Exploring the use of Extended Reality for user experience design in product-service systems

This dissertation aims to explore the use of extended reality (XR) as an approach to developing user experience (UX) for product-service systems. It included eight chapters to explore the research question: “How can designers use extended reality to develop the user experience for product-service systems?”<br/><br/>Chapter 1 introduces three...

Design for Sanitation: How does design influence train toilet hygiene?

Humans are travelling, and they may need a toilet on the go. <br/>However, they try to avoid this toilet because they perceive it as being dirty.<br/>This research project improved the Dutch train toilet's hygiene by reducing physical, mental, and social distances between toilet, dirt, and train travellers.

Implications of Social Practice Theory for Sustainable Design

Sustainable design faces challenges at a scale and level of complexity that are ill at ease with design’s mainstream focus on products and users. Recently, social practice theory has been suggested as a promising theoretical framework to inform new ways of designing. In social practice theory, practices – socially shared entities such as...

Anticipating Soft Problems with Consumer Electronic Products: How do soft problems interact with user characteristics and product properties?

Over the last decade consumer electronic product industries have been confronted with an increase in consumer complaints. Interestingly about half of the reasons for product return are based on so called ‘soft problems’, consumer complaints that cannot be traced back to technical problems. Probably this phenomenon results from technological...

SizeChina: A 3D Anthropometric Survey of the Chinese Head

Problem The design of consumer products that are worn on the head relies on the availability of accurate anthropometric information describing the shape and size of the human head and face. Historical anthropometric studies with univariate data have documented the existence of shape differences between Asian and Western head shapes, but the...

Managing Product Usability: How companies deal with usability in the development of electronic consumer products

Problem statement: Even though there is a large amount of methods for user-centred design, the usability of electronic consumer products (e.g., portable music players, washing machines and mobile phones) is under pressure. Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness,...

Fit for washing; Human factors and ergonomic evaluations of washing machines

People do the laundry all over the world. About 500 million washing machines are in use at the moment. To reduce the heavy workload, washing machines were invented about 100 years ago. 50 years of innovations led to a reduction in water, energy and detergent consumption and the interface became easier to use. However, the overall usage of the...