The goal of this thesis was to design a way for Ford to provide users more value during long-distance Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) trips. Users tend to buy their vehicle for the 95th percentile of use-cases. In the Netherlands, the average amount of km driven per day is 32 km, which is easily covered by any BEV currently on the market, without the need for charging during these trips. This means long-distance trips are the 95th percentile of use. For mass-market BEV adoption, the Early Majority needs to be attracted. Within the Early Majority consumer segment, there are certain target groups that are most likely to adopt BEV driving. These are the potential BEV drivers and were identified through literature research. However, these target groups are not yet investing in BEVs due to the following adoption barriers that play a role in long-distance BEV trips: charging time, charging infrastructure and range. Through qualitative research such as interviews, observations and netnography, the reasons behind these adoption barriers were researched. A solution has been created that mitigates these adoption barriers. The solution is a digital, data-driven, in-vehicle service system. The technical working principles of the service were designed with a new method that has been created along with the concept development, called Data Journey Mapping. This Data Journey Map shows how the different components within the data ecosystem communicate and what data they transmit. Together with Ford engineers, the working principles of the service system have been validated. The solution has been validated with potential BEV drivers and current BEV drivers. Both groups stated the solution has significant added value. Potential BEV drivers stated that this solution would pull them toward investing in BEVs. Current BEV drivers stated that this solution could be decisive when comparing BEVs. By launching this service system, adoption barriers of Potential BEV drivers are mitigated. This could result in an acceleration of BEV adoption in the Early Majority consumer segment, which is needed for the mass-market adoption of BEVs.

The circular economy is an economic system that aims to replace the linear economy and the accompanying take-make-dispose mindset. It is an economic system that decouples economic growth from finite resource consumption. The Sustainable Finance Lab (SFL) identified two requirements for a high state of circularity. 1) Products are serviced instead of sold and 2) the entire life-cycle of products must be considered. As a solution, the SFL came up with the idea of collective servitization (CS). It meets the previous requirements by aligning the incentives of all the value chain participants involved in a product-service system by compensating each of them as long as the product is in working condition. However, the SFL predicted four implementation barriers related to CS. The SFL expects 1) a need to share innovation costs, 2) high administration costs, 3) increasingly complex devision of ownership, and 4) a need to directly handle micro-transactions. To help overcome CS challenges, the SFL conceptualized the Circular Service (CiSe) platform. It is an administration tool for collectively serviced pay-per-access and pay-per-use products. It aims to use the novel technologies blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts to overcome these challenges. 1) The CiSe platform reduces transaction costs by automatically handling product use and access payments without an intermediary. 2) The CiSe platform stores the transactions of use and access in a distributed database that is publicly accessible. By viewing all the payments and costs, the SFL expects that companies can better decide on responsibilities. At last, 3) micro-transactions are made possible with the Micro-Euro cryptocurrency. From an Industrial Ecology (IE) perspective, the use of blockchain technology is fascinating. IE is a scientific discipline that takes a systemic approach to sustainability problems. Engineering, environmental, and social perspectives are crucial for the successful and sustainable implementation of new technologies. Blockchain technology has a wide range of technical applications. The question is if these technologies are effective in overcoming CS. In order to get initial insights into the effectiveness of blockchain technology in implementing collective servitization, this master thesis focuses on the company Bundles and their combined pay-per-access and pay-per-use washing machines. The following research question will be answered: “How effective could the Circular Service platform implement collectively serviced Bundles washing machines?” To address this question this thesis used a threefold structure. It consisted of a literature study that identified 51 blockchain designs in the literature and multiple papers oriented on both blockchain and the circular economy and blockchain and product-service systems. These provided insights into the problems and need for CS, insights into the solutions of the CiSe platform and their technical viability, as well as insights into additional challenges for the CiSe platform. Moreover, a business analysis identified 33 blockchain companies. These provided more insights into the technical viability of the CiSe platform. Finally, a case study explored collectively serviced Bundles washing machines on the CiSe platform. The primary stakeholder Miele and Vonk en Co were included in the CS business model. The case study helped identify additional opportunties and challenges of CS and the CiSe platform. The results of this study are not straightforward and mainly raise questions for additional research. This is largely because of the conceptual nature of CS and the CiSe platform, the majority of researched papers being conceptual, the majority of researched companies being in the experimental phase, and the explorative nature of the case study. There are some promising results and some challenges related to the effectiveness of the CiSe paltform. There is some economic potential by including Bundles, Miele, and Vonk en Co in a collectively serviced business model. This is for three reasons. Firstly, the transactional relationship and the cost for added value dissapear between each of the members in the collective servitization business model. Secondly, the CiSe platform further reduces the administration cost related to distributing revenue. Finally, by spreading the initial investments amongst multiple stakeholders the barrier for entry for Miele and Vonk en Co can become lower. However, It is improbable that a collectively serviced Bundles washing machine with Miele and Vonk en Co will happen. It is for four reasons. Firstly, Bundles will lose their role as risk-taker. Moreover, Bundles does not provide any additional value. Furthermore, Miele has the resources available to do the washing machine service themselves. Finally, Miele and Vonk en Co currently have a profitable collaboration with Bundles without long-term risks. Additional challenges are related to the use of blockchain technology. First of all, there is a problem with the flexibility of blockchain systems. Once live, blockchain systems and their smart contracts can not be altered. It can become problematic with a collectively serviced washing machine that is intended to be long-term. Moreover, the vulnerability of the system moves to the sensors. Due to the autonomous and automatic nature of the CiSe platform, a faulty or hacked sensor can wrongfully activate transactions. Furthermore, blockchain systems can generally only handle low transaction volumes. The CiSe platform’s scale is dependent on the number of products and the types of products that are going to be serviced. The main limitation of this study is in its conceptual and explorative nature. It is due to four reasons. Firstly, there is no support of the definition of CS in literature. Secondly, no direct comparison could be found of the CiSe platform concept either. Moreover, the results from the two systemic literature reviews were mainly conceptual papers. Finally, the case study is explorative. All in all, this means that these results are not final. They are indicative and more research is necessary to determine the effectiveness of the CiSe platform in overcoming CS barriers. To move the development of the CiSe platform forward, it is essential that the need for and problems of CS are researched more thoroughly. The case study revealed that CS is not for every value chain. If there is no need for CS, then the CiSe platform is irrelevant. If the CiSe platform does not address the right barriers of CS, the same fate awaits. It is advised to prioritize research into CS before developing the CiSe platform further.

Using the energy system is part of our daily routine but the complexity of power systems and its understanding have both been confined to the experts in the field. Furthermore, the advent of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Internet of Things (IoT), power system integration is becoming even more complex for the system planners and operators. Various clean energy technologies like solar power, massive offshore wind, Electric vehicle as well as the increasing dependency of the Prosumers to move towards a future decentralized and transactive energy market. There is hence a need to educate the general public about the important problems encountered during the energy transition as well as to provide a demystifying version of the existing power system to exhibit its complexity and its benefits of intelligent multi-energy systems. Energy System Integration Development (ESID) kit could solve this issue. This project concerns the design and development of a Middleware software system based IOT application, which runs on Raspberry PIs (RasPi), contribute to the layered bottom-top approach of the Illuminator - Energy System Integration Development Tool Kit and has the main goal to help in assisting the application layer to simulate energy system integration scenarios and will be prototyping simple proofs-of-concept for validation purpose. It’s realized as part of the master thesis curriculum of the author. On the completion of this project, there will be a generic middleware system that can be used by the end users/application layer to demonstrate energy system integration scenarios, which is scalable, reconfigurable, inter portable. Illuminator - Energy System Integration Development Tool Kit aimed to become an open-source platform depicting energy integration problems, an education tool kit, and research to prototype control algorithms for counteracting the energy transition challenges. The general public and system integrators would benefit as well as the stakeholders as it can help them analyze the energy integration challenges in a user-centric fashion.vii

The relevance of circular economy, in these days where the environmental impact and toll of humans’ activities is undeniable, grows steadily. Circular economy, founded on three basic principles, advocates for all materials to be kept in use for as long as possible. This takes a concrete shape, for example, in the importance of recycling materials. However, recycling materials can be a trickier business than one might think. Nowadays materials are so complex and specialized, that recycling them properly requires precise knowledge of their composition and content. In a way, then, it can be argued that the exchange of this knowledge, from material manufacturers to recyclers, is a core enabler of circular economy. As information exchanges happen mostly digital, data becomes then the key asset in this depicted scenario. Data exchanges are as well not an easy feat. Looking only at a business to business market, several obstacles refrain companies from sharing data more liberally. For once, openly sharing data exposes companies to threats from competitors and losses in their negotiating power. Circularise, the start-up this project has been developed for, has come up with a technical solution for a data exchange system that relies on a distributed ledger. Thanks to their technological protocol, circularise can enable secure collaboration between material manufacturers and the rest of the supply chain, all the way to recyclers. Despite the technological feasibility of the protocol, Circularise is struggling with finding clients. Currently the start-up has developed a value proposition that caters mainly towards material manufacturers and, as a consequence, material manufacturers are the only paying customer segment for them. In order for the protocol to have an effective impact and benefit on circular economy activities, expanding the client range is necessary for Circularise. This can be accomplished by expanding the start-up’s business model portfolio, so to speak. This means running two different business models at the same time, one being the existing one, catering to material manufacturers, and another one ensuring that a new customer segment receives an offer worth paying for. This is the opportunity this project is built around. In the course of this graduation project a digital platform has being design and is explained in this report, together with a new business model for Circularise to cater to automotive OEMs with a tailored offer.

This Master’s thesis looks at the development of a Service Design solution for a Supportive Health System in the field of nutrition. The project is scoped within Clear, a young organisation using Continuous Glucose Monitoring technology (CGM) to support better nutritional habits. This thesis applies a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis to answer the following questions: (1) How shall responsible parties generate a Preventive Health behaviour in the in- dividual? (2) How shall design parties integrate data in the design of Supportive Health Systems? And (3) How shall organisations deliver services that integrate Supportive Health Systems to facilitate Preventive Health Behaviour? The end goal of the final service solution presented in this thesis is to offer a proof of concept for a viable proposition in the emerging field of Personalised Nutrition. It is meant to be a guide for implementation to the collaborating organisation, and an actionable way to provide inspiration for key stakeholders of the field.

User-centric design practice rely on journey maps and personas as a way to communicate user needs to the design team (Lanius et al., 2021). However, journey maps in practice have been found to lack a dimension that could inform designers about intrinsic cognitive needs of the user. This research project aims to address this gap by exploring ways to make human cognitive data designer-friendly. Through multi-study approach, including the Research through Design (RtD) (Godin & Zahedi, 2014) method, the study investigates dimensions of the relationship between designers and cognitive user data to make it easy-to-approach in future. Following the context exploration studies, designers' perspectives and practices regarding cognitive user data are delved into. Findings from exploratory interviews reveal varied interpretations of cognitive data, challenges in accessing and visualizing data, and a keen interest in its potential benefits for design processes. Designers identify time constraints as a major hurdle but express enthusiasm for the posterity and revisiting advantages of effective cognitive data visualization. The RtD method helps in investigating a way of presenting holistic data to designer that merges intrinsic and extrinsic factors of the user. Designers favor clarity, interactive exploration, and reliability in data presentation. The study provides a comprehensive list of neurophysiological measures that can aid designers in decision-making. Additionally, insights into designers' thinking styles, distinguishing between big-picture and detail-oriented thinkers, add a nuanced layer to understanding their affinity with cognitive data. The report acknowledges limitations, including biases in the Research-through-Design method, reliance on self-reported data, and the controlled environment of prototype evaluations. Future research is encouraged to address these limitations and enhance the ecological validity of findings. In conclusion, this research offers valuable insights into integrating cognitive user data within designer practices and establishes a way of integrating observational data with user journey maps. The findings provide a foundation for developing tools and approaches that align with designers' preferences, ultimately enriching the design process through meaningful integration of cognitive insights.

From the internet to the sensors in wearable devices, people leave their digital traces behind both online and offline. Data is getting ubiquitous and cheap. Some new fields, like business intelligence, are recognized and emerging. As a trustworthy and precise material, data is also a valuable source for designers. It provides accurate and detailed data on users’ behaviors and brings some new perspectives on users’ needs in the design process. Meanwhile, big data is a new field for most designers. Most designers, especially novice designers, often lack big data related knowledge and skills. When they face big data, they usually feel clueless and anxious. It is difficult for them to deal with big data well. This thesis's foundational objective is to support designers in applying big data in the design process effectively and confidently. It is about keeping exploring the possibilities of design and making sure that design stays at the cutting edge of the big data era. This project focused explicitly on novice designers who are inexperienced with projects involving big data. To provide this appropriate support, the key pain point was targeted from designers’ big data related project experiences, which is the feeling of being overwhelmed by big data when designers face it. In the end, I designed the data management platform to help designers relieve this feeling and have a better performance at big data involved projects. This thesis will introduce the project process. First, I did the literature review to learn about big data, how the relationship between big data and design is, and how the relationship between big data and design process is. Afterward, Context Mapping was conducted to learn about the designers’ experiences in applying big data in the design process. With the literature review and Context Mapping, I understood the project from both a theoretical and design practice perspectives. Then, I held a session to explore the problem space. The session was organized with designers to learn about their difficulties when dealing with big data. After the session, I realized that the biggest challenge for designers is being overwhelmed by data when translating big data into insights. It results from the massive big data content and cluelessness when designers face big data. It affects designers’ efficiency and confidence in the design process. To explore the solution space of the challenge, I held a co-creation session with novice designers. In the end, Data Management Platform was proposed. The concept's goals are to relieve designers from data overwhelmingness and assist designers in dealing with big data. The Data Management Platform can provide designers an overview of the project and prevent designers from feeling lost in the big data content. By guiding designers to apply big data in an appropriate process and assisting designers with some tools to collaborate with different people, designers can confidently and effectively make full use of big data. In the end, the concept was evaluated.

Millennials, a generation of individuals born between 1981 and 1996 that are shaping the current working class. One trait that makes millennials stand out from other generations is that their generation is the most stressed out. It is estimated that 20% of employed millennials in the Netherlands are suffering from symptoms due to stress. These symptoms include less life satisfaction, tiredness, and, most importantly, insomnia. The fact that stress causes insomnia makes stress a relevant problem for Somnox, as its mission is to help 100 million people sleep better by 2030. Somnox is a Dutch scale-up that focuses on developing companion-like innovations that improve human wellbeing through the power of breathing. The fast-growing company is on the look-out for new ideas to expand its product portfolio. One of these ideas is a portable breathing regulation device. The assignment’s initial brief was to turn this rough idea of a portable breathing device into an advanced concept design. I approached this by adopting an iterative approach in which I quickly ideated, built prototypes, and validated these with users. This approach has led to the final concept: the Somnox Mini. The Somnox Mini is a portable breathing regulation device that simulates breathing motion using robotics. By following the device’s breathing frequency, the device guides the user in slow breathing - which is a breathing exercise in which the breathing frequency is reduced to 6 breaths per minute. Research shows that breathing at this particular frequency induces a biological phenomenon called respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), which synchronizes the heart rate variability (HRV) and breathing frequency. This stimulates the body’s relaxation response. Long-term practice of slow breathing has been proven to balance overactive stress response and improve insomnia symptoms.

Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer disease worldwide with highly fatal. It has accounted for 10% of the global cancer incidence (Bray et al., 2018). In the Netherlands, patients who have undergone treatment and surgery for colorectal cancer typically enter a five-year follow-up phase. During this period, patients often experience long-term health issues. Colorectal cancer not only has physical implications for patients but also significantly affects various aspects of their daily lives, including their social networks and mental health (Arndt et al., 2006). On the other hand, remote patient monitoring (RPM) can enhance efficiency and improve patient care delivery. However, there has been a noticeable lack of research and design focusing on the inclusion of social and mental health monitoring within these systems. According to the World Health Organization, health should include “Physical, Social and Mental” aspects. Therefore it’s important to focus on how to develop remote patient monitoring in these aspects. The project first used a patient community journey map (Jung, 2023) to summarize the experiences of colorectal cancer patients from a large number of posts on an online communication platform and invited medical experts from the Netherlands to a co-creation session to validate the map and explore research directions. The final research question was defined as: How to develop a remote patient monitoring system for patients’ social and daily activity and related emotion when they are away from the hospital? The research question was followed by user research. Patients received diary studies, including finishing a probe based on their activities. Upon completion of the diary studies by the patients, there is a follow-up interview to obtain patients' feedback and sentiments regarding the probe. Subsequently, the insights from the user research act as input during a collaborative designers’ brainstorm session. Finally, these research findings were exported into the initial guidelines for developing the RPM in social, daily activity and related emotions for colorectal cancer patients. After evaluations, the final guidelines for colorectal cancer patients’ RPM and a toolkit summarizing the "develop" and "deliver" phases were presented. This toolkit allows future researchers to develop RPM in social and daily activity and related emotion for patients in other contexts besides colorectal cancer patients, supporting the remote patient monitoring system’s evolution of physical, social and mental health.

The recently introduced General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) allows universities to use WiFi Access data for their research activities. The richness, ubiquity, and scalability of WiFi tracking make it an extremely relevant resource for studying the behavior and mobility patterns of groups and social systems. However, it is also a sensitive attribute and can pose serious privacy harms to data subjects, who often are unaware of the collection of this data and its usage. There are some voices in the academia asking for a more ethical approach when processing opportunistic sensor data, one that uses the consent of the data subject as a necessary foundation for enabling the analysis of personal information. In this regard, there are some alternatives proposed in the literature from which the dataBox stands out. This concept, developed by Mortier and colleagues for the smart-household, is repurposed in the Thesis to the context of scientific research. The dataBox can become the data subject’s portal for the future research data platform from TU Delft, currently being developed by several researchers from the University. This interface enables data subjects to support data-driven research by giving their informed consent to the researcher’s data requests. The thesis addresses the question of how to design the user experience of such dataBox transparently and trustworthily, equipping the University population with the control and knowledge needed to share their data in the degree they feel comfortable with. The research conducted demonstrates the adequacy of the dataBox concept to satisfy the data subject’s concerns and expectations about the data collections conducted by researchers from the University. Furthermore, it stresses the need for an onboarding phase previous to the negotiation and follow-up phases proposed by Mortier. The onboarding has been demonstrated necessary to enable data subject’s informed consent when facing participation requests since without it are likely to misinterpret the risks entangled. The UX design of such an onboarding phase is detailed through a list of guidelines, which have been validated over three dimensions: Perceived control, trustworthiness, and transparency. The research also brings clarity over the different perspectives towards sharing data in the University, which differs from the more general classification found in the literature about consumer data privacy. Three novel categories are formulated, based on the results of a Research Through Design process. These categorizations extend the literature about privacy perception in the context of scientific research. This knowledge feeds the design of the proposed UX and is useful to segment the analysis of future features. Additional work is required to detail the UX of the negotiation and follow-up phases since the guidelines presented focus on the onboarding phase.

Intelligent and connected services have become essential in the manufacturing industry. The surge of these services has even started a new phase of industry; industry 4.0. The COALA consortium aims to develop a service to assist operators within this new industry. The COALA consortium is an European Union Programme and aims to develop a Digital Intelligent Assistant (DIA). The DIA supports operators in situations characterised by cognitive load, time pressure, and little or zero tolerance for quality issues with trustworthy AI components. Diversey is one of the consortium’s partners and perceives COALA’s DIA as a viable solution to their stoppage challenge on their production lines in the factory. These stoppages can be caused by various bottlenecks, which are hard to determine due to the production lines’ complexity and processes. Therefore, this thesis explores how to prepare for AI service adoption within the factory of Diversey. However, management from the Diversey factory has attempted to identify the bottlenecks by collecting production information through operator data entries. Unfortunately, the operators did not provide the tool with quality data entries. Therefore, replacing this tool with the DIA most likely not succeed, especially when the new tool utilises AI technology that requires learning data to generate insights. In order to explore this resistance toward new tools within the factory, I used the frame creation method of Dorst. This method excels at finding innovative solutions for problem definitions with previously unsuccessful attempts. The method explores underlying themes within the context to reframe the problem definition and find new solution spaces. The themes are formulated from interviews with management, eight support staff employees across four departments, a team lead, and six operators. Four themes are generated by analysing the values, interactions, and ‘currency’ exchanged between stakeholders. These themes regarding new tools describe the unclear contributions to operators’ work, the lack of acknowledgement regarding operators’ role and expertise towards production improvements. These themes result in a lack of trust between operators and management, which diminish the willingness to adopt new tools. Additionally, management expresses concerns about the themes expertise and consistency, which are essential to the manufacturing industry. In order to address these themes, COALA’s DIA is reframed as a stage for expertise and exploration. Instead of simply requesting data entries, operators are put in the spotlight where they can showcase their knowledge and expertise. Additionally, this stage provides a space for operators to explore production improvements through collaboration with COALA’s DIA. The framing of the problem definition addresses the data collection aspect of COALA’s DIA. However, AI systems change over time as the systems adapt to the data input. Additionally, the thesis did not assess the users’ perception of the current DIA interface. Therefore, I recommend further research into human-AI interaction with regards to the system’s evolution over time and the interface. Lastly, the themes are generated from one production line’s operators who are experiencing the most stoppages. The themes cannot directly be generalised to other production lines as the number of stoppages, or other contextual factors can influence the themes.

Vehicles are becoming more and more connected, and in combination with various services, they generate large amounts of data, which is mainly used in development processes for testing purposes in Ford. However, sensor data has more potentials for product development, and one valuable potential is to contribute to product innovation in the early design stage, which can be seen from existing studies on data-enabled design. However, the large amount and complexity of data make it hard for the Ford Research and innovation (R&A) team to approach data, nevertheless apply data in the design process. In addition, there are no available methods and tools that fit in with Ford’s data availability and workflow to guide them to apply data for product development, which can make the R&A team feel clueless in their practice.  Based on the challenge, I framed the initial research question of this project as: How to facilitate the Ford R&A team to apply user data to enhance creativity in their ideation process? Then, I conducted research, product development, and evaluation to deliver the final design intervention. Afterwards, the concept "A toolbox for creative problem solving with data "was developed and tested. Based on the evaluation of the toolbox, I designed a guidebook containing a three-step method as a guide to applying the toolbox. The second-round evaluation shows that the final design intervention is believed to provide innovative methods and tools for the R&A team to generate insights from data combinations for the problem framing process and cultivate creative thinking during the session. Moreover, the three-step method for combining data fills the method gap for the implementation of data-enabled design in organizational practice. In conclusion, the final design intervention sufficiently fulfils the design goal and contributes to the method study on data-enabled design.

Connecting through Information is a participatory tool for citizens to map their Information Ecosystem. The aim is to foster citizen participation while developing data literacies through design methods. Through the use of Connecting through Information during a participatory session, members of citizen initiatives discuss and reflect on their role in their hyperlocal information ecosystem. Going through the path of expression during the session (current situation, past experiences and possible future, at the end of the session participants have concrete actionable ideas to carry on their goals as an initiative. Connecting through Information is adapted from a framework of information ecosystems for resilience. Through a set of requirements (effective, engaging,and actionable) based on literature on participatory design and design for infrastructuring , the researcher's framework was translated into a citizen tool, and three iterations of the tool evaluated. The final iteration of Connecting through Information was validated in context with citizen initiatives in Delfshaven, Rotterdam.

Leisure is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as: “The time when you are not working or doing other duties.” During this time, people engage in a broad variety of activities. They engage in these activities because they want to and because it makes them happy in some way. Newman et al (2013) researched the underlying psychological pathways by which leisure evokes happiness. They proposed five core psychological mechanisms through which leisure promotes subjective well-being (SWB). These mechanisms are detachment-recovery, autonomy, mastery, meaning and affiliation. Which activity triggers which mechanism, can differ per person and one activity can trigger multiple mechanisms.This project focuses on the mechanism of detachment-recovery. By utilising a user-centred approach, it was found that people were not always satisfied with their leisure time, more specifically with the recovery time they spent on the couch. The dissatisfaction had two main causes. Firstly, they were distracted from the activity they were engaging in. Secondly, they spent longer on the couch then they initially had intended to. To tackle those two causes, a smart pillow was designed.The concept of a smart pillow came to fruition by using a new perspective on smart objects, the perspective of objects with intent (OwI) (Rozendaal, Boon, & Kaptelinin, 2019). Objects with intent are everyday objects that act as collaborative partners in human activity. OwI’s are a type of agent and they take advantage of the meaning of everyday things as a site for intelligence and agency. Rozendaal et al (2019) prototyped the concept of an OwI by using a wizard of Oz style of prototyping (WoZ). In this setup, the researcher acted as the sensors and intelligence of the Object. In this project, I take a step towards the design of a fully autonomous OwI by applying a data-enabled design approach (J. van Kollenburg & S. Bogers, 2019).In this project, I explore how I can apply a data-enabled design approach. I show my approach, the tools I use, the visualisations I have made and the insight I have gained. By doing this I aim to inform fellow industrial design students on how they also can apply the data-enabled design. In this process, one specific visualisation was found to be very useful. This was a 3D representation of the prototype of the pillow in which data gathered by sensors in the prototype were visualised on the 3D representations. This representation was an animation which was matched with video recordings of the usage of the pillow.

With the rise of digital technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sensor technologies, all the products we use every day are increasingly becoming ‘intelligent’. Machines, objects, and tools are slowly evolving into robots, objects-with-intent (Rozendaal et al., 2019), and agents. At the same time, their capabilities are also increasing. These capabilities come from their ability to process large amounts of data. In this digital era, how can designers create user-centric solutions by leveraging the strengths of these digitally-enabled products at an early stage in the design process? This thesis explores this topic in the context of pedestrian mobility. More specifically, outdoor mobility for people with vision impairments. When people with vision impairments travel, they must process an extensive amount of spatial information without relying on their vision. How can an agent partner with these users to make this process less demanding and thus, make it easier for people with vision impairments to travel independently? Combining these two visions, this thesis focuses on uncovering the problem areas, information needs, and desires of PVIs traveling outdoors by leveraging behavioral data. Two main user studies, both involving different types of behavioral data have been explored. Based on the exploratory research, in which physiological data was collected, two behavioral states, ‘following’ and ‘reorienting’, were identified. These two states also reflected the PVI's mental state, moments of ease, and moments of uncertainty. This inspired the initial idea for a user-aware navigation agent, which could announce different types of data depending on whether the user was ‘following’ a route or ‘reorienting’ on the route. In the evaluative research, the agent’s capability to detect the two states was tested by training a machine learning algorithm. In addition, a second evaluative user study was conducted to test the hypothesis of the information needs in the ‘following’ and ‘reorienting‘ states. The study setup was designed to generate a new type of behavioral data, which consists of the location users requested additional information. Thus, the user needs were quantified. This kind of behavioral data; one that embeds rich information about the user needs, becomes the building block of future prototypes of the user-aware navigation agent. Those iterations will then produce more data that embed further insights. This positive feedback cycle will be key to keeping the PVIs constantly in the product development loop and hopefully, result in a navigation agent that allows PVIs to easily travel safely and independently.

Dutch primary school teachers are strapped for time currently, and this is impeding the adoption of innovation. This is also a problem for Faqta, who are trying to sell their innovative teaching method. To convince teachers to learn, several theories and strategies are explored in this report, and how they can be applied on a digital video learning platform, the Faqta Academy, to answer the question “How can primary school teachers be inspired & motivated to learn & apply new educational methods with the Faqta Academy?”. The three most effective strategies to convince and captivate teachers are Microlearning, Self-determination Theory and Gamification. Microlearning lowers the bar of entry, while gamification keeps the attention over a longer period of time. Application of self-determination theory makes sure that teachers can actually internalize the motivation to apply the learnt material, by promoting Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness.This report explores how to apply these to Faqta’s Academy by introducing several design strategies in a framework for motivation, and applies them to the Academy through a workflow.

Aito has developed a technology that can be placedunderneath surfaces to give haptic feedback. They make use of piezoelectricdiscs to sense a pressure difference and actuate a pulse if this differencereaches a certain level. This system is possible because of the piezoelectriccrystals in the discs. These crystals create current from movement for thesensing action, and create movement by adding current for actuation action.These properties, combined with the way Aito layers the structure to supportthe piezoelectric discs, allow for this type of haptic feedback which mimicsthe press of a button. While the technology of Aito currently focuses on asingle pulse to simulate the feeling of a button, it is possible to send acontinuous stream of vibrations through the piezoelectric discs. This streamcould be a pulse that is being repeated over and over, or it could be avariation of pulses which creates music. This last possibility is explored inthis graduation project by a state-of-the-art review, objective measuringtechniques and subjective measuring techniques. With Aito’s current structure, it seems possible to create aspeaker in which the surface is vibrated to create audio according to thegathered literature in the state-of-the-art review. The literature describestwo types of speakers with a similar structure as Aito, which are the distributedmode loudspeakers and multiactuator panels. These speakers use a vibrationmodule (an exciter), to move the surface they are attached to. The differencebetween these two speakers is the placement and number of exciters. Both thesespeakers have a different designing approach than the standard design processof coil-based speakers. The design approach for distributed mode loudspeakersand multiactuator panels is used in this project but incorporates sometechniques from the usual procedure. The main elements that are adopted fromthe standard audio engineering approach relate to the validation of the setupwith users and measurements.The traditional approach of audio engineers to involve usersinto the design process, is by letting participants participate in listeningtest to define the audio quality perception of the speaker. This approach isadapted in this project into an approach which allows users to define theiraudio quality expectations; this involves users earlier on into the designprocess. By letting users participate early on in the process, the audioquality experience can be changed efficiently. The perceptions could improvethe experience at the end of the process, while the expectations change it inthe beginning. The expectation that is explored during this research involvesfoldable laptops and tablets. This approach shows that the audio quality of foldablelaptops is expected to be higher than foldable tablets. The whole foldablegroup is expected to perform lower than a laptop, but higher than a smartphone.The expected speaker placement also showed a difference between foldablelaptops and foldable tablets, which shows similarities to their non-foldable devicegroup. Therefore, a speaker that is integrated into the surface would ensurethat the speaker location is most optimal in both the laptop position as wellas the tablet position of a foldable device.  For the measurement validation, various tests were donebased on the approach of audio engineers to define how Aito’s structureperforms for audio functionalities. This approach was chosen to compare theresults to the requirements of the industry; these take volume levels andfrequency range of the audio into account. When these requirements arecombined, a grading system is created to help in selecting the correct speakerfor specific experiences. The tests were done with simplified models of afoldable tablet because this product group is the best fit for a haptic andaudio combination. In total, there were eight individual models used during thesystem performance testing. All these models originated from one basic model,which was a simplified foldable tablet structure; this model can be seen infigure 1. Its structure is separated into two identical halves to be able tocreate stereo audio when both halves are used. In the individual models,changes were made to test the effects of different surface materials, surfaceedge fixtures, piezoelectric disc layouts and uses of the space behind thesystem. These changes were mainly based on the design principles of distributedmode loudspeakers and multiactuator panels but were combined with some designprinciples dictated by Aito and the speaker industry. This research was a first step in the direction of audiowith Aito’s current setup. From the performance of eight models in combinationwith the user expectations on foldable laptops and tablets can be concludedthat the technology is not yet there. However, for less demanding products,such as intercoms, the audio quality can be deemed good enough as is with somesmall improvements. There is also the possibility to use the system only forhigher frequencies and haptics and add another speaker to generate lowerfrequencies.