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publications 17 February 2021 2021-02-17T23:17:05+01:00 We follow up on a prominent line of work in which principles of embodied cognition are employed to not only account for skilled coping but also for more intellectual activities such as remembering and imagination. Imagination then, is not a reflective activity an individual does by herself, but a shared and embodied activity scaffolded by tangible design. We present a case study in which we designed a toolkit to facilitate imagining the Netherlands in 2050. We wrote speculative stories of people living in 2050 and designed an assortment of objects. We held several workshops to use the toolkit for shared imagination for our client, Rijkswaterstaat. We analyze how, in the context of the workshops, the stories and objects provided affordances for shared imagination. We thereby hope to have demonstrated that it is possible to design for more intellectual activities in a tangible and embodied way.

topics 10 December 2020 2020-12-10T16:27:15+02:00 Communiquer est essentiel, particulièrement en temps de crise. Dans cet exercice, souvent il a été adopté une méthode verticale, contrebalancée par une communication débridée sur les réseaux sociaux, parfois montrés du doigt comme des propagateurs de faits non étayés scientifiquement. Si ce constat porte une part de vérité, il faut cependant veiller à ne pas systématiquement assimiler, dans le cadre de débat démocratique, controverse et complotisme.

intro research 16 October 2020 2020-10-16T20:03:12+02:00

intro research 16 September 2020 2020-09-16T20:03:12+02:00

publications 30 August 2020 2020-08-30T17:03:37+02:00 Appropriation is the phenomenon by which an artefact is adapted for a specific use, distinct from the original design intention. By essence, it cannot be planned by design. However, it is a major aspect in the experience one may have in interaction with an artefact, as it leads to the feelings of ownership and to the effective situatedness of the artefact. It is therefore significantly contributing to designing for sustainability and for the everyday. This paper intends to address how design can consider the possibility of appropriation. Taking a kansei design approach, inspired from the nishidian philosophy on perception, we introduce the notion of artefactual emptiness as a space provided by design and left to the user to adapt the artefact for its integration in the habitability of the world. This space is made accessible and inviting by involving irregularities, suggested by Yanagi Soetsu as a means towards beauty, and implemented in design through micro-considerations and micro-frictions. Artefactual emptiness leads to beauty in experience, expected from a kansei perspective and made possible by kansei design. This work on appropriation through kansei design also leads to question the attention appropriation should have in other domains of kansei research, especially kansei evaluation. It calls for finding ways in kansei research to evaluate over time the kansei effect of appropriation on experience.

publications 29 August 2020 2020-08-29T16:39:07+02:00 We see a growing interest in sharing data and a growing desire to give meaning and understanding to data. Data sharing has great potential to promote people’s health and vitality by encouraging collaboration across a variety of parties. Nevertheless, the use of data lags behind due to the lack of consideration of various users’ requirements in designing data sharing platforms. Despite the needs of the socio-technical aspect for designing data platforms, studies in this regard are still limited. In this paper, we present our study to understand diverse requirements from stakeholders for the development of a vitality data sharing platform by identifying what kind of data is related to vitality. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two groups of stakeholders: (i) representatives of organizations involved in vitality (N=8), and (ii) citizens (N=20). From these interviews, we see that vitality and vitality data are multidimensional and got an insight into the different expectations on such a data platform among the stakeholders. The representatives of organizations involved in vitality, generally expect low-level data. On the other hand, citizens strive to gain more general information. Our findings suggest that various levels of information are required on data platforms as well as social discussion features to enhance the connection among multi-stakeholder.

publications 14 August 2020 2020-08-14T08:55:25+02:00 We investigate the use of five postphenomenological concepts by bringing them to design practice and using them as a “generative lens” in design research. The use of these concepts in design research creates tension between the general and the particular. In a constructive design research process, we resolve this tension. We follow two complementary lines of inquiry: first, we design a ritual to support a postphenomenological analysis of the workplace. We discuss insights regarding ordering and formulation of the concepts, selecting a technological intermediary and assessing technologies. In the second, we use postphenomenology as a generative lens in designing the ritual. We discuss the iterative process in which the designer shapes specific uses by proposing different designs and reflecting on them using postphenomenological concepts. These reflections point to a responsibility of the designer to incorporate ways of being, ways of knowing and values on top of specific uses and utility.

publications 20 July 2020 2020-07-20T18:08:42+02:00 A shared goal set by many local governments is to stimulate physical activity in neighborhoods. Public playgrounds play an important role in governmental policies for promoting physical activity. Although these playgrounds are generally considered beneficial for participation in physical activity, detailed data on their use is lacking. As a result, it is not clear to policymakers whether their policy choices are the right ones and designers cannot sufficiently align their design choices with the actual behavior of their end users. This Work-in-Progress presents a sensor-based data collection approach to collect detailed data in a real-life setting over a longer period of time. With this, we adapted the Data-Enabled Design process towards public environments by combining a quantitative sensor implementation alongside qualitative research. We show findings from two months of data collection on seven playgrounds and discuss next steps in the Data-Enabled Design framework.

publications 20 July 2020 2020-07-20T17:08:42+02:00 The Office Jungle is an experimental office environment designed to make offices more “wild”. Through this demonstration and associated design vision, we make a first attempt to reflect on and to define what characterizes wildness and how it could empower people in more playful and active lifestyles, particularly in the workplace. In our understanding, wildness is not an exclusive property of nature, but rather a condition that can be designed for. How wildness can be designed is described here in a set of design principles called “Design for Wildness”, inspired by the work of Gibson. The Office Jungle, a large geodesic sphere of 2 meters in diameter, is part and parcel of these design principles and can be used as a tool to design other wild environments. Such environments could benefit people working in the office, many of whom have been suffering the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle.

projects 26 April 2020 2020-04-26T13:38:26+02:00 Transforming Practices (TP) considers the transformations of our societies, dealing with major societal issues, local challenges for social resilience, or everyday activities, as well as their interrelations. Envisioning transformative practices, we question through designing the how, who, why and what of design for these major societal issues.

Description

This elective invites students to consider and deepen (both hands-on and through reflection) their understanding of the relationship between aesthetics and various concepts from human sciences that are at stake in the design process for transformation, including philosophy, psychology, sociology and economics.

For this aim, three frameworks are introduced and discussed (examples):

• complex thinking,
• learning,
• lenses & perspectives,
• embodied theories,
• post-phenomenology,
• transition theories.

Throughout the elective, students analyse the implication of these frameworks on the designs they create (as aesthetics propositions), and of designs on these frameworks. To reflect on their practice based on the three frameworks, students visualise all noticeable shifts in their designs, in their processes and in relations between and within these frameworks.
This reflection will be supported by a frequential redesign of an everyday design, seen as an embodied experience of an aesthetical and ethical proposition.

Learning objectives

The learning objectives of this course include:

• Identify, structure and illustrate relations between design (as aesthetical propositions) and other disciplinary fields within human and social sciences,
• Reflect on the impact of design on society and on oneself.

projects 04 November 2019 2019-11-04T00:55:28+02:00 How the interweaving between design, philosophy and human & social sciences impacts practices, societies and individuals

For example, should we focus on local challenges starting from an individual perspective, e.g. your grandmother with dementia that can’t live independently anymore, or should we focus on global challenges starting from the bigger perspective, e.g. how can society maintain a healthy lifestyle? Should we invest more in artificial intelligence and new technological possibilities to tackle our challenges, or should we invest more in the socio-cultural values needed to tackle our challenges? And should we focus on moonshot projects that yield systemic change in 2040 or 50, or should we start today designing for tomorrow?

During this one hour session you will get acquainted with Designing for Systemic Change through interviews with international experts (via videos), 3 presentations of best practices, and having a lively panel debate.

projects 03 October 2019 2019-10-03T16:27:15+02:00 Many societal challenges require a systemic approach towards change. An approach where multiple stakeholders together create insight in the challenge at hand, and explore possible directions for systemic change. This session explores the concept of Designing for Systemic Change, including: what is it, how do we approach it, and what are the challenges we face?

publications 23 September 2019 2019-09-23T13:46:08+02:00 In this chapter, the concept of Transformative Practices is introduced, i.e. shared relative steady ways of living and working with others (Wittgenstein, 1993), including specific configurations of actions, norms and knowledge (Freeman et al., 2011) and related tools and environments, focused at addressing our societal challenges, by transforming (elevating) our personal and social ethics and related behaviour through designing new ways of interaction with each other and the world. Through design research and innovation within these practices, we work together towards social-culturally, environmentally and economically sustainable communities.

publications 04 September 2019 2019-09-04T15:00:40+02:00 The concept of ‘everyday’ is a central topic in design, and this paper argues for more attention and discussion on the everyday than what is currently done in design research. By elaborating what the everyday is, designers can better formulate a perspective on people’s lives and experiences, and therefore can better contribute to the enchantment of the everyday through designing. To contribute to this effort of clarification and enchantment, we first attempt to clarify the concept of everyday and thereafter suggest notions originating from Japanese philosophy to address the everyday in design. The everyday is described mostly through the process of quotidianisation of the unfamiliar towards the familiar. To support designing for the everyday, we propose to focus on Japanese notions: thusness and irregularity. Thusness invites to consider the experience of the here-and-now as being the active relation with the entirety of the world through interaction. Irregularity invites to keep something unexplained in the design, eliciting possibilities of exploration, openness, change, and the shift of perspective. Finally, three relatively practical design concepts, namely micro-considerations, micro-frictions, and (es)sential details, are proposed to support application of thusness and irregularity through design.

DESIGN 3.0 FORUM

New design paradigms for the next generation of design research

Programme

Introduction by Dr. Ki-Young Nam, KAIST

Congratulatory Remark by Prof. Kun-pyo Lee

Professor Rachel Cooper, Lancaster University
| Context-setting for the theme: Design for Public Sector and Social Innovation

Professor Martyn Evans, MMU
| design for policy

Dr. Edward Hyunwook Hwangbo, PDR
| design for policy

Dr. Pierre Levy, TU Einthoven
| interaction design for society

Professor John Vines, Northumbria University
| digital civics

projects 03 September 2019 2019-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 Design 3.0 Forum aims to raise and discuss the challenging issues in design research, education and practice in this newly emerging paradigm we now face with new forms of end-user products such as intelligent products and services, DIY/fabrication tools, and IoTs. These new forms of products and services change the ways people interact with them and shape their everyday lives.

topics 03 September 2019 2019-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 A series of recorded lectures on design, by prof.dr.ir. Caroline Hummels @TU/e.

How would our world look like 20, 30, 40 or 50 years from now? Will we monitor each individual on the planet to live a low-risk life? Will we replace organs, eyes, or other parts of our body with artificial alternatives? Will we upload our brains and live on a server? Or do we seek ways to embrace a life more related to mother earth? In this Design Fiction project, several potential healthcare futures are explored. The project is a collaboration between Philips Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Design Academy Eindhoven, and Frank Kolkman.

When designing and developing for an audience, as was done in this project, a wide range of different opinions have to be dealt with. A well-known example are robots and Artificial intelligence (AI). Some people only see the positive side and potentials: what if robots could take over all our work so we have full-time vacation? Others only see the downsides and risks: what if robots become smarter than people and start attacking us? Either way, the truth will be somewhere in the middle, but it is very important to capture such opinions and discover what society thinks of current developments. The goal of this project was to do exactly that by developing design probes for four potential healthcare futures – based on a framework by Philips Design – and exhibiting them during the Dutch Design Week (DDW) and within Philips to provoke a debate.

During the first part of the project, four teams each developed a design probe for one of the potential futures, which were exhibited at the Dutch Design Week.

The project was continued within another team and a fifth probe was designed based on the insights gathered at the DDW. This time, the focus was laid on preventive healthcare in the present time, which led to the design of a fictive device that helps parents to monitor their baby’s health and aids them in growing a healthy child.

projects 03 September 2019 2019-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 In this Design Fiction project, several potential healthcare futures are explored in a collaboration between Philips Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Design Academy Eindhoven, and Frank Kolkman.

Stewart has received:

• the Core77 award for best interaction design student work
• the Golden A’ design award in engineering and technical design

Stewart is a tactile interface designed for a fully autonomous car. Self-driving cars offer obvious benefits such as faster travel and enhanced safety. However, they also eliminate a sense of freedom, expression, and control while driving.

Stewart’s objective is to accommodate a healthy relation between man and machine, to be achieved by an intuitive and expressive form of interaction.

Stewart provides you with constant updates about the car’s behaviour and its intentions. If you don’t agree on the car’s next course of action, you can manipulate Stewart to change this. Stewart will learn from you as you can learn from Stewart, hopefully resulting in a mutually trustful relation.

Interaction through Stewart will bring about a haptic discussion about what the car’s next move will be. Who will win this discussion? Who knows best?

Stewart is on: core77 | Design News | BBC | Creative Applications Network | and many other places…

projects 03 September 2019 2019-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 Stewart is a tactile interface designed for a fully autonomous car.<br/><i>a final bachelor project by Felix Ros</i>

publications 28 June 2019 2019-06-28T12:29:52+02:00 Society is affected by the consequences of data collection, and there are trends visible in law, the public debate and technology that could make a privacy-conscious future possible. We study how to avoid data collection from the perspective and the role of design, to provide a starting point for new developments in this context. We do so by presenting a portfolio that exemplifies a range of possible design contributions. We show how to design smart products for retail and smart home while avoiding data collection, how to convince clients through design, and how to use design to spread awareness. We present design notions and reflections that stem from this portfolio for the synthesis of new designs, that further explore the potential of design in practice that affords the trend of privacy.

Transcription of my defense for Habilitation

I would like to thank you for being here today.

I am very happy and honoured to be able to defend my HDR at the Compiègne University of Technology, for several reasons.

First of all, because UTC has put Technologies and Human Sciences at the centre of its pedagogical project in engineering, and has dedicated one of its educational programme to industrial design. A vision in which I find myself completely.
Also because it was at UTC that I started my studies and obtained my engineering degree in 2001.
It was also through UTC that I set foot in Japan, through my final year project by becoming head of innovation for Decathlon in Japan.
It was also at UTC that I was introduced to research, under the supervision of Anne Guénand.
It was also at UTC that I first met Prof. Yamanaka in 2002, and I had the honour of having him become my thesis director during my doctoral thesis at the University of Tsukuba in Kansei Science obtained in 2006.
It was also at UTC that I first met Prof. Overbeeke, from the Eindhoven University of Technology, in 2003. During my visits to Europe, I never stopped visiting UTC and TU/e, immersing myself in a reflection on design and theories related to embodiment. And in 2009, I had the honour of becoming an assistant professor at TU/e in the Designing Quality in Interaction research group then headed by Prof. Overbeeke.
Later, once settled in TU/e, collaborations continued with UTC, particularly on the subjects of cross perception and sensory substitution with Prof. Lenay.

It is therefore in a form of continuity that I am happy to support my HDR today.

Plan

My presentation is structured in four parts.

I will first explain my approach to research through design, an approach that structures my activity.

I will then present what I call my Japanese experience, which comes from my experience in Japan and my reflections on Japan, which has been decisive for a turning point in my perspective on design.

It is this turning point that I will then explain, as well as what it has led to in my research.

And finally, I will explain the consequences of this turning point for design, and in particular about everyday life rituals.

Research through design

Design research invites the participation of the designer’s skills and attitude in the research activity. The participation of design in the research activity is relevant if it is accompanied by a reflection associated with the action, allowing the creation of knowledge.

This research, linking action and reflection, is based on reflection in action and on action proposed by Schön (1983).
This approach is also in line with embodiment related theories, brilliantly brought to design by Dourish (2001).

The research through the design I conduct is mainly structured on two elements:

• Constructive design research, which invites experimentations with devices designed for research. Research-through-Design (Koskinen et al., 2012) is a major marker.
• The development of the annotated portfolio research tool proposed by Bill Gaver (2012), which structures an analysis of a corpus of artefacts either designed as part of the research project or external to it.

The role of the prototype is central to this approach, but changes in nature compared to what is traditionally considered in design: it is not a first model, close to what will be produced in series, but what Frens (2006) calls a physical hypothesis, and Hengeveld (2011) an experiential hypothesis, a very eloquent barbarism which I think corresponds entirely to the role of the prototype.

Finally, this approach also requires a project so that design can act and contribute to research. In Sennett’s words and adapting them to design, Hummels describes this request to localize the research question, which can then be followed by a reflection in action allowing it to be questioned, and a reflection on action to inquire the research question a fortiori, beyond the project itself.

This is my approach to design research.

Japanese experience

Before becoming an assistant professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology, I spent about 9 years in Japan, mainly affiliated with the University of Tsukuba, at the Kansei Information Science Laboratory, directed by Prof. Yamanaka, who was also my thesis director during my doctoral studies.

The study of Kansei has been for me a guiding principle that allowed me to progress on two fundamental subjects in my research:

• A deepening of my interest in the affective relationship to the lived world, which gradually led me to also become interested in notions related to embodiment.
• A personal and intellectual curiosity for the Japanese culture, and for what it reveals about the beauty of the everyday.

Concretisation of the beautiful

In particular, I have been interested in the Way of Tea, which Okakura (1906) describes in his famous book The Book of Tea as the cult of the beautiful of the ordinary in the everyday. And I have been especially interested in the Japanese tea ceremony, which is a ritualized experience of the Way of Tea, established by Rikyu in the 16th century.

To illustrate what I saw there, I would like to take the example of a short moment during the ceremony, illustrated by the photo you see here. Once the light tea has been served, the main guest asks the host if he or she could view objects used for tea. The host then introduces him to the chashaku and the chaire, the chashaku being the small spatula to take tea out of the chaire, which is the tea container. The chaire diameter is about one third the length of chashaku. The host places the chashaku two mats apart from the edge of the tatami in front of the main guest, and aligns the centre of the chaire with the centre of the chashaku. Once the host has withdrawn into the water room, i.e., the kitchen, the guest approaches the two objects so that his knees are two mats from the chashaku. Sitting in seiza, he will then be able to comfortably manipulate and contemplate the two objects presented to him, in a culturally Japanese comfort.

What impressed me here is that Rikyu has made an aesthetic proposition towards harmony that corresponds to a system of values (not aimed at effectiveness or efficiency), with aesthetic, ethical and social concerns, and that enables the realization of beauty.

The tea ceremony as a design

This led me to consider that Rikyu (1522-1591) transformed a proposal of values, those of Buddhism and the Wabi etiquette of his time, into a situated system of artefacts, social actors, and signs enabling an engaged and social experience of these values.

This transformation is based on the development of the technology of his time in response to a social expectation of his time. This system is an aesthetic proposal.

The idea that the formalization of the Japanese tea ceremony responds to a “social expectation of its time” already invites us to rethink the ritual not as a fixed repetition of a sequence of actions, but as a practice of daily life re-interpretable in a time and place.

Moreover, the realization of an aesthetic proposal enables the perspective of this aesthetic proposal by Japanese thought, and opens on the notions of contexture and temporality of the daily experience, notions that we will question later.

Mujirushi ryohin

This aesthetic proposal is still found in contemporary design, as for example in mujirushi ryohin, better known simply as muji. If we analyse what has been written about the brand, as well as what the main actors who have participated in the development of the brand and design – notably Kenya Hara and Naoto Fukasawa – have explained about muji’s philosophy and vision, we find most often three key concepts that characterise muji’s design and seem to be in line with the values embodied by the Japanese tea ceremony:

• The simple invites to consider what is obvious or essential, stripped of all superfluity.
• The ordinary focuses on what appears classic or usual, and useful for everyday life. It also invites to consider habitability, a concept dear to Alain Findeli.
• Finally, the void concerns a space of possibilities left open by the design, to be filled by the user (or interactant) with the artifact, in order to adapt the value proposal to one’s place and time within one’s daily life.

The aesthetic proposal proposed by Rikyu is reflected in a contemporary design, that of muji.

Turning point

From this observation on tea, and by observing a corpus of artefacts from the work of contemporary Japanese designers, this aesthetic proposal aiming at a form of harmony between values, bodies, gestures, etc. has caused a turning point in my view on design.

Looking at the Japanese tea ceremony through the lens of design, I saw the tea ceremony as prototypical of design based on Japanese culture, which has deeply shaken my perspective on design.

So I turned the lens over and looked at design through the lens of the tea ceremony, and saw a lack of a theoretical framework for design to explain the tea ceremony. And this absence gave way to a gap to be filled by a cultural decentration of design.

This decentration invites us to redefine the ritual not as an identical repetition of a sequence of actions, but as an aesthetic proposal that allows us to be reconsidered every time in our daily lives.

It also appears that the ritual is both social and singular, and always reinterpretable by those who propose it, the designers, and those who live it.

Design is therefore questioned in the light of the ritual, and the ritual is questioned through design.

Japanese philosophy and culture

To achieve this decentration, I studied Japanese philosophy and culture. Although I do not have time here to present the details of this study, I list here the main topics on which my attention has been focused:

• Watsuji’s ethics on relationship, published in 1934;
• Nishida’s philosophy (and a little more generally of the Kyoto School) on experience, whose main work was published in 1911;
• The writings of Dōgen on time, dating from the 13th century;
• And the work on the Buddhist idea of beauty proposed by Yanagi and published more recently in 1972.

Framework for design

From this study, it results that the aesthetic proposal of the Japanese perspective studied here is based on two notions on which design can act:

• Thusness, or suchness, which proposes to look beyond human-machine interaction, considering a maximum of elements that constitute the lived world, as well as their relationships and the global harmony. Therefore, it suggests a method that takes the lived world as a starting point, and not the human-machine relationship as it is traditionally done, and aims to a harmonious integration of the designed artefact.
• Irregularity offers an ethical vision for the design of everyday life. It does not aim for a form of perfection – very often considered in industrial design – but goes beyond it by presenting itself as a source of freedom and opening up fields of possibilities through interaction.

The two photos shown on the left of the screen are, at the top, an embroidered pattern designed by Akira Minagawa in 2005, and at the bottom a set of chasen handles (the whisk used to mix tea during the ceremony) 3D-printed during Shigeru Yamada’s master project that I supervised in 2016.

The irregularity shown in Minagawa’s design is made through a large number of embroidery stitches intended to be made at the same place, so that the machine can no longer make the stitch because of too high thread density. This causes the needle to twist to continue making the required stitch. This results in one or more embroidery stitches being made in an unplanned location, and therefore in an irregularity.

The chasen handles were based on a parametric design (the shape is described by a mathematical formula). The six models were produced at different printing speeds. From right to left, the first print was made at the standard machine speed, as indicated by the machine manufacturer, then 2, 3, 4 and 6 times faster. When we showed these chasen handles to a group of tea masters, considered experts in this experiment. The second was significantly more appreciated. This chasen handle has both a possibility to be used properly, and also a subtle irregularity that makes the object beautiful. We see in this experiment that irregularity is perceived as beautiful.

The contexture of everyday life

What thusness and irregularity enabled is to reopen the question of everyday life, and in particular the rituals of everyday life. We question here what people feel in their daily lives, especially in terms of aesthetics. The everyday ritual is precisely an interesting moment for design as it gives everyday practices a space for attention.

However, the idea of an aesthetic proposal that was discussed earlier brings us to an aesthetic view of the experience in the here-and-now, and therefore to what I call a contexture.

In this space (or moment) of attention that is the ritual, there is a texture, i.e., an inquiry on form by the organization of space, by the choice of objects, of gestures and practices… This texture is concretized by the ritual. Therefore, our approach questions the contexture delivered by the aesthetic proposal of the ritual and aims at a balance that allows a form of harmony.

Moreover, the ritual includes aspects that are social and singular. To understand it, it is therefore necessary to question it both on its social and singular aspects. To capture the singular, for about two years I have been asking my students, who have sufficient skills to make small films of this nature, to do one on one of their own daily rituals. These films are then viewed, discussed and analysed. This is one method, among others, to capture elements of the complex, intimate and implicit experience of everyday life, which are singular and aim at harmony within this experience.

The temporality of everyday life

I also conducted another experiment to explore a daily ritual, which was based on my personal morning hot chocolate. This experiment has shown that the question of the contexture, enabling to approach the aesthetic proposal, also questions our temporal values, most often in opposition to efficiency that often imposes itself on any question of temporality, especially in industrial design and interaction design.
This raises the question of the time values that are given to these everyday experiences.

How can the temporality of the ritual be characterized, for example differently from the flow theory, proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, also aiming at efficiency? We are aiming here at an aesthetic proposal that questions temporality, that invites us to take time: in this proposal, what values stopping to listen to music, contemplating a landscape, etc. This is another major issue addressed by this research program.

Enchanting everyday life through design

My research is therefore a design research, based on the contexture, a questioning of the temporal value, and a structured theoretical framework on thusness and irregularity.

The aim is to use the questions of contexture and temporality to invite the composition of a daily experience. And I like to borrow Bart Hengeveld’s words, who compares such a composition to that of music.

This is done in resistance to the Western culture of industrial design, which focuses almost exclusively on efficiency and effectiveness, and which seems to resist questioning emotion and irregularity. The Design&Emotion Society, established about a dozen years ago and mainly led by the Department of Industrial Design at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, which first worked well, and is currently in standby to discuss and to understand why it didn’t work so well in the end. I hope that this research brings an original perspective to this discussion.

Irregularity is at the heart of the approach. The irregularity enables an absence of fence, avoids a design that would aim at a controlled behaviour by an optimization of the means for a predetermined goal. It contributes to a better understanding of design, and to suggest an epistemology of design on the fact that a totally predictable and regulating system – whether social, cultural or technical – prevents invention or transformation.

Therefore, irregularity prevents us from falling into the trap of industrial production aiming at perfection and infinite reproduction, and enhances the idea of surprise, accident, openness to possibilities, both in the design and manufacturing processes and in the results.

And this research program aims to enchant everyday life through design.

One last thought

This brings me to a final reflection on this research program.

The opening made by my inquiry on the Japanese tea ceremony through design proposes something different to design. It questions the subject and the place of design research afresh, as it raises the question of everyday rituals.

Design research must be reappropriated by a design that is close to the thinking of Art&Craft and the decorative arts, i.e., by a thought that focuses on the arts of living, and that reflects aesthetic values and proposals for balance in the sensitive experience. This ambition to propose balances has rather been forgotten in current design research – and I am referring here to the research communities to which I belong, especially SIGCHI and DRS – which comes rather from industrial design and aims at a form of perfection, i. e., to an end of any reinterpretation.

The objective of design must be to propose aesthetic arrangements aimed at proposals for harmony between artefacts, spaces, gestures, values, etc., and not exclusively to promote effectiveness and efficiency, yet a dominant effort in contemporary design research and particularly in technological education places.

Therefore, I see this research as a form of resistance to functionalism, so well established in the culture of design research, inspired by industrial design.

What is important for such a design is the enchantment of everyday life, that is, an attention to a harmonious aesthetic arrangement made visible by the contexture: questioning again norms that are no longer visible by design, seeking an overall aesthetic balance in everyday life that allows the experience of beauty.

Thank you very much.

publications 18 November 2018 2018-11-18T13:00:33+01:00 The Japanese tea ceremony is an experiential moment of aesthetics and ethics of the everyday, a harmony between objects, beings, places, and practices. It underlines that everyday objects, heart of our material culture, exhibit a profound beauty, uphold a remarkable ethics, and yet go unnoticed. At the crossing of a reflection on a Japanese approach on design through the study of kansei, and a reflection on design in HCI based on embodiment theories, this research inquires first the western cultural hegemony of design in HCI, and second sets a cultural decentration of the discipline taking Japanese philosophy and culture as theory. This results in a novel perspective on design and designing, supported by an ethics of relation, an experience of thusness, and an aesthetics of irregularities. This perspective invites design to enchant the everyday, enabling to consider details of reality as it is lived, and to create unexpected moments, source of surprises and new possible outcomes. Therefore, inviting to culturally decentre design, this research suggests an original approach to design for the everyday, and contributes to find in it a major esthetical and ethical source, towards human development, as well as one’s sensitivity, and one’s values.

Introduction

First, I would like to thank Stephan Wensveen for the organisation and for making this day a such a special one, from start to end (although who knows how it will end…).
I am very glad to be here. It is an honour to participate to this symposium, and to have the role of opening the series of presentations. It is also a challenge I must say. Kees has been enriching the life of many of us, and I believe many of us would have something valuable to tell based on sharing experiences with Kees. I am very conscious of this privilege.

Times ago, discussing this symposium with Stephan, the idea was to have one eye looking back at what Kees brought to us and hoped for the design community, and to have the other eye on the future trying to tell our current students, to remind our alumni and ourselves some aspects Kees carried through his work, that we may bring further.
I have the honour and the challenge to operate this eye gymnastic and to share with you today what I see.

Contemplating the impossible

Today, in this speech, I will try not to bore you with details of the inaugural lecture of the late Prof Kees Overbeeke, “The Aesthetics of the Impossible”, that he gave in 2007, 11 years ago in exactly a week. Today offers an occasion for me to bore you with a contemplation of some of the key ideas raised during this lecture, and to contemplate them from where and when I stand today. And much have happened in between.

Today is also for me the occasion of getting bold again in the tradition of DQI. For the ones who hoped this was the past, bear with me and I’ll promise I will try to be soft. For the ones who miss it at times, hope you can enjoy.

For the ones who did not meet Kees, I would like to briefly introduce him. Late professor in our department of Industrial Design, Kees had a significant impact on the design and CHI communities all over the world, especially on the topics related to embodiment in design for interaction. But that would not tell much about the guy, by far. If he is remembered and celebrated in such a way as today, is because his ideas, his generosity, his friendliness and appreciation to all, impacted many individual lives, many of us both intellectually and humanly. He is, for many, one of these very few people that significantly meant something to us. He is a moment in the development of thoughts and attitudes.

His inaugural lecture was entitled “the aesthetics of the impossible”. The notion “impossible” demands here a little clarification, which is to me twofold:

• Aesthetics, which is the core of design for interaction is ungraspable. It is only when and where it happens, in the here and the now. And then it is gone, suddenly as it happens. It is unique and impossible to grasp. Standardisation is impossible and actually not wished, as it would lead towards an extreme level of boredom and dissatisfaction. Systematic research is difficult but should be challenged.
• Impossibility is also in the complexity we encounter in design: that is, in the variety of disciplines our students are facing (challenging skills, knowledge and practices), and in the inherent complexity of interaction and of experience. To address this impossibility, design approaches require a greater balance between making and thinking (supported by reflection on action, which I will address again later).

Therefore today, to contemplate the impossible, I will especially focus on three aspects: believes, teaching and research, making and thinking. And I will do so by freely mixing what Kees said (at least the way I understand it) and by my reflection on it. For the flow of my discourse, I will often borrow from Kees’s inaugural lecture without systematically mention it.

Contemplating believes

Kees explains:
Every scientist, as well as every designer, has a body of knowledge, as well as a galaxy of believes (that is my wording).

Knowledge is established through research activities and transmitted through teaching. It is about how things are. Believes contribute to envisioning how things ought to be. They result from philosophy, intuition, awareness, experience, from our being-in-the-world, in a giving culture, in a giving timeframe.

Believes are guides for where we go, where we look, we what we do, and what strikes us. They condition our engagements, our motives, our stance and our actions in the world. Less than a month ago, Bill Buxton, lecturing here at TU/e, was reminding us the importance, and actually the necessity of having a compass and a horizon in design practice and design research. It is essential for good design (given that this design intends to contribute to the making of a better world).

In the current context where the most striking thing we know is that we do not know where the world is going, because of its complexity, because of challenges that we are aware of but do not fully comprehend, because of tensions we feel but that are not clear to our sight. This is made even more complex by our relation and use of technology: as we praise it and support its development and its use in society, yet questioning it at the same time.

Knowledge and believes then are necessary in design practice, design education, and design research.

A few believes that Kees mentioned during his inaugural lecture, are worth remembering:

• “Design is about people. It is about our life and dreams, about our loneliness and joy, our sense of beauty and justice, about the social and the good. It is about being in the world”.
• Meaning emerges in interaction and cannot be detached from action. This demands a primacy of embodiment and a primacy of action.

Considering these two first points, a few consequences can be suggested here. The first two ones are also stated by Kees:

• A design theory must be a theory of action (and I would add of transformation, which I will discuss later). This theory should focus on embodiment in the first place, and on meaning in the second place. Reflection in/on and for action is a source of knowledge and a creator of new and valuable perspectives on and for design, on and for the world.
• Design research and practice are powerful source of knowledge. As I will discuss it later, research and education should be highly interwoven.

To these two considerations, I may add the following:

• Design research is not solely an applicative research but contains also, and actually is for a large part, a theoretical research, with the condition that we give space to it. Design theory, constitutive of design research, is a theory of action. If design would to be a science (in the modern sense of the term, which I have throughout the years got progressively to agree with), it would be a transformative science, as any other science with transformative outcomes, such as engineering or chemistry (when it tries to create a new molecule for example). Design is not a descriptive science, such as ethnography, physics trying to describe the phenomenon of gravitation, or chemistry trying to describe a natural chemical reaction.
  Design (being practice, education, or research) is about transformations, and is specific as it is about action, about people, and about ethics.
• Therefore, I would challenge any reduction of the world or the experience of it, to data. In this crucial moment, where data related technologies become so predominant, with incredible and promising outcomes, design practitioners and design researchers should obviously embrace such technologies, as well as not forgetting that the experience of the world is embodied, is affective, and symbolic. We are beings with a history, culture, ethics, visions and dreams.

Contemplating teaching and research

This is especially important when considering the necessity of aligning research and teaching. Kees reminded us clearly and simply the necessity to align both activities for the academic world.

He told us: “expressivity, beauty and meaning are at the core of design”. In 1999, I (being Kees while in Delft) pointed out the mismatch between teaching and research. Research was about structural aspects of perception, and teaching was about beauty of interaction. I could not change the teaching, so I changed the research. “Emotion became important, which is not obvious as a research topic in the technical background that was then in Delft and now here.”

The PhD of Stephan Wensveen is one of the first and a clear example of research work on emotionally intelligent products. Already then he noticed the challenge and the necessity of interacting in a continuous and simultaneous way with products (topic that was still challenged in the PhD of Jelle Stienstra just 2 years ago). Many related topics were then developed further in various ways throughout most PhDs executed in the DQI research group. And I am no surprised that Stephan today pushes the research further and focuses on questions related to the “aesthetics of the intelligence”.

Recently, our students are facing a progressive increase of topics the design community is engaging in (design based on big data, A.I. and other learning algorithms, but also service design, social design…). All these increase challenges and complexity in their education and their future work. They also face a progressive increase of technological solutions at hand to make their designs.
Now that teaching is challenged by many other topics (related to technology and society), I think It is important for us, as a leading academia in design, to keep focusing where our skills are: as we interact with data through interfaces, being either sensors or actuators… “how do these become meaningful and beautiful to us?” is our core question. Mastering data management (among others) is certainly important, however, providing meaningful, rich and beautiful interactions is the heart of design.

This demands to care for human and their actual experiences as beings-in-the-world, and to keep design teaching and research focusing on this. Only then, when students will embody that by being curious, sympathetic and independent, only then they will embody and act the richness design may provide. Taking again the lines from Kees: “But the only way to develop curiosity, sympathy, principle, and independence of mind is to practice being curious, sympathetic, principled and independent. For those of us who are teachers, it isn’t what we teach that instills virtue, it is how we teach. We are the books our students read most closely”
“Let us practice what we preach”. Let us care, through our teaching, what our students learn and become.

Contemplating making and thinking

The electronic and digital interfaces are loaded with buttons that demands little of our motor-perceptive skills, and too much of our cognitive skills.
This situation leads to standardized and efficient interactions, as well as to boring and poor ones if we consider the human being in its entirety.

Making simple buttons by default is, to my point of view, a triple failure:
First, as we already mentioned it, it fails the possibility to provide beauty in interaction, beauty and care in the experience. It fails the heart of design.
Second, it is defeating the idea that design is about challenges and only addressing these challenges will help, in the long term, to find novel, effective, rich and beautiful ways of interacting.
Third, the button degrades our contact with the world. When there is no experiential relation between the activity of pressing a button and the functional and experiential consequences of doing so, there is also less space for grasping the world, that is for sensemaking. Proposing poor interaction solutions (by opposition of making rich interaction solutions), makes us designer and us users less to experience our being-in-the-world, and therefore inepter (or more moronic is you prefer).

The button here is obviously only the archetype of a quick and easy decision making, yet leading to boredom, poverty in life experiences, and flattening both designers’ and users’ minds.
Our design skills exploring possibilities of rich interactions are therefore not only a way to make user’s experiences and life better, but also a way to advance in design research: exploring through making (using design skills well), and reflecting in and on action is what design can do best, and contribute to the most in the world of academia in the first place, and in the world in the second place.

Finally, as Kees reminded us, we need to keep in mind that we are too many that know, and not enough that make. Reflection on action should be the drive to push design practice and design research further. “in our effort to understand reality, we have been too much abstracted from it”.

Contemplating transformation

As mentioned before, design is about transformation, transformation of practices in societies and in our everyday life. Understanding reality, which means understanding our everyday life, is to transform it:

Étudier la vie quotidienne serait une entreprise parfaitement ridicule, et d’abord condamnée à ne rien saisir de son objet, si l’on ne se proposait pas explicitement d’étudier la vie quotidienne afin de la transformer. Guy Debord

Studying the everyday life would be an absurd undertaking, and anyway fated to catch nothing of its object, if studying the everyday life would explicitly be with the intention to transform it. Guy Debord

And I would like to conclude with this notion of everyday transformation, being actually my research topic which I believe I have built partly on the considerations I have discussed today.

Although this word, “everyday” is so much used in the world of design, addressing it is not as obvious as it seems, and is often actually avoided or subverted. As things become part of our everyday, a process called quotidianisation, they escape from our attention, giving us peace of mind. They stop questioning us, and we stop questioning them. This way, they progressively disappear from our awareness. Perec even speaks about amnesia, rather than lack of attention. What can be extraordinary when new, becomes infra-ordinary through the process of quotidianisation.
Questioning the everyday requires exploring the infraordinary, which demands exploring tiny and often personal details that we are obviously not aware of in the first place. Exploring the everyday to transform it demands to get aware and to understand its most tiny details, which as Coyne & Mathers explain “often appear irrational from a third-person perspective, but most often rational from a first-person perspective”. Therefore, designing for the everyday demands a continuous and structuring dialog between an exploration at the first-person perspective, to create a rational, observing and transforming ones’ own everyday life to comprehend these rationales, and a third-person perspective that enables us to design for others.

I have found the sensibility, the attention to tiny details and the beauty in the everyday in the Japanese culture and philosophy, from which I have elaborated a theoretical framework for designing for the everyday. This framework relies indeed on Japanese philosophers and thinkers, such as Nishida Kitaro or Yanagi Soetsu who through their work have pointed out where beauty relies in the everyday, as well as designers, such as Naoto Fukusawa and Kenya Hara who through their work have not only designed but also reflected on their making to show the values of paying attention to the everyday towards human and social elevation, and have made it existing in our societies all over the world, through companies such as Muji.

Designing for the everyday is to me a clear example of what design claims to do, yet actually (and for now!) fails to do properly. The hope of making design research education and practice an actual unique and yet not isolated contributor to a betterment of our world, goes through a repositioning on what design can do best: focusing and creating meaning in interaction for people’s experiences, using at full reflection in and on action to make sense of the world as it is lived, making sure to enrich the beauty of our everyday life. All that stands in the way of abstraction, standardization.

Contemplating the impossible

To finish on Kees’s considerations: “It is our role, scholars and industrialists, to define a new project for design. We have to avoid remaining in a problem-solver perspective, and to wake-up and let grow the challengers that is in each of the designers we are educating.”

We must dream, to give youngsters hope.

Thanks to Kees for all this teaching, that even in challenging times remain constitutive of our design compass.
La reconnaissance est la mémoire du cœur.

Thank you

publications 19 October 2018 2018-10-19T10:30:52+02:00 Times ago, discussing this symposium with Stephan, the idea was to have one eye looking back at what Kees brought to us and hoped for the design community, and to have the other eye on the future trying to tell our current students, to remind our alumni and ourselves some aspects Kees carried through his work, that we may bring further. I have the honour and the challenge to operate this eye gymnastic and to share with you today what I see.

Stephan was appointed full professor of ‘Constructive Design Research in Smart Products, Services and Systems’ in the Department of Industrial Design on May 1, 2017. He will deliver his inaugural lecture ‘Constructive Design Research’ at 16:00.

Additionally, there will be a series of lectures by staff and students including Pierre Levy, Caroline Hummels, Luke Noothout and Angella Mackey.

Guest speakers include Bill Gaver, from the University of London, who will give a talk describing how he and his team has designed DIY devices that people can make themselves: ‘The first is for a collection of cameras and an audio device designed for Cultural Probes studies. The second, a ‘wildlife’ camera that uses computer vision to trigger image capture when it sees movement.’

projects 09 October 2018 2018-10-09T16:27:15+02:00 Preceding the inaugural lecture of prof. Stephan Wensveen, you are cordially invited to attend the Kees Overbeeke symposium at the Senaatszaal in the Auditorium, on Friday, October 19, 2018.<br/><i>On the legagy of Prof. Kees Overbeeke</i>

Description

The everyday is the reality in which we act and perceive through unremarkable experiences. It is about going to sleep, waking up, cleaning, eating, dressing and undressing, reading, drinking tea or coffee… It is therefore in the flow of the infraordinary (Perec, 1989) and the banal, away of the extraordinary and of the memorable. What the everyday is actually less a matter of activity value than a matter of ‘specific mode of manifestation’ (Dewolf, 2008).

The aim of this course is to address the qualities embodied in the everyday from an interaction design perspective, and to explore the relation between the designed artefacts and the everyday they are involved in. The main focus will be on how to capture the everyday and to design towards it. A continuous discussion throughout the elective will address the merits of addressing the everyday in interaction design.

To address this course through a project, we will first focus on a personal everyday ritual, in order to determine descriptive elements. We will then explore ways to approach the everyday through a project.
The final day will close the module by a demonstration of the design addressing the students’ inquiry on the everyday, and a discussion on these designs.

Describe your street. Describe another one. Compare.br> Make an inventory of your pockets, of your bag. Wonder about the origin, the use, the future of each of the objects you take out.
Question your tea spoons. []
It matters little to me that these questions are fragmentary, barely indicative of a method, at most of a project. It matters a lot to me that they seem trivial and futile: that’s precisely what makes them as essential, if not more so, as so many others by which we have vainly tried to capture our truth. (Perec, 1989)

Learning objectives

The learning objectives of this course include:

• Describing everyday rituals and the everyday;
• Implementing details related to the everyday through interaction design;
• Arguing the design decisions taken during implementation and their consequences;
• Assessing or evaluating the everyday-related qualities in interaction.

projects 04 September 2018 2018-09-04T00:55:28+02:00 Addressing the ordinary through design

projects 03 September 2018 2018-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 床を抜け匙にて点てるココアの茶

publications 28 June 2018 2018-06-28T15:04:28+02:00 The everyday is often mentioned in design, yet hardly inquired. The everyday is about what is banal, infraordinary, not memorable, as well as about the force that makes things habitual, endotic. In the research encompassing this paper, we question the everyday and explore opportunities to enchant it by design. This paper focuses more specifically on the design of everyday rituals, and aims to propose a descriptive framework to ‘read’ and compose such rituals. The elaboration of the framework is done based on a case study: the making of a hot chocolate in the morning. Through an autoethnographical approach, the main dimensions of the framework are determined (place and time, essentiality, and strength) and discussed. Throughout this inquiry, the value of a first-person perspective while designing for the everyday is discussed, as well as its relationship with the third-person perspective. This framework proposed points out the importance of quick iterations and of the consideration of consequences of design decision at all levels of the everyday ritual (structural, temporal, aesthetical, ethical…).

publications 22 March 2018 2018-03-22T23:44:38+01:00 The proceedings gather a selection of refereed papers presented at the 7th International Conference on Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research 2018 (KEER 2018), which was held in Kuching, Malaysia from 19 to 22 March 2018. The contributions address the latest advances in and innovative applications of Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research. The subjects include: – Kansei, Emotion and Games – Kansei, Emotion and Computing – Kansei, Emotion and Wellbeing / Quality of Life – Kansei, Emotion and Design – Kansei, Emotion and Health / Ergonomics – Kansei, Emotion and Multidisciplinary Fields – Kansei, Emotion and Culture – Kansei, Emotion and Social computing – Kansei, Emotion and Evaluation – Kansei, Emotion and User Experience The book offers a valuable resource for all graduate students, experienced researchers and industrial practitioners interested in the fields of user experience/usability, engineering design, human factors, quality management, product development and design.

publications 22 February 2018 2018-02-22T23:14:50+01:00 The scope of technology has expanded towards areas such as sports and vitality, offering significant challenges for engineering designers. However, only little is known about the underlying design and engineering processes used within these fields. Therefore, this paper aims to get an in- depth understanding of these type of processes. During a three-day design competition (Hackathon), three groups of engineers were challenged to develop experience-able prototypes in the field of sports and vitality. Their process was monitored based on the Reflective Transformative Design process (RTD-process) framework, describing the various activities part of the design process. Groups had to keep track of their activities, and six group reflection-sessions were held. Results show that all groups used an open and explorative approach, they frequently swapped between activities, making them able to reflect on their actions. While spending more time on envisioning and creating a clear vision seem to relate to the quality of the design concept.

publications 14 June 2017 2017-06-14T23:20:07+02:00 Technological advances increase the possibilities for the aesthetics of interaction and the user experience. This is a growing field in the Human-Computer Interaction community (HCI). However, Lenz et al. [3] show that little is known about the relation between experiences and interaction. The current study explores this relation through the design of an interactive lamp. We compare a direct and a delayed coupling between the user’s action and the reaction of the light. The results provide empirical evidence that deliberately violating one of the unification principles (i.e., delayed response) triggers a more positively engaged experience. We discuss the result and further implications for design research.

The nature of design thinking projects requires a great capacity to solve situated-inquiry problems (versus technical problem solving – Schön). Design thinking requires practitioners to become reflective professionals. This piece of research provides a protocol and tools to guide their journey of self-reflection:

• A new action research protocol (derived from Pedagogical Action Research) for design thinking practitioners,
• A conceptual framework (People Place Process) to guide design thinking development, in both academic and business environments,
• A scale-up model to develop design thinking pedagogy at the scale of an individual educator, a university and a government,
• An activity framework for both academic and business users to identify competences developed with (and required for) design thinking projects

Pedagogical action research represents the oldest strand of action research, reaching back to the Science of Education movement in the late nineteenth century (Bain, Boone) and revived in the early twentieth century by the work of John Dewey. The ultimate goal of reflective teaching is to develop teachers’ skills in ‘‘reflection-in-action”, i.e., their ability to frame and reframe problems, find solutions instantly on the basis of their interpretation and analysis of the situation, and construct new meanings and directions for future actions (Schön). The protocol and tools developed in this research have been adapted to design thinking projects, both in academic and business contexts.

projects 23 May 2017 2017-05-23T16:27:15+02:00 The nature of design thinking projects requires a great capacity to solve situated-inquiry problems (versus technical problem solving – Schön). Design thinking requires practitioners to become reflective professionals. This piece of research provides a protocol and tools to guide their journey of self-reflection.<br/><i>Doctoral dissertation of Véronique Hillen</i>

publications 14 April 2017 2017-04-14T19:19:56+02:00 In this paper we share a theoretical perspective of co-responsibility, developed by a consortium of a university, a private company and a hospital. On this perspective we will base design interventions towards improving the experience and specifically the engagement of cardiovascular patients after the disease has occurred, a phase referred to as secondary prevention. Co-responsibility argues that responsibilities of different people in society are intertwined with each other, not in the sense that people share the same responsibilities, but in the sense that people’s responsibilities are interdependent. We discuss the opportunities and challenges for design from a co-responsibility perspective through examples of co-responsibility encouraging design artefacts. We argue that such an approach offers the opportunity to support more sustainable engagement by attuning patients, their family and friends, and medical professionals to each other to increase their team performance, address their internal motivation and create a win-win situation.

publications 23 March 2017 2017-03-23T23:11:05+01:00 Technological advances increase the possibilities for the aesthetics of interaction and the user experience. This is a growing field in the Human-Computer Interaction community (HCI). However, Lenz et al. [3] show that little is known about the relation between experiences and interaction. The current study explores this relation through the design of an interactive lamp. We compare a direct and a delayed coupling between the user’s action and the reaction of the light. The results provide empirical evidence that deliberately violating one of the unification principles (i.e., delayed response) triggers a more positively engaged experience. We discuss the result and further implications for design research.

publications 02 September 2016 2016-09-02T23:06:45+02:00 Our lives are highly shaped by rituals. The way we wake up, the way we prepare tea or coffee are two of the many rituals many of us have constructed. As they structure our everyday lives, it is crucial to understand how to design them from a kansei design perspective. This Research-through-Design inquiry contributes to a larger research of addressing the way to design rituals. An annotated showcase of three ritual design projects is proposed. From the analysis of these three projects, we suggest 11 points of attention for the construction of a ritual visualization tool. This tool is expected to be used not only to support the analysis and the assessment of rituals, but also to contribute to the composition of rituals, towards the design of experientially rich rituals from an interaction perspective.

publications 02 September 2016 2016-09-02T22:55:03+02:00 Over the last decades, the integration of digital technology in the automotive industry has caused important transformations for interaction design in regards with secondary controls, but much less in regards with primary controls. However, not only primary controls remain the dominant artefact to interact with in the driving experience, but also distracted drivers (i.e., interacting with secondary controls or other artefacts while driving) are a major reason of accidents. In this paper, we introduce a design project on the steering wheel, taken from a kansei design perspective. Based on a kansei design framework, structured by three stages (Expression, Gesture, Affect), we observed the way drivers interact with various forms of steering wheel in order to create design propositions for greater and safer driving experiences in the context of novel driving conditions, i.e., with novel technologies and recent driving techniques. This overall project aims at revisiting fully the driving experience, while inquiring further the framing of a direct kansei design approach.

publications 31 July 2016 2016-07-31T15:17:29+02:00 While user interfaces for in-vehicle systems in the market are mostly button- and screen-based, advances in electronic technology provide designers with new design opportunities. In this paper, we propose applications of these novel technologies for several aspects of the current and future driving context. We explore opportunities for gesture-based and haptic interfaces in three different areas: establishing shared control between the driver and the autonomous vehicle; providing situation awareness to users of autonomous vehicles while engaged in other activities; connecting drivers to fellow drivers. We argue that these interface technologies hold the promise of creating richer and more natural interaction than the traditional vision- and audio-based interfaces that dominate the current market. We conclude by outlining steps for further research.

publications 10 June 2016 2016-06-10T22:02:04+02:00 Dans l’esprit de pluridisciplinarité qui a animé le worshop #illuminov – éclairage connecté lors de la semaine du 25 au 29 avril dernier, j’ai le plaisir de vous convier à la présentation de Pierre Lévy, assistant professor en design à l’Université de Technologie de Eindhoven, qui se tiendra le vendredi 10 juin à la Pré-Fabrique de l’innovation à 14h30. Au travers de ses travaux de recherche, Pierre Lévy s’intéresse à l’implication des théories de la perception et de la phénoménologie, dans les domaines du design d’interaction (embodied interaction design) et du design Kansei (regard japonais sur la sensibilité et l’affectif) – sujet pour lequel il a été invité de nombreuses fois pour des conférences à l’internationale. Diplômé d’une thèse en science du Kansei de l’Université de Tsukuba au Japon, il est actuellement président-élu du Groupe Européen du Kansei (EKG).<br>Lors de cette présentation, nous discuterons de l’approche en constructive design research, et la perspective qu’elle propose sur l’attention réciproque entre l’homme et l’artefact, et sur la notion d’”irrésistibilité” en design d’interaction.<br>Cette approche ouvrira sur l’exploration menée par Pierre Lévy en “design de rituels”, qui se place à l’intersection du design kansei et et du design de systèmes. La présentation se construira autour d’exemples de projets concrets développés par l’Université de Technologie de Eindhoven, susceptibles d’intéresser tout autant les chercheurs que les praticiens du design. L’intervention et les échanges se feront en français. Fabien Labarthe (IRAM-Télécom Saint-Etienne, Laboratoire Elico, Centre Max Weber).

The prototype was inspired by the moment of perceptual crossing that occurs when you meet a stray cat in the street, and a moment of anticipation makes time stand still, as you and the cat try to figure each other out.
Using a single sheet of folded paper and embedding it with motors and custom-built touch-capacitive sensors, an object which breathes and responds to the presence of human touch was designed, creating the perception that the Kinetic Fold is alive.

projects 03 February 2016 2016-02-03T16:27:15+02:00 This research focuses on what happens to our relationship with objects when they come alive and engage in reciprocal communication with us.<br/><i>An (es)sense research project by Kevin N. Andersen</i>

publications 05 November 2015 2015-11-05T23:00:52+01:00 Our lives are a collection of rituals. The way we wake up, the way we leave or enter our home are two of the many rituals each of us have constructed, and they structure our everyday lives. However, designing rituals remains challenging because of the nested structures of events within a ritual (temporal complexity) and the required consistency between the ritual and the involved artifacts. In this first Research-through-Design iteration, we introduce a workshop done to explore the way to design rituals from an interaction design perspective. Our inquiry addresses such approach and aims at proposing tools to support the design or the evaluation of daily rituals. The workshop was structured by a introduction session (a Japanese tea ceremony) and two iterations leading towards the design of a high-resolution ritual and required artifacts for welcoming people home for Dutch students. Findings mainly pointed out different starting points for designing rituals, suggested the pervasive effect of engagement in rituals, and proposed a descriptive tool to provide the designer with participants’ perspectives in and affect by the ritual.

The notion of perceptual crossing indicates the experience of interplay between perceptive activities of multiple beings (train anecdote). Charles Lenay explained the importance of perceptual crossing in the encounter of the other’s perceptual intentionality, in the mutual attraction of perceptual activities (“they come to start a sort of a dance together”), leading to the constitution of a shared world of emotions. Creating such a connection between beings is often experienced, and it is (and it has been for a long time) a quest in design to build such connection between a being (or user) and an artefact: how to design for perceptual crossing? research 16 October 2015 2015-10-16T20:03:12+02:00

Description

Our lives are a collection of rituals. The way we wake up, the way we leave or enter our home, the way we prepare our suitcase before going on a trip are just simple examples of the many rituals each of us have constructed and that structure our everyday lives. These rituals are not rigid procedures, but a seemingly established series of activities from which experiential meaning emerges, and by which personal values are expressed.

The aim of this course is to address these qualities embodied in rituals from an interaction design perspective, and to explore the relation between the designed artefacts and the rituals they are involved in. Through this exploration, we will gain insights in the relational nature of these influences between the artefacts, subjects, and the ritual (and by extension the experiential meanings and the expressed values). The main focus will be on how to capture, to clarify, and to compose rituals. The final discussion will address the merits of addressing rituals in interaction design, and how to design for meaningful rituals.

To address this course through a project, we will first focus on a personal everyday ritual, in order to find descriptive elements. We will then explore ways to enrich rituals through a project. Both will be used to contribute to the elaboration of a composing tools for rituals. The final day will close the module by a demonstration of the ritual with the newly designed series of artefacts.

Learning objectives

The learning objectives of this course include:

• Describing rituals;
• Implementing ritual-related interaction qualities;
• Arguing the design decisions taken during implementation and their consequences;
• Assessing or evaluating the ritual-related qualities in interaction.

projects 01 September 2015 2015-09-01T14:55:28+02:00 Addressing these qualities embodied in rituals from an interaction design perspective

publications 11 May 2015 2015-05-11T22:37:10+02:00 The project presented in this paper is part of a broader research addressing in-between spaces and the designing of experiences taking place there. The project focuses on door frames, and inquires the way to improve social interactions taking place ‘at the door’. To do so, the approach is structured on an Experiential Design Landscape in order to create an in- between space with audio traces and to evaluate these traces impact on people’s behavior change. Our hypothesis is that sound traces triggers behavior changes. Evaluation is done quantitatively through the measurement of the door movements, and qualitatively based on laddering techniques mapped out in a mean-end chain. The results show no significant impact of the audio traces on people’s behavior change. However, emotional reactions could be observed. Although this first step revokes our hypothesis, it also has provided insight for further inquiry on in-between spaces.

This thesis takes on a combined approach, from societal and business development angles, to explore the question of ‘how to design for an active and healthy lifestyle. It follows a Research-through-Design approach, which generates new knowledge through the act of designing. A design-driven research method called Experiential Design Landscapes (EDLs) is developed together with accompanying tools and techniques. With the EDL method, the design process is taken into society by creating infrastructures where designers work together with stakeholders in jointly creating experienceable propositions that can evolve over time. These propositions, Experiential Probes, are intelligent, open, sensor- enhanced, and networked products service systems that enable people to develop new and emerging behaviours, and in parallel enable detailed analysis of the emerging data patterns by researchers and designers as a source of inspiration for the development of future systems.

projects 15 April 2015 2015-04-15T16:27:15+02:00 The design process is taken into society by creating infrastructures where designers work together with stakeholders in jointly creating experienceable propositions that can evolve over time.<br/><i>Doctoral dissertation of Carl Megens and Michel Peeters</i>

Our lives are a collection of rituals. The way we wake up, the way we leave or enter our home, the way we prepare our suitcase before going on a trip are just simple examples of the many rituals each of us have constructed and that structure our everyday lives. These rituals are not rigid procedures, but a seemingly established series of activities from which experiential meaning emerges, and by which personal values are expressed.

The aim of this course is to address these qualities embodied in rituals from an interaction design perspective, and to explore the relation between the designed artefacts and the rituals they are involved in. Through this exploration, we will gain insights in the reciprocal nature of these influences between the artefacts and the ritual (and by extension the experiential meanings and the expressed values). The final discussion will address the merits of addressing rituals in interaction design, and how to design for meaningful rituals.

To address this course through a project, we will first turn to a Japanese tea ceremony, which is one of the most elaborated and rich rituals and one of the pillars of the Japanese craftsmanship culture. By extracting key characteristics of this ritual, we will start a design exploration to conclude with a concept at the end of the first week. The entire module focuses on one ritual (to be decided), and each group will focus on one artefact within this overarching ritual. The second week focuses on opportunities of a series of prototyping iterations to reach details. Each of them being concluded by a discussion on the reciprocal influences between the artefacts and the ritual and the implication on the interaction design process. The final day will close the module by a demonstration of the ritual with the newly designed series of artefacts.

projects 03 November 2014 2014-11-03T16:27:15+02:00 The aim of this course is to address these qualities embodied in rituals from an interaction design perspective, and to explore the relation between the designed artefacts and the rituals they are involved in.

publications 06 September 2014 2014-09-06T13:36:40+02:00 The everyday is often mentioned in design, yet hardly inquired. The everyday is about what is banal, infraordinary, not memorable, as well as about the force that makes things habitual, endotic. In the research encompassing this paper, we question the everyday and explore opportunities to enchant it by design. This paper focuses more specifically on the design of everyday rituals, and aims to propose a descriptive framework to ‘read’ and compose such rituals. The elaboration of the framework is done based on a case study: the making of a hot chocolate in the morning. Through an autoethnographical approach, the main dimensions of the framework are determined (place and time, essentiality, and strength) and discussed. Throughout thizs inquiry, the value of a first-person perspective while designing for the everyday is discussed, as well as its relationship with the third- person perspective. This framework proposed points out the importance of quick iterations and of the consideration of consequences of design decision at all levels of the everyday ritual (structural, temporal, aesthetical, ethical…).

Nobody ever said that defying gravity is easy!

The aGravity is a device which lets one experience the challenge of levitation. The fingerboard allows one to float over a straight platform, while experiencing a constant evolving environment within. It creates unique interactions that makes one able to develop a new skill and improve over time. The aGravity aims to make more aware and sensitive to what is being perceived and how the slightest movement can influence the whole system.

To get the board hovering, requires focus, concentration and some skill. Though once it is learned to hover the board, it is up to the user how far he or she can go. Giving no precise guidelines, the only rule is to explore, interact and challenge yourself.

(Alex Jurtan)

projects 03 September 2014 2014-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 Nobody ever said that defying gravity is easy!<br/><i>a final bachelor project by Alex Jurtan</i>

publications 13 August 2014 2014-08-13T22:46:54+02:00 Approaches to create artifacts taking kansei into consideration are multiple and are shared among various disciplines, such as kansei engineering, kansei science, and kansei design. In this paper, I focus on the discipline of kansei design and show that various approaches exist within this discipline. These can be characterized based on their focus: either the physical or the interactive materiality of the artifact. Indirect kansei design, mostly focusing on the physical materiality, is based on indirect (or mediated) perception theories. It often relies on representations, models, and metaphors to provide meaningful input to the design. Direct kansei design, mostly focusing on the interactive materiality, is based on direct (or ecological) perception theories. It mainly relies on the designerly attitude of the designer in the process, and apprehend design meaning to emerge from the reflection upon design exploration within the process. Describing and differentiating these two approaches show how kansei is considered differently by different approaches of kansei deign, looking forward a dialogue between these approaches in order to obtain a greater insight on kansei and on its consideration for designing.

publications 13 August 2014 2014-08-13T22:41:15+02:00 This research project is called Rite de transition. By means of DesignChoreography, an approach developed by Sietske Klooster, we explore the rituals revolving around traditional Turkish marriage. In due course, inspired by an emotional and auto-ethnographic interpretation of the explored rituals, Klooster designs a novel ritual and artefact that intend to embody shared values, hence intercultural exchange. We choose for a bodily first person approach as we estimate that the complexities of the modern world – i.e. cultural clashes and the breakdown of cultures – require a radical change in tackling these issues. We suggest to move away from pure rational analytic approach our society adhered to. We are on the verge of a new era that embraces diversity and organic interaction that cannot and does not have to be standardized, fixed or rigidly defined anymore. Our approach is based on embodiment and phenomenology, allowing us to diverge from narrowing down broad societal and cultural issues to mere rational thinking and judging. We use DesignChoreography as a vehicle, since the knowing and making body can experience meanings and values that lie underneath visual appearance. By doing so we bring about our bodily understanding for intercultural interaction and exchange.

What does data feel like? Data Resonance makes the table resonate with surrounding Wi-Fi traffic. Qualities of the digital signals are translated to something you can feel. This gives you a sense of activity at the workplace that is otherwise quiet and hidden. It creates a feedback loop about your own network usage, and a new connection with the activity of colleagues.

Data Resonance is inspired by how the traditional shared workshop acted as an extension of the craftsperson’s body. You saw and heard your colleagues work, and awareness of their activity influenced what you did. Now that much of our creative work happens on the screen, we lost something. With Data Resonance, we become more aware again of colleague’s work in a calm way: we notice when someone is dealing with heavy traffic and when people are taking a break, or just tune in to the rhythms of data that flow through space.

(Sander Dijkhuis)

projects 03 June 2014 2014-06-03T16:27:15+02:00 What does data feel like?<br/><i>by Sander Dijkhuis</i>

publications 03 December 2013 2013-12-03T21:39:49+01:00

publications 19 November 2013 2013-11-19T21:29:03+01:00

publications 12 September 2013 2013-09-12T22:31:09+02:00 Next to the well-developed and recognized kansei engineering and kansei science, the discipline of kansei design still appears as emerging and explorative. In this paper, after presenting succinctly the theoretical basis of the first two disciplines, I compare them with and focus more in detail on the bases of kansei design, along with an inspiration in Japanese philosophy and culture. In order to structure further the discipline, necessary for the creation of a robust and specific design framework, I describe the constituents of the discipline, i.e., the notions the designers should take into consideration to either describe and explore kansei through designing, or to reflect upon and validate kansei designs (especially interactivity aspects). Finally, these constituents are illustrated by two kansei design projects showing their value and the current explorations done on the topic of interactive materiality in kansei design.

publications 10 September 2013 2013-09-10T20:07:29+02:00 In 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.

publications 10 September 2013 2013-09-10T19:25:35+02:00 For over three decades, kansei engineering has expanded greatly and has become a significant discipline both in the industrial and the academic worlds. In this paper, I present the current situation of kansei engineering, and plead for the emancipation of other disciplines, as part of kansei research as well. By reconstructing the historical path of kansei research and exploring the variety of disciplines within kansei research, I point out the opportunities for kansei design to emerge. Whereas kansei engineering and kansei science have found their roots in scientifically established approaches (respectively engineering and brain science), kansei design intends to return to earlier Japanese philosophical or cultural works to rediscover the essence of kansei, and to use them as inspirational means for design. This new discipline certainly needs to be elaborated further. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to the elaboration of a more expansive point-of-view in design research regarding the relationship between human beings and their immediate environment.

Prior to interaction, there is perception. Perception is intrinsically rising from one's actions and from what one senses. These are the way one is connected to the world: acting is the way one impacts the world, sensing is the way one captures it. At this level, in direct contact with the world, there is no information, but energies (or forces). It is these energies and these forces that designers deal with (consciously or unconsciously) when putting a new artefact in the world. This primacy of perception towards interaction is the main focus of this workshop, proposing an approach to effectively taking it into consideration in the design process.

For design practical reasons, design should focus on qualities of senses. For example, touching is local, reciprocal, and private. It is where I touch, I am touched by what I am touching, and nobody else can touch what I touch. On the other hand, smell is at a distance, possibly unidirectional, and public. These are qualities of senses that can be useful for design. To be so, these qualities need to determined and mapped. Moreover, we may seek differences between static and dynamics qualities of senses.

Finally, designers should comprehend these qualities and engage them in order to find opportunities for design - how can I make something private at a distance? How can techno challenge these qualities (e.g. headphones make sound private)? What implications for design?

projects 03 September 2013 2013-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 The primacy of perception towards interaction is the main focus of this workshop, proposing an approach to effectively taking it into consideration in the design process.

publications 30 August 2013 2013-08-30T21:55:59+02:00

publications 30 August 2013 2013-08-30T15:39:24+02:00 My name is Pierre Lévy. I am currently assistant professor at the Department of Industrial Design of Eindhoven University of Technology. I have been studying in France, in Canada, and in Japan. I have studied mathematics, mechanical engineering, psychophysiology, and design (which has been the continuous topic over my studies). I have been working in companies in France and in Japan, and in universities in Japan, in France, and in The Netherlands. My teachings have touched upon design, cognitive science, phenomenology, Japanese culture, and psychophysiology (all topics in regard to design). From this I can satisfactorily see that I have been ‘travelling’ in the world of design education, and writing for the BKO portfolio is for me an opportunity to step back, and reflect on my vision, my role, and my work as an educator.

publications 13 June 2013 2013-06-13T22:26:48+02:00 Since 2006, Design Thinking education programs for master-level students have been developed at Ponts ParisTech, a leading French engineering school. This paper presents a longitudinal study of the creation and dissemination of Design Thinking (DT) as a discipline to educate top-level French students for innovation. From 2006 to 2012, 53 projects were carried out by a total of 224 students. A review is made of the instructional design of those DT projects, from local experiments through the creation of a d.school supported by the French Ministry of Education and Research to the dissemination of DT nationally. From this, key lessons are drawn for faculty members wanting to set up and disseminate DT in their own university. The paper advocates that a DT professor becomes a staging director who should consider three elements – people, place, and process – in order to create “the right conditions for students to innovate” (Leifer, Stanford). A faculty member’s task thus defines itself as the art of creating the best conditions for driving students’ journeys of exploration within a specific context, and represents a transformative and learning adventure.

This doctoral project investigates whether and how to design for perceptive qualities in systems of interactive products from a phenomenological point of view. It sets out to form and frame a new perspective on designing an artefact's intelligence from a quality- and action-centric approach, rather than a functional approach. Artefacts and the systems they create become increasingly intelligent and disappear to the background of our environment. How do we understand all these intelligible connections that systems create in our environment when they are invisible and highly flexible? Moreover, how do we design for such systems of intelligent and interactive artefacts? I am convinced that if we want to design for successful intelligent systems that are perceptible to and evolve around its user, the artefact's intelligence has to build on the direct interaction with its user(s). It is shown that, by designing for perceptive qualities, the system's activity becomes meaningful to its users. Moreover, the user activity becomes meaningful to the system in the course of the interaction.

The work is inspired by and directly synthesises from theory. The theoretical starting point and the generated design-relevant knowledge, in the form of design notions, are a leitmotiv through this work. Three main chapters are structured around this connecting thread. In each of these chapters, designing plays an essential role. The first chapter follows a minimalist approach in context and in implementation to bring forward fundamental knowledge for designing. The second chapter investigates the added value of the generated knowledge for designing, and a step is made towards design practice. In the third chapter, a third-person perspective corroborates the first-person approach and findings. It is crucial that these three chapters feed into each other to inform, inspire and validate.

projects 23 May 2013 2013-05-23T16:27:15+02:00 On May 3rd 2013, Eva Deckers has received a Ph.D. degree CUM LAUDE on the topic of Perceptive Qualities in System of Interactive Products.

publications 13 February 2013 2013-02-13T22:16:36+01:00 Perceptual crossing is the reciprocal interplay of perceiving while being perceived. In this paper we discuss the last iteration of our ongoing research project on designing for perceptive qualities in systems of interactive products. We describe the design of explorative behavior in an artifact to enable the artifact and a person to engage in perceptual crossing. The explorative behavior is compared to the following and active behavior, the results of two earlier iterations. Through the iterations we formulated, applied and evaluated design relevant knowledge in the form of seven design notions. These notions inform design-researchers and design-practitioners on how to design for perceptive qualities in systems of interactive products. Here we specifically focus on how the artifact detects active perceptive behavior of a person, and how the artifact becomes aware of bygone perception and anticipates on future perception. An experiment shows how participants preferred the resulting explorative behavior that is closest to our theoretical framework based on phenomenology.

The future of design is unclear, as designerly responsibilities are changing. The emphasis used to be on form and production, but as the products to be designed have changed, design has changed. With an interactive product the designer needs to consider not only the form but also the temporal aspects of the product?s interaction and behaviour, and even the specifics of its functionality. While we are starting to understand how to design for interaction through the integrating of form, interaction and function, the next challenge is already in sight: designing for systems.

From a design perspective, there is very little experience of designing systems, and there are no methods ready at hand. However, our question of ?how to design for systems? is not a ?methodology? question in the first place. To formulate a method is to simplify and abstract the design challenge into a defined set of subsequent steps to be taken. In the case of design for systems, this is problematic because it is difficult, if not impossible, to have an overview of the complete system before it exists or of its impact on society. Not only is our grasp of the system limited by our point of view, but systems also allow for many different yet valid points of view, thanks to their inherent complexity.

In order to overcome these issues it is necessary to start exploring the design space for systems. As we have little experience in this area, it is essential that we get involved in designing ourselves and let our insight in these matters grow until we can compile it into a relevant methodology. What is more, we need to take an experiential approach to the design of these systems. That is, we need to undergo the experience of living with such systems as we are designing them if we are to make value judgements on the direction the solution should take. In other words, the uncertainty of method and the complex nature of systems call for a research-through-design approach, with ?doing? as the mechanism for obtaining insight into the process at hand guided by relevant theory and a vision of what we want to achieve.

This exposition contains a selection of projects involving members of the Designing Quality in Interaction (DQI) group in which research, education and industry come together. These projects provide insights into our perspective on design and how it has changed over the years. We aim to paint a picture of a world that could be, as well as giving insight into how we think the design challenge for industrial designers is changing.

Text by Oscar Tomico

projects 12 December 2012 2012-12-12T16:27:15+02:00 While we are starting to understand how to design for interaction through the integrating of form, interaction and function, the next challenge is already in sight: designing for systems.

publications 13 September 2012 2012-09-13T22:22:12+02:00 In this paper we describe seven showcases, namely ‘BeTouched’, ‘Dawe & Valle’, ‘Wonderturf’, ‘IN2WACO’, ‘Blow!’, ‘ShyLight’ and ‘PeR’, that give relevant insights on how to design for perceptive qualities in artifacts. Designing these perceptive qualities hypothetically enables a person to engage in a reciprocal perceptive interplay with the artifact: perceptual crossing between person and artifact can happen. This paper is part of an ongoing research in which we designed, built and evaluated several artifacts with perceptive qualities and in which we discovered a set of design notions. The theoretical model and the design notions involved in this research-project are introduced. The showcases illustrate and give value insights on the application of the theoretical model and the design notions.

publications 10 September 2012 2012-09-10T20:43:11+02:00 In this paper we describe our research on how to design for perceptual crossing between person and artefact. We present the design-research process, the design and evaluation of the designed artefact PeP+, short for perception pillar plus, and the generated design relevant knowledge. In our previous research we formulated a number of design notions, namely Focus the Senses, Active Behaviour Object, Subtleness, Reaction to External Event, Detecting Active Behaviour Subject, Reflecting Contextual Noise and Course of Perception in Time. These notions are relevant for designing perceptive activity in an artefact to allow for perceptual crossing between a person and this artefact. The person is able to get the feeling of sharing a common space with the artefact: to feel involved. To further investigate these design notions we reconsidered and implemented them in the design of PeP+. We discuss how the different design notions are applied in the artefact and show their relevance in an experiment. In this experiment we compare three behaviours, namely random, following and active, of PeP+ that are the result of the development of the design notions. The experiment gave insights into the development of the design notions and the experience of the person. This research uses phenomenology as a theoretical framework. Theory is used as inspiration and is the basis for synthesis.

publications 10 September 2012 2012-09-10T20:43:11+02:00

We are accepting technology more and more into our lives as means to enhance the experience of the everyday. Intelligent products and systems are omnipresent, weave into our everyday life, and consequently have the power to transform our society. Adoption of these systems in our environments invites for exploring further how we interact with our environment.

This research is grounded on the phenomenology of perception and ecological psychology, considering perception to be active. Perception is result of the dynamic coupling between a person’s action in relation to her or his environment and the sensory input this environment provides. In other words, we have to act to perceive and we concentrate our senses in the direction of the stimuli: e.g., turn our body around to see what is behind us, in order to perceive.

The research focuses on how interaction with interactive artefacts can add intrinsic value on space being experienced as a transitory space. Four topics are introduced to investigate our experience of space as transitory space: ritual, space, light and craft. They serve as the backbone of the project and we could say that the ritual is the means for the technology (light) to enable the value (sense of place) to emerge in interaction with (hand) crafted artefacts. In this project I investigate if an interactive lighting installation can trigger our sense of place and belonging in spaces.

Throughout this project I follow a ‘research-through-design’ approach. This is an approach where products are designed to explore implications of theory in context. The idea of perceptive qualities in interactive lighting installations is explored, and I question if an interactive artefact contributes to the experience of transition and allows for a greater feeling of involvement in the space. The project is divided into three cases:
- In the first case (Homelab), different light behaviours and interaction in a home situation are explored.
- Simultaniously, we investigate the relationship with an interactive artefact in context. In the second design case (Videolab), the influence of an additional object on the space being experienced as transitory space is explored. In the third design case (Mirror), the gained relevant designknowledge is united and expressed in a concluding interactive light object.
- With this project I aim to get a grip on how interaction with interactive artefacts can add intrinsic value on space being experienced as transitory space.

(Nadine Amersvoort)

projects 03 September 2012 2012-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 Intelligent products and systems are omnipresent, weave into our everyday life, and consequently have the power to transform our society. Adoption of these systems in our environments invites for exploring further how we interact with our environment.<br/><i>by Nadine Amersvoort</i>

This research project focuses on how to design for perceptive activity in artifacts in order for crossing in perception of expressivity between person and artifact to happen. It is part of the research of Deckers et al (2011), on designing for perceptual crossing between person and artifact. In their work they propose a series of design notions which are meant as a tool for synthesis when designing for perceptive activity in artifacts. In this research we follow a research through design approach in order to generate design specific knowledge on the application of these design notions when designing an artifact capable of showing expressivity through its perceptive behavior. We designed LUMA, an dynamic light design capable of expressing a variable level of excitement thought its perceptive actions. We conducted research using the LUMA design in order to investigate how the stage of perception of expressivity can be reached in an artifact and if crossing of perception of expressivity can happen over the course of interaction between person and artifact. For this we specifically investigate the relation between the perceived expressivity and the occurrence of a cross-influential interplay of expressivity between person and artifact. The results of our experiment show that clarity in variability of this expression is essential for this interplay to occur. We discuss possible changes to the design to improve the clarity in variability of expressivity as well as further research steps.

(Koen Beljaars)

projects 03 September 2012 2012-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 This research project focuses on how to design for perceptive activity in artifacts in order for crossing in perception of expressivity between person and artifact to happen.<br/><i>by Koen Beljaars</i>

Monty a curious entity that has the ability to perceive activity within its field of vision. When Monty detects activity it will gradually move towards the activity until it is in centre of its perception. If its interest is kept on the activity long enough, Monty becomes engaged and will start taking pictures of the activity.

The envisioned environment in which Monty can be used is a designer’s working environment. Here Monty will mainly be interested in the activity of the designer which will lead to process pictures of all the activities performed by this designer. This in turn gives the designer the possibility to reflect on his own process by scrolling through the visual representation of his activities. And will give him process pictures that can be used for communicative purposes.

Due to its curious nature Monty might not always be focused on what you are doing. He can however be temporarily motivated to move towards a particular area on your desk.

(Rens Alkemade)

projects 03 September 2012 2012-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 Due to its curious nature Monty might not always be focused on what you are doing. He can however be temporarily motivated to move towards a particular area on your desk.<br/><i>by Rens Alkemade</i>

The Practice of Constructive Design Research is a conversation proposed by Stoffel Kuenen at the DRS2014 conference.

'Catalysts (=invited participants) for the conversation were researchers in this field: Lorenzo Davoli, Mahmoud Keshavarz, Pierre Lévy and Ambra Trotto. In order to feed and frame the conversation, I made a video containing statements taken from interviews with more consolidated researchers: Pelle Ehn, Daniel Fällman, Caroline Hummels, Johan Redström and John Zimmerman.' (Stoffel Kuenen)

projects 03 September 2012 2012-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 The Practice of Constructive Design Research is a conversation proposed by Stoffel Kuenen at the DRS2014 conference.</i>

publications 10 August 2012 2012-08-10T21:23:58+02:00 This paper introduces a design method using psychophysiological research output as an inspiration means for the design of products taking user?s Kansei highly into consideration. The development of this method is itself a part of a series of design methods based on the collaboration of the research fields of psychophysiology and design. As case studies, two design projects following this process are introduced. Firstly, the colourful rain umbrella lets its user to experience grapheme-colour synaesthesia. Secondly, the sensorial socialising smartphone informs about the user?s digital social network activity by the means of warmth, a non-invasive tactile technique. Informed by psychophysiological literature, this design is shown to be not only informational of the network activity, but also motivational towards greater social experience. This approach enables psychophysiology not only to inform and support design ideation, but also to enrich the value of the design concept by bringing new arguments.

publications 13 July 2012 2012-07-13T15:46:21+02:00 During the last three decades, kansei engineering has expanded greatly and has been highly recognized both in the industrial and the academic worlds. Nowadays, the term ‘kansei engineering’ is so strong in the kansei community that activities related to kansei, but not to engineering, keep on naming themselves kansei engineering research. This prevents the emancipation of other kansei disciplines, the enrichment of the field by the multiplication of point-of-views, and the dialogue between disciplines to understand better what kansei and kansei related disciplines are about. By presenting the historical path of kansei research and exploring the variety of disciplines within kansei research, I point out the multi-disciplinary nature of kansei research. Thereafter, I focus on three disciplines directly related to the making of physical artifacts: kansei engineering, kansei science, and kansei design. Whereas kansei engineering and kansei science have found their roots in scientifically established approaches (respectively engineering and brain science), kansei design intends to return to earlier Japanese philosophical or cultural works to rediscover the essence of kansei, and to use them as inspirational means for design. A case study of kansei research through design is also presented.

publications 25 May 2012 2012-05-25T21:30:22+02:00 Many academic laboratories and companies in Europe have worked in kansei research. As on other continents, kansei engineering is the most important discipline, but is not the only one. The disciplines in Kansei Research in Europe are multiple, as are their origins. This multiplicity of disciplines and points-of-views creates a great opportunity for the development of the field in Europe. As an expression of the interest for kansei engineering, Europe has recently welcomed two major conferences related to Kansei Engineering: ICBAKE2009 (including KEAS2009) in Cieszyn, Poland, and KEER2010 in Paris, France. For this last edition of the KEER conference, 32% of the presentations were presented by European researchers, and 40% of the attendants were affiliated in Europe. However, there is no European community on Kansei Research, neither officially nor practically. Laboratories and companies have not found yet the way and the means to create such community, which would certainly help the promotion and the development of Kansei Research in Europe. In this presentation I would like to show an overview of the European presentations at KEER2010, as a starting point to scan the current state of Kansei Research in Europe. I hope this presentation will elicit reactions towards the construction of such European community.

This thesis starts with a Manifesto, bold, passionate and ambitious. Goals are set high, as to commit to a major endeavour: how can design contribute to a new civilisation. The first version was written in 2006 in Bertinoro, Italy, where Caroline Hummels, Kees Overbeeke and I were giving a workshop on Aesthetics of Interaction for the University of Bologna. In this Manifesto, we declared our belief and proposed a vision, concerning how design can change Western thinking towards pervasive ethics. By pervasive ethics I mean a social praxis aimed at justice and freedom, which pervades society in a capillary way, becoming a Universal attitude that makes people aware of their own rights, able and willing to contribute to seeing their own rights and those of all people fulfilled. I called this approach Rights though Making. The manifesto stated a mission1, which was later applied and validated. The main lines of thoughts of the manifesto have been respected and enforced through several actions. This thesis will describe these actions, the underlying theory and the related reflection both on the approach and on the outcomes. The Manifesto integrated the points of view of the writers, united by a common drive, in a world riddled with all sorts of social uncertainties. In the Manifesto we declared our intention of preparing and doing workshops with students of different nationalities, stimulating the integration of skilful points of view among future designers. When the Manifesto was written, there was not yet a concrete strategy on how to empower people towards pervasive ethics. The only anchor point was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We wanted the values contained in this document materialised, embodied in (intelligent) products or systems. Both the outcome of what we were envisioning (intelligent products or systems empowering towards the realisation of human rights) and the process of realising it (workshop) had to work towards ethics. This was all I knew at that point. Later I designed the way to do it, based on this solid and enthusiastic shared vision.

Throughout the years, the underlying theoretical framework started to acquire its own body. Only after the realisation of the first 5 workshops (out of 7 in total), was I able to explicitly structure and describe the platform of theory that was supporting my endeavour. These actions (the workshops), contributed to the formation of a body of knowledge, of which the potential strength and soundness until then had exclusively been perceived through intuition. This tacit knowledge was dredged out, reflected upon and refined, through iterations of reflection-on-action, in which the “active” parts were the individual workshops.

Thus the forming of this theoretical platform, the refinement of the research quest or design challenge and giving the workshops were overlapping in time and closely intertwined. For clarity, in this thesis I chose to position them in the following order:

• Part 1: defining the design challenge / research quest and the Rights through Making Approach;
• Part 2: illustrating the theoretical framework underlying the whole work. This theoretical framework is formed by three elements: (1) Ethics (2) Making and (3) their integration, i.e. how Making empowers towards Ethics: the core of the RtM approach.
• Part 3: describing how this theory is applied in design workshops and how the Rights through Making (RtM) approach evolved;
• Part 4: reflecting on the overall research experience and the underlying personal motivations.

Before this central body I placed and introductory part, containing acknowledgments, rights of the readers, synopsis (this chapter) and tables of contents. After the fourth part, I positioned a part called “Annexes”, which is composed of two main sections:

• In the first section I present the RtM workshops in detail, in regard to both the process of each RtM workshop and their evolution;
• In the second section, I illustrate the direction in which I envision the diffusion of RtM in the future, through the realisation of an Internet platform.

projects 15 May 2012 2012-05-15T16:27:15+02:00 Pervasive ethics is a social praxis aimed at justice and freedom, which pervades society in a capillary way, becoming a Universal attitude that makes people aware of their own rights, able and willing to contribute to seeing their own rights and those of all people fulfilled.<br/><i>Doctoral dissertation of Ambra Trotto</i>

publications 14 April 2012 2012-04-14T22:03:51+02:00 In this paper, we introduce a Research through Design on Sensual Dynamics, and explore four design projects (namely Be Touched!, Sound Flowers, Shylight, and Blow!) from which we extract design notions providing valuable insights on how to design with and for the senses’ quality ‘reciprocity’. ‘Sensual Dynamics’ designs are artifacts that are able to sense one person and to behave upon her presnece to invite for movements enhancing the perceptive experience. Such an artifact is therefore at the same time the object of the experience as well as the trigger for a greater perceptive experience.

publications 14 April 2012 2012-04-14T21:52:14+02:00 Designers face the world’s complexity at an experiential level. We consider Making (synthesising and concretising) an essential activity of designers, prior to Thinking (analysing and abstracting), because only through experience – a result of acting in the world – we achieve meaning, funnelling human intentionality. Making enables designers to explore the unknown by trusting their senses and their kansei, exploring resistance and ambiguity and by tapping into their intuition. Because ‘intuition begins with the sense that what is not yet could be’, it involves skills, as skills are our way to make sense of the world, transform it and to cater for ethics. In this paper we describe a one-day workshop that has been held during the CHItaly conference 2011 in Alghero, Italy. During that day, we explored how the integration of points of view, using intuition through skills can communicate and create a richer meaning. The assignment was to design an empowering and enabling tool that allows a person to begin to experience another person’s skill. To be able to design such a tool, designers had to go through several steps of documenting and reflecting upon their own and each other’s skills. We reflect on the experience and explain how this approach can support the integration of points of view, which is considered to be formed by personal experience, by skills, and by kansei.

publications 16 March 2012 2012-03-16T21:48:30+01:00

Light through Culture is an international design school which explores the theme of complexity in learning environments. The aim of the school is to weave the newest technologies and the rich existing culture into a new canvas for making and thinking. The school was funded in 2011 by Patrizia Marti (University of Siena) and Kees Overbeeke (Technical University of Eindhoven).

This ehibition proposes a reflection on the individual vs. social perception of human rights, exploring 2 fundamental and controverted articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 13: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Visitors travel through an interactive path, where they experience the application or the negation of such rights. This concurs in stimulating and reinforcing a reflection on their relevance and universality.

projects 15 January 2012 2012-01-15T16:27:15+02:00 Light through Culture is an international design school which explores the theme of complexity in learning environments.</i>

publications 23 September 2011 2011-09-23T15:21:00+02:00 In order to describe emerging methods and means for Kansei design, this paper overviews three approaches involving an intense collaboration between the fields of design and psychophysiology:<br/> - The use of tools built for psychophysiology and of techniques based on constructivist psychology theory, in order to support designers ‘inspirational work focusing on human beings’ behaviors, experience, and mental constructs.<br/> - The use of knowledge created by psychophysiological research as an inspirational source of knowledge and as a conveyor of it for all along the design process. This approach takes into account the latest scientific progresses in psychophysiology, and concerns greatly about the scientific nature of the considered knowledge.<br/> - The use of psychophysiology tools to complete design requirements. Each approach presented here is supported by an applicative example. These interdisciplinary approaches lead towards the structuring of Kansei Design as an application field of Kansei Science.

publications 14 September 2011 2011-09-14T21:58:10+02:00 Among other explorations, the field of telepresence technology has looked at ways to create a feeling of telepresence based on the transfer of minimal information. On this topic, the Cololo project has taken an extreme position by proposing the experience of 1-bit communication. Based on the observation of Cololo in use, it is shown that content is not necessary to trigger an emotional experience. This paper introduces a novel dimension to be taken into consideration in communication technology: the content-completeness dimension, ranging from non-content to hyper-content. Furthermore, we built the Ohlala framework, aiming to explore the content-completeness dimension. Based on Ohlala, by way of a research through design, we intend to explore further the relations between this dimension on communication and emotional experience.

In this two-week workshop, theories of interaction design are explained and explored through applications. The DQI approach to Interaction Design is theory informed. This means that theory inspires and even guides the way we look at interaction, and the way we design for interaction and experience.

Topics

- Phenomenology and experience (Merlau-Ponty and Dewey)
- Gibsonian theory of perception
- Models of interaction: Interaction Frogger
- Resonance
- Rich Interaction
- Societal Design
- Craftsmanship

These theories, philosophies and models will be explained first and then explored in a series of interaction designs, i.e. practical applications.

projects 03 September 2011 2011-09-03T16:27:15+02:00 The primacy of perception towards interaction is the main focus of this workshop, proposing an approach to effectively taking it into consideration in the design process.

publications 14 June 2011 2011-06-14T21:43:41+02:00 The Industrial Design Department of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is continuously developing and putting in practice a holistic and integrative educational approach, focusing on designing intelligent systems, products, and related services for societal transformation. This approach requires students to continuously reflect upon their design process and their results. Therefore, we are exploring how to support them in documenting and reflecting on their design projects.<br/> This paper introduces the first design iterations of Luciole, a design process visualisation tool based on and integrated in the educational model of TU/e.ID. These first iterations show clearly the students? benefit of using Luciole. This tool supports students in their design processes and in their reflection upon them. It is viewed as a tool to assist reflection upon designing, communication with coaches, and assessment.<br/> Finally, a first functional prototype of Luciole is introduced, as a means for further research. A long term user-test is currently conducted in order to validate the actual relevancy of Luciole as a tool to support education at TU/e.ID, and to evaluate the students? appreciation and use of the tool.

publications 31 March 2011 2011-03-31T21:21:51+02:00 Auparavant, il a été maître de conférence en “Service Product Design” a Chiba University et à la Kansei Information Design de University of Tsukuba, au Japon. Docteur en Science de cette même université, il a un master d’ingénieur mécanique de l’Université de Technologie de Compiègne. En tant que chercheur, il s’est intéressé à tous les aspects de partage (des connaissances, espace, temps, compétences, motivation …), conduisant à la socialisation et à la créativité. Il pense que la recherche kansei et le design sont deux approches d’ouverture d’esprit qui peuvent apporter des idées originales aux mondes universitaires, industriels et sociaux. Une approche phénoménologique peut aider à mieux comprendre et à améliorer leurs relations, souvent complexes, avec les différents aspects du monde en réseau.

publications 14 March 2011 2011-03-14T21:32:12+01:00 The Industrial Design Department of Eindhoven University of Technology is continuously developing and putting in practice a holistic and integrative educational approach, focusing on designing intelligent systems, products and related services for societal transformation.<br/> During the semester, each student is supported by a personal coach, by assignors and experts, who eventually provide feedbacks on the student’s learning, achievement, and reflection upon learning. During the end-of-term assessment, students are evaluated on their overall development (taking skills, knowledge, reflection, attitude and identity into account). After describing the rational of the educational system of TU/e and its process in practice, this paper focuses on the introduction of a new educational tool aiming at supporting education, assessment included: the Frame of Reference.<br/> The holistic quality of the educational system allows the personalisation of the entire student career. Therefore, there are as many visions and student paths as the number of students. Each student is different from others in terms of their knowledge, skills and experience. Consequently, no standardized criteria can be properly applied to the evaluation procedure.<br/> The Frame of Reference is structured as an intelligent space, both physical and virtual, and adaptive to the visitors’ expectations and experience. It offers referential works and development of design students (prototypes, reports, showcases…), illustrating stages of and processes for competency development and over-all development as a designer. The Frame of Reference is introduced and described as a place for sharing points of views and experiences, between students, coaches, experts, assessors, and external visitors. It is designed to inspire and to support students as well as staff, by creating a comprehensive and clearer, yet non-homogenous vision of what students throughout the department achieve, of how this is evaluated and how this contributes to students’ overall competence of designing.

publications 08 March 2011 2011-03-08T21:11:59+01:00

publications 23 October 2010 2010-10-23T21:16:30+02:00 The International Conference on Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research 2010 (KEER2010), held at the Arts et Mètiers ParisTech in Paris, has been a promising event for the future of Kansei Research in Europe. For the first time, numerous European researchers in Kansei Engineering and related topics met not only each other, but also their colleagues from all over the world. For the first time, a European community on Kansei research gathered and exchanged knowledge and views on Kansei with the Asian communities.<br/>I would like to take the chance of this presentation to frame again the current situation of the European research on Kansei, and to position it from an Eurasian perspective. To do so, I will take two steps:<br/>- A review on the history of Kansei research will show the early implications of European philosophy in the ‘academic establishment’ of the term Kansei and of the philosophy of Kansei. This aspect is crucial as it shows already existing bridges between Asian and European thoughts, and stresses points for reciprocal interests and future collaborations.<br/>- A picture of the current Kansei research in Europe will show main driving European activities on Kansei research. To do so, I will present a review of KEER2010, picturing the presence of European researchers in the field of Kansei and related topics. Although this picture, based only on the outcome of KEER2010, may not be complete, it will render the great possibilities of further Kansei research development in Europe.<br/>With this presentation, I hope to be able to clarify better the current situation of Kansei research in Europe, towards greater involvement of Europe in this field, towards better exchange between Europe and Asia for a more international Kansei research community.

presentation research 16 October 2010 2010-10-16T20:03:12+02:00

publications 10 September 2010 2010-09-10T21:18:00+02:00

publications 04 March 2010 2010-03-04T22:10:51+02:00 On behalf of Arts et Métiers ParisTech, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to Paris for the International Conference on Kansei Engineering and Emotion Research: KEER 2010.<br/>This event has been co-organized by the Japanese Society of Kansei Engineering, the Taiwan Institute of Kansei, and Arts et Métiers ParisTech. KEER 2010 is organized for the first time in Europe, more specifically in Paris. We are all the more proud to host this conference within our School, which is one of the oldest Schools of Engineering in France, with a culture that focuses strongly on innovation in technology and processes.<br/>The overall theme of the conference is ‘Crossing places, crossing experiences, crossing minds’. We sincerely hope that the conference will set a strong ground for future scientific and cultural exchanges. With time, we hope that the contacts you will make here will help construct long-lasting bridges between our cultures, and bring us closer together in mutually beneficial work relationships. We have been fortunate this year to receive many contributions from 25 countries worldwide, which added up to 410 submitted papers and posters, over 230 of which were selected in the final program. In the next three days, we have organized 7 simultaneous sessions to host presentations from the authors, as well as two keynote presentations every day. We hope each and every one of you will find nourishment for your scientific curiosity and for future lively and fascinating debates.<br/>I am greatly thankful to all authors for their excellent contributions, to the program committee members, and to the referees for their contribution and valuable insight during the reviewing process. I would also like to thank all the people who have helped with organizing the conference: Prof. Hisao SHIIZUKA (Kogakuin University, President of JSKE), Prof. Kuohsiang CHEN (National Cheng-Kung University), Prof. Toshimasa YAMANAKA (University of Tsukuba), Prof. Yu-Ming CHANG (Southern Taiwan Universty of Technology), Assistant Prof. Pierre LEVY (Eindhoven University of Technology) and Assistant Prof. Carole BOUCHARD (Arts et Métiers ParisTech). Particular thanks go to the members of the KEER 2010 organizing committee here in Arts et Métiers ParisTech.<br/>Welcome to Paris. We wish you all a very fruitful and convivial conference.<br/><br/><i>Améziane AOUSSAT</i><br/><i>Conference Chair</i>

publications 04 March 2010 2010-03-04T22:03:51+02:00 Approaches in interaction design were explored a hyperspace that human cognitive actions and interactive system in both two end. Recently, this dualism in diverse direction is integrated in a notion of context, which had brought from social science as the manifest of implicit interactions that makes ‘sense’ from human actions or activities. In this research, we applied perception in ecological view to capture the stimuli of context in its dynamic nature, and proposed a notion of sensory function in extracting the transfer character of sensorimotor as transmitting signals to perception. Firstly, a theoretical approach in integrated context and perception was reviewed as the nature of stimuli and sensorimotor that can offer a grounded knowledge to carry images of context to perceptual actions. Secondly, we practiced a process in conductive way to analysis and synthesis the transfer function as a notion of sensory function. Thirdly, an application of prototype was built for order action that situated in a coffee shop, and implemented with a concept of ‘waiter cup’. To conclude, this study may be important to support incentive observation at the early design stage, and provides a tool to exploring contextual perception in designing interaction.

publications 22 September 2009 2009-09-22T21:28:01+02:00 This paper introduces an interdisciplinary design method, based on psychophysiological knowledge used as inspirational means for Kansei design. After describing the interest for such method, this paper describes each step of the method, from pre-ideation steps to actual design process based on the knowledge of human behavior phenomena and of their mechanisms. This description is supported by two examples. The teaching of this method to design master students pointed out not only the great possibilities of this method as an interdisciplinary approach in Kansei design, but also the difficulties of using scientific literature and knowledge in design.

publications 10 September 2009 2009-09-10T21:14:52+02:00 Culture is typically approached in the field of design through generic, cross-domain constructs. In this paper we provide an alternative methodological approach to exploring cross-cultural differences by studying the idiosyncratic views of individuals with regard to existing products. We operationalize this approach through the Repertory Grid Technique, a structured interview technique motivated by Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory, and propose a content-analytic procedure combining quantitative and qualitative information. We further propose the use of three distinct metrics in the analysis of personal constructs: dominance, importance, and descriptive richness. Dominance of a construct is measured through the relative percentage of a construct category over the total sample of constructs. Importance is measured through the elicitation order; this assumes that constructs elicited first are more salient and important to the individual. Descriptive richness relates to the diversity of a class of constructs. Some constructs might be uni-dimensional while others might tap to a number of distinct facets. The use of these indices enables the quantification of the different ways in which individuals perceive and differentiate between products. By identifying how individuals respond to a rich set of stimuli within a given domain, we inquire into their values and the qualities they appreciate within this restricted domain. Cultural values are thus explored in relation to a set of stimuli. We tested this procedure through an exploration of the ways 17 Dutch and 16 Japanese industrial designers valued a set of pens.

publications 22 August 2009 2009-08-22T21:06:57+02:00 This paper introduces a Kansei design method using psychophysiological research output as an inspiration means for the design of products taking highly into consideration user’s Kansei. The development of this method is itself a part of a series of design method creation based on the collaboration of the research fields of psychophysiology and design. The Kansei design method is based on four major steps involving both a classic design process and a literature investigation in psychophysiology. The main difficulty for the Kansei designer is to take into consideration the scientific rigor of the literature and to succeed to describe properly the behavioural phenomenon(a) she/he wishes to involve in the design process. As an example of design output, the colourful-rain umbrella is introduced. This umbrella lets its user to experience a rare synaesthetic perceptive phenomenon: all sounds in the rainy street are also perceived as colours (visually). To do so, the synaesthetic phenomenon is detailed from a psychophysiological point of view.

publications 10 August 2009 2009-08-10T21:01:53+02:00 The aim of this paper is to present the project undertaken by the authors to describe Kansei and to structure Kansei design studies. Indeed, the current fuzziness on Kansei research structure complicates the global comprehension of this field and seems to be a hindrance to Kansei design education and internationalisation. To improve both of these aspects, this paper proposes a comprehensive description of Kansei and Kansei Studies, explains its specificity compared to “classic” research fields, and introduces a list of 131 Kansei Study Keywords which will be used in further projects to structure Kansei sources of knowledge and improve Kansei knowledge development, Kansei research, and Kansei education.

publications 23 June 2009 2009-06-23T21:19:56+02:00 Through the example of three projects, this paper describes emerging methods and means used in the field of Kansei design studies:<br/>- The use of tools built for psychophysiology and for constructive psychology in order to support designers’ work focusing on human beings’ behaviours and mental schemes;<br/>- The use of knowledge created by psychophysiological research as an inspirational source for industrial design, taking into consideration the latest scientific progress in psychophysiology;<br/>- The use of psychophysiology tools to complete design requirements. Each point presented here is supported by an applicative example.

publications 10 March 2009 2009-03-10T20:48:39+01:00 Creativity has been proposed to be either the result of solely right hemisphere processes or of interhemispheric interactions. Little information is available, however, concerning the neuronal foundations of creativity. In this study, we introduced a new artistic task, designing a new tool (a pen), which let us quantitatively evaluate creativity by three indices of originality. These scores were analyzed in combination with brain activities measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results were compared between subjects who had been formally trained in design (experts) and novice subjects. In the experts, creativity was quantitatively correlated with the degree of dominance of the right prefrontal cortex over that of the left, but not with that of the right or left prefrontal cortex alone. In contrast, in novice subjects, only a negative correlation with creativity was observed in the bilateral inferior parietal cortex. We introduced structure equation modeling to analyze the interactions among these four brain areas and originality indices. The results predicted that training exerts a direct effect on the left parietal cortex. Additionally, as a result of the indirect effects, the activity of the right prefrontal cortex was facilitated, and the left prefrontal and right parietal cortices were suppressed. Our results supported the hypothesis that training increases creativity via reorganized intercortical interactions.

publications 13 November 2008 2008-11-13T15:56:16+01:00

publications 22 October 2008 2008-10-22T21:02:00+01:00 This research focuses on the engagement in service design. It aims at understanding how users appreciate or not their own engagement in the service process. As a case study for the experiment, various ways of ‘making tea’ were used, and were presented to the subject. Based on the repertory grid method and the means-end chain technique, subjects’ preferences and mental model evaluation structure were captured and analyzed. As a result, two major aspects were extracted: the preference for easiness of preparation, and preference for control over the preparation process. Finally, it was noticed and discussed that engagement in service design was perceived as positive for social services, but bothering for personal one. Also, user’s control and service feedback to the users’ senses were discussed and proposed as service design recommendations.

publications 22 October 2008 2008-10-22T20:55:44+02:00 In recently, we designers aimed at discovering new domain of service and product to find the opportunities in order to create users need or demands in their daily life. However, the guidelines are still neglect for us to process design thinking for solution output. In the first part of this paper, the notion of service-embedded product (SeP) will be defined in environment of service-product-integration. And we described approaches for designing interaction of SeP for improving qualities as the background. For this matter, we found the function in designing is not only inferred to the product itself and more in service and needed systematic approach. Thereafter, we proposed a Functional Analysis tool, which adapted from the APTE® in solve complex problems by analyzing values through the functions. For this purpose, a list of keywords related to service-product-integration and designing interaction, was extracted from 432 articles from CiNii during the period between January and May 2008. The result presents and constructs several terms for guideline in describing designing interaction functions, such as Information Tangibility, Gateway Accessibility Network Protocol and Product Affordability, to be used as core concepts to design interactions for SeP. By these results, we intend to develop a design tool for SeP in Service and Product Design (SPD) filed in the future.

publications 22 October 2008 2008-10-22T20:45:41+02:00 Objective of this research is to clarify crucial competences for designers who design service and competences that education institutes should develop for future service designers. To refer about Service Design, firstly, it is necessary to clarify each of two concepts, design and service, that both are elusive.<br/>In this research, design is treated as a process to create a meaningful new option through doing simulation of creation, imagination (of people who will enjoy the benefit) and evaluation.<br/>Regarding service, this research shows that a concept of service includes several different concepts and those are able to be categorized into two major concepts.<br/>One is the concept of service in a narrow sense, which there are nothing left after goods are bought and sold and nonphysical economic goods to provide satisfaction and utility (e.g. cleaning shop, hair salon, etc). Another is the concept of service in a broad sense which is economic nonphysical combination of goods of products, information and narrow services for getting satisfaction and utility (e.g. restaurant, car dealer, hotel, etc). Consequently this research proposes that broad service is that we should cover and the competence we should develop is to do cycle in a level of combination of products, information and narrow services.<br/>However about the way to develop the competence, if the simulation of creation, imagination and evaluation is the exclusive means in order to create a meaningful new option, it might be impossible to start to do the simulation in a level of narrow services without any knowledge and experience and also difficult to find the excuse that designer should be competent for the simulation in a level of narrow services.<br/>Therefore, by expanding the ability of imagination which enhanced by repeating the simulation in a level of products and information as conventional design process to the level of service, the competence for creating meaningful new services in a narrow, also broad service should be developed.

publications 02 October 2008 2008-10-02T21:03:50+02:00

publications 24 September 2008 2008-09-24T20:18:29+02:00 The research presented in this paper is part of the last target of Kansei research for design. Its aim is to build up a design method for interdisciplinary workgroup context. The bases of this method have been published in the past [Lévy 2006]. In this paper, this method and a more practical way to apply it will be introduced, before presenting a case study output from a course taught from April to November 2007 to Master students.

publications 23 September 2008 2008-09-23T20:22:26+02:00 The aim of this article is to explore the suitability of psycho-physiological measures (e.g. levels of pleasure, excitement and comfortableness during the usage obtained from physiological measures) and psychological explorations (e.g. users’ reflections about their needs for interaction obtained from an interview) for approaching user subjective experience during and after the interaction with a product takes place (explorative usage and reflection processes).<br/>For this purpose the 2-point Electroencephalogram (EEG) comfort measurement is used to gather realtime information about how a person feels during the interaction with a product and the Repertory Grid Technique (RGT) interview is used to gather information about what people’s primary goals and concerns are and about the meaning placed on the purpose outside the immediate experience (after interacting with a product).

publications 25 March 2008 2008-03-25T20:31:02+01:00 Within the last thirty years, Kansei studies have become an important field of research in Japan. More recently, foreign researchers have become more and more interested in understating the approach, despite the difficulties related to the cultural dimension of Kansei and Kansei studies. The aim of this research is to propose to westerners a clear description of what Kansei and Kansei studies are, and how it is different from classic western approaches on sensory or emotion design. Using this description of Kansei studies, a brainstorming has been organized to determine a list of keywords (KSK) used to structure and map comprehensively Kansei-related source of information. Moreover, a participative tool, called KanseiTako, is introduced. This tool aims at providing researchers, educators, and students, with an organized and useful set of knowledge sources to structure comprehensively the research field and the education in Kansei studies.

publications 28 February 2008 2008-02-28T19:51:56+01:00 The aim of this paper is to present the project undertaken by the authors to describe Kansei and to structure Kansei design studies. Indeed, the current fuzziness on Kansei research structure complicates the global comprehension of this field and seems to be a hindrance to Kansei design education and internationalization. To improve both of these aspects, this paper proposes a comprehensive description of Kansei and Kansei Studies, explains its specificity compared to ‘classic’ research fields, and introduces a list of 131 Kansei Studies Keywords which will be used in further projects to structure Kansei sources of knowledge and improve Kansei knowledge development, Kansei research, and Kansei education.

publications 25 February 2008 2008-02-25T19:44:09+01:00 This research explores the combinationof psycho-physiological measures and psychological explorations to illustrate user’s tacit factor while experiencing the use of products. As an experiment, we used a set of ballpoint pens for experience. The Repertory Grid Technology and EEG measurement, based on alpha wave fluctuation of left and right frontal brain, are used. The result carried an idea about the potential of using the RGT quantitative results as a bridge for linking qualitative data from the interviews with quantitative data from the comfort measures. Precisely, the quantitative data form the RGT allows for classifying and comparing qualitative information from different participants. At the same time correlate its values with other measurements like the comfort level. This opens the possibility to track the evolution of the comfortableness level in relation to the movements, actions and tasks done while interacting with the product. It also shows the possibility of rating and clustering the subjective information obtained from the RG (weakness analysis) in order to define which characteristics are related and which of the senses that take part of it.

publications 02 October 2007 2007-10-02T19:37:01+02:00 This paper presents an interdisciplinary design method and shows its relevance for EcoDesign. Interdisciplinary design intends to design a product considering its entire context, by the participation of various disciplines. A metaphorical level is required and built in the design process in order to involve properly all disciplines. This continuous participation of every involved discipline makes this design method fully interdisciplinary and relevant for EcoDesign. After introducing the objectives of EcoDesign and interdisciplinary design, the method of interdisciplinary design method will be detailed. This description will be useful to understand how interdisciplinary design works, and how it can be useful for EcoDesign. Finally, it will be suggested that Kansei research for design, which is at the origin of this research, can be a source of new development to improve the quality of human factors in EcoDesign.

publications 09 September 2007 2007-09-09T20:52:21+02:00

publications 10 July 2007 2007-07-10T19:32:06+02:00 Kansei design methods are successful in the Japanese industry and academic worlds. Outside Japan, their level of development and recognition is nothing compared with the situation inside of Japan. One of the reasons is that there is currently no comprehensive description of Kansei and Kansei studies written for the international community. This paper intends to provide such description, to analyze involved cultural differences, and to describe how Kansei is involved in the Japanese design approaches. To do so, an overview of main descriptions of Kansei is realized and synthesized into a comprehensive and useful description. Thereafter, Kansei study objectives and methods are analyzed and their differences with that of western approach. Finally, the implication of Kansei in Japanese design is explained. This research intends to improve western understanding of Kansei, and to improve mutual understanding in both industrial and academic worlds between East and West.

publications 29 June 2007 2007-06-29T17:35:41+02:00 The Kansei design method allows interdisciplinary workgroups to process design projects using an original knowledge sharing system. This system is based on the SECI Model, already recognized as one of the most efficient models for creative projects. To minimize knowledge distortions due to the interdisciplinary quality of the workgroup, a tool called Evoked Metaphor is inserted to the SECI process. Thanks to the Evoked Metaphor, all shared knowledge can be understood intuitively by any member of the design workgroup, and can be validated on disciplinary points of view. This allows any member of the workgroup, regardless her/his own specialty, to participate to any step of the design process and to communicate with other members. This paper recalls the way the Evoked Metaphor can be used in the Kansei design process, and focuses on its construction method. To illustrate the construction process, an example is proposed concerning a car navigation project.

publications 29 September 2006 2006-09-29T19:13:29+02:00 This paper introduces a new research aiming at defining the term Kansei using western philosophical concepts. In the literature, all definitions of the term Kansei are imprecise, even incorrect in most of the case. This is mainly due to the fact that Kansei is a Japanese term, which does not have direct translation in any western language. However, a deeper research has to be pursued to bring the research in Kansei, in Kansei Information, in Kansei Science, and so forth to an international level. This objective requires many research fields to meet in an interdisciplinary research environment following the example of previous works done in other fields, but also trying to link Japanese and Westerns concepts. This paper is an invitation for interested people to contact the research team.

publications 10 September 2006 2006-09-10T20:58:39+02:00 The artifact is a complex element. Besides its elementary dimensions (material, functional and formal), the artifact is composed of much more dimensions: ergonomic, emotional, cultural, and even ethologic or theological. To take into account this great quantity and diversity of dimensions, the designer’s work has to be widened out. Necessarily, this goes through an interdisciplinary approach, i.e. through an interdisciplinary workgroup activity. Nevertheless, this brings issues, notably concerning knowledge communication and sharing. For each variety of knowledge (tacit, prescriptive and descriptive), interdisciplinary activity provokes issues either because of disciplinary ontology differences, or because of human subjective understanding differences. Intuition is a mental process which is able to minimize these issue effects. We then propose a methodology based on intuition, structured on the theory of Ba, on the SECI Model, which an evoked metaphor (EM) is added to. Through the EM, each member of the workgroup is able to participate to every steps of the design process and to communicate with other members, thanks to an intuitive understanding permanently validated by involved disciplines. This creates an efficient interdisciplinary dynamics and the realization of fully interdisciplinary projects. To illustrate this methodology, the design of MATiK is introduced as an example. MATiK is an original workgroup communication system based on a Kansei information approach. In order to understand the expected functionalities of MATiK and to design it, the EM is set up. Considering basic aspects of an extensive workgroup operative process, the Loft is defined as an EM. The Loft offers an opportunity to understand MATiK’s original functionalities, MATiK’s design, and MATiK’s functional and technical requirements intuitively. This methodology, based on the EM, asserts its relevancy for interdisciplinary design. Its strength comes from the fact that the EM links all the levels of the design process (the idea/concept level, the reality level, and the technical level) and makes their understanding accessible to all members thanks to intuition.

publications 29 June 2006 2006-06-29T17:27:20+02:00 In this paper, we introduce the work-in-progress of the design a CMC (Computer-Mediated Communication) system called MATiK. The originality of this design is not only the result, i.e. MATiK, but also the Kansei Information based design methodology used to design it. The later uses intuition as a knowledge-sharing process among the design workgroup members. An original conceptualizing tool (the Evoked Metaphor) is introduced in the paradigm of the sharing knowledge process (the SECI Model) to allow members of the interdisciplinary design workgroup to work together upon individual and disciplinary differences. MATiK includes an original function simulating the “cocktail party phenomenon” in the information flow management system of the CMC. This new function improves drastically the quality of social aspects of communications over computers by taking into considerations subjective and social aspects of all the users. Therefore, this paper proposes to discuss the implications of Kansei on sharing knowledge to overpass the current limits of the information technologies, before introducing MATiK and its design process.

publications 29 April 2006 2006-04-29T17:14:53+02:00 Considering the complexity of the artefact (artefact means here human construction, to be opposed with the Nature construction. It gathers objects, processes, services and their systems), great design improvements can succeed thanks to an interdisciplinary approach. However, interdisciplinary knowledge sharing encounters many issues, due to disciplinary ontology and human subjective understanding. For designers to adopt an interdisciplinary behaviour, a method is required. This paper introduces a methodological solution, based on intuition.

publications 24 March 2006 2006-03-24T15:27:47+01:00 The evolution of humanity, and notably of societies which are composing it, is marked all along its history, by evolutions, verily revolutions, of communication technologies (invention of spoken language, written language, of printing techniques, and so on. . . ). The digital technology and the advent of the Internet are significant steps of this evolution. Nowadays, the impressive development and the intrusion of information technology at every level of the society, at the institutional levels as well as the private ones, bring the need for a new social and societal paradigm based on the knowledge and intelligence economy. This new paradigm includes the concept of Cyberspace to denote the virtual space for human and social exchanges based on human knowledge and experience. Each human being is a center of this paradigm. The individual, owner and retailer of intelligence, is emphasized by her/his own experience. Considering Chisei and Kansei, both cognitive elements of each individual, and descriptive and tacit knowledge, owned by each individual, there is a necessity to consider subjective (or personal) dimension in social communication while designing tools for the Cyberspace. The actual evolution, brought by the new information technologies, makes possible for each individual to share and announce one’s own knowledge with the rest of the group (by extension, with the whole humanity), whatever its size or nature. This is certainly a revolution. This is at the beginning of a new context allowing the design of relevant tools enable to help humanity to understand its common action. This understanding reaches to Collective Intelligence, a new opportunity for human community to progress. Thus there is a real need for new design objectives: creation of tools for Collective Intelligence. Kansei, translated in English as a mental sense of subjectivity, is influencing human relationships. It has an influence on both the ideation and the understanding of interpersonal communication. Thus, Kansei becomes a key point in social context behavior of each individual, influencing not only the social context it-self (its structure and its operation), but also the information flow. Therefore, Kansei Information can contribute to integrate human subjectivity aspects in the design of tools for the Collective Intelligence. Considering these points, the aim of this study is to understand how Kansei Information can contribute to the creation to the creation of a design methodology for Collective Intelligence, and thus to the improvement of communication structures of interdisciplinary workgroups.

publications 29 September 2004 2004-09-29T17:21:09+02:00 Even though IT is a very convenient tool for virtual communities to correspond, limitations are many and, for most of them, already known. This paper focuses on the issues related with tacit knowledge and subjective communication. The aim is to introduce an original software taking user’s subjectivity into account to optimize information flow.<br/>This research has been launch as a part of the 21st Century COE Program, sponsored by the MEXT, aiming at structuring Kansei as a science. Three laboratories with different specialties are working on this common program. As various knowledge is sharing between various people, a quick multiplication of mailing-lists occurred, creating a chaotic situation, preventing efficient communication. The wish to share knowledge (a fortiori tacit one) would fail if nothing was done.<br/>MATiK is introduced as an original communication system satisfying determined requirements for optimized information sharing in an interdisciplinary workgroup. This introduction is done by pointing out the lack of currently existing systems: there is no consideration of the link between message content and user’s specificities. This link is shown as a solution for information flow optimization.<br/>Then, a similarity concept, the loft, is introduced in order to explain the global operating procedure of MATiK, i.e. its information flow management. This ideation process, through highly subjective similarity concept, is favoring Kansei design approach. Next step of MATiK design will be presented in further publications.

publications 29 October 2003 2003-10-29T17:08:49+01:00 The industry of product conception mainly involves decision makers from the fields of marketing, design and engineering. In this study, the perception of the information through this process that influences the decision makers was analyzed through a survey riding on a Kansei approach. This approach emphasizes the influence of the professionals’ personality and characteristics. The subjects’ average perception of the concepts was retrieved through positioning them into a map without considering their individual influence. On a second phase, it was showed that the lack of issues, such as personality or individual characteristics, limited the possibilities of the map. The analysis began with the definition of the fields marketing, design, engineering, and Kansei, and a brain- storming for obtaining the keywords related to the three fields interaction. The resulting keywords were redefined and distributed on a pilot-map with an x-axis divided into user/product, and a y-axis divided into tangible/intangible. For validating the pilot-map the same survey was applied to professionals involved in marketing, design and engineering and the results were projected originally into an average map without considering personal data. On account of the limited information retrieved on this map, a group of wider maps was generated considering personality and characteristics.<br/>Integrating the Kansei approach by considering personality of the subjects, improved the possibilities of the model and gave rise to a source of flexible patterns of information that improved the understanding of the industrial environment relationships. In the future, the final mapping system may be used as an observation tool for magnifying the different possible intersections and patterns between the professionals involved in the fields of marketing, design and engineering and as a platform for further analysis of industrial interaction.

For over three decades, kansei engineering has expanded greatly and has become a significant discipline both in the industrial and the academic worlds. In this paper, I present the current situation of kansei engineering, and plead for the emancipation of other disciplines, as part of kansei research as well. By reconstructing the historical path of kansei research and exploring the variety of disciplines within kansei research, I point out the opportunities for kansei design to emerge. Whereas kansei engineering and kansei science have found their roots in scientifically established approaches (respectively engineering and brain science), kansei design intends to return to earlier Japanese philosophical or cultural works to rediscover the essence of kansei, and to use them as inspirational means for design. This new discipline certainly needs to be elaborated further. research 16 October 2003 2003-10-16T20:03:12+02:00

publications 30 June 2002 2002-06-30T15:35:08+02:00 Le design industriel est une activité créatrice, qui s’inspire de connaissances ayants des origines variées, et dont l’objectif est d’établir les qualités multiples des objets, des processus, des services et de leurs systèmes durant leur cycle de vie complet. Ainsi, le design est un facteur central pour l’ ‘humanisation innovante’ des technologies et un facteur crucial des échanges culturels et économiques.<br/>La communauté académique est unanimement d’accord pour affirmer que le design possède pour ‘objectif secondaire’ important de mieux comprendre le résultat de son travail: l’objet. Une orientation de type interdisciplinaire du design industriel peut l’amener à accomplir cet ‘objectif secondaire’. L’ ‘attitude interdisciplinaire’ n’est pas étrangère au design industriel. Depuis plus de soixante-dix ans, le design est souvent allé chercher les connaissances et les outils de disciplines variées afin de développer – et de résoudre – les problématiques auxquelles il s’est trouvé confronté.<br/>L’objectif de cette recherche est de montrer qu’une ‘attitude interdisciplinaire’ formalisée du design industriel peut lui permettre d’atteindre cet ‘objectif secondaire’ et d’en faire bénéficier la société dans son ensemble.