Imagine going to a bar to meet your friends. When you arrive you try to spot them in a room filled with people, but your view is blurred which disables you from recognizing your friends. How would this make you feel? People that are blind or have low vision (PBLV) are all around us and can be found in any context of life. Just like sighted people, they feel the need to attend to social situations. However, socially navigating themselves, meaning finding and navigating toward familiar people around them, can be more challenging for them due to missing sight.

Literature describes that having a visual impairment can greatly impact your social life (Brunes et al., 2019; Desrosiers et al., 2009; Grow et al., 2015; OehlerGiarratana & Fitzgerald, 1980). This was confirmed by PBLV, during interviews that were executed in advance of the project. There seems to be a gap in exploring how design could help PBLV with the challenges they experience in their social life. With a participatory approach, this project attempts to contribute to filling this gap. During the project, the goal was to ‘develop a supporting device that makes PBLV feel more at ease in social situations’.

Interviews and shadowing sessions with PBLV, and a literature study resulted in the definition of eight areas where PBLV experience challenges in their social life. Together with studying the technological developments in the field of social life of PBLV, resulted in composing the design goal to: ‘Design a tool that allows PBLV to improve personal social navigation. Helping them to find and identify familiar people around them in social settings.’

With this design goal and the conducted research in mind, the conceptualization phase followed. During this phase several concepts were generated, (rapid) prototypes were created, and additional tests and studies were executed. Knowledge gathered from this phase resulted in the design of the final concept called ‘Sofi’.

‘Sofi’, the social finder, is an application and add-on for the Apple Watch which supports PBLV in their social navigation. It does so via communicating the identity, and location of familiar others nearby through vibrations. In addition, it helps PBLV to navigate towards these familiar others when desired.

Based on prototyping and testing elements of the final concept, and gathering feedback from PBLV, ‘Sofi’ seems to be a promising concept that could have potential for further development. The findings of this project, in particular, the research on social challenge areas for PBLV, and the design exploration can contribute to the knowledge of using design to help PBLV tackle the challenges they experience in their social life.

Just a couple of years ago the delineation between the public and the private sector was clear. However, with the introduction and proliferation of shared mobility providers, the boundary is becoming fuzzy, especially since these newcomers all use their own specific way of checking in and out. Because they are not incorporated into a single digital ecosystem, the journey from door to door is becoming less seamless the more mobility providers are added to the market. The goal of this thesis is to fully understand what exactly constitutes seamless mobility and how it can be incorporated into the Dutch mobility sector. Consolidating research presented in this thesis in combination with previous research, a full traveller journey map is constructed in which anti- seamless behaviour is identified. Checking in to both a train station gate and a shared modality are the least seamless aspects of the journey. Therefore a new novel seamless interaction idea is presented. The proposed interaction is essentially the inverse of the current situation revolving around the idea of a wireless digital handshake. Wherein the old scenario the traveller must physically present a modality-specific identifier to a permanently closed barrier i.e. gate or moped, a traveller now carries a small modality non-specific token which can be detected by a gate at the train station or by a parked shared modality if it is in close proximity. Check-in gates at the train station are now permanently open and subsequently will only close when a valid token is not detected i.e. the digital handshake cannot be made. The same goes for checking in on a shared modality. Shared modalities are permanently unlocked and turned on and will cut the power, apply the brakes, or sounds an alarm when a valid token is not detected i.e. the digital handshake cannot be made. The combination of the wireless technologies PKES and UWB are selected. The introduction of the aforementioned seamless mobility scenario is dependent on the integration of public transportation and shared mobility services. Based on interviews with a municipality, a shared mobility provider, desk research, and leveraging the future introduction of Account Based Ticketing, nine strategic interventions are proposed. Now made possible by the strategic blueprint, research is done on how future travellers will react to the reimagined seamless mobility scenario. This is done through a series of interaction prototyping tests. Insights are translated in a redesigned travel token, a seamless train station gate, and a seamless scooter. A demonstrator prototype is built for attendees at the thesis defence to experience the reimagined seamless travel scenario.

Nowadays, the digital space is gaining more and more relevance in our daily lives. Transactions, documents, education, meetings, and social activities are being digitalised. Companies from around the globe are making steps and taking initiatives to lead the change with concepts like the “metaverse”. Parallelly, blockchain technology is helping the evolution from the traditional internet to the so called “web 3”, a new concept where decentralisation is key, and revolutionary concepts such as digital ownership and authenticity are more possible than ever. In this scope, the graduation project takes place.

Due to the fast changes the digital environment has suffered in the last year 2021 with the surge of the NFTs and the serious investments in the development of “metaverses”, I intend to understand what problems users have while interacting with NFTs to promote this change and remove possible barriers for the adoption of the technology. The focus, therefore, is on the uses of NFTs and how the consumers interact and experience them. The goal is to detect a problem in this regard and propose a solution that improves the current state of the art. Thus, the work conveyed consists of a study of the general environment, industries, users and their problems and a definition of a problem to solve. Afterwards, I provide a solution to the problem detected.

In the study conducted I pinpoint the current trends of NFTs as a hyped and niche market, but with potential to become mainstream in the mid future (5 years). Accordingly, a problem that could prevent this to happen is detected as result of engaging with the users and their current use of NFTs. Here, the present scenario for showcasing NFTs is highlighted as an issue and potential roadblock for the mass adoption of the technology.

The solution developed does not only focus on the user problem but also on the underlying limitation, the technical existing constraints when visualising NFTs. The result of the graduation project not only solves the problem detected, but also improves the current state of the art and sets a solid ground for NFTs to unlock their maximum potential. This is achieved with the use of advanced technologies like Augmented Reality and concentration on the user’s desires.

Finally, future recommendations are suggested to improve the deliverable, including all the functionalities required. A fully working prototype will shed more light to the results obtained and give the users the true complete desired experience.

This master thesis explores how Philips wearable the biosensor can bring value in the cardiovascular disease care pathway. This project proposes a concept of product-service system to improve patient care in transcatheter aortic valve stenosis implantation (TAVI) perioperative journey. Aortic valve stenosis (AS) is one of the most common and progressive valvular heart diseases in ageing society. According to the European Society of Cardiology (2020), the burden of AS symptoms affects the patient’s quality of life and survival. For intermediate or high-risk patients experiencing severe symptoms, they are often suggested TAVI treatment, is a minimally invasive clave replacement surgery. However, TAVI patients are also frailer and with comorbidities, which requires multidisciplinary teams to deliver perioperative patient care. The problem is defined as when patients step out of the hospital, there is a lack of communication in (1) knowing when and what actions to take if complications occur; (2) Knowing how active can and should the patient during home recovering. Hart, a smart digital care assistant, is a PSS for the adoption of Philips wearable biosensor data in TAVI perioperative patient care. Hart initiating communications on helping patients reflecton their own health situation, building shared knowledge by using patient-shared contextual information with long-term monitoring during physical activities or experience of symptoms.

Delirium occurs in upto 80% of the ICU patients and is one of the most common source of morbidity and mortality in the ICU. Inattention is one of the core features of delirium and affects 97% - 100% of the delirium patients. This indicates that attention can be a good parameter for detecting delirium. In literature, it has been found that the use of visual attention tests have been successful in detecting delirium among the ICU patients. The VitalSky is a luminous ceiling used for providing light therapy to the ICU patients. Since, the VitalSky is already available in the ICU and allows to render visual contents, it can be used for detecting delirium in the ICU patients by performing visual attention tests. In this thesis, visual attention tests are developed for the VitalSky. Moreover, different interaction devices are explored that can be used by the ICU patients to respond to the tasks of the attention test and help in automation of the test. The technical feasibility and usability of the automated setup is also evaluated in this thesis. The validation of the performance of the attention tests and user preference of the response devices is assessed by conducting a pilot study on 10 healthy volunteers and collecting their subjective feedback.

Advances in sensing and machine learning technologies give rise to personal health coaches that monitor human activities and support healthy behaviour. In this context, wheelchair users can benefit from such technologies as they often suffer from physical ailments due to insufficient or over activity, prolonged improper posture and lack of postural changes. While sitting posture is a well-studied area, current works focus on the recognition of less frequent postures and miss important postures such as slouching and pelvic postures. The benefits gained from activity tracking also remain restricted to able bodied individuals. In this thesis we demonstrate an end-to-end, multimodal, wheelchair sitting posture and activity monitoring system facilitating just-in-time feedback on postural changes. By using an earable to monitor activity and head posture with a complementary filter and performing classification using Force Sensitive Resistors, we show faster and more precise recognition of relevant postures and activity.

Graduation project focused on designing a data enabled product using internet of things to support cooking enthusiasts in their daily cooking practices for ATAG. By using practice theory bij Kuijer the graduate student researched the kitchen context and did user interviews to uncover design opportunities for data enabled products in the kitchen context. This was used to develop a concept named Sjef. Sjef is an app that works with sensors the user puts on their pans. Through recipes and measurements of the sensor the user is assisted with cooking. The concept was tested with the target group to discover insight into future developments for a connected product such as Sjef.