1,720,952 research outputs found
Material Deformations of Penrose Tiling
No full textThe heart of this work is exploring Penrose tiling. Penrose tilings are ways tocompletely cover an infi nite plane with perfectly fi tting shapes, in a pattern that neverrepeats – they have moments of local symmetry, where it may look like they are regular andordered, but on a larger scale, this order is always disrupted. We use a technique thatchanges the shape of the tiles while keeping the underlying pattern to create a rich,generative space for artistic explorationGreen Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Arts & CraftsHuman Information Communication Desig
Adapting care robot Tessa for early-stage dementia with implementation through general practitioners
No full textTessa is a social, assistive robot from the company Tinybots, designed to support people with early- to moderate stage dementia and other mild cognitive impairments.By giving verbal reminders and instructions, programmed by their formal and informal caregivers, Tessa gives people back their self-management and autonomy, enabling them to live independently for a longer period of time. Next to this, Tessa can be used by home care organisations to save physical minutes of care, up to 132 minutes per week (Onderzoek En Ervaringen, n.d.). With the staff shortages in the health care sector and the expected rise of people with dementia from 290,000 in 2021 to 620,000 people in 2050 (Alzheimer Nederland, 2021), the use of e-health solutions like Tessa will become increasingly important.This master thesis consists of two parts. In the first part, a distribution scenario is designed to implement Tessa through GPs, a potential market for Tinybots to target. Currently, Tessa is implemented through home care organisations with the support of their health insurance. From interviews with GPs and their supporting caregivers like POHs and casemanagers, the appropriate scenario was chosen. In this scenario, the general practitioner gives Tessa as an option to their patient and refers them to a home care organisation that implements Tessa. This scenario gives GPs the opportunity to support their dementia patients while maintaining their current role in which they assess the situation and then refer. Due to a limited time per patient, more involvement than that is not feasible. With dementia especially, most care is immediately taken over by the casemanager. Another important factor is the lack of financial support the GP receives. Without this support, affording Tessa is impossible. In home care, there is a higher chance of financial support which is therefore incorporated in the scenario.In the second part, the focus is on acceptance. Acceptance of help and therefore, acceptance of Tessa is hard. To increase acceptance by this group of people, the perceived usefulness of the product needs to be increased, which is what the second part of this thesis focuses on. To do this, multiple solutions were proposed surrounding themes like increasing autonomy, independence, compatibility, social connectedness, and trialability. Adding the functions of listening to audiobooks and receiving personal voice messages will give Tessa a relative advantage over the current products elderly use and increase perceived usefulness and social connectedness.In addition, a light version of Tessa in the form of an app to be used onpeople’s own devices is proposed as a solution to lower the barrier to accepting Tessa. An app is more subtle, is better compatible with the elderly who use their phone or tablet and who are still living an active life. When dementia progresses and home care is needed, the app evolves into an app that can be used by home care to provide care.Since material and logistical costs are saved with an app, a free trial can be offered to potential users. With this, the attribute of trialability is used, which can lead to easier adoption of a new product.In preparation for the launch of the Tessa app version and the new functions, Tinybots needs to prepare a website and information aimed at people with dementia and their informal caregivers instead of care organisations.By implementing these design changes, Tinybots can implement Tessa through the GP with the proposed distribution scenario. This means they can use Tessa to support people with dementia and their informal caregivers from very early on and for a longer period of time.Strategic Product Design | Medisig
RoBotanics: Exploring Design for Plant-Hybrid Robots
No full textUsing plant-hybrid technologies presents an unusual design opportunity, by combining living plants with technology. This master’s thesis delves into the integration of plant-hybrid robotics, exploring human-plant interaction systems. The study explores the potential design implications of this field, particularly in public settings where interactions with humans are unavoidable. This way, the project aims to stimulate design for physical and psychological connections between humans, nature and technology. RoBotanics, the case study in this exploration, focuses on designing an extremely slow-moving swarm of plants that subtly roam public indoor spaces. This way the concept subtly tries to express the passage of time. Plants lack the capacity for verbal communication or auditory perception like humans. Instead, the concept allows the plants to rely on sensing through its leaves. The physical properties of the selected plant, Dypsis Lutescens, allows the plant-hybrid robot to have a large amount of ‘antennae’ (like insects) on all sides. This quality enhances the range of the plant sensor. The plant collects data on human-plant activity, which informs its navigation. This equips plants with subtle autonomy, bringing more liveliness to an otherwise static environment. The prototype has demonstrated that inattentional blindness allows the plant to quietly navigate shared spaces with humans without causing distraction. Moreover, varying slow speeds affect the plant’s physiological dynamics uniquely, triggering different responses. This case study contributes to the field of human-plant interaction by highlighting the potential for plant-hybrid robots to coexist alongside humans.Master ThesisIntegrated Product Desig
Enacting the Last Mile: Experiences of Smart Contracts in Courier Deliveries
No full textSmart contract systems could change the nature of last-mile deliv- ery for the better through enhanced precision, coordination and accountability. However, technological complexity poses a chal- lenge for end-users participating in the design process, making it hard to explore their experiences and incorporate their perspectives. We describe a case study where technological prototypes create smart contract experiences for professional couriers and receptionists, allowing them to speculate about emerging possibilities, whilst remaining grounded in their current practices. Participants enacted a series of deliveries, choreographed by smart contracts, and their responses were explored in post-experience, one-to-one interviews. Working with professionals to explore the potential impact of smart contract technologies, revealed the systemic webs of value underlying their existing work practices. This has implications for design of such technologies, in which increased automation, efciency and accountability must be delicately balanced with the benefts of sustaining personal values, relationships and agency.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Human Information Communication Desig
Gender Choices of Conversational Agent: How Today’s Practice Can Shape Tomorrow’s Values
No full textWhen creating conversational agents, designers have to make decisions about the way the agents present themselves. In this position paper, we identify and synthesize ethical dilemmas that conversational interface designers and researchers face around gender of conversational agents. First, we identify three layers that cause tension in designing conversational agents’ gender: (i) interactional qualities; (ii) goal-orientation; and (iii) societal issues. We then argue that conversational agent designers and re- searchers can navigate this problem space by comparing two ethical frameworks: a utilitarian perspective and a dialogical ethics perspective. Finally, we argue that dialogical ethics can be a balanced, ethical lens that can help conversational agent designers and researchers make design decisions about the gender of an agentGreen Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Human-Centred Artificial IntelligenceHuman Information Communication DesignWeb Information System
Interactive Data Comics
No full textThis paper investigates how to make data comics interactive. Data comics are an effective and versatile means for visual communication, leveraging the power of sequential narration and combined textual and visual content, while providing an overview of the storyline through panels assembled in expressive layouts. While a powerful static storytelling medium that works well on paper support, adding interactivity to data comics can enable non-linear storytelling, personalization, levels of details, explanations, and potentially enriched user experiences. This paper introduces a set of operations tailored to support data comics narrative goals that go beyond the traditional linear, immutable storyline curated by a story author. The goals and operations include adding and removing panels into pre-defined layouts to support branching, change of perspective, or access to detail-on-demand, as well as providing and modifying data, and interacting with data representation, to support personalization and reader-defined data focus. We propose a lightweight specification language, COMICSCRIPT, for designers to add such interactivity to static comics. To assess the viability of our authoring process, we recruited six professional illustrators, designers and data comics enthusiasts and asked them to craft an interactive comic, allowing us to understand authoring workflow and potential of our approach. We present examples of interactive comics in a gallery. This initial step towards understanding the design space of interactive comics can inform the design of creation tools and experiences for interactive storytelling. Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Human Information Communication Desig
Prototyping tangible tools for sonic sketching in the UX design
No full textSound in UX design can be used in a variety of ways; to navigate the interaction, for branding, to set the ambience etc. The importance of sound for the user experience of a product is undeniable; however, this is not represented in the practices of UX designers. UX designers lack the tools and knowledge needed to integrate sound design into their prototyping activities. As a result, the sound is often considered last-moment, limiting the creative potential and added value of sound in the interaction. This report explores the possibilities of integrating sound design activities into the practices of UX designers. This is done through design research activities such as interviews, co-creation sessions, creating (interactive) prototypes and user testing. The aim of the project is to provide UX designers with prototyping tools for sound design. Common sound design tools are difficult to integrate in prototyping activities as UX designers often lack the skills and knowledge needed to operate these tools in a quick-paced and iterative way; which is needed in order to facilitate prototyping. Furthermore ways of bridging the semantic gap between the stakeholders is explored as well as the potential of tangible interfaces in making sound design more intuitive and engaging for UX designers. Finally, a concept is introduced: The Timbreworld, parts of which are embodied in an interactive prototype. The Timbreworld is a (tangible) interface for sonic sketching, it enables its users to create quick and iterative sound prototypes. The interactive prototype has been tested with participants and evaluated based on the design guidelines provided in the reportDesign for Interactio
Participatory Research and Design for Repair of customers’ IKEA furniture: Prolonging the life of IKEA furniture through Creative Repair
No full textValuable resources are discarded on a daily basis, in the form of home furniture. Tonnes of prematurely disposed, functional and repairable furniture is often destined for landfill or incineration, with small proportions recycled. The emergent sustainability needs of the planet, and changing policies for repair of consumer products, drives the home furnishing company IKEA to explore repair as a circular strategy to enable prolonging the life of IKEA furniture. This project explores the context of repair at IKEA and is focused on the use-life of furniture, in people’s home. Linear models aimed at profit making from the sale of new furniture, have so far prevented exploration of repair in IKEA stores. Subsequently leading to lacking visibility, knowledge, competencies, and resources for repair. While interventions are now being explored, in the form of tests and few examples at IKEA globally, channels for exchange of knowledge and service to customers are limited or yet to be developed. In terms of customer behaviour for repair various values associated to furniture, from functional, aesthetic, emotional, material, and social, motivate customers to repair their home furniture. Yet highly person and product dependent and oftentimes limited perceived ability, in terms of knowledge, skills and resources for repair of home furniture, prevents people of taking any actions for repair. Furthermore, missing triggers, especially in the face of easily available and affordable new furniture, and high effort, low impact perception of repair leads people to replace rather than repair their furniture. A participatory approach to include various perspectives relevant for repair, guided the research + design project. Desk research, interviews, front days, and co-creation with various stakeholders from IKEA helped identify the context of repair at IKEA NL. In terms of the infrastructural capacities, shortcomings, and subsequent opportunities for customer-end repair interventions by IKEA. Customer insights were gathered from desk research and further explored through interviews, survey, and co-creation sessions. Pain points, challenges and needs identified for distinct customer personas, enabled conceptualisation and prototyping of repair interventions to prolong the life of IKEA furniture. Within the scope of this project, customer challenges of missing awareness of resources and overwhelming options for repair were explored alongside their needs for a sense of preparedness, advice, and guidance for repair of home furniture. In-store repair and refurbish activities for customers were explored as prototypes in collaboration with external experts to mitigate the limited repair resources and competencies in the store. The activities explored repair as a creative and social process. These were proposed to inspire, motivate, and enable customers to add value to their IKEA furniture. Creatively repaired products, demonstrations, hands-on engagement, and advice from experts were evaluated to investigate customer experience and desirability of the workshops.While customer experience was positive and desirability for future workshops was high, yet there is low scope of feasibly and viably operating the workshops in their current format. Prominent challenges included limited dedicated space for and exploration of creative repairs and repaired products for inspiration, as well as many interdependent systems, especially in case of customer engagement and. The prototype workshops revealed a need to develop infrastructure, knowledge and products that are creatively repaired, prior to engaging with customers for knowledge exchange. An alternate model of in-store repair and refurbish of IKEA furniture is proposed as future recommendation in the form of a visible creative repair hub, hosted by external experts. To enable development of a range of creatively repaired furniture for sale and inspiration, thereby preventing the waste of abundant damaged furniture from showroom and customer returns. A local repair hub in-store and expert collaborations also offer the opportunity to cater to customer repair requests in-stores, or referral to at-home services. Design for Interactio
Investigating human altruism towards robots with a novel and reconfigurable interactive social robot
No full textAs robots become increasingly popular and co-inhabit spaces with people, there is a need for designing robots that people are comfortable interacting with. For robots to successfully integrate into human society, it is important to design robots in a way that enhances the quality of the human-robot interaction. While the human-robot relationship typically exists to serve people, there will be instances when robots require human assistance. This project aims to investigate people’s interactions with robots that need their assistance. It employs a robot designed to test people’s willingness to help it achieve a goal under various scenarios.The project in its entirety was quite an ambitious one given the limited scope of a graduation project. A literature review carried at the beginning helped identify key features a robot and an interaction should have, in order for it to be perceived positively by humans interacting with it. This review culminated in a list of design considerations which informed the design and the interaction. These design considerations were referred to throughout the project, while choosing ideas for the interaction and while detailing the chosen scenario. A state machine was used to explain the general behavioural states of the robot, and the electronic components that facilitated the desired interaction were chosen. These components were coded to reflect the desired behaviour of the robot during the interaction. Alongside this process, the robot was embodied as sub-assemblies incorporating these components. Once the robot was given a form, the components were designed to fit within a modular body that accounted for zoomorphic and anthropomorphic features, while retaining functionality of the components inside. During its embodiment, the robot was given the ability to express itself through displayed speech, sounds, facial expressions and body language. Additional structures like "nests" were also designed to support the robot's interaction. Once the interaction was designed and embodied, the robot was then plot tested, before being used as a research probe to conduct human-robot interaction (HRI) experiments to address the research questions outlined at the start of the project. Data was gathered through data logging via the robot, user observations and interviews. The results of the experiments indicate that people's willingness to help a robot is influenced by the narrative of a human-robot interaction, the effort level of the task required to help the robot, as well as individuals' attitudes towards robots. Increasing the effort level reduced people's willingness to help the robot, but only when the narrative of the interaction was simple and functional, demonstrating that a narrative which tries to engage emotionally with participants has a positive effect on their altruistic response. The experiments were also able to shed some light on the social dynamics that emerge when a robot co-inhabits a space with people, as more people informed others about the robot.https://github.com/AkmalAhmed23/boop-reconfigurable-social-interactive-robot The project's GitHub repository containing supporting files such as the code and CAD files.Integrated Product Desig
Cosmic Troubleshooting: Designing supervised autonomy for astronaut – robot coaction in space
No full textSpace exploration has historically driven technological innovation, resulting in significant advancements with applications in various industries on Earth. The exploration of Mars has emerged as a crucial objective, offering opportunities to search for signs of life and gain insights into planetary evolution. However, working on Mars presents numerous challenges, including the lack of a breathable atmosphere, different gravity, extreme temperatures, and the need for infrastructure development. Robots have proven resilient on the Martian surface but still require real-time control and decision-making from ground operators. To address this challenge, a promising solution involves astronauts in orbit around Mars controlling the robots, utilizing high-bandwidth communication techniques and autonomous capabilities.This work focuses on the Surface Avatar project, led by the DLR and ESA, which involves the humanoid robot, Rollin Justin. The project aims to gain valuable insights into the efficient control of robots in future space missions, particularly through collaborative exploration and construction tasks. Rollin Justin, equipped with autonomous capabilities, features a user interface that allows manual controls through various input devices and autonomous operation through interface commands.While the concept of an astronaut-robot pairing shows promise, several challenges remain. Error handling during teleoperation poses a significant issue, as error messages often lack specificity, leaving astronauts confused and without immediate assistance due to the distance between Earth to Mars and the associated communication delays. Limited situational awareness, unfamiliarity with robot constraints, and a large time gap between training and usage further complicate astronaut interactions with the robot. Addressing these problems is critical for optimizing astronaut-robot cooperation and reducing cognitive workload during Mars missions.To address the challenges, this work adopts a research-through-design approach, specifically focusing on user experience research and design. Extensive initial research including sessions at the DLR and literature review, was conducted to identify key issues impacting error-handling capabilities. Based on the research findings, conceptual solutions were developed to address the identified core issues. These concepts were evaluated for feasibility and desirability, considering expert input. Selected concepts were further developed, drawing inspiration from game cues and elements for user interface design. High-fidelity prototypes were created to represent the refined concepts accurately: A third-person perspective including game elements to allow for better situational awareness and a debug page that guides the user through potential error reasons in the moment of an occurring planning error. The prototypes underwent evaluation using various methods, including user sessions at the DLR and a comparative study. The results for both prototypes reveal important enhancements in user experience and a reduction in cognitive workload compared to the existing system. The findings led to informed recommendations for further improvements in the interface design, the robot’s camera setup and the communication of errors to enhance error-handling capabilities for astronauts in future missions. Design for Interactio
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