Design for Sustainability

Philips

In the project "Saving Energy Through Family Fun", the main challenge was to stimulate positive behavior change in a fun way, so people enjoy being more responsible in their energy use. The focus of this assignment, excuted for Philips Research, was on how different generations (parents and children) can accomplish this behaviour change together.

Energy & Behavior change

There are several ways of reducing your environmental footprint at home. The two main options are through technological innovations such as buying more energy efficient appliances and behavioural improvements such as using devices more efficiently. In the case that the reduction of energy consumption cannot be achieved through technological innovations, it is up to people to change their behaviour in an environmentally positive way.

Family Dynamics

The current focus of most studies looking at home energy consumption is on the household as a unit. A household is looked at as if it were a black box, where energy is consumed without notion of who is really responsible for that consumption. During this project, the challenge was be to look inside this household black box and discover the family dynamics.

Fun

As a strategy to achieve this behaviour change, the route of fun was chosen. From the study it appeared that families have busy lifestyles, but both parents and children appreciate the time they can spend together. The project focus was therefore to design a product that brings the family together to change their behaviour in a fun way.

The Flo Concept

In this game, every family member receives a Flo Cube containing electricity, metaphorically represented as a liquid. With these Flo Cubes, they could use entertainment devices in the house such as the TV and the PC. They can set a weekly budget, and the goal was to have as much liquid remaining as possible at the end of the week. An animated storyboard was made in order to evaluate this concept with the families from the user study. During the study, some families already started to make up their own rules for the game using the Flo system. The Flo concept can therefore be seen as a platform on which also other games besides can be played.

Methodology

Process followed during this project:

• Online questionnaire for parents about the time spent with their children and about sustainability
• Contextmapping study with families in order to get a deeper insight in their needs and wishes
• Concept Design
• Prototyping
• Evaluation with families

Images

A contexmapping study was executed and above an example of a 'family card' is shown. Here the opinions, preferences, needs and wishes of one (anonymized) family are displayed in order to inspire a design team.

A model of the Flo concept: a Flo cube per person, plugs to measure the electricity consumption and a docking station for recharging.

Flo at work: liquid energy can not only be used to power electrical devices, it can also be used as a currency or reward and transferred between players

Usability testing and redesign

Alcatel-Lucent

During a project for Alcatel-Lucent, one of their standard office phones was tested and redesigned.

Project executed in cooperation with David Guiza Caicedo, Meike Mak, Steven Fokkinga, Marjolein Hartog and Amine Rhord.

Images

The original Alcatel-Lucent IP Touch 4018

Redesign concept - Using a touch screen where connections are created by dragging a line between two connections.

Redesign concept - Using an LCD display for extra large text displays and universal buttons.

Redesign concept - Projecting different functions on top of blank buttons to provide functionalities similar to a touch screen, but with the tactile feedback of a real button.

Redesign concept - As most functions of the phone were not used by interviewed users, a basic model was designed which could be extended by plug-in extra functionalities.

Redesign concept - An even more basic version of the telephone, adding freedom of movement.

Final design - Providing a better user experience by making the menu more comprehensible.

Final Design - The menu provides information about next buttons to press by highlighting the most logical ones with a LED ring.

Toy Design

Double-O-Turtle

The Double-O-Turtle consists of a turtle in his shell. It is designed to support the child on its way to independence, compensating the absence of the mother, as a Transition Object following Winnicott's theory.

Designed in cooperation with Amine Rhord.

Images

When the baby is newly born, a kind of hammock can be attached to the turtle. The mother can then put this around her neck and the baby can get to know the turtle (eyecontact and play elements that can be attached).

Then if the child is alone afterwards it can still hug the turtle (which probably will smell like his mother as well).

The turtle has different elements on the outer shell. There are a lot of reactive elements to understand the not-me and to learn how different materials react.

When the child is a little bit older, it will discover that it can also open the shell and get the spyturtle out. On the inside of the shell, there are also play elements.

When the child gets older, it can take off the watch and take this to school. This will remind the child of all the soothing elements that Double-O-Turtle has, and will comfort him.

A prototype of Double-O-Turtle was built and successfully tested.

(European-)Global Product Realisation

Real-Time Monitoring during Rehabilitation

The Global Product Realisation project was carried out in a team consisting of students from EPFL Lausanne, University of Ljubljana, University of Zagreb, BME University of Budapest and Delft University of Technology. Meetings were held through video-conference but the prototype was built during a workshop week in Utrecht.

The Universitary Medical Center of Utrecht (NL), asked for a device that was capable of monitoring the rehabilitation process. The chosen focus here is on the measurement of the distribution of the body weight between both legs during walking by means of a sensor. This data is analyzed, and real-time feedback is then sent to both the patient (vibration and ligth from the device) and his doctor (through a website). This improves the quality of the rehabilitation process significantly, since patients can be guided at home as well, not only when at the doctors office.

Project executed in cooperation with Vanda Kovacs, Gabor Brezvai (BME Budapest), Luka Skrinjar, Janez Budic (Univ. of Ljubljana), Sasa Petrovic, Anton Racki (Univ. of Zagreb), Mathieu Ackermann and Andrea Cabral (EPFL Lausanne).

Images

A sensor is placed in the sole of the patient's shoes.

The doctor gets an overview of his patients, ranked on how they are doing. This way he can immediately see which patients need extra assistance in their rehabilitation process.

A prototype was built and successfully tested.

Superbus

Public transport has a reputation of being slow and inflexible. The Superbus Project is a new public transport concept involving a very aerodynamic and light vehicle that can transport 23 persons at a speed of 250 km/h. It is fully electric, so it does not depend on fossil fuels.

I was hired to help construct the prototype of the first Superbus, which is finalized at the moment.

For more information about the Superbus Project, visit their website (click here).

Nuna Solar Car

The longest and most comprehensive project I have undertaken so far, was being a member of the Nuon Solar Team.

This team of engineering students designs and builds a solar powered race car every two years, in order to compete in the World Solar Challenge in Australia. Our car, Nuna4, won this race in 2007, crossing the Australian continent with an average speed of 90.8 km/h, purely on solar power.

Within the team, I was responsible for public relations, as well as for driver comfort and ergonomics.

Photo: Hans-Peter van Velthoven

For more information about Nuna, visit the website of the Nuon Solar Team (click here)