Technology and Meditation:: Exploring the Challenges and Benefits of a Physical Device to Support Meditation Routine

Existing studies of technology supporting meditation habit formation mainly focus on mobile applications which support users via reminders. A potentially more effective source of motivation could be contextual cues provided by meaningful objects in meaningful locations. This longitudinal mixed-methods 8-week study explored the effectiveness of...

Using data collected by wearables to improve the efficiency of the routine use of family cars

The experience of using a car can be defined as a lot of things. How comfortable it is to drive in? Or just sit in? What entertainment features does the car have that can keep all passengers entertained for a car journey? Or even for the more extreme motor heads, how does the engine sound when going through a tunnel? All of these factors shape...

Improving the daily ICU experience from a critically ill patient's perspective

The intensive care unit (ICU) is a dehumanizing technical environment causing complications that are all captured in the term post-intensive-care syndrome (PICS). The patient’s well-being could be improved by moving away from this hostile environment toward more patient-centred care. Therefore this report explores how to improve the daily ICU...

Daily family routines after Corona times

The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the daily routines of families in the Netherlands. From March 2020, strict measures were taken by the government to prevent the spread of the virus; The Dutch population was under quarantine. This caused many changes in the everyday life of families. Using an exploratory process with six families,...

Exploring the Trophic Spectrum: Placing Mixoplankton Into Marine Protist Communities of the Southern North Sea

While traditional microplankton community assessments focus primarily on phytoplankton and protozooplankton, the last decade has witnessed a growing recognition of photo-phago mixotrophy (performed by mixoplankton) as an important nutritional route among plankton. However, the trophic classification of plankton and subsequent analysis of the...

A routine design strategy to change organisational processes in the front end of radical innovation

For technology firms like Barco, radical innovation a way to escape intense competition, but also crucial for long-term survival as they provide the foundations on which future generations of products are created (McDermott & O’Connor, 2002; Sandberg & Aarikk-Stenroos, 2014). However, a required mature radical innovation capability in...

Redesigning Routines: A visual thinking service for Ink Strategy to activate organisational change

Organisations need to go through continuous change in order to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. This change is often expressed in a vision which should engage and involve all stakeholders. However, implementing change successfully turns out to be a challenge since two in three change processes stall. Ink Strategy is a visual...

Engaging employees with their organisation's vision: Using visual storytelling through sketching

This paper explores the use of visual storytelling, for instance sketching, in organisational strategy practices. It contributes to an understanding of how design education has to change in order to broaden the skillset of design students, for them to be able to redesign organisations.

Reflection-in-Action When Designing Organizational Processes: Prototyping Workshops for Collective Reflection-in-Action

In this paper on designing organizational processes, we combine insight on reflection-in-action with the role of reflection and experimenting from the organizational routine dynamics literature. Illustrated through a case at a strategy consultancy, we show how a prototyped workshop can elicit reflection-in- action when designing organizational...

The Visual Storytelling Toolkit: A Way to Engage Employees with their Organization’s Vision

The need for companies to innovate continuously has never been greater, due to the complex and dynamic conditions in which they compete today (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Tellis et. al., 2009). The ones who need to innovate, are the employees of an organization. However, to properly innovate, the employees need to understand and be engaged...

Maya: Smoothen the transition of ‘being awake’ into ‘falling asleep’ aided by an environment, for people who suffer from sleep deprivation

According to the literature, sleep deprivation is becoming more common among women between the age of 35-54. These women are easily affected by stress due to their peculiar hormonal, familial and social conditions. Their lifestyle rhythm is shifting towards a 24/7 time-schedule where there is a massive presence of technologies and stressful...

A Human-like steering model: Based on sensorimotor control theories

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a Human-like steering model which can capture steering behaviour, including intra-driver variability, in both routine and emergency scenarios. The model is based on the assumption that steering behaviour, in both scenarios, is governed by the same principles as performing point-to-point...

A Culture-Inspired Approach to Gaining Insights for Designing Sustainable Practices

This paper explores a design method to generate insights for designing less resource-intensive forms of everyday life. This study takes the assumption that looking at cultural diversity can widen the variety of insights which can be used as a source of inspiration for designing sustainable practices. However, there is a lack of clear-cut...

Stimulating interpersonal connectedness: By designing for specified social profiles

An explorative study into elegant designs for connectedness. Three different social profiles are selected based on characteristic social behaviours, norms and values. For these three profiles three conceptual designs are developed and prototyped.

A Culture-Inspired Approach to Designing Sustainable Practice: A study of sustainable bathing practice for the Living Lab project

Introduction: This study explores a method to designing less resource-intensive forms of everyday life. The method is geared toward the early phase of product development, which is the generation of insights and design ideas. Looking at daily behavior, one can observe clear differences between different cultures. From this observation, the study...

Technical concept for datamanagement systems of flow solvers using BOLA as an example

In the development of mathematical simulation methods for engineering processes, it is essential to validate the mathematical models. Its results must be compared with results from other calculation methods or measurements. This is especially true in computational fluid dynamics (CFD). It is essential that an engineer developing mathematical...

Voorontwerp methodenbestandssysteem - Preliminary design method base system

The informatics policy at NLR is focussed on providing an infrastructure for the development of information systems. A new component in the infrastructure is the method base system, designed to support the management and use of algorithm implemented in programs. The preliminary design analyses the functions of the method base system and...