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.

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.

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.

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.