· · · Institutional Repository

To be able to design product sounds that elicit a predetermined expression a study was performed to find how sound properties influence the experience of their expression. Two explorative studies using figurative against abstract visual stimuli were performed to create insight in how people experience sounds and to create a list of usable semantic associations. This list was ordered in 25 expression categories each under one descriptive semantic association. A third study using mind mapping was conducted to examine what sound properties were considered as influences on a few of these categories and to optimize the categorization. The sound properties that were considered as most influential were sharpness and noisiness. The final descriptive semantic associations were placed on a scale with the axes unpleasant-pleasant and calm-active. From these the following were considered to be most usable: activated, angry, boring, calm, chaotic, cheerful, eerie, energetic, pleasant, relaxed, trustworthy and unpleasant. In a fourth study the sounds of six domestic appliances were chosen and adjusted for sharpness, noisiness and their combination. They were evaluated for their valued expression on the 12 semantic associations by 30 participants. The results showed that increased sharpness elicited a more unpleasant and activated expression and decreased sharpness elicited a more pleasant and calm expression. This indicates that a general influence of sound properties can be established to design sounds for expression.

In the highly competitive retail world, standing out from the neighboring shops is the first step to attract consumers. The fashion apparel industry provides an interesting case of hypercompetitive behavior. Fashion apparel retailers are always struggling for a marketing position with new products and retail strategies in an attempt to capture the customers’ attention. Since people are drawn to light and lighting influences the attractiveness of products in a store well-designed lighting systems can stimulate sales by guiding the consumer’s eyes to the key sales points Therefore, this study aimed at Investigating the vocabulary used by users to describe the attractiveness of apparel textiles in given lighting situations and building a connection between lightings and the vocabulary.

This report is for the graduation project- Design a conceptual tool for home lighting design, which is done in the group of Visual Experience at Philips Research Eindhoven. The aim of the project is to understand how home users conduct the home lighting design activities and design a tool based on the user-centered insights. The project comprises of three phases, research, conceptualization and evaluation. In the research phase, literature on light and lighting design was studied to form a theoretical basis for further exploration. The literature research has found that most of the knowledge, principle and design process are developed for professionals and commercial spaces. The necessity of developing a tool for home users is outlined, in which the professional knowledge should be translated in a plain and simple way. A contextual study was performed to gather insights by approaching the targeted users. The contextual study has revealed a four-step framework, Problem-Design-Evaluation-Execution, which demonstrates how home users conduct the lighting design process. Under the framework, insights are classified into contextual facts, problems, wishes and demands. Similar solutions on the market were also analyzed to find a unique positioning for the new tool. It is found that no current solution supports the process of home lighting design very well. The link between different design phases is missing whereas the supports for each phase are not adequate, especially for the phase of design evaluation. The research findings led to the formulation of design focus in concept development, which was “To develop a tool which assists users with their creative activities in the process of home lighting design.” A number of design criteria were also created to guide the conceptualization. - Link the various phases in design process - Cater to individual situations - Preventing the obtrusive experience - Response to user habits - Utilize the characters of online interaction - Novel and creative - Feasibility In the conceptualization phase, 6 concepts were proposed, selected with user-centered design methods. The final concept is a home lighting design APP that provides users with fast and extensive information of a lighting fixture through augmented reality. By scanning the image of a lamp from magazine, shops and websites, people are able to see a great number of design examples, product specifications, customer reviews and the lighting effect in their home. For the light setting designed by the users, the tool also gives diagnosis based on the intended atmosphere. The final evaluation was done with an interactive prototype of the concept. At the end of the report, suggestions are made that in short-term the concept should fix the usability problems as well as improve the key functions based on the user test feedbacks; in long term, some features of the concept can be developed into independent applications with advanced functions. A group of home lighting design tools will be arranged as a tool kit to meet more personalized demands of the targeted users.

The following MSc thesis describes a project done at Senta multisensory concepting, by a student from the Delft University of Technology. It was the student’s assignment to analyse which kind of problems occurs in the communication between Senta and its clients. This knowledge was then used to develop a design proposal for an instrument, with the potential to boost Senta’s business and serve as the core strategic instrument of Sense World: a centre of inspiration, where Senta wants to show the added value of multisensory integration in branding. Through analysing Senta’s activities, as a B2B company, and the needs and mind set of the clients, it came to front that there is a wide variety of clients, while Senta offers a wide range of activities. Since Senta is in a developing industry (Experience marketing), which is not seen as necessary for every client, it makes it more difficult for Senta to clearly explain the value of its activities. Out of the analysis a search area is created, Trust and Certainty, which could be the basis of Senta’s further business strategy and serve as a foundation of the instrument, to be designed. The focus in this search area was on the creation of an instrument that helps Senta to clarify their philosophy and corresponding offer to the client and that supports the creation of trust in order to shape the basis of a long-term B2B relationship. Subsequently interviews with the employees of Senta were conducted. A context mapping session on Trust in B2B gave deeper insight in the factors that influence the start of a trustworthy and long term B2B relationship. Then the design goal was formulted, based on the analysis and the researches. This was the basis for ideation and the creation of a concept. Two test runs with a paper prototype led to the design proposal: a facilitating instrument that supports the communication between Senta and its clients, which boosts Senta’s business by serving as an interactive, co-creative and supporting platform for all sales conversations and that has the potential to serve as a strategic key-building block inside Sense World. Finally the design proposal was tested by an operational prototype that included hardware, software and physical objects. These tests led to suggestions for further research and development.

The master thesis report shows the process and result of the development of a optical cellular oxygen comsumption system for the diagnosis of Sepsis by using the fluoressing property of Protoporphyrin IX in the skin cells.

This thesis focuses on the properties of light fields with respect to object appearance. More specifically, our interest was mainly directed to the structure and spatial variation of light fields in natural scenes. We approached the structure of light fields by means of spherical harmonics which allows one to divide the complicated spherical functions of local light fields in frequency bands and to analyze those separately. In chapter 2 we empirically studied the variation of different frequencies of light field approximations over natural scenes by means of panoramic photography and found that the low order components show systematic and stable spatial variations whereas the high order components vary rapidly and chaotically over most scenes. We showed how the ‘quality of light’ can be expressed by means of a light vector and a squash tensor which provide a formal mathematical but nevertheless very intuitive way of representation bridging the gap between scientific and artistic understandings of light. In chapter 3 we continued the study of the spatial behavior of light fields more thoroughly considering complicated scenes and focusing on the 2nd order structures which we measured by our custom made device. In Chapter 4 we presented a technique with which the 2nd order descriptions can be recovered for an entire three dimensional scene on the basis of a limited number of measurements and presented a visualization of the structure of light fields by means of light tubes. Chapter 5 was devoted to possible topological structures of light fields. In the Appendix we provided additional examples of methods, measurements and visualization of light fields. In chapter 2 we considered simple scenes such as typical ‘street’, ‘wall’ and ‘forest’ scenes and studied the spatial variation of light fields along the main axes of symmetry of the scenes. The measurements were performed photographically by utilizing panoramic imaging. We described the local light fields in terms of spherical harmonics up to the 10th order and analyzed the qualitative properties and physical meanings of the low order components. We took a first step in a further development of Gershun’s classical work on the light field by extending his description beyond the three-dimensional vector field, towards a more complete description of the light field using tensors. We showed that the three first components, namely the monopole (density of light), the dipole (light vector) and the quadrupole, which we named ‘squash tensor’, suffice to describe a wide range of qualitatively different light fields. The empirical analysis allowed us to conclude that the low order components dominate the structure of most light fields. The low order components are rather constant over the scenes whereas high order components are not. Using simple models, we found a strong relation between the low order components and the geometrical layouts of the scenes. In chapter 3 we presented a new technique to capture the global structure of the light field in terms of spherical harmonics functions. Our custom made device Plenopter allows to perform measurements of light fields up to the second order easily, quickly and with a high dynamic range. Using that device we continued the research presented in chapter 2 by considering measurements across the scenes, along the line orthogonal to the main axis of geometrical symmetry. The measurements clearly indicate that in scenes of similar geometry the light fields demonstrate characteristic variations of the light vector and the squash tensor over the scene. This happened despite the fact that the scenes possessed different reflective properties and even were differently oriented with regard to the primary light sources. In chapter 4 we presented a method for measuring, reconstructing and visualizing the global structures of light fields in finite 3D spaces. We used the Plenopter to measure second order light fields at points over a regular grid and interpolate the spherical harmonics coefficients to calculate the light fields at all points of a closed 3D space. We presented a new way of visualizing the light field in 3D space by means of light tubes which indicate the radiant flux transfer and provide intuitive insights into the global structure of the light field through the entire space of the scene. In chapter 5 we considered possible topological structures of light fields. We studied singular points and showed that all generic topological structures that are possible for 2D vector fields may also occur in the case of light fields. We provided models which showed that light tubes can even be closed. The global structure of the light field may be described by means of the singular points.