This project aims at designing a gait test station for children. The gait test station tests children’s walking in Child Brain Lab at Sophia Children’s hospital. The children in this project are at the age of 4-10 with different capacities.
There are two scopes in this project, the service scope of the gait test and the experience scope of children. The service scope is to define the current procedure of the gait test. The procedure includes the gait test device, the gait test process, and the test conductor’s working experience. A service blueprint specifies the entire procedure. Another research with physical therapists, child experts, and parents by questionnaire is conducted in the service scope. With those experts’ experiences, I understand children’s related capacities to follow and finish a gait test; some design opportunities also are found. Regarding the scope of children’s experience, as the gait test station has not been set up at the hospital, the research with children is conducted at home, based on the defined service blueprint. In the Covid-19 situation, the children are researched remotely or at the family home with permission. With the research results, children’s current situations are defined and depicted in the experience maps. The current situations are four different typical situations at the gait test station. After the series of research activities, children’s current problems at the gait test station are defined. I formulate my design goal as Design an experience journey for children’s (aged 4-10) gait test to induce their natural walking, make them motivated and fun, or learn about the walking. A shortlist of design requirements is also concluded in the service scope. Before the design phase, there is a project phase of design sprints. I test and iterate different interventions in this phase for several rounds. With the intervention iterations, I can emphasize more on children to better design for them. With the iteration results, the design patterns are concluded on children’s experience maps. A list of design elements is also concluded from the iteration interventions. In the design phase, concepts have been generated with the combination of all the design patterns. As these are the combined concepts, I first evaluate if the concept includes all the design elements in different design patterns. The concepts are also evaluated with the hospital in the service scope. With these two evaluations, one concept has been selected. This concept contains three different tasks for different types of children. The three tasks are exploring walking knowledge, imitating animal walking, and sending animals to the jungle. Children can have one task during the gait test to achieve the envisioned experience. In the final concept, the technology tool is changed from the previous concept to enhance the walking experience. With the final concept, a new service blueprint and a technology roadmap are made as final deliverables. Considering a long-term implementation, I also implemented the concept into the interactive videos for short term use. The interactive videos can directly work at the gait test station, also as a final deliverable.

Being mindful in the evening is overlooked for sleep-deprived parents with young children, especially with tv's and smartphones grabbing their attention. This graduation project explored in the context of personal energy care to unlock evenings for parents and found out that mindful and secular rituals can energize them. The core elements of a ritual consisting of a focus, mood, and space, led to analyzing what the focus and intention behind the rituals were. Seeking relief, restoring balance, seeking control, and nurturing relationships are four secular ritual intentions/focus in the evenings to re-energize tired parents in the evening.
These findings result in the mobile application: Tada. A gentle and guiltfree tool that suggests personal rituals with the four ritual intentions to energize parents in the evening. The direct way of choosing rituals creates moments of frictions that make you reflect what your current energy level is in the evening. It motivates you to try out new rituals you have not tried before. Tada does not make choices for you, but it only supports your choices. In this way, Tada makes you slow down and mindful to recharge you for the next day.

Effective and appropriate care for people in their last stage of life has become a priority in nowadays health care delivery. Everyone has a different perspective on what a ‘’good death’’ would be, but many patients consider a sense of completion important for a good death, attaching value to maintaining their dignity, and to the affirmation of their whole person. Enabling people to make one last wish come true during their final stage in life therefore heavily contributes to their quality of dying. This thesis focussed on optimizing the wish ride experience facilitated by WensAmbulance Brabant, whose aim is to grant the last wish of terminally ill patients (and their loved ones) to visit a special place.

In order to establish an understanding of the complex context of the different stakeholders, literature- and field researches were executed simultaneously. These respectively provided insights regarding aspects to take into account when designing for End of Life, and problems currently occurring during the wish event. This allowed the creation of a comprehensive example of a wish ride and the establishment of a Patient Journey Map. The journey map revealed multiple aspects that could be improved regarding the wish journey. The aim of the design project then became to provide terminally ill patients with a more comfortable and re-assuring experience, without compromising patient- and volunteer safety, in order to increase the likelihood of them meeting their set wish goals.

The concept which was created, the Patient Wrap, decreases the patient’s anxiety prior to engaging in the wish ride and when the first goodbyes are being said, is envisioned to improve the patient’s ability to rest or even sleep during the wish ride, and provides an accessible solution for WensAmbulance Brabant to ensure patient- and volunteer safety.

To whom it may concern, I hope this thesis will have the ability to inspire you.