving present-day problems.
Products are a means of accomplishing appropriate (more…)
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
I'm an industrial designer with a focus on interaction within product design, and this blog is my place to try and share some of the things I know about and discuss those I would like to know more about.
This website works as a platform to share my experience with some design methodologies & tools, to discuss design related issues and to showcase some of the projects I've worked on.
You can learn a bit more about me by clicking the link underneath.
