Archive for the ‘Designing’ Category

Low-Fi prototyping: Cheap & easy, but damn good!

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

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”.

PrEmo: a tool to measure emotional responses

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 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:

Design is about looking for possibilities, and possible futures, instead of solving present-day problems.
Products are a means of accomplishing appropriate

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

Hema themed Internet Explorer

Hema Internet explorer As 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!

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

Relevant 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

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)

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

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

ipNext: Usability testing and redesign of an office phone

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.

The Virtual Bathroom – website

While working at 3D capacity, I was given the task to design the website for The Virtual Bathroom (www.devirtuelebadkamer.nl), a new concept for the communication of bathroom installations which makes use of interactive 3D and videos to create an immersive user experience.

Virtual goals: introducing new technology into the game of football

For our Interactive Technology Design (ITD) course as part of my Design for Interaction master (TU Delft), we were asked to work on introducing interactive technology into the Cruyff Courts (free access outdoor football fields throughout the Netherlands) so that we could enhance their playability and attractiveness, with an specific emphasis on integrating more girls into the fields, as it was found that they were not making much use of the courts even though they like the game and girl-football is on the rise.

We came up with the concept of “Virtual Goals”, which consists of replacing the normal goals and nets we have today by two large surface areas on each side of the field, in which different types of goals will be displayed according to

Botoneria.com – Logo and website design for a Colombian button manufacturer

Botoneria Ltda. (formerly known as La Piacentina) is a button manufacturer in Bogota, Colombia.

They asked me to design a new logo for them and to develop a simple website to showcase their work and production possibilities.

The new logo was inspired by the unique mixture of creativity and technical know-how that characterizes them.

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.

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

BeerBuddies: Empowering bartenders against unwanted behaviour

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.