Category: Articles

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Effects of Ambient Lighting Displays on Peripheral Activity Awareness

Article published in IEEE Access

The emergence of ubiquitous sensing and the Internet of Things (IoT) have inspired the
development of ‘‘smart’’ everyday objects, which offer tremendous opportunities for maintaining the quality
of life in ambient assisted living (AAL) environments. Inspired by the future possibilities of connected
everyday devices, we envision a peripheral activity-based awareness system that captures human activity
information and renders this information to enhance context awareness and support social connectedness
between the elderly and their caregivers…

K. Davis, E. B. Owusu, L. Marcenaro, L. Feijs, C. Regazzoni, and J. Hu, “Effects of Ambient Lighting Displays on Peripheral Activity Awareness,” IEEE Access, vol. 5, pp. 9318-9335, 2017.
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DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2703866
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Drama, Story, Production, Interaction: A Design Approach towards Interactive Installations

PhD Thesis by Yu Zhang

Background: Since the early pioneers like Le Corbusier in collaboration with the Philips Corporation designed Poème électronique in 1958, practitioners including designers and artists have embraced interaction and interactive technologies as means for expressing their intuitive concepts. Consequently, designing the experience for interactive art products and installations has gained attraction worldwide over the last decades. Any innovative design is strongly influenced by the intent of the practitioner. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to understand how those practitioners’ intent can be made explicit through their designed artifacts.

Y. Zhang, Drama, Story, Production, Interaction: A Design Approach towards Interactive Installations, PhD Thesis, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2017.
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New Scientist: Augmented reality lets cars communicate to reduce road rage

CarNote
CarNote

You’re driving along and someone cuts you up. You go to honk your horn or make an aggressive hand gesture, when a virtual note flashes up on your windscreen: “Rushing to the hospital”. Your anger dissipates and you feel empathy instead.

Chao Wang and his colleagues at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have developed an augmented reality app designed to reduce road rage by improving communication between drivers. “In the US every year, 1500 people are injured or killed as a result of aggressive driving,” says Wang.

read more at New Scientist.

C. Wang, J. Terken, and J. Hu, “CarNote: Reducing Misunderstanding between Drivers by Digital Augmentation,” in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, 2017, pp. 85-94.
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Serious Games for Learning

PhD Thesis by Maira Brandao Carvalho

Digital Serious Games (SGs) are gaining increasing importance as educational and training tools. However, there is still a long way to make them widely deployed. On the one hand, balancing fun and educational elements in a SG is not trivial and requires understanding how these games can be designed to support effective and efficient learning. On the other hand, actual development can be costly and time-consuming, involving large teams of people from different backgrounds, who often do not share common vocabularies and work processes.

The objective of this research is, thus, to support the design and development of digital educational SGs, by helping reduce the costs associated with SG development, while fulfilling the game’s educational and entertainment goals…

M. Carvalho, Serious Games for Learning: A model and a reference architecture for efficient game development, PhD Thesis, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2017.
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Designing a Wearable Gait Assistant for Parkinson’s Patients

[M22 project by João Paulo Lammoglia]

The project revolves around the Freezing of Gait (FOG) phenomenon occurring among elderly patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). FOG is the temporary, involuntary inability to move and it can be experienced on turning, in narrow spaces, whilst reaching a destination, and in stressful situations. FOG is one of the most disabling and common mobility disorder in PD, and is usually observed in the advanced stages of the disease (Nieuwboer, 2013). Gait impairment and FOG seriously affect the quality of life of patients as it can lead to an unpredictable loss of control over movement and can result into falls.

The effectiveness of the Sensory cueing in improving gait in PD patients has been established by different researchers (Bagley, 1991) (Freedland, 2002). Sensory cueing can be defined as the use of external temporal or spatial stimuli to facilitate movement, gait initiation and continuation (Nieuwboer, 2007). It can be divided into three modalities: visual cueing; auditory cueing; and tactile cueing. Visual cues help to enlarge the stride length and generate sufficient amplitude movement (Azulay, 1999), while auditory cues help to stabilize the gait timing (Freedland, 2002).

The goal for this project is to combine the established scientific knowledge on FOG and Sensory cueing with an in-depth User Research into the design of an intelligent product/service for the assistance of a more independent lifestyle for PD patients with FOG symptoms.

In this document it is described my design vision and connected to it motivation for my Final Master Project. After, information about the context and project can be found. It is illustrated the project development, design approach, outcomes and future steps.

J. P. Lammoglia, Designing a Wearable Gait Assistant for Parkinson’s Patients, M22 Report, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2016.
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LivingSurface: Biofeedback through Shape-changing Display

2016-TEI-LivingSurfaceIn this paper we describe the concept, design and implementation of LivingSurface, an interactive wall-like surface as a shape-changing display of biofeedback. The surface changes its shape responding to an individual’s physiological data, reflecting the internal bodily processes. The surface design basically consists of two layers: the pattern layer (front layer) and the actuating layer (back layer). The first is a complex paper-based structure with repetitive incisions created by laser cutting. The actuating layer serves as a medium transforming the force from servomotors, vibration motors or fans into an action on the
pattern layer. The cutout patterns are stimulated to vibrate, swing, bulge, or rotate which is used to display physiological information in dynamic physical form. This work has been exhibited on Milan Design Week 2015; we collected and analyzed the feedback from the visitors during the exhibition and discuss the possibilities of the proposed surfaces as a shape-changing interface of biofeedback or an ambient display of information.

B. Yu, N. Bongers, A. van Asseldonk, J. Hu, M. Funk, and L. Feijs, “LivingSurface: Biofeedback through Shape-changing Display,” in Tenth Anniversary Conference on Tangible Embedded and Embodied Interaction, Eindhoven, 2016, pp. 168-175.
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EVE

Project by Myrte Thoolen and Bram de Vogel

2015-MyrteThoolen-Eve This report details the combined work of Bram de Vogel (B3.2 Final Bachelor) and Myrte Thoolen (Pre-Master) in semester 1 2015-2016. We developed the “Eve” Sleep Diary concept within the context of the project Tools for Medical Professionals and the project track Sleep in particular. The design challenge in the project was to develop a new sleep diary for use in the treatment of patients with insomnia. For our final concept, we designed “Eve,” a hybrid physical-digital sleep diary. Eve aims to improve the sleep logging experience for insomnia patients and to provide medical specialists with more quality and
quantity of patient sleep data, significantly benefitting the treatment.
Within this report, you may find an extensive description of the “Eve” Sleep Diary, description and analysis of the original problem, the design process as well as future development (recommendations). We have also added individual reflections regarding the project and our individual growth as designers.

M. Thoolen, and B. de Vogel, EVE, B32/Premaster Report, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2016.
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Designing for Gait Assistance in Parkinson’s Disease

FMP by JOÃO PAULO LAMMOGLIA

The project revolves around the Freezing of Gait (FOG) phenomenon occurring among elderly patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). FOG is the temporary, involuntary inability to move and it can be experienced on turning, in narrow spaces, whilst reaching a destination, and in stressful situations. FOG is one of the most disabling and common mobility disorder in PD, and is usually observed in the advanced stages of the disease (Nieuwboer, 2013). Gait impairment and FOG seriously affect the quality of life of patients as it can lead to an unpredictable loss of control over movement and can result into falls.

… The goal for this project is to combine the established scientific knowledge on FOG and Sensory cueing with an in-depth User Research into the design of an intelligent product/service that can assist a more independent lifestyle for PD patients with FOG symptoms.

J. P. Lammoglia, Designing for Gait Assistance in Parkinson’s Disease, M21 Report, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2015.
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An activity theory-based model for serious games analysis and conceptual design

There are currently a number of models, frameworks and methodologies for serious games analysis and design that provide useful interpretations of the possibilities and limitations offered by serious games. However, these tools focus mostly on high-level aspects and requirements and do not help understand how such high-level requirements can be concretely satisfied. In this paper, we present a conceptual model, called Activity Theory-based Model of Serious Games (ATMSG), that aims to fill this gap. ATMSG supports a systematic and detailed representation of educational serious games, depicting the ways that game elements are connected to each other throughout the game, and how these elements contribute to the achievement of the desired pedagogical goals. Three evaluation studies indicate that ATMSG helped participants, particularly those with gaming experience, identify and understand the roles of each component in the game and recognize the game’s educational objectives.

M. B. Carvalho, F. Bellotti, R. Berta, A. De Gloria, G. Gazzarata, J. Hu, and M. Kickmeier-Rust, “A case study on Service-Oriented Architecture for Serious Games,” Entertainment Computing, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 1-10, 2015.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.entcom.2014.11.001
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Best Poster award of Auto UI 15’ for Chao Wang (DI)

2015AutoUI_BestPosterAfter presentation and voting by conventioneers, Chao Wang, PhD Candidate in the DI group, just got the Best Poster award of AutomotiveUI 15’, which is the premier forum for UI research in the automotive domain.

C. Wang, J. Terken, B. Yu, and J. Hu, “Reducing driving violations by receiving feedback from other drivers,” in Adjunct Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications, Nottingham, United Kingdom, 2015, pp. 62-67.
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DOI: 10.1145/2809730.2809736