Jun HU :: HU, Jun

Three of our first year students, Jesse Meijers, Marjolein Schets and Jim Steenbakker, did a nice project in the context of cultural computing. “The goal of the project was to create a new form of presence and user experience by turning the visitors sense of reality upside down through the use of modern technology. The rooms built for this project were based on scenes from the book `Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. We decided to build a new room. Our room is based on the scene where the tarts of the Queen of Hearts2 get stolen. The visitor will accidentally perform the theft. The rooms purpose is evoking a feeling of confusion. The room is an infinity mirror room which contradicts the visitor’s sense of reality, proportion and boundaries.”

[The final project report: "A New Encounter with Alice" 1.3M, PDF]

Don Willems designed a doormat. The doormat is not just for wiping your feet, but also for lowering the electricity consumption. How does it do it? The doormat is at the same time a LED display that allows people to easily turn off devices when leaving the house as well as improving their energy consumption behavior by leaning from tailored coaching when coming in. Read the full report for more information [PDF, 3M]

From his report, “The Doormate is for wiping your feet and supporting lowering of electricity consumption. It does the latter by communicating information through an integrated LED display. It allows people to easily turn of devices when leaving the house as well as improving their energy consumption behavior by learning from tailored coaching when coming in. One could say the Doormate is addressing both the ‘consumer’ – making sure no money is wasted when not at home and the ‘citizen’ – contributing by environmental friendly behaviour – in people. Read more…

Hao Liu, one of the PhD students I supervised, defended his thesis “Biosignal Controlled Recommendation in Entertainment Systems”, on Monday, December 13, 2010.

[DOWNLOAD | PDF, 2M | Biosignal Controlled Recommendation in Entertainment Systems ]

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Sometimes the first year students surperize you with what they can do in their very first year. Pim Vellenga, Hessel Sieswerda and Niels Timessen challenged themselves with “one huge problem: how do you get the interactive onscreen user interface out of instant messaging experience.”  They designed a tea box that is integrated with messaging abilities for the elderly to communicate with their grandchildren. Read the report [PDF, 2M] for more.

By Matthijs Kwak

Interesting work done by one of the master students. [Project Report, PDF, 700K]

Abstract: Technology is moving to the background and interoperability between devices increases. The handles for users to explore, make and break connections between devices seem to disappear inoverly complex menu structures displayed on small screens. Two prototypes have been developed that introduce a tangible approach towards exploring, making and breaking connections between devices in the living room. One provides a centralized approach (SCD1), the other a decentralized approach (SCD2). Industrial Design students and graduates(N=12) have performed tasks and were asked to explain and grade one out of three methods: SCD1 (image 1), SCD2 (image 2) and bluetooth pairing.Findings suggest that users are better able to project their mental model of how the system works on SCD2 and that atangible solution is not necessarily a better one.

B22 Project by Jaap Norbruis. [PDF Report, 1.5M]

“Within this project I explored how context is experienced and in what ways it can be captured and communicated. The design goal of this project is to design a system that communicates contextual information seamless across realities, the context of a remote user should be communicated to a receiving person is such a way that he or she is able to experience it.”

 

M12 Research Project by Niels Molenaar. Report: [PDF, 400K]

In public spaces to improve the public perception of cleanliness different lighting conditions can be utilized to dim or to light the littered areas. One would suggest to dim the light for the littered area, or the other way around, to improve the perceived cleanliness. It is however not clear how the lighting condition in the littered area would influence the perceived cleanliness. In this paper we report the result from an experiment in which a metro environment is set up to observe how people react to darkened and lightened litter. The result is somewhat supersizing. People perceive an environment as cleaner when attention is drawn to litter by focusing light on it. The causes of this observation are discussed.

by Sophie van der Weerd, [PDF | 2M]

In her B22 project report, Sophie writes: “…I will offer the ‘WeTouch Pillow’; the pillow that communicates your families’ presence in a subtle way without an obliged effort. If one uses his pillow, the pillow of the other becomes warmer and vice versa. I will focus upon the communication tools market. The market will have a need for my product, since it communicates family presence without an obligation and current communication tools require an obligation and effort, which people do not like when communicating with their family like having to call, as to my user research. I want to express to the market the importance of family presence and contact, but that there is no obliged effort needed. The internet will be a good medium to use to contact the target group of relatives living apart, since the younger generations uses it a lot. And I try to reach people who live apart from each other, so an internet service which sends one pillow to each of the relatives is a good way to sell the WeTouch Pillow. Also because an internet connection is needed for the pillows to connect…”

 

Final Bachelor Project by Ruben Hekkens. Report: [PDF, 4M]

Professional traditional painters find it very hard to generate a proper living from their painting activities. Some do a job on the side. The web offers new opportunities for generating exposure and income, for instance via Youtube or a personal website. However, it is hard for painters to exploit these possibilities, as they have few finances and insufficient IT-knowledge to do so. In this project, I explore a new product service-system for painters, which helps them generate extra money while still keeping interaction with the user very simple.

Final USI project by Li Li. Report: [PDF, 1.8M]

The Collaboratory software system at FEI Company allows customers to work together with an electron microscope over a distance, and to share the instruments, microscopy expertise and services. It originally has been developed from the results of the Collaboratory.nl project.

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