The Dutch healthcare system is under increasing pressure from rising patient numbers, administrative burdens, and staff shortages. These challenges are felt throughout the healthcare sector, including academic hospitals such as the 'Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum' (LUMC). The cardiology department at the LUMC, in collaboration with TU Delft, has initiated a project to optimise their current care journey. This is done by improving workflow efficiency, reducing workload, and enhancing the wellbeing of healthcare professionals while maintaining high-quality patient care.

The project applies a strategic design approach with mixed methods. This includes qualitative research through interviews, observational studies, and Thematic Content Analysis (TCA). It identifies key problems in the current workflow, including administrative overload, fragmented communication, and a lack of transparency between internal systems, people, and technology. The findings indicate a misalignment of expectations patterns between internal healthcare professionals, patients, and external healthcare providers. This leads to decreased wellbeing, reduced collaboration, and professional burnout.

A strategic design framework was developed to address these challenges. This includes interventions for future implementation, such as a redesigned patient portal, a digital collaboration platform for interprofessional communication, and a knowledge data bank for medical and lifestyle information. The interventions aim to increase transparency, facilitate collaboration, and empower patients to engage in their care journey. By implementing the interventions, the cardiology department can improve workflow efficiency, enhance the wellbeing of internal healthcare professionals, and improve patient experience.

The project contributes to a wider discussion on healthcare system transformation and serves as a model for optimising care journeys. Future research should focus on evaluating the long-term impact of the interventions and their scalability across departments and other healthcare organisations.

This Master's thesis describes the redesign of the HeartEye portable Electrocardiogram (ECG) device to enable home use for patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). The initiative aimed to transition the medical-grade 12-lead ECG from a clinical setting to a user-friendly, home-based application, maintaining the device’s diagnostic integrity while enhancing accessibility for non-expert users.

The project was done in collaboration with HeartEye, TU Delft, and NPK Design, applying the double diamond design framework that works with four key phases: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver.

Discover Phase: The redesign began with an examination of the existing HeartEye ECG device, assessing its design and functionality. Following research explored the opportunities in E-Health, highlighting trends and innovations that could inform HeartEye's integration into telemonitoring service centres. In-depth user group research was conducted to understand the specific needs, behaviours, and experiences of CAD patients, guiding the development of user personas. This phase also looked at the regulatory landscape to ensure that the redesigned device would comply with the most important medical device standards and to address potential future regulations related to AI and sustainability in healthcare. A quick dive into machine learning interpretability was completed. Additionally, market strategies were evaluated to discover if they would have an impact on the to be designed device. Gender-specific issues of heart disease and care were addressed as well. Lastly, a qualitative study enriched by direct patient feedback provided deeper insights into the personal impact of CAD.

Define Phase: Using the knowledge from the Discover phase, a start was made to discover potential use scenarios. A well evaluated choice was made to choose for the rehabilitation to rehabilitation period as the use scenario to be designed for. Once this was defined, we scoped down the design space to only encompass the physical design considerations and set up some boundaries to help make design decisions later on in the project. Lastly, we defined four determinants that determine what makes a good measurement based on expert feedback and research.

Develop Phase: Factors influencing measurement quality were developed, allowing for the exploration of a broad range of directions. Ideas were iteratively conceptualized, prototyped, and refined, with three main directions chosen for further development: housing geometry, feedback methods, and electrode material. These were prototyped and tested in a structured user test, consisting of four parts: quantitative evaluation of device geometries, qualitative interviews about user experiences, a card game to discuss feedback needs and methods, and an internal test on electrode material effects on contact resistance. The results informed design guidelines for the redesign.

Deliver Phase: This phase explored the practical implications of the developed design guidelines, by designing, optimizing, and evaluating a concept design. Moreover, some recommendations are given for the future implementation of the insights generated over the course of this project.

The resulting redesigned HeartEye portable ECG device could empower patients to monitor their cardiac health effectively at home, combining clinical-grade monitoring capabilities with an accessible, user-centric design to potentially reduce CAD-related mortality through timely and frequent monitoring.

This thesis report explores the integration of haptic technology in enterprise processes through the case of SenseGlove, a scale-up company based in YesDelft that produces Virtual Reality Gloves. The study aims to identify the potential barriers and requirements for the enterprise’s clients to adopt haptic technology and integrate it into their company processes. The research also investigates potential markets for SenseGlove's products, with a particular focus on the online meetings market.

Initially, the researcher intended to design a new use case for SenseGlove products. However, further research revealed that numerous ideas for haptic glove applications already existed. Recognizing the company's vision to enter the consumer market and become the mouse and keyboard of the future, the researcher decided to further investigate what could be a way for SenseGlove to accomplish this. Drawing upon the concept of prosumer products, exemplified by smartphones and 3D printers, the study explored four potential markets, ultimately selecting the online meetings market as the most promising through the application of Blue Ocean Theory.

To assess the potential of haptic technology in online meetings, the researcher conducted an interview with a professional experienced in online and offline meetings and performed additional observational research. The findings, combined with an examination of market factors such as price and virtual/augmented reality, implied that it was not currently advisable for SenseGlove to enter the consumer market. The main argument supporting this vision is that peripheral products like haptic technology heavily rely on the development of the AR and VR markets, which have not yet had a breakthrough in the consumer market.

A pivotal aspect of the thesis involved an internal analysis of SenseGlove’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats , uncovering an important issue: very few, if any, of the current clients integrated SenseGlove's product into their company processes. This discovery led to the formulation of the research question: "What needs to happen for enterprise clients to start integrating haptics in their company processes?" To explore this question, the researcher employed grounded theory, conducting qualitative research through interviews with 15 of SenseGlove’s clients. By analyzing these responses a comprehensive list of 15 arguments was created, detailing the necessary product improvements for SenseGlove’s clients to embrace their product. These arguments were subsequently clustered into three categories: immersiveness, usability, and costs versus benefits.

The final chapter of the thesis presents strategic recommendations in the form of a future roadmap for SenseGlove. This roadmap consists of three steps; step one focuses on encouraging adoption of the product, step two outlines strategies for establishing SenseGlove as the industry standard in the business-to-business haptics market, and step three explores entering the consumer market with a product specifically tailored for online meetings.

The findings of this thesis provide valuable insights for SenseGlove's future direction and development. By addressing the identified barriers and incorporating the recommended roadmap, SenseGlove can enhance its product offering, increase integration with enterprise clients, and potentially position itself as a leader in the haptic technology market.

Inter IKEA Systems B.V. (also known as Core Business Franchise or CBF) is the franchisor and the owner of the IKEA Concept. By means of this franchising system, IKEA’s vision of creating a better everyday life for the many people is upheld through the collaboration, feedback, sharing and joint development between the franchisor (CBF) and the IKEA franchisees. IKEA Culture & Learning is responsible for strengthening the IKEA culture and empowering IKEA co-workers through their own abilities. However, the current tools provided to enhance co-workers’ competences, gather their feedback and discover potential business improvements lack in cohesion, ease of use, relevance and active dialogue. Therefore, this project focused on designing new concepts for bi-directional information sharing between the franchisor and customer-facing IKEA co-workers. The final concept ensures the development of IKEA co-workers by presenting IKEA Concept Knowledge, Learning Solutions and IKEA Product Information given by CBF and Range & Supply. I started the project with a literature review about the modern-day Employee Experience and based on three literature studies I established the theoretical parameters of my thesis’ design context to create a theoretical framework. The literature framework consisted of the following research findings that acted as the guiding principles for the design process: Daniel Pink’s Intrinsic Drivers of Motivation: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose (Pink, 2009); Joseph Pine’s Drivers of Experience Value: Time well spent & Time well invested (Pine, 2020); Bi-directional Information Sharing via a Digital Infrastructure (Koenders et al., 2018). In parallel to the literature review, I conducted interviews with CBF employees and IKEA Delft co-workers. This was to contextualize the theoretical findings with real-life, IKEA stories and experiences from both stakeholders. From these interviews came the following core insights: 1. CBF wants to be more accommodating and foreseeing in terms of IKEA co-worker learning needs and overall learning experience 2. CBF wants to create more points of involvement and interaction with IKEA co-workers to get their feedback on the IKEA Learning Offer 3. CBF wants to add more tangibility and guidance to the IKEA Learning Experience. 1. Co-workers want a relevant and personalized IKEA Learning Experience 2. Co-workers want to be more involved in CBF projects and be kept up to date on the status of their feedback 3. Co-workers’ autonomy in their learning experience is strong and that should not change. These insights guide the implementation of the concept idea because they’re based on more detailed and subjective findings and therefore, they contribute to a more specific level of what the concept should achieve as opposed to the literary findings. Additionally, L&D managers from external companies were also interviewed and to bring more meaning to the findings of my research and design context. These findings are presented as ‘advice’ within this assignment because even though the findings were valuable, they represent a different company or industry than IKEA. Therefore, these findings were more suggestive than imperative to include. With these findings, I went through an iterative process to define the design statement of this assignment. First, I created user stories, which I then clustered into design opportunities, and conducted collaborative brainstorming sessions with IKEA people to gather content for my individual ideation cycle. It then became clear that the design process was sprawling and didn’t have a clear design goal. So, based on an initial design statement, I created three concept idea directions that each had a digital infrastructure as a facilitator of their goals. These directions proved to show a disconnect with the initial design statement as they contained design decisions about the manifestation of the concept idea that weren’t reflected in the initial design statement. So, by conducting user feedback sessions with IKEA Delft co-workers, I gathered their feedback on the relation of the design qualities in the initial design statement to the concept idea directions and finalized the design statement to eliminate the disconnect that had established itself during the design process. The final design statement is: The concept should enable Inter IKEA Systems B.V. to facilitate promptive learning of the IKEA Concept so that customer-facing co-workers feel autonomous, purposeful, and heard. This should be achieved through customizable layers, visualization of co-worker growth and omni-channel feedback. From these user feedback sessions, I gathered feedback on the three concept idea directions and evaluated them based on their fulfillment of the overall goal of facilitating promptive learning of the IKEA Concept, as well as the goals to make co-workers feel autonomous through customizable layers, feel purposeful through visualization of co-worker growth, and feel heard through omni-channel feedback tools. The same was done for an iterated version of the concept idea direction based on the feedback gathered during the user sessions. This potential fulfillment of the design statement was the deciding factor for the final chosen concept idea direction which was a combination of Direction 1 and Direction 3, and ultimately led to my final concept idea, Ändamål. For IKEA co-workers, Ändamål is a social performance support platform that presents a personalized experience of the IKEA Learning Offer with relevant learning content and personal development tools. By providing a digital space for IKEA co-workers to come together, share their experiences and feedback with all IKEA people, Ändamål gives IKEA co-workers the drive to continue their purposeful learning journey and improve the IKEA Concept. The platform is introduced at the beginning of someone’s IKEA career during their onboarding process. It has been designed with customer-facing co-workers in mind but can be used for IKEA co-workers from all departments since they all have their own experiential expertise. The platform is then used throughout the co-worker’s entire time at IKEA as it helps them to document their professional growth. Ändamål centers its features around the co-worker’s needs of autonomy, mastery and purpose. Co-workers are encouraged to choose their own development path at IKEA (autonomy) and by offering learning content that specifically aligns with their (team’s) goals, Ändamål makes every IKEA learning moment time well spent. The additional personal development tools that enable co-workers to document their learning goals and visualize their growth, prompt their need for intellectual challenge (mastery), thus creating time well invested. To create the feeling of purpose and togetherness, Ändamål’s digital communities connect IKEA co-workers to colleagues with shared interests, goals, or experiences, but also facilitates active omni-channel feedback loops between CBF and co-workers. Ändamål essentially removes the disconnect in communication and collaboration between CBF and IKEA co-workers in a way that puts the co-workers’ needs first and makes both stakeholders equal partners in their relationship.

This report is the result of a master thesis project that finalizes 2 years of Strategic Product Design master program at the Industrial Design Engineering faculty. The project is about designing a data-informed clinical care process for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) patient. Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) is a treatment that aims to reduce symptoms of Aortic Valve Stenosis (AOS). Most TAVI patients are in the above-75 population. The project brief is to improve TAVI patient's experience using sensor data.
To understand the context of TAVI care pathway, a literature review and stakeholders interviews were done, resulting in a comprehensive understanding of the care pathway. The opportunity to improve the period after TAVI was addressed. To understand the underlying problem among patients in the post-TAVI period, text analysis from the literature was done, followed by coding, categorizing and framework creation. The framework was iterated in a series of 5 co-reflection sessions with the stakeholders. The result is that TAVI patients are managing confrontations throughout the care pathway, which prevent/ limit them from doing enough physical activity. The proposed vision is a continuous and collaborative goal setting system using sensor data. A concept ideation was done, followed by concept testing sessions that resulted in the list of concept requirements. The final proposed product-service system concept is called LIVEsense, a continuous and collaborative goal setting system using sensor data and voice-based conversational agent. LIVEsense consists of three main steps: baseline collection, collaborative goal setting and monitored goal pursuit. Patient wears the sensor and interacting with the voice assistant during the monitored goal pursuit. The sensor collects and compares patient's heart rate and activity data. The proposed product-service system was validated in a co-reflection session with stakeholders. LIVEsense satisfied all elements of the Quadruple Aim (Bodenheimer & Sinksky, 2014) and it brings most value for the period right after TAVI. Other elements that needs to be further explored are the implementation of LIVEsense in the care pathway that consists of multiple organizations.

Changing mobility Mobility is one of the fundamentals of our society and for the first time since the introduction of the automobile in the 1900s, we face a disruptive change in our mobility ecosystem. The rise of autonomous technology will allow us to get from a to b while being able to do other activities on the go. Challenges in change Although autonomous mobility will go hand in hand with many benefits, we still have challenges to overcome if we want to implement autonomous vehicles to their fullest potential. If we want to get rid of all the mobility problems we have today, such as congestion, traffic accidents, air pollution and parking limitations, autonomous vehicle rides should be shared. Ride-sharing will allow a larger part of our population to join the autonomous revolution, contributing to Ford’s goal to democratize mobility and increase the ease and speed of implementation in society. Ride-sharing For this to succeed, it is essential to understand peoples motivations to share (or not share) rides. Today’s mobility landscape in San Francisco allowed me to research current ride-sharing concepts. Here I experienced ride-sharing myself and interviewed relevant actors in the servicescape, to find that interpersonal contact is a substantial differentiator in the ride experience. Another main finding revolves around the drivers, whom we are trying to eliminate as we are moving towards an autonomous future. The roles the drivers take on besides enabling transport, bring essential values to the user experience. Scope After gathering extensive user insights during field research in San Francisco and learning about the potential positive effects of AV ride-sharing, I scoped the project to the daily commute in the Netherlands. This use case holds excellent potential for business, but more importantly, has the duration and frequency to make it worth to invest in the interpersonal relations amongst users. As well as diminishing the negative effects of human-driven vehciles (HDVs) on the daily commute in society. Acting-out By co-creating and acting-out shared concepts for the daily commute, I further explored the values and desires of future users. This has led to many insights, design qualities and a lot of funny moments. The raw insights are assembled in the additional deliverable: Session Booklet. The central findings are taken to the synthesis phase. Synthesis To bring all these insights together and make them communicable to Ford, this thesis holds multiple deliverables. Starting with the following vision statement: Autonomous Vehicle rides should be shared to maximally utilise the potential AVs have to offer to society. To successfully design shared AV rides for the daily commute, the service provider should gain individual insights to facilitate a common understanding amongst co-riders & provide a sense of control for each user. This vision is visualized in a communicative drawing, showing a little bit, about a lot information. Since the user insights go much deeper than what can be shown in the drawing, a set of criteria for designing shared AV rides for the daily commute, is created too, showing a lot about a little bit. The criteria are accompanied with a user narrative. This narrative shows how users will experience their daily commute in an AV ride-sharing service, that is designed accordingly.

In common Dutch cardiac care, patients only have few follow-up meetings with their cardiologists after they have been treated at the hospital. Sometimes, they have to wait several months for their next visit. Therefore, patients often turn to online platforms where they can ask questions to other patients or healthcare professionals, namely health-based social networks. These platforms are managed by a small group of volunteers, cardiologists, who seek to inform patients in order to make efficient use of the limited time at the hospital. However, it is expected that the number of cardiac patients on these networks will increase due to overall growth of the number of Dutch cardiac patients and the recent trend of searching health information on the internet. Hence, it remains the question whether health-based social networks can scale up with this development. To investigate the sustainability of health-based social networks, user posts from the Dutch social platform Hart Volgers and American social platform DailyStrength were analysed. The results show that the number of patients on these platforms grows rapidly, and they reveal that users prefer to contact cardiologists instead of fellow patients. These findings suggest that there is an urgent need for new solutions that keep these platforms future-proof. To address this problem, Harthulp is proposed, a smart question-and-answer platform for cardiac patients to provide better and more efficient aftercare. Harthulp introduces a question wizard that enables patients to quickly find information on the platform, so that it is not always necessary to ask a question to a healthcare professional and to wait for a reply. As a core component of the question wizard, a novel search engine has been developed which employs a deep learning model that captures the semantics of words on health-based social networks. In this way, patients can search with short questions and retrieve relevant posts while they may not contain the exact same words. It has been demonstrated that the proposed search engine significantly outperforms traditional search engines when retrieving relevant question-and-answer posts from Hart Volgers. A web interface has been designed to show how all components can be embedded in a single user-centered design. This design has been evaluated together with an experienced cardiologist.

Healthcare systems in developed countries are under extreme pressure due to multiple factors. The challenge is to deliver high quality of care while dealing with limited budgets. An ageing population and in increase in chronic diseases leads to an growing demand for care. This growing demand leads to an increase in costs in the system, but the required budgets are not available. The rapid rise of costs makes healthcare systems unsustainable, a transformation is needed. Not only the costs, also other signs show that healthcare systems need drastic change. Patients are not satisfied, healthcare staff is dealing with burnouts and health outcomes are not as good as is desired. These different signs together show that the healthcare deals with a systemic problem. To address a system problem, the different factors should not be seen in isolation, the interlinked effect of factors should be considered. What is needed is a transformation towards value-based care (VBC). Theory proposed by Porter and Teisberg (2006) explains that the basis of healthcare systems need to shift from delivering volume to delivering value. From their perspecitveg value in healthcare means to improve relevant health outcomes while reducing the costs. The transformation to value-based care can be guided by the quadruple aim. The quadruple aim is a framework developed by Spinelli (2013) and used by Philips to show the different dimensions that need to be addressed in transformation: 1)improving health outcomes, 2) improving patient experience, 3) reducing costs and 4) improving staff experience. The quadruple aim is a suitable approach to guide transformation to VBC as it is widely used across the health system. The quadruple aim is seen as most complete overview compared to other frameworks, because all important dimensions of a healthcare system are included in the quadruple aim. However, the theory on VBC and the quadruple aim is general and needs a translation into a specific context. In other words, the global strategy of VBC needs to be made specific to guide local action. In this thesis, living labs are the context for defining local action. Philips wants to set up living labs with multiple stakeholders and learn how to initiate living labs for transformation to VBC. A key element in the initiation of a living lab is the construction of a common vision, because based on this vision actions need to be defined. This thesis results in a toolkit to supports the definition of a vision for a living lab and translate the vision into action. The toolkit can be used in co-created sessions with partners in the living lab. The toolkit provides tools to define purpose, partners and objectives in a local setting. The purpose for the living lab is defined first. An overview of the global challenge, vision and enablers in VBC is presented visually. Following the step-by-step approach will support the lab partners in defining a local challenge, vision and enablers. Based on the identified local vision, the partners and objectives for the living lab can be systematically discussed using tools. To support the co-creation sessions, the toolkit consists of four elements: A global purpose visualization. Work sheets that need to be printed and filled in during the sessions. A slidedeck to use during workshops. Facilitator instructions to support the facilitator in explaining the process. The toolkit has been tested within Philips and determined valuable for their business. Based on a test session suggestions for improvements are identified and included in the report. It is recommended to further test the toolkit in real-life settings. The toolkit shows to be relevant by providing a integrated overview of theory on VBC in a visual way. Besides, by outlining the process of initiating a living lab, this thesis is a foundation to develop more tools that can be used in living labs.