The intensive care is a complex environment where nurses have to deal with more than 500 tasks a day, an administrative burden and an information overspill coming from a multitude of IT systems and colleagues. On top of that, a high rate of alarms is false and messages are not always relevant. These stressors have a large impact on patient safety and work satisfaction. In literature, multiple solutions are proposed to improve this situation. However, these research outcomes are not consistently implemented in the field, the solutions found are not generally accepted due to current hospital cultures and the usability of implemented solutions is often insufficient. This project started with the assignment to design a dashboard for ICU nurses that would improve patient safety and work satisfaction. To reach that goal, a contextual research, based on contextmapping, was done, in which seven ICU nurses were interviewed about their workflow and information management. There, it came forward that improving effectiveness and efficiency, could improve work satisfaction and patient safety. To achieve this, collaboration and the feeling of having control of the situation had to be improved. This led to the design goal “Design a dashboard that increases the feeling of control and collaboration by showing timely and relevant information.” To come to a design that fits the ICU environment, the appearance and interaction style was based on the general characteristics of an ICU nurse. The content of the dashboard was based on a co-creation session with ICU nurses, which also provided structure to the interface. To provide alert fatigue to occur, an alert philosophy was formulated that gives guidance to prioritizing the alerts and to visualizing the types of notifications. This design was tested with six ICU nurses, with the aim to get insight in their opinions about the system and to formulate recommendations for further development. The results of this test show, that the nurses think this system is intuitive, easy to learn and has future potential to improve information provision and patient safety. However, it has to further developed to conclude this with more certainty. For example, the interface of the dashboard has to be evaluated when it is used next to the current registration software, so it can be concluded whether the current design does justice to the dashboard’s main functionalities. Next to that, it is recommended to look into supporting communication in multidisciplinary teams by means of this ICU Dashboard. It could be concluded that this project has provided a good foundation to reach the goal of New Compliance. It provided insight in the ICU context and proposed a design, which seems to be able to support the ICU nurses’ workflow. Not only is it a tool that helps nurses to locate specific information more quickly, it also gives insight in the activities of team members so that collaboration can run more smoothly. In short, the ICU Dashboard is a good start to improve patient safety and work satisfaction.

Every year 550 children are diagnosed with a cancer in the Netherlands. Currently a new hospital is being built in Utrecht, the Prinses Maxima Centrum for child Oncology, this hospital will focus solely on paediatric oncology. The families that deal with child cancer have to go to the hospital frequently and spend long days there. These days are filled with different appointments and treatments so there is a lot of waiting involved. These waiting times can make the parents feel stressed and the children feel anxious, this results in an elongated waiting experience. In order to decrease the stress and anxiety the parents and children experience a system was created that provides the families with information and distraction. This system consists of an app for the parents and a basic wearable on a bracelet for the children. Furthermore, the system makes use of portals and patches which create an interactive environment. This system makes it possible for the families to receive notifications about waiting times and can be used to play a game, Parent and child can track each other and send messages to each other. The system gives the parents a sense of control and gives the children a sense of freedom and provides them both with a form of distraction.

COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) is a lung disease that causes damage in the patients lung and results in energy and breathing problems. COPD patients often experience a decrease in their energy level. This decrease means they have to adjust their routine and habits and that can be a big challenge. In this graduation project the needs and challenges of COPD patients in regard to energy management are explored. The insights in the needs and challenges leads to a set of criteria. This set of criteria can be used to develop and evaluate e-health solutions that support COPD patients in energy management. Needs COPD patients have two general needs in regard to self-management: autonomy and security. They want to feel secure about their abilities and feel in control of their life. Challenges In order to adjust their routine and feel secure & autonomous the patients meets some challenges. Three groups, with a total of nine of challenges are defined based on interviews with patients. The three groups of challenges are: Keep focus on energy level and act if needed, Find new applicable routine, Put yourself in first place. Needs for support All the challenges of COPD patients lead to specific needs and needs for support. The needs for support are translated into criteria for e-health solution that help COPD patients with energy management. Criteria The result is a list of in total twenty validated criteria. The criteria can be used to evaluate concepts and when translated in a “how to.. “ question as guidens during ideation.

This thesis presents an approach for 1) analyzing Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) for sub-sea robotic Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) 2) structurally redesigning its interface modules and 3) evaluating the resulting designs. The thesis exemplifies this process by redesigning the interface modules that pertain to the diagnosing of hardware failures of the propulsion systems of rock dumping ROVs. The redesign focused on providing the user with more situational awareness.

Nowadays, social interaction is often mediated by technology, which makes it possible for people to interact with each other when they are separated. However, most of these technologies target the interaction between 'weak ties' and they cannot support the naturalness and richness offered through face-to-face interaction. Recently, a new type of mediated social interaction technology, social VR, is opening new possibilities. Social VR technology allows users who are separated to interact with virtual representations of other people in shared virtual environments. These types of social VR technologies are believed to have the potential to create social interactions that are similar to face-to-face interaction. Efforts are needed to understand how people experience interacting with others in social VR. What are the advantages of social VR that make it different from other social medias, and how can these be used to improve mediated social interaction. Regarding this knowledge gap, the problem defined in this project is to understand the impact of social VR on user experience during social interaction. This project is divided into six parts: exploring a UX framework for social VR, understanding the photo sharing context, designing an evaluation methodology, evaluating user experience in an experiment, providing design recommendations and reflecting on the project. In PART 1, the user experience framework of social VR is explored. Several relevant frameworks are selected and compared. These frameworks help us to create a common ground understanding of user experience in social VR. In PART 2, user experience is explored in a specific scenario - photo sharing between two friends. Context mapping is used to understand the important dimensions of user experience. Three dimensions of experience are identified: Quality of interaction, Social meaning and Presence/immersion. In PART3, an evaluation methodology is developed according to the research findings in PART 2. This methodology consists of a quantitative part and a qualitative part. For the quantitative part, a questionnaire is developed, based on a set of questions selected from related work. For the qualitative part, a semi-structured interview is designed. In PART 4, the evaluation methodology from PART 3 is used in a user experience experiment. We compare the experience of photo sharing in Social VR with a Face-to-face situation and a Skype situation. The experiment results show that social VR provide good experience of social meaning as well as presence and immersion. But the quality of interaction needs to be improved. In PART 5, design recommendations for social VR are proposed, based on the evaluation results from the experiment in PART 4. In PART 6, reflections on the whole project are provided. Suggestions for future research are given.

The goal of the assignment was to: Design a high-quality User Experience and User Interface for the Schluss personal data vault. This user experience should be hands-on, transparent, intuitive and clear. The user interface should feel extremely private, secure and trusted, whilst containing all the data that Schluss users need or want to track. In order to depict the user experience, a more practical deliverable is needed:  A functional user interface prototype for the Schluss data vault. What has been done?  The design process consisted of three stages:  1. Validate Schluss’ value propositions.  2. Design the user interface.  3. Evaluate and redesign the user interface.  1. Validate value propositions Before starting with the design, a value proposition validation has been done, for which four value propositions are distilled from information about Schluss, context and comparable services. These were the propositions:   Schluss enables its users to... ... have a better ensured/protected privacy.  ... share data easily.  ... manage consent easily.  ... have all data correct for all data users easily.  These values have all been validated positively with a survey, where the participants were first shown the different possibilities with Schluss. 2. Design the user interface After validating that users see value in Schluss’ propositions, it was time to design a corresponding user interface. For the design Schluss has been separated into three core functionalities: 1. Logging in with Schluss at third party data users 2. Updating your information in the Schluss vault.  3. Managing consent in a Schluss dashboard and receiving notifications about consent.  Designs and functional prototypes are made for every functionality in the form of a Mobile Application and a Desktop Dashboard 3. Evaluate and redesign part of the user interface.  The first functionality is evaluated. I think this is the most important part, because Schluss has yet to be introduced to consumers and this is the functionality that consumers see first. Most onboarding will happen through this functionality. This is the reason that this functionality - in this stage of Schluss - needed most attention.

The possibilities of applying game elements for positive behavior change in non-game contexts (i.e. gamification) seem limitless, ranging from politics to treatment of mental illness. However, the number of applied gamification studies is still limited. Our research (part of CRISP G-Motiv) aimed to contribute to the knowledge about designing and applying game elements for teamwork. First, we defined four basic design components that constitute a ‘gameful’ experience (i.e. feeling as if playing a game): goals, rules, objects, and freedom. Next, we explored the application of game elements in two lab- and two field experiments. In the lab, we developed a multiplayer computer game to examine the effect of different rules on interdependent behavior and we developed a physical game with coins to investigate the effect of different rule-sets on output in group-brainstorm meetings. In the field, we implemented and investigated the effect of gamified interventions to improve the cohesion within the operating teams of a strip-galvanizing factory and at a consultancy firm, we developed and tested a game with coins to change the attitude of participants of ‘red team’ meetings. The results of these studies showed that in teamwork, game elements seem mainly valuable for raising attention and changing goal-driven behaviors and experiences. In order to design and research a gamification that positively influences teamwork it is important to consider: 1) the above-mentioned four basic design components and 2) to what extent they pervade in the emotions, attention, and behavior of team members. @en

In order to provide patients with the highest possible quality of care, healthcare institutions often standardize the way they provide healthcare. Yet, there are also more and more calls for tailored healthcare services that are intended for one specific person and based on characteristics that are unique to that person. This dissertation investigates tailored healthcare services and does so specifically in the orthopaedic context. Orthopaedic patients, in particular patients who have undergone joint replacement surgery of the hip or knee joint, are relatively dissatisfied with the current healthcare service provided to them. Specifically, the communication with total joint replacement patients (including the way in which patients are informed about the surgery, its risks and the treatment plan, but also the emotional support they receive from healthcare providers) often leaves something to be desired. In examining tailored healthcare as a potential solution to dissatisfaction with patient-provider communication, this dissertation focuses on the definition, validation and implementation of so-called patient profiles. Patient profiles represent the common characteristics of a specific subgroup of patients that are unique compared to the overall patient population. The patient profiling approach is derived from the principles of mass customization and assumes that representations of the common and unique preferences, needs, and competences of different groups of patients can be used to design tailored healthcare services. These tailored healthcare services can then be offered to individual patients based on their profile. It is expected that tailored healthcare services will lead to improvements in patient experience. This dissertation examines patient profiles and the effect of the patient profiling approach on patient experience following four questions: (1) what are relevant patient characteristics for patient profiling?, (2) which data driven patient profiles can be distinguished?, (3) which orthopaedic healthcare services are suitable for tailoring?, and (4) what is the effect of tailored healthcare services on patient experience? These questions are approached using the biopsychosocial model. The biopsychosocial model assumes that biomedical factors (such as pain and physical functioning) as well as psychological and social factors (such as coping mechanisms and communication preferences and competences) influence how someone experiences their illness, and therefore, what type of healthcare service would suit them. A combination of research methods including observations, interviews, questionnaires, machine learning, systematic literature reviews and experiments were used to answer the specific research questions...@en

Materials are omnipresent. Recognizing materials helps us with inferring their physical and chemical properties, for instance if they are compressible, slippery, sweet and juicy. Yet in literature, much less attention has been paid to material perception than to object perception. This dissertation presents studies on a method to systematically measure human visual perception of opaque materials and test the influence of lighting and shape on material perception. In our studies, we applied multiple psychophysical methods such as matching, discriminating, and perceptual scaling to test the visual perception of materials for human observers. Beyond just matte and glossy material variations that were commonly tested in material perception literature, we included in total four canonical material modes to account for a wide range of materials, namely diffuse, asperity, forward, and mesofacet scattering for "matte", "velvety", "specular", and "glittery" material modes, respectively. For the lightings, we included three canonical lighting modes within a spherical harmonics and perception based framework, namely "ambient", "focus", and "brilliance" lighting. Based on the spherical harmonics analysis of the global lighting environment, we were able to quantify the “diffuseness” and “brilliance” of the light maps by using Xia’s diffuseness metric and a novel brilliance metric we proposed. Combining the four material modes and three lighting modes, we presented a canonical set that in combination with optical mixing supports a painterly approach in which key image features could be varied directly. With this method we were able to test and predict light-material interactions using both photographs of the real objects and computer rendered stimuli. We first introduced a new type of non-spherical appearance probe, implementing the painterly approach. Moreover, we developed an interactive interface that integrated the probe for an asymmetric matching task, where observers adjusted sliders to vary each material mode in the probe. The interface was found to be intuitive for inexperienced users and allowed purely visual quantitative measurements. Performances were generally well above chance and robust across experiments and observers, validating the approach. We further developed the material probe and expanded it to allow optical mixing of canonical lighting modes. In a light matching experiment and a 4-category discrimination experiment we found asymmetric perceptual confounds between judgments of material and lighting. Specifically, observers were found to be less sensitive to light changes than to material changes. Moreover, using this canonical approach, we were able to test and predict light-material interactions in two perceptual scaling experiments. To this aim a novel spherical harmonics based metric was introduced for quantifying the "brilliance". Lastly, we compared results from our probing method and results from other psychophysical experimental methods, namely perceptual scaling and discrimination, in which semantic information (for material attributes) was involved. Robust effects of light, shape, and light map orientation were found, in a material dependent way. To conclude, our research mainly contributed to 1) the development of a novel probing method that mixes image features of the proximal stimulus in a fluent manner instead of varying the distal physical properties of the stimuli, plus a validation that it works and that it allows quantitative measurements of material perception and material-lighting interactions; 2) understanding of visual perception of opaque materials and material-light-interactions in a wide ecological variety; 3) a validated model for predicting the material dependent lighting effects for matte, specular, velvet and glittery materials; and 4) the interpretations of the material perception results in a manner relating to shape and light. Our findings can be further applied to many subjects, such as industrial design, education, e-commerce, computer graphics, and future psychophysical studies. @en

With the growth of global population, the big cities become increasingly crowded. It is not rare to see large crowds in public transportations and events with masses of visitors, such as music festivals and football matches. The question “How to deal with crowds” is receiving attention, both from academia and practical crowd management. This thesis aims at contributing to a better understanding of crowds from the perspective of individual crowd members’ experiences, including their well- being, emotional experiences and action tendencies. In addition, we want to understand the emotional contagion effect between groups in crowds. To achieve this, we chose to go into the crowds, get in touch with the crowd members, and try to find out what factors sustain their well-being, how their emotional experiences can be measured in a playful and non-intrusive manner, what they tend to do when they have certain emotions, and how the grouping behavior reflects their experiences.@en