With the development of Artificial intelligence and Machine learning capabilities, the connected objects are extended with predictive capabilities, and the character of things is changed to “things that predict” (Smit, 2021). If a connected device is able to embrace a predictive system that not only profiles for scripted behavior but could also use the knowledge co-created by all the other similar devices and their users that encounter similar situations, the predictions can be generated based on that. In this case, a new type of interplay between humans and things called "predictive relation" is created. However, challenges such as the transparency and users' acceptance of predictive behavior of the everyday connected product still require us to figure out before the future takes place. It is urged to understand the now and the future, and this leads to the question: ‘how to design transparent and acceptable predictive relations for the things that predict?’ Therefore, to investigate the question, the project will explore the predictive relations and identify the design qualities for predictive relations between humans and things by taking the XiaoMi’s Vacuum robot as the starting point of the case study. The purpose of this project is to explore the predictive relations and study the transparency and the acceptance of the predictive behavior. In answering the initial research question, this project proposed 2 propositions for transparency and acceptance respectively by combining the insights generated from the case study of XiaoMi’s vacuum robot and the creative session of envisioning the working of predicting vacuum robots. The 2 propositions are evaluated through the method of ‘Wizard-of-oz’ and proved valid by combining the results of quantitative and qualitative research. As one of the results of the evaluation, this project also proposes the idea of “Designer as the facilitator of the human-robot collaboration”. The designers can be the ones who help to bring in the background knowledge and the patterns of the predictive relation and indicate the ways for humans and robots to co-perform reliable and meaningful daily practice in their partnership. Eventually, this project takes designing a guidebook as one of the ways to clarify the idea and integrates the main results of the project into the guidebook to facilitate the collaboration between humans and predicting robots. ... Read more

The project that is performed is for the master thesis of the master study ‘Integrated Product Design’ at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the TU Delft. The final product is a handbook that functions as a tool to create a dock for SeaBubbles, and it is developed for the company Advier.
The process started with exploring the scope. The scope can be split up in three directions: the business direction in which the company Advier and its stakeholders is analysed. It becomes clear that Advier will give the handbook to a design agency that will create the actual dock design. The second direction is the analysis of the location. The network is situated in the area of Dordrecht, also known as Drechtsteden. The effect of the weather and tide on this area is analysed and the conclusion is drawn that the design of the dock must deal with changing water levels. The third direction focuses on the SeaBubble, in which the SeaBubble for seven passengers and twelve passengers are presented. The reservation system is mapped out and shows that the SeaBubble will define its route on the demand, in between it is possible that the SeaBubble will change its route. This has a large impact on the passenger journey.
In the passenger journey, two types of passengers are presented: a prepared and an unprepared passenger. The prepared passenger has bought a ticket at home, while the unprepared passenger must buy a ticket at the dock. From this point in the process, the focus will be on the experience of the passenger. By creating a building that fulfils the needs of the passenger when the passenger is being guided, is waiting, and is boarding, the experience of the passenger will be good.
The next part that is being analysed is the elements that is needed for guiding, waiting and boarding. For guiding, first the crowd flow is analysed. Based on this crowd flow, a general layout of the building is created for the location of ticket vending machines, waiting areas and potential one-way systems. Secondly, the needed information is analysed and tested in an online 3D environment. The location and the initial way of communication for several information elements is determined.
For waiting, literature is analysed, and people are interviewed and observed. The passengers will find distraction on a smartphone or while enjoying the view, having a seat is preferred.
For creating a comfortable boarding experience, two supports are needed in an area with even floor and no gaps. By getting inspired from the results, different configurations of docks were created.
By determining the principles behind the configurations, the design choices are mapped out. These design choices are structured with a morphological map and explained in the handbook, which is the final product of this master thesis. After finalising the handbook, interviews were held with the client and an architect to evaluate the final product. ... Read more

This project explored the domain of the home office worker to shape an AI driven concept guided by positive design principles to increase subjective wellbeing and resolving problems related to working from home. The 13 fundamental needs, which are an operationalisation of the positive design framework, are used as components for subjective wellbeing. Research and interviews with both managers and home office workers have shown that people working from home experience difficulties to detatch and take effective breaks, feel guilty for doing personal things during office hours, and lack routines to structure their day. Exploring possibilities to use AI as an integral part of a product design addressing these problems have shown that recent developments in natural language processing make it possible to process and work with abstract human concepts. Two interaction concepts were tested to gauge promising concept directions and explore possibilities of how to intervene in people‘s established routines. Co-creating use cases for AI to act in a product to increase work/life balanece, combined with previous ideas and insights have led to the final concept vision. The final concept vision is an AI driven to-do list concept which helps users to maintain work/life balance by giving personalised tips and suggestions for balancing activities and informing people about their fundamental need fulfilment. It is a concept vision leveraging the capabilities of natural language processing to classify human tasks, learn form behavior and personal data and give users individual suggestions tailored to their needs and interests. The concept vision was tested with home office workers in real-life conditions for one week using a „Wizard of Oz“ prototype. Evaluations of the prototype have shown interesting insights into the perception of receiving personal suggestions from a machine and a promising response to the concept. Especially regarding needs classification and tracking triggered curiosity and left users wanting to know more about their need fulfilment pattern. The concpet offers the starting point for the use of AI for the human good using fundamental needs and subjective wellbeing at the core. ... Read more

History has taught us that not all innovation is good innovation. Just take for example the ecological devastation the DDT and the carcinogenic asbestos have caused. The advancement in new technologies like AI, IoT, autonomous robots and big data brings with it plenty of uncertainties, risks and ethical questions that need answers to if we wish to reap their benefits safely. We need these technologies to tackle some of the greater challenges of your society (like sustainability) but at the same time, we require ways to know how they should be deployed responsibly. This project focuses on the responsible deployment of technologies in the city of Amsterdam and this project has been done in collaboration with the Cities of Things Labs and the AMS institute. The project starts with an initial problem statement of “How can the “Principles for Accountable Algorithms and a Social Impact Statement for Algorithms” be used to develop a strategic framework for responsible Al innovation in Amsterdam” and to answer this question a literature review was done, Municipalities were researched, perception of the citizens were researched and in order to understand the relation of devices to the city a technology called Scan Cars was researched. Later in the project, the initial problem statement was reformulated into a change statement. The formulated change statement was “I want citizens to get well informed about what data collecting devices are doing in public spaces so that citizens can help authorities decide what is best for them” the value of transparency and the ladder of citizen participation were seen as means for achieving the above statement. The final design that was developed is a mobile application that shows citizens where the various data collecting devices are around them in the city, what actions do these devices take after they collect the data, how do the devices work and it gives citizens the opportunity to respond to these devices by either asking a question, giving feedback or participate in programs that work to improve the way of working of these devices in the city. In order to ensure technologies responsible usage in the city, it is important to reduce as many uncertainties about the devices as possible. This can be done by making sure every citizen has the channels to ask questions, give feedback and even raise their voices against these devices anonymously. It is also part of the municipalities “inclusive digital city” ambitions and interests to work on such platforms. In conclusion, the application is one such channel that the city should be developing for informing and empowering their citizens and the recommendations given in the report can be the first steps for fully developing the application. ... Read more

This graduation project starts with the goal of making a mobility hub as part of living services. In the project, the service scope of a mobility hub is a community, and the service objects are residents of that community. The concept of living services in the project is defined as the living service package which includes the rental service and a series of additional shared services, such as shared space, cleaning and maintenance. Online surveys and qualitative interviews are conducted to understand how different types of users participate in shared mobility and shared living services, as well as their needs and expectations for community-scaled shared services. The results show that tenants living in shared living communities have higher demand and expectations for shared services, thus are regarded as the target users. Moreover, it is found that there is strong association between people's community life and their participation in shared services. In addition to the physical shared facilities and space, tenants expect value-added services to help them use shared services without concerns and better manage their community life. In the design phase, DUWO community is taken as an example for designing a living service concept including mobility, to support tenants' community life. The final design, DUWO community service platform, is not limited to the functional combination of shared mobility and shared living services, but also makes up for the deficiencies of DUWO's shared services in supporting services and neighborhood interaction. The platform integrates all DUWO's living services including shared mobility, and also provides tenants with neighborhood interaction and communication services. Additionally, communitybot is provided as a community service assistant, responsible for answering users' questions and providing users with suggestions and information based on their living conditions. ... Read more

This project is focussed on a design for stimulating interaction amongst passengers in the Seabubble. The Seabubble is an autonomous hydrofoil that is able to fly above water. The Seabubble can transport 4 to 5 passengers on inland waterways. The hydrofoil-technology creates a whole new travel-experience because it provides very stable and silent travel conditions.Haven-Stad is used as a case-study. This water-rich area in het Westelijk Havengebied of Amsterdam will be transformed into a mix of residential- and workplaces. The Seabubble can make community sharing possible within this area.The ViP-method served as the main research & design method to create a future-oriented context for the design. Additionally a creative session and Minimal Viable Products supported the designing phase. The VIP-method requires a construction of a future context in which the design is implemented. This context is created by means of literature-research, a survey and interviews. This resulted in a context in which the challenge of the design lies in connecting 2 divergent type of individual-oriented passengers: the passengers differ in their preference regarding (continuous) technical development, like autonomous vehicles.Additionally a detailed description of the desired interaction is required. The easiest interaction for individual type of passengers is a spontaneous interaction. This spontaneous interaction is described by an analogy: The interplay of confidence and doubt during improvisation.The creative session led to the first ideas of how to exploit the journey by Seabubble as a social stimulus between neighbours of Haven-Stad. This session resulted in several design directions. These directions are used for MVP-testing in which low-fidelity prototypes, in test set-ups, test if the ideas would give the desired effect in practice. The obtained insights are translated into a list of requirements as a guideline for a design for the Seabubble and to provide as tools for stakeholders in the field of shared autonomous vehicles. For this last reason, all the insights are bundled into a guide in a generic state.MVP-testing showed that a certain amount of (cooperative) control provides a motivation for undertaking interaction. This insight was used, together with the list of requirements, to design a control-system for the Seabubble: the SpeedBubble. It facilitates interaction by requiring passengers to cooperate in order to have a sense of control on the sailing speed.The SpeedBubble is a projection that indicates the speed of the Seabubble. The passenger can choose to interfere with the control of the autonomous Seabubble by means of the SpeedBubble; they can collect ‘bubbles’ by moving their hands orfeet. The amount of control depends on the amount of collaboration since the SpeedBubble can only be controlled when the passengers act in successive order (regarding their seating position).The evaluation of the SpeedBubble concept was conducted amongst neighbours in a test set-up. The test showed that the concept stimulates interaction in a spontaneous way. Both divergent type of passengers were actively involved.The SpeedBubble concept could be offered as a customization-option for parties that would want to implement Seabubbles in community sharing contexts. ... Read more

This project revolves around redesigning the future mobihub for the context of the Netherlands. A mobihub (or mobipunt in Dutch) is a brand of mobility hub. In this report, a mobility hub is defined as “A recognizable, physical place where different context-driven functions and services (mostly shared mobility-related such as shared cars) that benefit the neighbourhood meet. A connection to public transport is desirable but type-dependant.”A typology of mobihubs was found and simplified to three types, with a special focus on the type: “neighbourhood hub”. Along with this, a target group was defined: the “suburban citizen”: people that live in a smaller neighbourhood and work in a bigger city. This type of hub and target group determined the focus of the project. This focus was on social cohesion in the neighbourhood. Vision in Product Design (VIP) was used as the main design & research method.In the research phase, a broad literature study was done, along with case studies in the Netherlands and interviews with users from the target group (Figure 1), amongst others. It was found that users on a transport hub always navigate the space between being connected and being autonomous, while they experience positive or negative ‘friction’ (events that slow them down) during their travels. The amount of ‘being connected’ and ‘autonomy’ that a user experiences or seeks, depends on that users personality. Based on this, the design statement was formed:“The mobihub needs to wake up people by introducing a kind of positive friction (that literally and figuratively slows them down) at their local or commute mobihub, with which they can choose to interact, together or alone”The mobihub needs to facilitate for two kinds of pePple at the same time. The fact that the mobihub needs to be in these two states at the same time was compared to the principle of ‘quantum superpositioning’. In quantum superpositioning, a quantum particle can be in two places at the same time (figure 2). After an ideation period a design direction was found. This design direction revolves around modular multi-purpose interactive capsules on the mobihub. With these capsules, inhabitants can combine their mobility patterns. Inhabitants can deliver packages for each other, lend or sell each other items, or pick up groceries. The capsules and the supporting app form an open-ended platform that can be used by the inhabitants as they see fit. This design direction was prototyped (figure 3) and evaluated with users and experts. The functionalities were viewed as very beneficial, but the design direction did not provide a meaningful interaction between place (mobihub) and user (inhabitant).After an extended period of research, it was found that the mobihub should act as a concerned parent through the app and the interactive capsules. The mobihub acting as a concerned parent gives the relationship between user and hub more meaning, because it mirrors wanted mobility patterns. The hub is a concerned parent that needs to ‘educate’ it’s users about responsible mobility usage, and ‘take care’ of them. The user, in turn, has the responsibility to keep visiting his ‘parent’. The final design was dubbed “mobi+punt” (Mobipuntplus or Mobipluspunt) (see figures 4 and 5) and was evaluated with relevant experts in an expert meeting (figure 6). It was evident that social cohesion the most relevant success factor of the design is, as well as efficiency in delivery methods and extra value for the neighbourhood. The main limitations all revolved around the business model and implementation -questions. The final design is still conceptual, and there are much unknowns about its eventual realisation. The experts recognized that it is an idea with a lot of potential. ... Read more

Artificial intelligence (AI) has come to the fore and is now expected to be one of the most disruptive technologies. It is easy to tell that AI will become pervasive in our everyday life. However, people still lack confidence in AI. Since trust is crucial in the development and acceptance of AI, it is essential to design for proper trust in the human-AI relationship to make people benefit from the technological advance. In this project, the challenge of trust in AI is explored in collaboration with Exact. Exact is one of the market-leading business software companies in the Netherlands. Following the trend of automation in the business software industry, Exact comes up with the future vision of Robotic Accounting and integrate AI into their product Exact Online. However, the users seem to stay behind in adopting these automatic features. Through initial interviews, they find that the lack of trust is one critical reason behind the low adoption. Thus, the design assignment is to “find out the reasons that cause a low trust and adoption of users for automation within Exact Online, and design a solution to promote the trust and usage towards Exact existing and to-be designed AI features.” To understand the background and why trust is such a challenging topic in AI, the project starts with literature reviews around AI and trust. Then trust models are studied to build the theoretical structure of what is trust and how is trust formed. Besides the literature review, the context of Exact and bookkeeping is also studied to define the background of this project and guide the design concept. After the analysis of trust theories and context background, two rounds of user research is conducted to know how users trust AI functions in Exact Online, and how will different elements influence their trust towards : the quantitative research and the qualitative research. The quantitative research is based on the theoretical framework of trust to validate and prioritized the elements, while the qualitative research is more explorative and could explain the elements with real experience. Insights are generated from the two rounds of research and guide the solution design. After the research, a strategy pyramid is created for Exact. The strategy pyramid consists of four layers. The first layer is the vision: trust AI like trust your best assistant; The second layer is the strategy: take care of trust for the whole journey; The third layer is the tactical layer: the trust-building guideline. And the last layer is the operationalization: the envisioned product. The last two layers are further designed. The trust-building guideline is designed as a toolkit that could provoke discussion round trust in the AI development process, and the envisioned product is a redesigned version of Exact Online based on the trust-building guideline. Both the two design concepts are being tested, iterated, and evaluated. ... Read more

By 2030, 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. With technological development, the focus of building a city has been changing over time. Currently, the urban construction is dominated by the dream of the built environment with embedded intelligence. Urban data streams are processed by algorithms which feed to the physical urban choreography, namely the Smart City. But what does this smart-dream-future vision mean to its citizens? People choose to live in the city for seeking out meaningful jobs, like-minded communities, exciting opportunities etc. People take delight not in urban technological wonders, but in how the city can empower them to fulfil their own dreams. And this is where cityness lies. Taken as an organic combination of the ‘nexus of technological infrastructure’ and the ‘concentration of humanity’, cityness reflects how people live in and live for the city.

The core of this project is to call for cityness in the future smart age. Hinting Civic Futures is a design practice that explores the alternative futures for cities in the smart age, concerned with interrelatedness of social and technical aspects. It stimulates a re-envisioning of urban solutions beyond traditional smart city. By exploring how people want to dwell in what kind of city in the future, Hinting Civic Futures strives to find the connection of functionality and desirability, where resides the cityness. And furthermore, to develop the notion cityness in a preferable direction.

By exploring next generation cities derived from positive value incentives and brings them alive, the project strives to uncover the composition of cityness. This will help further open up space about how cityness can be amplified in enacting policy-making, business-modelling and behavioural change. ... Read more