Category: Student Project Reports

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Increasing comfort on long-haul air travel in an economy class environment

by Rick van de Westelaken.

Almost 2 billion people are traveling by airplane every year. A large group of passengers experience discomfort or stress in some degree during a flight. This is not surprising because on the one hand humans have not evolved naturally to fly and are better suited to terrestrial travel. On the other hand airlines try to fit as many chairs in a plane as possible to keep the ticket prices low with limited seating space in economy class as result.

In 2006 an European funded project entitled “SEAT” (smart technologies for stress free air travel) was set up to investigate and develop new innovative ways to improve comfort in air travel. The final master project described in this report is executed as part of the SEAT project and has the objective to improve the perceived level of comfort in air travel. Because the term “comfort” is quite broad it was further defined as reducing psychological stress and supporting passengers with their activities during a long-haul flight.

Read More: [Final Mater Project Report, PDF, 1.7M]

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Movow: Contextual Information Exchange

by Meerthe Heuvelings. [PDF, 2.3M]

Movow
Movow

“In the ‘Contextual Information Exchange’ project, the focus was on communicating the context of one user to another user. In this project I focused on creating a feeling of connectedness over distance. To create this feeling of connectedness, I did research to the missing-links between face-to-face and distant communication and concluded that virtual shadows of real physical objects or people can create a feeling of physical presence on ‘the other side’.

In this project we worked in three iterations, the last two iterations were done individually. In the second iteration I developed a concept in which the shadows of stones can form a new medium of communication over distance. The stones on one side are transfered into shadows on the other side and vice versa. This will create a decorative piece of stones and shadows, that is made with use of two persons that live on a distance from each other.

The final concept is the ‘Movow’, which stands for ‘Moving Shadow’. In this concept the amount of people and the speed with which these people move are detected in one room, and transfered into shadows of the ‘Movow’ light object in another room. The ‘Movow’ is able to generate shadows according to the amount of people and movement. When there are not that much people in the other room, only the lower ring of the prototype will be lit. When the amount of people increases, the light will ‘grow’ to the ceiling. The speed with which the lights will be circulate in the rings, depends on the movement of the people in the other room. For this concept a prototype is build that represents the light and shadow capabilities of the concept.”

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Magnetic clock: Contextual Information Exchange

B22 Project by Yi Xue. [PDF Report, 3M]

Magnetic Clock
Magnetic Clock

“The number around the clock will change according to the social status of other’s. The size of the number and the distance to the clock are proportional. Larger the size, longer the distance stands for socialing and vice versa. The color in the middle will show dynamic situation of social environment.”

 

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Designing Peace of Mind

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

The Peace of Mind project aimed at developing an innovation on child safety as part of the strategy to expand Philips’ domestic appliances portfolio for Mother & Childcare products. This section of Philips’ business unit was recently expanded with the purchase of Avent, a brand known for excellence in products such as baby bottles and breast pumps. With the acquisition, Philips-Avent was created…

J. Benini, Designing Peace of Mind, USI Final Report 978-90-444-0808-9, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2008.
FULLTEXT: PDF
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Use of WebLabs as a platform for remote customer research

USI Final Project by Dirk van de Mortel. Draft report: [PDF, 500K]

WebLabs is the project name for a new, web-based platform for gathering user feedback. During　most, if not all phases in the (iterative) design cycle, representative users and/or clients can be　involved and leave feedback/input as part of User-Centered Design (UCD) process. This　feedback is valuable for an evaluator (e.g. HCI expert), who then compiles yielded information　and implements severe parts, by rendering them in the development of the product or service. Executing usability tests by means of a User Evaluation Method (UEM) as part of UCD is a　well-known method. Other usability methods are e.g. contextual interviews, focus groups, heuristic evaluation, interviews, personas, task analysis etc that all might be applicable as feedback system on the web.
However, until now little information is known on how laboratory testing compares to remote testing, concerning Philips Research applications (i.e. multimedia applications for consumer electronics). Important advantages of remote testing are A. Time and space independence (asynchrone) B. Relatively low cost for a worldwide (and cultural diffused) audience/participants and C. Automation of results. Important disadvantages are I) No control after publication or invitation of users II) Applies on the imagination of participants when a situation is simulated/mimicked III) Requires special preparation (low fidelity prototypes become digital or hybrid: send by post and evaluated with Web applications).

D. van de Mortel, Use of WebLabs as a platform for remote customer research, USI Final Report 9044408127, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, 2008.
FULLTEXT: PDF
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Far far away … To help expats feel more at home abroad

Far far away ...
Far far away ...

A nice project done by MieKe Kleppe. “The goal of my IBP is to design a system or device that will help expats to feel more at home abroad. I used literature, interviews, surveys and a context mapping session to find out that the real problem is that they feel far away from the people that really know them. After some more research and idea generation I refined my direction in designing a system or device that will motivate friends of the expat to share their daily life with the expat with use of text messages. So I chose to design something for the friends, not the expats themselves. The biggest challenge for this project was to make sending the messages as little effort for the friend as possible, but still keep it interesting for the expat.

The result of my project is a pendant that can be hung on the phone of the friend. With a simple sliding movement a message is send to his expat friend. Context awareness phones are used to determine what the friend is doing and which message should be send.”

Download the report [PDF, 800K] for details.

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Communication of remote context through lighting

A very nice project done by Bram Knaapen. “The non face-to-face communication of social and emotional experiences between people usually happens through phone or other media like e-mail, IM (instant messaging or webcam (e.g. Skype). The context in which the experiences were experienced plays an important role. Neither the technology nor our way of describing enables us to communicate this visual context in a way it can be “experienced” by the other person. There still are a few layers of formulation & interpretation in between: you can only imagine. This project focuses on the design of a system that is able to communicate the real-time visual context of a remote user so that the receiving person is able to “ feel” as if he/she is there without the translation steps that are required when describing an experience. Emphasis is on the visual element in experience and thus imaging technology. The final concept is a modular system of connectable triangles that can be mounted to the wall and can project areal-time abstract display system of a remote visual context.”

For more information, download the project report: [PDF, 2.5M]

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Perceived Privacy Handling in an Amigo Extended Home Environment Application

by Abdullah Al Mahmud and Yeo Lee Chin. Final USI Project. Report: [PDF, 1M]

Perceived privacy i.e., how users perceive that their privacy is handled by the system, is one of the key issues for the user acceptance of current ambient intelligent environment applications. This project was carried out in the context of the Amigo project, a large IST funded project in which 15 European organizations work together on the development of interoperable software architectures and applications for intelligent ambient home environments. Within the Amigo project, one of the tasks is dedicated to gain insights into how perceived privacy should be handled in an ambient intelligent networked home environment. Our project consisted of designing and building a functional prototype in which the system adapted to changes in the context of the user and the user’s environment while accounting for the users control over their privacy.

Continue reading Perceived Privacy Handling in an Amigo Extended Home Environment Application