Category: Articles

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Supportive Environments

by Carlijn Valk. M12 project.

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2015-CarlijnValk-SupportiveEnvironmentsElderly people with dementia often suffer from negative feelings such as loneliness and anxiousness due to increased social isolation, and confusion. Design affords us the opportunity to create supportive environments that engage the elderly with dementia in such a way that they are stimulated in a positive way. From my investigations, it is clear that nature and animals have a positive effect on the emotions of residents living in care homes. However, it impossible for care providers to facilitate interactions with animals or nature. To answer this need I wanted to design an immersive experience that suggest a connection to nature for those in the care home that do not have the ability to be in nature due to limited supervision from care takers, limited outside space in urban located homes or mobility challenges.

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C. Valk, Supportive Environments, M12 Report, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2015.
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Best Full Paper Award: Towards a Service-Oriented Architecture framework for educational serious games, by Maira Carvalho

icalt 2015 best paperProducing educational serious games can be costly and time-consuming. The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach of software development can offer a solution to reduce costs and foment serious games development. In this work, we apply a model called Activity Theory-based Model of Serious Games (ATMSG) for identifying existing relevant components that can be reused for different educational serious games. We apply the derived structure to classify the elements of an existing game and to identify how it can be refactored and expanded following the SOA paradigm.

This work received a best full paper award at the 15th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT2015) in Hualien, Taiwan.

M. B. Carvalho, F. Bellotti, J. Hu, J. B. Hauge, R. Berta, A. D. Gloria, and M. Rauterberg, “Towards a Service-Oriented Architecture Framework for Educational Serious Games,” in Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT), 2015 IEEE 15th International Conference on, 2015, pp. 147-151.
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DOI: 10.1109/ICALT.2015.145
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Interfacing with adaptive systems

BY René Ahn, Emilia Barakova, Loe Feijs, Mathias Funk, Jun Hu, Matthias Rauterberg

Interfacing with adaptive systemsWe cast a design view on the interactions that occur when humans face (interconnected) adaptive systems. As humans are also adaptive, the combined behavior of such systems and humans can exhibit various phenomena that are especially of concern to designers of adaptive systems dealing with the inherent complexity of systems, systems’ interfaces, interconnectivity, and other design factors. Based on examples of interactions between humans and systems at different levels of complexity, we propose a hierarchical taxonomy of increasingly complex challenges that system engineers will encounter when designing adaptive systems. Among adaptive systems, the taxonomy distinguishes closed and open systems, embodying processes that are unaware or aware, and finally, friendly and hostile. This taxonomy can be of use in designing these systems and their interfaces, as it helps to categorize the information needs of users. In fact, systems at various levels in the hierarchy need to offer certain cognitive affordances for users to operate these systems successfully. We illustrate how complex the information needs of users in these different situations can be, and formulate emerging design research questions. These could be of particular interest to designers who create intelligent systems, products, and related services in a societal context.

R. Ahn, E. Barakova, L. Feijs, M. Funk, J. Hu, and M. Rauterberg, “Interfacing with adaptive systems,” Automation, Control and Intelligent Systems, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 53-61, 2014.
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DOI: 10.11648/j.acis.20140204.12
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Internet of Screens

InternetofScreensSharing digital media has become second nature for most of us. Throughout the day, we interact a lot with media in the cloud without even noticing it. The cloud has become an essential part of our workflows, but not of our natural behavior. The goal of the project was to share and interact with digital media in the cloud in such a way, that it becomes an integral part of our daily routines. ‘Unify’ aims to link our smart devices together, to make them truly an extension of each other. By knowing the relative position to other devices, we are able to connect them in a much more intuitive way. For example, you can share your digital music with someone else in a physical way by just swiping a song. Magical and meaningful interactions do appear by blending the digital and physical design space.

S. Zoontjens, Internet of Screens, M22 Report, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2015.
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Interactive Storytelling in Mixed Reality

PhD thesis, by Marija Nakevska

2015-MarijaNakevska-InteractiveStoryTellingImmersive and interactive Storytelling is a form of digital entertainment in which an actual narrative is recreated into highly immersive and interactive fictional worlds where a user can have the experience of being a character in a story that unfolds based on her actions. We take advantage of novel technologies, by merging real and virtual worlds to produce new environments that confront the user in an intense and a seemingly real experience. The user is physically immersed in the narrative, co-creates the story, and interacts with the space instead of watching on a screen.

M. Nakevska, Interactive Storytelling in Mixed Reality, PhD Thesis, Department of Industrial Design, Einhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2015.
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Design Implications for a Community-based Social Recipe System

by Veranika Lim et al.
Community-based Social Recipe SystemWe introduced the concept of a community-based social recipe system which suggests recipes to groups of users based on available ingredients from these users (i.e. who can be from the same household or different households). In this paper we discuss the relevance and desirability of such a system and how it should be designed based on user studies. We identified the relevance of targeting ingredients and found positive expected experiences with the system such as to prevent habitual waste-related behavior, awareness of in-home food availability, creativity in cooking, moments for surprises and spontaneity, coordination among a group of friends, education and connectedness. Possible reasons of not using the system are trust and the inconvenience of distance among users in a group that are suggested with a social recipe. From our findings, we specify design implications for the system and optimization functions aiming at the prevention of food waste at a collective level.

V. Lim, F. Yalvac, M. Funk, J. Hu, M. Rauterberg, C. Regazzoni, and L. Marcenaro, “Design implications for a community-based social recipe system,” in World Congress on Sustainable Technologies (WCST-2014), London, United Kingdom, 2014, pp. 19 – 26.
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DOI: 10.1109/WCST.2014.7030089
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Shiguang Time Machine

M22 Graduation Project by Fan Chen

This project explores some related work about utilizing recorded data to reflect past experiences and maintain relationships. The first iteration was carried out in the university and a growing collective memories album service named Shiguang Time Machine was developed. With the input of client, Mobile Taobao, a second iteration was carried out focusing on the photo merging. Shiguang Time Machine is a mobile social application that brings past memories to present and merges photos together based on the location. The service aims at (1)making recorded data easily accessed in the right situation and (2)bringing touched moments and joy to the user. Finally, after the evaluation of the project, further development directions were discussed.

F. Chen, Shiguang Time Machine, M22 Report, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2014.
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Social Interaction in a Public Space: Words of Wisdom

B32 Graduation Project by Emilija Marinkovic

The design challenge in this project is to find ways to design a physical locus of interaction, a specific, physical device that opens the ‘digital’ action possibilities of a city to the physical ones. While the context is the city, it is up to the designer to focus on the design challenge within that context. How to let a ‘generic’ device grow into different meaningful forms and shapes dependent on the context of use, or the specific location in a city, and how to operationalize the concept of context dependent action possibilities.

E. Marinkovic, Social Interaction in a Public Space: Words of Wisdom, B32 Report, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2014.
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Flink!

[M11 Project by Yasemin Arslan]

2014-YaseminArslan-FlinkFLink! is a service designed to increase the social climate at flex workspace Seats2Meet, located in Strijp-S Eindhoven. It is a combination of a physical Meeting Point that triggers flex workers who can interact with it by using their tokens. With this interaction other possible interesting people are presented to the flex worker, through the Mix& Match system. If the flex worker decides to address another person, they can easily connect their LinkedIn accounts by FLinking. This is interaction is similar to performing a high five. Playful yet functional, FLink! motivates people to interact with each other.

Y. Arslan, Flink!, M11 Report, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, 2014.
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