In a collaborative effort spanning between the Netherlands and Kenya, this project aimed to enhance the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in the Meru region by designing a manual groundnut thresher. Recognising the importance of cultural context, I embarked on a journey guided by a cultural anthropological research approach, placing a strong emphasis on co-creation and iterative prototyping to ensure the tool’s effectiveness and usability.

Through research, several challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Meru were uncovered. Handpicking groundnuts is labour-intensive and time-consuming, limiting productivity and income generation. Additionally, there is a lack of tools available to aid in the harvest of groundnuts, and the options found in other regions, such as Asia, were prohibitively expensive or unsafe.

This project fostered a collaborative environment where stakeholders from diverse backgrounds actively participated in the design process. Farmers, engineers, and students from a local technical institute worked together to co-create solutions tailored to the specific needs and preferences of the community. This inclusive approach ensured that the final product addressed the real challenges faced by farmers on the ground.

Prototyping played a prominent role in refining the design concepts and iterating towards the final prototype. We experimented with various mechanisms and configurations to optimise the thresher’s performance and usability. Continuous feedback loops enabled us to make iterative improvements, ensuring that the final product met the standards of quality and functionality.

After multiple iterations and rigorous testing, we developed a working final prototype: the Manual Groundnut Harvester. This innovative tool streamlines the harvesting process, reducing the time and labour required to thresh groundnuts. Its design allows for easy operation by farmers of all skill levels, empowering them to increase their productivity and income. Additionally, the thresher’s cultural sensitivity ensures seamless integration into the local farming practices, further enhancing its adoption and impact.

Looking ahead, the project holds promising prospects for the future. The Manual Groundnut Harvester and its redesign have the potential to significantly improve groundnut farming in Meru, offering a sustainable solution to enhance productivity and livelihoods. Moreover, the collaborative approach serves as a model for future design projects, emphasising the importance of co-creation and cultural sensitivity in addressing complex socio-economic challenges.

In conclusion, this journey to design and develop the Manual Groundnut Harvester exemplifies the power of inclusive design and collaborative innovation. By leveraging local knowledge, expertise, and resources, we have created a solution that not only improves agricultural practices but also fosters economic empowerment and community resilience in the Meru region.

This project develops a novel assistive technology for aiding in mobility of the Visually Impaired in collaboration with Royal Visio. This technology provides VIPs with a dynamic tactile map of their environment to improve spatial awareness. The aim is to improve overview, wayfinding and orientation, while also improving the overall mobility experience by boosting confidence and independence through comprehensive awareness of the environment.
The initial research phase seeked to understand the needs and challenges in mobility faced by VIPs, both from a functional point of view, focusing on wayfinding and orientation, and on a psychosocial level, focusing on emotional and experiential needs that derive from the process. It was found that the absence of the visual sense significantly limits VIPs’ ability to overview and comprehend their surroundings, hindering their orientation and use of distant environmental reference for movement, resulting in the reliance on physical guidelines. Reduced awareness of potential hazards and complicated wayfinding often leads focus the functional aspects of mobility. They experience a vigilant, alert state of mind, focusing mainly on avoiding risks and not losing their way. This intense focus diminishes engagement with the broader environment and leads VIPs to stick to familiar areas. Such limitations impact their independence but also their connection with society.
The review of current assistive solutions reveals that they primarily concentrate on similar functional aspects of mobility, using interface technologies that fall short in significantly enhancing environmental awareness and reducing the perceived lack of environmental awareness.
This gap highlights the need for assistive technologies that focus not only on wayfinding and navigation but also on these experiential aspects. The project proposes a multidimensional, spatial interface technology akin to conventional tactile maps but of dynamic nature, is capable of real-time updates based on the actual environment, moves along with the user and subsequently is able to display non-static and small-scale environmental elements. This dynamic tactile map aims to provide a deeper sense of environmental awareness and understanding.
In the subsequent research-through-design phase, a prototype of the conceptual product, that provides a dynamic top-view map of the environment on an electronic braille screen, is put to the test. Despite highlighting the potential of this conceptual direction for spatial understanding, orientation and free, confident movement, the experiment reveals significant requirements for improvement of the interface and environmental mapping technologies.
The final design, “Immersive Spatial Awareness,” features an improved interface with in the form of a haptic augmented reality system that enables a dynamic 360° 3D perception of the environment, primarily through touch, but supplemented with multisensory elements. While significant technological development and Human-Centred-Design is required to realise this visionary concept, the applied technologies are grounded in actual research and existing technologies that see rapid development, highlighting the realistic potential of the concept. The design is supplemented with a roadmap that details and presents the development process towards the successful application of this technology.

Hand suturing is one of the most challenging tasks in laparoscopic surgery and requires high cognitive effort from the performing surgeon. Nevertheless, it is also one of the basic skills of minimally invasive surgery and it is a critical skill due to its high requirements and broad application.

During gastric bypass surgery, there are multiple moments of hand suturing which makes the procedure physically and cognitively challenging. This research focuses on possible alternatives for internal tissue closure to reduce the frequency of hand suturing. The main objective of the research was to develop a method which reduces cognitive effort and procedure time while enhancing comfort for the surgeon.

To get insights into the current procedure of hand suturing, it was analysed on the example of anastomosis closure. Observations of gastric bypass surgeries gave the required information to generate a detailed workflow which identified hand suturing as a key difficulty during the process. The analysis results gave a starting point for the ideation of a new closure method. Additionally, requirements for the closure method were formulated and taken into account during the development.

Multiple concepts like differently shaped clips, hooks and staples were created and prototypes were built. Materials like metal wire staples and 3D printed prototypes were used and tested on foam, silicon and rubber. Through tests and interviews with healthcare professionals, one concept could be chosen and further detailed.

The newly developed method combines the advantages of both hand suturing and the commonly used stapling technique. The staples are attached in an alternating way on the edge of the tissues, while a suture is pre-threaded through the staples. When pulling the suture, the two sides approximate each other. The advantage of this method is that the tissue does not need to be positioned before the application which makes the procedure less challenging for surgeons.

A real scale prototype of the method was build to test manufacturability and proof of principle. Further optimization was done with Finite Element analysis and co-creation sessions with medical doctors. The evaluation of the concept was done in close collaboration with multiple bariatric surgeons, by conducting interviews and hosting discussion sessions.

The result of the evaluation showed that some of the safety requirements on anastomosis closure cannot be met with the newly developed concept. More suitable alternatives like the closure of mesenteric windows was investigated. Mesentery defects occur e.g. due to anatomic changes during gastric bypass surgery. If left untreated they may lead to internal hernia and small bowel obstruction. The newly developed method has the potential to close mesenteric windows time efficiently while enhancing the surgeon’s comfort. Risk assessment and further interviews showed that this application is safer and more accepted by surgeons which makes it a promising solution for hernia repair.

The coronavirus, which emerged worldwide in 2020, has raised concerns about viral safety in air travel. Less passengers fly due to the imposed restrictions and the fear of catching the virus while traveling. These concerns might have a long-term impact on travel patterns, with nearly a third of travelers planning to fly less after the pandemic. The aviation industry, an important part of the global economy which provides 65.5 million jobs worldwide, has been hard hit since the virus outbreak. Experts agree that addressing new passenger concerns will be critical as their willingness to fly will drive the recovery. Developed in collaboration with the aircraft manufacturer Embraer, this project explored ways to increase the perception of viral safety in current aircraft, and translated these findings into a product proposal, which provides a feeling of safety and privacy during a flight. To understand the factors influencing the perception of viral safety, interviews were conducted with recent flyers and flight attendants. The collected data showed that contracting the virus is a big worry, especially while eating. Not only does it reduce the feeling of safety, it also exposes passengers to the risk of infection as a result of removing the masks. In order to facilitate ideation, a brainstorming session with aviation experts was conducted. Prototypes were developed and tested with travelers using virtual reality technology to define solutions that evoke a sense of safety. The combination of insights allowed for the development of "COVR" – an aircraft interior element that separates passengers, providing a feeling of viral safety and, as a result, increasing the willingness to fly.

On-the-go food packaging has a significant negative impact on the environment. The awareness of this long existing problem is rising among consumers and policy makers. Although over decades many professionals in various areas of expertise have worked on improvements and tried to find solutions, these solutions all involve trade-offs. An ideal zero waste, circular status in which the world’s resources are preserved and their value is maintained has not been reached yet. New solution spaces need to be discovered, which seems like an impossible job within this already much discussed issue. The present project starts out from the thesis statement that there are still ‘voids’ to be discovered in the entirety of solution possibilities. A ‘void’ is defined as a solution space that is not deployed because it is undiscovered, not because it is considered un-useful. Traditional design ways of problem solving use ideation techniques to come up with different concepts from which the best one is selected. By selecting solutions in this way, solution spaces and possibilities may be overlooked. Going beyond the traditional design problem solving techniques, this research uses a technique based on abstracting physical working principles of solutions, borrowed from the field of biomedical engineering. By combining problem solving techniques from different engineering disciplines, a systematic overview of solution spaces is created exposing undeployed solution spaces. In the subsequent phase, the undeployed solution spaces are investigated further to see if there are actual ‘voids’ among them. The overview is used to create an innovative solution concept by first clustering the solution spaces in workable solution directions to reduce complexity. By an iterative process of ideating and research, a solution space is selected. Taking the complex interconnected boundary conditions into account – such as the demanding consumer, the profit desiring retailers and the different types of environmental impact –, solution concepts are developed within the selected solution space from which one is selected as final solution concept. The final solution concept implies separating the presentation function of food packaging from the disposable packaging and shifts the function to a reusable element. The solution concept is developed into an example application: a new packaging is designed for prepacked stuffed wraps. The new packaging is user tested and adapted in an iterative process, based on the test results, until it has shown its potential. Thus, the created systematic overview is verified to uncover at least one ‘void’ and holds the possibility to contain more. This project aims to contribute to reducing the negative environmental impact of on-the-go food packaging by showing that is worthwhile to search beyond existing solution directions. The created packaging concept plays both ways: by being part of the theoretical void finding process in verifying the overview and by being part of a practical solution in reducing the amount of single use material. The application of this concept can be explored further in future research.

The focus of this project is two-fold: first it explores how animation can be used to make functional robots more intuitively understandable. A framework for functional robot developers, to apply animations in the designed behaviours of their products, is proposed. Second, it demonstrates the value of the incorporation of animated behaviours, as well as the effects, through application of the framework to a hospital transport robot.

Robots, belonging to smart machine technologies, are expected to be part of the most disruptive technologies over the next decade. Especially functional robots are on the rise, making the transfer from controlled factory floors to mundane environments, where people can also encounter them in everyday life. This requires new design strategies that tackle functional robots, not only as efficient machines but also as understandable agents that people can deal with, preferably intuitively.
What sets robots apart from other intelligent agents, is that they are able manipulate our world not only digitally, but also physically. Since people are highly sensitive to physical movement, this trait can be used in the pursuit of more intuitively interpretable robots. The art of animation houses deep expertise in how to use movement, to dynamically communicate state and intention, and can therefore be the key to designing more intuitive robots
This project has therefore set out to make effective application of animation practices available for functional robot developers, as to enable them to offer more intuitively understandable products and be a game changer for how we have to deal with robots today.
A framework, that combines animation practices and functional robot development with knowledge of user-centred design, is proposed, to provide guidance throughout development towards more intuitively understandable products.

Over the last decade an increasing number of functional robots have been developed and employed to conduct the intra-logistics in hospitals. The main reason for implementation has been that hospitals are under a constant pressure to cut costs. However, especially in sensitive settings such as hospitals, there is urgency for these robots to be naturally understood to facilitate an intuitive response in people towards the robots. People in healthcare facilities often feel stressed and anxious, leaving them with only little capacity to deal with complex or confusing situations.
Based on the identified urgency for more intuitive robots in this setting, a case study was conducted that aimed to answer the following question:

How can the application of animation principles in the designed expressivity of a hospital delivery robot evoke an intuitive response in hospital visitors, in such a manner that its expressive behaviour seamlessly integrates with its delivery function?

It was found that the proposed framework effectively stimulates a workflow that adopts animation practices. Also, it could be concluded that animated behaviours and ‘staging’ of robots movements through embodiment can indeed stimulate desired response in the human encountering the robot.
Although the framework still requires validation through evaluation in real life robot development project, the current study shows its potential as a first step towards more intuitively understandable robots based on animation practices.