247 research outputs found
Teaching attitudes, skills, approaches, structures and tools
No full textTaking a critical look at current educational models, open design will involve a shift in the relationship between designers and potential users in terms of attitude, skills and approach. Caroline Hummels discusses the consequences of open design for the educational approach and for the structure and tools offered. She advocates an educational model that reflects the flexibility, openness, and continuous development of open design
Teaching attitudes, skills, approaches, structures and tools
No full textTaking a critical look at current educational models, open design will involve a shift in the relationship between designers and potential users in terms of attitude, skills and approach. Caroline Hummels discusses the consequences of open design for the educational approach and for the structure and tools offered. She advocates an educational model that reflects the flexibility, openness, and continuous development of open design
Matter of transformation : designing an alternative tomorrow inspired by phenomenology
No full textIn this month’s cover story, Caroline Hummels and Pierre Lévy propose an alternative, value-based vision for design:
Can we create alternative ways to engage with the world based on trusting our senses? Where intuition is as valuable as logic? Where commitment and engagement are valuable assets for growth? Where people can take a first-person perspective and be in the moment, instead of forever worrying about efficiency?
Growing out of a long history of work in the Designing Quality in Interaction group at TU Eindhoven, Hummels and Lévy’s vision is rooted in phenomenology and the ideas of 20th-century philosophers such as Dewey, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Over the course of the article they build their case for this new approach, highlighting projects that illustrate aspects of the vision they outline. As the cover image hints, even typically mundane objects such as vending machines can produce rich, aesthetically rewarding experiences when their design is inspired by phenomenology and its associated values such as embodiment
Gestural design tools: Prototypes, experiments and scenarios
No full textIndustrial Design Engineerin
LINKX, a language toy for autistic toddlers developed in co-creation with parents and pedagogues
No full textThis master thesis shows the design process of LINKX, a language toy for children with a disorder in the spectrum of autism. Children with autism have an inborn brain disorder and therefore play and learn differently than children with 'typical' development. Language and speech of children with autism develops slowly or not at all. These children's 'different being' indicates a need for different toys. Main goal of this project was to design a toy that stimulates language development in a playful way. Insight in how autistic children play and learn was mainly gained by high involvement throughout the whole process of autistic children, their parents, and their pedagogues. These children: Beer, Robbert and Jakob, played a leading role in this process. I observed them at home, at school, and at speech therapy, and interviewed their parents and pedagogues. Exploration resulted in a design framework for autistic children in which control, direct feedback, rewards, repetition, and memory, are important elements. After this exploration I realized that already within these three children there was much variation in needs. For example, the language development stage, in which children differed. A found similarity was that all children have trouble with giving meaning to words. Therefore they should learn to word objects in their environment. With this framework in mind, ideas were generated. The idea with most potential regarding interaction was chosen and evaluated with parents. Their opinions contributed in further concept development and eventually led to LINKX, the final design of this project. This design aims for a connection on three levels: motor, cognitive, and emotional. On motor level children literally link play-elements together and thereby receive a visual and audio reward. On cognitive level, the children are triggered to link an object with a word. On emotional level LINKX aims to connect parent and child by providing a way to play together. LINKX is elaborated into an experiential prototype and tested in several play-sessions with the participating children. Parents took on the role of co-researcher, because they are expert on their child's behaviour and feelings. The child's play served as reference for evaluation, both for me as for the parents. In general the children enjoyed playing with LINKX. They laughed and repeatedly linked elements to hear the sound and let it move. The characteristics described in the framework seemed to be true. Especially when the prototype did not function as expected, the importance of 'giving sense of control' was evident. For the future I hope that my framework can inform and inspire other designers to develop more toys that facilitate the learning process of children with autism. With growing technological possibilities, technique can help these children learn more, and thereby let them be more able to cope with life.Industrial Design Engineerin
Hephaestus and the senses
No full textThe need for transformative collaboration among cross-disciplinary stakeholders is becoming paramount since the complexity of designing (intelligent) systems, products and services has increased rapidly the last decade. Inspired by phenomenology, pragmatism and embodied cognition, we explore how we can use embodiment and skilful coping to connect people and to catalyse a constructive design conversation among people with different backgrounds (Hummels, 2012). During a two-weeks workshop with Master students at the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology, we developed six different interactive Engagement Probes: open, creative and playful tools aimed at engaging people in a design process more concrete and effective than a brainstorm session. These Engagement Probes have been validated in a five-hour workshop Hephaestus and the Senses, in which 80 participants from different background have used them as a mean to ignite their design process. Every team started to meet and getting to know each other in a playful way using their bodies through one of the Engagement Probes. Thereupon, they designed and prototyped in teams of 4-6 persons, an artefact for citizens to socially connect through their senses. The results of the workshop show that the Probes stimulate engagement, help people to get familiar and connect in a short period of time, and inspire and boost a design process with an emphasis on embodiment and tangibility (Trotto and Hummels, 2013)
Data-enabled design for social change: Two case studies
Full text linkSmartness in contemporary society implies the use of massive data to improve the experience of people with connected services and products. The use of big data to collect information about people's behaviours opens a new concept of "user-centred design" where users are remotely monitored, observed and profiled. In this paradigm, users are considered as sources of information and their participation in the design process is limited to a role of data generators. There is a need to identify methodologies that actively involve people and communities at the core of ecosystems of interconnected products and services. Our contribution to designing for social innovation in ecosystems relies on developing new methods and approaches to transform data-driven design using a participatory and co-creative data-enabled design approach. To this end, we present one of the methods we have developed to design "smart" systems called Experiential Design Landscapes (EDL), and two sample projects, Social Stairs and [Y]our Perspective. Social Stairs faces the topic of behaviour change mediated by sensing technologies. [Y]our Perspective is a social platform to sustain processes of deliberative democracy. Both projects exemplify our approach to data-enabled design as a social proactive participatory design approach
Instilling cultural values through bodily engagement with human rights
No full textThe paper presents vision, approach and outcomes of "Light through Culture", an international design school that aims at weaving, through design, innovative technologies and culture into a new canvas for making and thinking [6]. In this paper we present in particular the second edition of the school that explored the theme of human rights and designed ways of eliciting the exposure of their violation, with the realization of an experiential path through five interactive spaces, in an exhibition called "Experiencing Human Rights". The students built this interactive path to elicit a rich experience and unfold new opportunities for meaning to be elaborated by visitors. Story telling was used, as a way of creating a holistic experience that was not just based on the narration of facts but also exploited feelings and deep cultural values through embodied interaction. Based on the student's craftsmanship and their different cultural and educational backgrounds, they opened up a reflection on human rights, both in their own process, as well as for the visitors during the exhibition. The students' learning activity held Making in its core, and students were encouraged, through cycles of reflection-on-action, to develop their personal point of view, to take responsibility for it and present the designed exhibition to the visitors, inviting them to be bodily engaged and to reflection. Copyright © 2013 ACM.The paper presents vision, approach and outcomes of "Light through Culture", an international design school that aims at weaving, through design, innovative technologies and culture into a new canvas for making and thinking [6]. In this paper we present in particular the second edition of the school that explored the theme of human rights and designed ways of eliciting the exposure of their violation, with the realization of an experiential path through five interactive spaces, in an exhibition called "Experiencing Human Rights". The students built this interactive path to elicit a rich experience and unfold new opportunities for meaning to be elaborated by visitors. Story telling was used, as a way of creating a holistic experience that was not just based on the narration of facts but also exploited feelings and deep cultural values through embodied interaction. Based on the student's craftsmanship and their different cultural and educational backgrounds, they opened up a reflection on human rights, both in their own process, as well as for the visitors during the exhibition. The students' learning activity held Making in its core, and students were encouraged, through cycles of reflection-on-action, to develop their personal point of view, to take responsibility for it and present the designed exhibition to the visitors, inviting them to be bodily engaged and to reflection
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