Beyond the coffee corner: Workplace design and social well-being

Positive social interactions and feeling connected with people around us are fundamental human needs and crucial to our well-being. This dissertation explores how interior office design could foster workers’ social well-being. The research indicates that to enhance social interactions and a sense of belonging, factors like atmosphere, diversity,...

Conceptualizing inter-household energy exchanges: An anthropology-through-design approach

With the growth of decentralized, off-grid, and distributed renewable energy systems across the globe, an arena for energy exchanges between households is opening up. As compared to traditional ‘centralized’ energy supply systems, in these emerging energy systems households are imagined to acquire agency by having choice and control over inter...

Beyond the numbers: A user-centered design approach for personal reflective healthcare technologies

The current healthcare paradigm shifts towards considering the patients’ home as the primary self-care environment. Health care is changing from being solely delivered by professionals in hospitals, to considering daily-life experiences and patients’ personal contexts. In order to meet this paradigm, the interaction between healthcare...

Empowering end-users in the energy transition: An exploration of products and services to support changes in household energy management

Current discourse on smart grid deployment expects residential end users to play a more active role as co-providers in the electric power system. Their electricity consumption and production is considered a resource for balancing supply and demand in an electric power system with distributed generation. This means that, in addition to using...

Designing awareness systems for social connectedness – A field study approach into theoretical foundations, design principles and evaluation

Being in touch, and being aware of the people in one’s social network strongly contributes to one’s sense of social well-being. As communication technology has become more ubiquitous, it is possible to always be in touch with friends and relatives in the periphery of one’s attention, e.g. through instant messaging and online social networks....

A pattern language of firefighting frontline practice to inform the design of ubiquitous computing

Designing computing systems for frontline firefighting is an open challenge. As of today, little computing support exists for such hazardous environments and designers struggle to build appropriate systems that fit the complex configuration on the frontline. Following Christopher Alexander’s understanding, design is about producing living...

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...

Design framework for developing ict products and services for rural development: A persuasive health information system for rural India

Information poverty cannot be addressed by simply giving away computers and installing internet connections in rural areas. What is really needed is to offer rural users relevant, personalized information that enables them to make positive changes in their daily lives, rather than give them the type of information that is typically available via...

Please do not disturb: Modeling user experience for considerate home products

Products in the home offer ever more functionality. Advances in sensor technology, embedded processing power, and modeling and reasoning software, have enabled everyday products to sense their environment and eventually anticipate user needs. The enabling technology for ambient intelligence is now available. Whereas in the early days most of the...

Help Me Help You. Designing Support for Person-Product Collaboration

This thesis explores how to make appliances, such as thermostats, televisions and microwave ovens, easier to program. It does so by looking at person-product interaction as a type of collaborative planning dialogues. The user and product must âtalkâ to each other, engaging in a collaborative dialogue that can lead to a shared plan concerning...