1,721,056 research outputs found
Tips for TIPS
No full textThe transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) procedure is one of the most technically challenging procedures in interventional radiology. During the procedure, interventional radiologists (IRs) insert very thin and long instruments through a little incision in the patient’s neck. They then navigate the instruments through the blood vessels towards the liver to create a shunt in the liver. The most difficult step of the procedure is to puncture through the liver into to the portal vein, often referred to as the intrahepatic puncture. The difficulty of the puncture lies in the limited availability of real-time three-dimensional (3D) information about the anatomy and instruments during the puncture. IRs do get information to navigate, for example from X-ray imaging modalities, but insufficient. A promising technique to provide IRs the required information is by using three-dimensional ultrasound (3D US). However, the user interfaces (UI) of current 3D US machines are complicated and do not meet IRs’ expectations. The goal of this research is to design a real-time 3D US based UI for IRs to minimize the number of punctures during the TIPS procedure. To do so, the main objective of this thesis was to discover what information should be presented in an interactive 3D US based UI to minimize the number of intrahepatic punctures in the TIPS procedure. By using co-design research, the author was able to create an overview of the TIPS procedure, identify the related challenges and UI needs, and investigate the possibilities of using 3D US technology to improve the procedure. She found that IRs mainly miss information to perform the elementary cognitive actions and have limited possibility to create and maintain proper situation awareness, to predict the consequence of actions, and to learn from previous attempts. Based on the insights, two 3D US based UIs were designed to plan and perform the intrahepatic puncture, respectively. The UIs were tested with IRs and the results showed that both UIs provided the participating IRs with 3D information, feedback and navigation support in a more effective and efficient manner.Design EngineeringIndustrial Design Engineerin
Generation Y Interactions: Making the Office Catch Up
No full textThe rapid development of information technology in the past decade has enabled the introduction of a number of new communication tools and platforms in everyday life, such as instant messaging, podcasting, blogging and social networking. These tools offer people new ways of interacting, enabling them to create, retrieve and broadcast large amounts of digital information, using a great variety of devices, techniques and media. As a result of this constant stream of information, people have become more socially active as well as become more capable and ready to integrate their virtual world with their physical world, using highly interactive devices, such as mobile phones, laptops and multi-touch tablets. So far, however, this kind of interactive behavior has mainly manifested itself in people’s private context, while in the more public work context the rich interactions that all these new technologies are offering do not seem to be supported to a great extent yet. Whereas office applications have increased sometimes dramatically in functionality, the ways of interacting with all these functionalities have evolved much more slowly. As a consequence, most office work is thus still done through the ubiquitous, almost 40-year old, set-up of keyboard, display and mouse, which only supports limited behaviors, such as keyboard tapping and mouse clicking. This lack of richness in interaction is becoming more evident, now that a new generation of workers is quickly entering the market. This so-called Generation Y, born in the 1980s and early 90s, are digital natives, who have experienced digital technology their entire lives. Thus they have developed new ways and habits of interacting with their (digital) world, putting very high demands on the applications, services, devices and networks that enable and support these interactions. An interesting challenge therefore presents itself to designers and researchers: How to bring the qualities of the interactions that people currently experience in the private context of their homes and friends into the more public context of their offices and colleagues? In this thesis this challenge is taken on through a number of studies, in which the following research questions were addressed: 1. What are Generation Y styles of interaction in home life and office work? 2. What are the interaction qualities that make up Generation Y styles of interaction? 3. How are these interaction qualities experienced within home and office context? 4. What are opportunities to design office tools or services that support Generation Y styles of interaction? 5. How are the interaction qualities of these new designs experienced? The research framework of this thesis distinguishes three major components: 1) people (Generation Y), 2) technology and 3) context (home vs. work). On the intersections of these three components are the interactions that are at the core of the research. From the beginning and throughout the whole research, prototypes that are rich in aesthetic, expressive and experiential quality were built and tested in real contexts. In the first phases of the project emphasis was in the exploration of new ways of interacting, while later on in the project the focus shifted to applying these new interactions within the office context. Chapter 2 addresses research questions 1 and 2 through literature review, as well as a qualitative study, aimed at exploring Generation Y styles of interaction, behaviors and interaction qualities. In a series of contextual interviews with office workers, we found that they put very high demands on the applications, services, devices, and networks that enable and support collaborative work. A set of examples of activities representative of what people currently do in their home and office context was gathered and grouped into a style of interaction, which we have labeled as ‘Generation Y’. This style of interaction seemed to be more prominent in the home situation than in the office context. Six interaction qualities (instant, expressive, playful, collaborative, responsive and flexible) were identified to make up the Generation Y style of interaction. The interviews strengthened the impression that these qualities were better represented in the home context, through activities such as gaming or chatting, than in the office context. Chapter 3 focuses on interactive technology design, designing and developing a number of experiential prototypes as a first exploration. It explores how to use interaction qualities to guide the design of Generation Y styles of interaction by combining functional, experience and technology approaches. In an educational setting a number of interactive prototypes were built by students in which specific interaction qualities were explored and demonstrated. From designing, building and testing these prototypes, we learned to use interaction qualities to explicitly guide and constrain the design process. Interaction qualities were found to be able to integrate all three design approaches, and thus can be introduced as a possible new principle into design research and education. Chapter 4 addresses research question 3. In follow-up interviews, we explored how office workers experienced and judged the interaction qualities in their home and the office situations in order to develop interaction design guidelines. The interviews and discussions showed that the six interaction qualities made sense to users and designers alike. Designers are more used to talk about interactions and qualities as abstract things, whereas other people will refer to their direct experiences. The six interaction qualities, together with their corresponding guidelines were subsequently used by the author and by design students, to design new types of interactions in the work context. Chapter 5 deals with research question 4 by implementing the interaction qualities into a new design, which uses the knowledge and experience gained from the previous chapters and integrates them into a working prototype. An office phone was chosen as the product to bring the Generation Y interaction qualities into an office context. The YPhone prototype was developed to demonstrate the interaction qualities with new ways of working, e.g., pushing down hard on a contact to send an urgent mood while calling. YPhone prototype is being developed using Max/MSP, Phidgets sensors and Arduino. A pair of prototypes was built to demonstrate and to evaluate the Generation Y interaction style in office work. Chapter 6 focuses on synthesis again to answer research question 5. This chapter presents findings on the prototype’s performance on the interaction qualities in a lab setup and in a real office work context. The YPhone prototype was demonstrated, evaluated and discussed at a series of venues, with respondents trying out scenarios such as placing an urgent call, or relaying an incoming message. The prototype worked in demonstrating the intended Generation Y interaction qualities. Moreover, the evaluation results indicated that the interactions would fit into work contexts and enrich people’s work situations. These findings indicate that the interaction qualities can give guidance in designing Generation Y type of interactions. Chapter 7 starts by reflecting on the answers on the five research questions. This is followed by a general discussion of the research: what has been learned and what are the possible impact of its results. The aim of this research was to contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the domains of interaction design and design research. By taking interaction qualities as a driver in the design and research process, the intention was to bring Generation Y interaction qualities from the home context to the work context. We believe and hope that interaction qualities can serve as a tool to guide the design process, and that the six interaction qualities will become a valuable instrument to guide designers in developing new office tools and applications that are rich and engaging in interaction.Industrial DesignIndustrial Design Engineerin
Crossing Cultural Chasms: Towards a culture-conscious approach to design
No full textThis thesis concerns specifically the discipline of product design, and the main question is how can designers be supported in understanding the culture of their intended users. The reason for this study is that designers are experiencing difficulties and uncertainties with regard to their intended users, as these users live in cultures with which the designers are not familiar. By means of an extensive series of empirical projects, this thesis explores the concept of culture in the context of design. It proposes a framework (based on socio-cultural dimensions) and a tool (a set of cards) that help designers to become aware of possible cultural barriers with respect to participatory design research as well as to design. In addition, the study describes the opportunities (including five intentions) for a culture-conscious approach to design.Industrial Design - Design AestheticsIndustrial Design Engineerin
Creating Socionas: Building creative understanding of people's experiences in the early stages of new product development
No full textThis work presents the research into Creating Socionas, a step-by-step approach to building creative understanding of user experience in the early stages of new product development (NPD). Creative understanding is the combination of a rich, cognitive and affective understanding of the other, and the ability to translate this understanding into products and services that are pleasurable and easy to use (Wright and McCarthy, 2005). It draws on information about the user and his/her everyday life, and it includes inspiration for design and empathy or “a feel” for the user. Several approaches to building creative understanding of user experience have been developed over the past years, including critical design, generative design research and empathic design (Sanders, 2006). They have been successfully used by their creators in projects for and with clients in the industry. Despite these successful efforts, designers and user researchers may experience two important challenges when trying to implement and practice the approaches in an industrial organization. The first challenge is to make sense of users’ experiences for design. Recent societal issues and socio-technological developments, including the mass adoption of real-time social media services, have made “the social” an essential topic for design. The social denotes the idea that human activity is fundamentally social, as opposed to individual. In the design research literature, it has been suggested that holistic approaches to understanding user experience that include the social are needed to develop products and services that delight users. However, most existing approaches to understanding user experience for design build on frameworks of user experience that focus on the individual, and leave design teams unequipped for understanding the social. The second challenge is to build creative understanding of user experience in the context of NPD practice. Existing approaches to understanding user experience often suggest that members of a design team adopt the role of user researcher, and directly interact with users to ensure that the user perspective is included in design. In NPD practice this interaction is not always feasible as the user research is frequently sourced from a third party, e.g., an external consultancy or an internal user research team. Thus the users researchers who perform the user research and the design team members who manage the concept design are usually not the same people in NPD practice. This means that the user data that has been gathered in user research needs to be shared with the design team. The richness and basis for building creative understanding is often lost in this process. The current research seeks to address these two challenges; it investigates what design teams need to understand about user experience to develop products that delight users, and how they can build this understanding under the constraints of NPD practice (chapter 1). “Creating Socionas” is proposed as a possible solution. Creating Socionas is an approach to building creative understanding that addresses the two challenges by offering a conceptual framework that helps designers and user researchers to make sense of user experience for design, plus five steps that guide them through the process of building this understanding under the constraints of NPD practice. The approach builds on empathic design – an approach to designing for experience that is characterized by a design attitude of respecting users, being committed to understanding users’ needs and desires, building holistic understanding of users’ activities, and relying on personal insight and creativity (Mattelmäki, 2006). The research into Creating Socionas proceeded through cycles of developing and evaluating the approach in ongoing NPD projects at Philips. Design practice and design theory were closely integrated in the research process. In chapter 2, the research approach is described as research through design, by which I mean, “generating new knowledge or understanding through cycles of developing and evaluating experiential artefacts and process prototypes”. The chapter explains how action research methodology was used as a framework for practicing a research through design approach in addressing the research questions, after which it introduces eight empirical cases at Philips in which instantiations of Creating Socionas were developed and evaluated. The following four chapters explain the development of Creating Socionas and the knowledge and insights that were generated in the projects at Philips. Chapter 3 provides a critical reflection on the use of user-centered design approaches in industry, and the differences between industry and academic research settings. In this chapter, we review the literature of empathic design, and discuss our own experiences with introducing and practicing empathic design in several NPD projects at Philips Research over the past years. Having experimented with empathic design in an industrial context, we experienced success but also encountered eight challenges that relate to discrepancies between the theory of empathic design as described in literature on the one hand, and the application of empathic design in an industrial context on the other. An example is the earlier described discrepancy between empathic design’s advise to engage design team members as multi-disciplinary experts in user research on the one hand, and the common practice of sourcing user research from external consultancies or internal user research teams on the other, which raised questions of who, when and how to engage design team members in user research. Three cultural and methodological changes are proposed for addressing these challenges in the future. These include changing focus (a) from rational approaches to including empathic approaches, (b) from users as informers to users as partners in new product development (NPD) practice, and (c) from being informed of user research to being engaged in user research. The first two changes are consistent with those proposed by Sanders (2006), which endorses our conviction that other industrial organizations face similar challenges when introducing and practicing empathic design. The third dimension is new. It highlights an area of empathic design that is still largely unaddressed in the literature, but may be key in successfully embedding empathic design within an industrial organization. Chapter 4 introduces the concept of “trialogue”. Trialogue is a framework for sharing rich user data in NPD practice that was developed by using Wright and McCarthy’s (2005) concept of dialogue between designer and user to explore the tri-partied interaction between users, user researchers and design teams in NPD practice. Existing approaches to understanding user experience for NPD often assume that designers build creative understanding in direct interaction with users. In NPD practice, the interaction between users and the designers is often mediated by a third party performing the user research. In these cases, the rich user data gathered in user research needs to be shared with designers in ways that enable them to build creative understanding of user experience for design. In chapter 4, we identify and discuss four requirements for successfully building creative understanding in situations of trialogue, after which we discuss five implications of trialogue for sharing user data in NPD practice. One important implication is the active engagement of design teams in reading and interpreting user data for NPD, rather than in gathering user data, as is suggested for situations of dialogue. Creating Socionas builds on this implication. Chapter 5 reports our search for a conceptual framework that design teams could use as thinking tool of the social in empathic design. Despite the fundamentally social nature of life, most existing frameworks intended to generate perspectives of user experience in design still focus on the individual. Therefore, a conceptual framework is needed to sensitize design teams towards both relationality and individuality in designing for user experience. Building on the idea of engaging design teams in reading and interpreting user data for design, we set out to find a conceptual framework that design teams could use as thinking tool of the social in making sense of rich user data. In chapter 5, we review a number of possible frameworks on the basis of literature and describe our experiences in applying candidate frameworks in NPD practice at Philips. A set of criteria for assessing the usefulness of frameworks for empathic design and five groups of frameworks are identified, “special effect theories”, “relational frameworks”, “catalogues”, “metaphors”, and “scaffolds of context”. Activity Theory (AT) (Vygotsky, 1978; Leont’ev, 1978), as a scaffold of context, is found to have the best fit between design teams’ needs in empathic design and the frameworks’ offerings. An important advantage that AT brings is that it addresses the individual’s experience and social context. Having experimented with AT as thinking tool of the social in NPD practice, we found that AT is a potentially powerful framework for structuring, discussing and sharing rich user data in empathic design. Chapter 6 proposes Stanislavsky’s approach to play-acting as an intuitive way for practicing Activity Theory in empathic design. Activity Theory provides a comprehensive framework for analyzing user experience data for design, but is generally considered to be “hard to learn” and “difficult to put into practice”. More intuitive ways are needed for design teams to grapple with AT in interpreting user data for NPD. We found Stanislavsky’s System, an approach to acting that supports actors in the process of embodying and enacting a role (Stanislavsky, 1961), to provide these intuitive ways. In chapter 6, we discuss the conceptual relations between Stanislavsky’s System and Activity Theory, and show how Stanislavsky’s System was used to translate Activity Theory for empathic design in an NPD project at Philips. Our approach in this project was successful in that the design team built creative understanding of user experience from an AT perspective, without perceiving the approach as “too theoretical” or “difficult to grasp”. Chapter 7 consolidates the knowledge and insights from the previous chapters into a five-step approach to building creative understanding of user experience, Creating Socionas. In this chapter, I explain how user researchers and designers in Philips and in similar organizations might implement and practice Creating Socionas, using examples from NPD projects at Philips to illustrate the approach. Looking back on the research into Creating Socionas in chapter 8, I find that Creating Socionas is unique from most other approaches to understanding user experience for design in that the approach (1) sensitizes design teams towards the individual’s experience and social context in building understanding of user experience, (2) explains how design teams can build creative understanding of user experience in situations of trialogue, and (3) combines a conceptual framework that helps design teams to make sense of user experience for design, with a hands-on approach that guides them through the process of building this understanding under the constraints of NPD practice. A limitation of the approach is its transferability; Creating Socionas reliably applies to NPD practices similar to those at Philips only, and practitioners will need to adjust the approach to fit with their own contexts of NPD. Therefore, it is recommended that further research investigates the transferability of the approach. The results of such research may raise confidence in the success factor of Creating Socionas, and may persuade managers and other stakeholders to implement and invest in the approach in their organizations, and thereby develop products and services that resonate with users’ social lives.Industrial DesignIndustrial Design Engineerin
For Inspiration Only; Designer interaction with informal collections of visual material
No full textDesigners surround themselves with visual material as a source of inspiration. The images are used in collages and moodboards to define and communicate the direction of a design project at an early stage of the design process. This thesis describes how designers interact with their collections of visual material and how new tools can support this interaction. During the research two field studies were conducted and several working prototypes were built. During the field studies and from theory it was found that the activity of collecting and organizing is in itself a creative act. Furthermore, in practice the designers were found to keep two separate collections. A physicial collection of snippets, photos and advertisements that are gathered, shared and organized as a collection and another goal-oriented collection of digital images on computers, cd-roms and internet, which are used to find images to be used in collages or moodboards. The final prototype in the research, called Cabinet, is a tool that brings these two collections together, allowing the designers to interact with physical and digital visual material equally and simultaneously. Cabinet does this by providing a physical interaction with digital images using direct manipulation on a large table surface using expressive gestures. Furthermore with Cabinet designers can easily and fluently add physical material to their collections, using a camera that records visual material placed on the table. The working prototype of Cabinet was used as an apparatus in the final field study, in which three designers at three design agencies used Cabinet for a period of four weeks in their regular work practice. During this experiment Cabinet was both evaluated and used as a means to get insights into how designers interact with visual material.Design, Engineering and Productio
Design reuse in product shape modeling: A study of freeform feature reuse by signal processing techniques
No full textLack of facilities in supporting design reuse is a serious problem in product shape modeling, especially in computer-aided design systems. This becomes a bottleneck of fast shape conceptualization and creation in consumer product design, which consequently prohibits creativity and innovation. In the past, several efforts have been made in order to improve this situation, with confined methodologies in the spatial domain, following conventional ways of geometrical operations. These domain dependent researches did not yield satisfactory solutions. Looking at the state of the art technologies, to find a better solution, an investigation applying interdisciplinary knowledge has to be conducted. The present study aimed at finding a systematic approach to support design reuse in shape modeling, especially Freeform Feature (FFF) reuse, by hypothesizing that a better solution could be achieved by applying signal processing techniques. This global goal was further decomposed into a number of concrete objectives, each correlated to a broad spectrum of domain specific knowledge. Investigations on relevant subjects enrich the aggregation of knowledge, especially that concerning computer-assisted technologies in industrial design field. Solutions of this study functionally extend the capability of shape modeling, and enhance the interchange ability of shape depiction between the spatial and the frequency domain. A number of examples were employed to test the methods and mathematical formulations proposed. The results affirm that the hypothesis works, and the methodology developed in this research are both effective and beneficial.Design, Engineering and Productio
Designing with precedents
No full textEvery year designers are challenged to generate new and unique product forms. Often, the design and form of previous products constitutes a basis for the generation of new ones. What role then do existing products play in the generation and development of new product forms? How can this role be influenced by means of new design techniques? And how can these techniques be supported by means of a design support tool? These three questions have directed the research in this thesis. In a first study interviews with designers were conducted to map the context in which new product forms are being created. Based on a review of the literature, a theoretical framework was then constructed to describe the possible role of "the old" in the creation of the "new". This framework was then made specific for the form-creation phase of the product design process. The assumptions underlying the framework were then tested in a design experiment. This was followed by another experiment, in which designers were studied while arranging, grouping and naming collections of existing products, in order to identify their classification behavior. The results of these studies were then integrated into the design of a user interface for a visual database of product samples. The interface is based on a new interaction technique for both indexing samples into the database and retrieving samples from the database. Finally, a fully functional prototype of the interface was built and tested in an educational setting.Design, Engineering and Productio
Product Stigmaticity: Understanding, Measuring and Managing Product-Related Stigma
No full textStigma-free Product Design. Many of the products intended to relieve us from discomforting or unsafe situations and many medical and assistive devices are experienced as unpleasant and uncomfortable. On top of their discomfort, product users may also experience social unease from the people around them. Just like people may be rejected because of traits they may or may not have control over, a product can also be the causal factor of rejection or stigma. Although many assistive, protective or medical devices are helpful and functional, they often lack appeal. To improve day-to-day life for people who depend on these products, our research provides experimental techniques and tools that strive beyond functional gratification and address the user’s emotional and social needs.Industrial DesignIndustrial Design Engineerin
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