Designing Positive AI: How optimizing for contextual wellbeing inspired a design method for artificial intelligence that promotes human flourishing

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), from <i>curatorial</i> AI in YouTube to <i>generative</i> AI in ChatGPT, demonstrates both potential for progress and risks of harm. Adopting a Positive Design approach aimed at directly enhancing human wellbeing, this dissertation develops the concept of...

Design touch matters: Bending and stretching the potentials of smart material composites

In the past decade, the interest in collaborative materials development projects with designers and materials scientists has gained momentum. Designers’ involvement in early materials development is expected to inform the development process about the potentials of a new material, beyond the values of efficiency and convenience. This paper-based...

Design Conversations: An exploratory study of teacher and student interaction in the design studio

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the process of teaching and learning how to design. Knowledge about design education has thus far lacked a foundation in empirical studies. As such, the thesis is built by four case studies conducted in real-context settings; the case studies are direct observations and analysis of four different teacher...

The beauty of efficiency in design

The aesthetic appreciation of a product is often described without taking into account that the product has been designed for a purpose; for instance, merely based on the product’s appearance. This dissertation examines the kind of aesthetic appreciation that involves recognizing that the product has been designed (as a means) to achieve a...

The beauty of Unity-in-Variety: Studies on the multisensory aesthetic appreciation of product designs

This thesis embarks from the idea that aesthetic appreciation of product designs is determined by simultaneously perceiving the two partially opposing dimensions of unity and variety. People actively avoid boredom by searching for variety because it challenges the senses and offers the potential of learning new information. Hence, people browse...

Design -|+ Negative emotions for positive experiences

Experience-driven design considers all aspects of a product – its appearance, cultural meaning, functionality, interaction, usability, technology, and indirect consequences of use – with the aim to optimize and orchestrate all these aspects and create the best possible user experience. Since the late 1990s, designers and design researchers have...

Metaphors we design by: The use of metaphors in product design

Imagine a coffee maker that subtly references the serving gesture of a butler or a car that explicitly mimics the sleek and streamlined form of a jet plane. Such metaphors are frequently used by designers as a means to render the values and meanings they want to assign to a product into a physical form. By their nature, metaphors build...

On the moment-to-moment measurement of emotion during person-product interaction: By means of video-supported retrospective self-report, with some ancillary remarks on other issues in design-related emotion measurement

This thesis investigated the measurement of emotion during short episodes of interaction between products and their users. Chapter 2 is a review of the many ways that have been used to measure emotions, organized according to the component of emotion involved: feelings, bodily changes, and facial expression. Measurement based on bodily changes...

RELAX! inherent feedback during product interaction to reduce stress

For this research different experiments were conducted that indicate that people make rocking and rolling movements with a pen when they feel stressed; that when nervous movements are counteracted this results in more control over a situation; and that people prefer objects with moving parts when they are stressed. Embedding sensors in a pen...

Understanding and designing for emotions

Shoes, Cars, and Other Love Stories: Investigating The Experience of Love for Products

People often say they love a product. What do they really mean when they say this, and is this a phenomenon that is relevant to the field of design? Findings from a preliminary study in this thesis indicated that people describe their love as a rewarding, long-term, and dynamic experience that arises from a meaningful relationship built with...

Sensory Dominance in Product Experience

People perceive the material world around them with their five senses. Information from different sensory modalities is integrated in the brain to create a stable and meaningful experience of objects, including industrial products that accompany us in our everyday life. Some of the sensory systems play a more important role in product experience...

Meanings of Materials

This book is about meanings we attribute to materials of the objects around us. Materials convey meanings: they look traditional, they express luxury, they are associated with factories, or they conjure up one’s childhood. How do materials obtain these meanings? How do they interact with other elements of product design in expressing certain...

Sensory incongruity and surprise in product design

People continuously experience the world and the objects in it through all their senses. Product designers can influence the way people experience products by paying attention to the multiple sensory aspects of product design. Designing sensory experiences can be aimed at communicating a consistent message to all sensory channels, making this...

Expressions: Embodiment in the experience of design

EXPRESSIONS: EMBODIMENT IN THE EXPERIENCE OF DESIGN Products are not just objects by means of which we get things done. Apart from bringing aesthetic pleasures, for instance, they may also embody values we hold dear, communicate our fine taste to others, and help us define who we are. These widely varying functionalities are rooted in our...

Product personality