This research project investigates the challenges faced by blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals in using digital technologies, particularly focusing on the usability and accessibility of voice assistant technologies. The study aims to identify key problems experienced by BLV users, analyze the limitations and recent developments in voice assistant technology, and co-create a solution aimed at enhancing the usability of voice assistants for non-visual users.

To achieve these objectives, a mixed-methods approach was employed, including a literature review, usability inspections, digital anthropology, as well as co-design sessions with Visio experts and prototype testing with BLV users to validate potential solutions. The research further explores how these solutions can be integrated into the existing support network, ensuring that the design not only addresses immediate usability concerns but is also sustainable and adaptable.

The findings highlight critical design tensions and opportunities for future iterations of the prototype, particularly in terms of attainability, trust, and user agency. This research provides valuable insights for designers and stakeholders aiming to create more inclusive digital tools for the BLV community, offering a roadmap for embedding these solutions within broader support systems.

Deceptive design patterns (also known as 'dark patterns') are design elements that trick users into unintended behaviors that harm them and benefit the party implementing the design. Prior work has taxonomized, investigated, and speculated the presence of dark patterns across environments (applications, websites, games, VR, AR, IoT) and modalities (visual, audio). However, more attention is needed to investigate how haptic technologies might be used to enable deceptive patterns since it is gradually becoming prevalent in digital experiences.
This project contributes to the characterization and demonstration of deceptive patterns enabled / augmented by haptic stimulation. First, we identify the key characteristics of haptic modality that may enable new dark patterns or argument existing ones, and we surface examples of such patterns. Second, we conducted a between-group study ,in which we investigated the efficacy of one chosen haptic dark pattern. In addition, we presented mitigative recommendations to the stakeholders.

Touch is one of the first senses to develop during embryonic stages, playing a fundamental role throughout human life. It is integral to our experiences, mediated by a network of receptors across the skin. From infancy to old age, touch is involved in numerous everyday activities, many of which are carried out by the hands—our primary tools for interaction with the world. A significant aspect of this interaction is self-touch, the spontaneous or deliberate contact of our hands with our own bodies. Self-touch is a ubiquitous yet often unconscious behavior that occurs in various contexts, influencing how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.

The duality of self-touch is reflected in its psychological implications. While it can be associated with stress and negative emotions, it also plays a crucial role in information processing and coordination. Despite its pervasive nature, self-touch remains under-explored and underutilised in our daily routines, particularly in a world increasingly dominated by external stimuli and distractions. One avenue to harness the benefits of self-touch in everyday life is through the integration of this concept into clothing and textiles. Clothing, has a constant presence in our lives due to societal norms and mediates our tactile interaction with our bodies. Individuals often engage with their clothing subconsciously, through actions like squeezing cuffs or pulling zips. By understanding the emotional significance of these interactions, we can design textiles that not only enhance well-being but also foster a deeper connection with oneself through self-touch.

Problem Definition
Year after year, the general population is growing sicker and sicker (Callaghan et al., 2021; Sleeman et al., 2019) and unhealthy lifestyle choices are in large part to blame. Designed to treat instead of prevent, healthcare systems are failing to meet individuals’ needs and people are taking charge of their health, seeking out products and services aimed at improving well-being.

Wearable devices like the Apple Watch, Fitbit, and Oura ring cater to this shift, offering biomarker measurements that empower users to make informed lifestyle choices. Despite the proven effectiveness of these devices, individuals still struggle to make long-term behaviour changes.

The answer may lie in reforming our habits. They make up 43% of our everyday actions (Mazar & Wood, 2018) and the saying “old habits die hard” holds true for many. Researchers have found that existing habits are one of the primary impediments of people adopting and sticking to healthy behaviour (Wood & Neal, 2016).

So how do we make these old habits die? In the habit formation cycle, cues and rewards play a pivotal role, signalling our brains to perform these automatic context-behaviour associations (Gardner et al., 2012). However, effectively interfering in this cycle poses a considerable challenge (Gardner & Lally, 2018; Mazar & Wood, 2018; Neal et al., 2012).

Scope
This project explores how vibrotactile feedback, as compared to other communication modalities, can accelerate habit formation and retraining processes. It culminates in the design of a wearable device that can measure, monitor, and provide vibrotactile feedback within the habit cycle. The resulting product is designed to aid consumers in both forming new habits and reshaping existing ones to improve their overall health and well-being. In support of the concept, the final section presents a strategic business plan, launch strategy, and high-level marketing campaign.

Research question
This report is aimed at answering the research question:
How can a wearable device intervene in the habit formation process to make building and changing habits easier for individuals so that they can achieve their long-term health goals?
Each section of the report approaches this question from a different perspective. To start, The Research section dives deep into the current research on the topics of habits, wearables, and vibrotactile feedback complemented by user research on the same topics. In The Design section, insights are turned into a cohesive product service system that brings the idea for the device to life. Finally, in The Strategy section, a business strategy, go-to-market roadmap, and campaign plan envision how to take the concept from idea to reality.

Immersive technologies are redefining user interactions in the evolving digital landscape, promising deeper and almost physical digital experiences (Alpers et al., 2020). Concurrently, the mobility world is undergoing a paradigm shift, with an emphasis on advanced autonomous solutions. Such autonomy enables users to reclaim and repurpose their commuting time, fundamentally altering how people interact with their vehicles and ushering in an era of enhanced on-road experiences.

Mercedes-Benz hopes to be at the epicentre of these tectonic shifts by incorporating immersive technologies into their upcoming fleet. Their goal is to fundamentally transform user experiences, not just technological ones. Realising this ambitious vision, however, necessitates an in-depth exploration of this domain to ensure that the proposed innovations provide tangible value to end-users. This thesis delves into the complexities of such plausible futures, focusing on users’ perceptions and expectations of these technological interventions.

This thesis combines speculative design and context mapping methodologies in a synergistic manner. The former allows users to empathise with potential realities by facilitating the creation and exploration of future scenarios. Context mapping, on the other hand, deepens our understanding of user needs, concerns, and aspirations, resulting in more nuanced and resonant solutions.

The thesis begins this investigation by delving into the theoretical underpinnings of XR in AVs, focusing on the intersections of autonomy and immersion levels. Following trend and stakeholder analysis, the existing tensions in this space were revealed. Five meticulously crafted future scenarios sparked conversations with selected participants during context mapping sessions. Thematic analysis revealed shifting vehicle perceptions, the changing nature of space within autonomous vehicles, and the criteria for successful XR integration in AVs. This process also shed light on the specific dynamics and implications of the tensions highlighted in the scenarios. As a result, some tensions were validated, new values emerged, and inherent biases towards certain values became evident.

Unsurprisingly, safety emerged as the top priority, with tensions especially high during control negotiations between systems and users, i.e. in Takeover (TO) scenarios. To address this criticality, the research focused on creating an ideal TO journey, with the goal of seamlessly transitioning a user from an immersive state to assuming vehicle control, all while minimising safety-related concerns. This design process, which was subjected to expert scrutiny, resulted in a comprehensive experience map and a detailed video elucidating the TO experience, capturing the intricate dynamics of user-system interactions.

The feedback from these expert consultations not only validated but also enriched the research, pointing out areas for further investigation and refinement. The resulting experience video was useful in focus group sessions, allowing the research team to identify elements that resonated and those that needed to be reconsidered.

Finally, the thesis emphasises the importance of collaborative problem-solving by highlighting key tensions, most notably the delicate balance between immersion and safety. Furthermore, it lays out a strategy for future research in this area, emphasising the robust potential of speculative design as an invaluable research tool, particularly in corporate settings. This study provides a blueprint for how companies like Mercedes-Benz can navigate the convergence of immersive technologies and autonomous vehicles, ensuring a future in which technology enhances, rather than dictates, the human experience.

Touch deprivation, a largely unrecognized phenomenon that affects approximately 54% of people globally, has a significant negative impact on the well-being of these individuals. Having physical connections is a fundamental part of the human experience whether it is a warm hug from a loved one or a comforting pat on the shoulder. However, touching often has a stigma around it, and expressing touch-related needs can be a difficult task. The aim of the project was to understand the needs, difficulties, and overall experiences of touch-deprived young adults (18-30) and based on the findings design to improve their well-being. This led to the concept of a clothing line consisting of pieces designed for connections, comfort, and awareness.

Through a series of qualitative research activities with the target group, we could see that it is mainly a struggle among young adults who live far from their families and friends, long-distance couples, and individuals struggling with social anxiety or other mental health issues. Touch deprivation is a complex issue, influenced by other life experiences and often intertwined with the feeling of loneliness, anxiety, emotional regulation, and can lead to low self-esteem. However, the absence of touch goes beyond the physical sensations, young adults long for the emotional connections that come with closeness. While technology enables these groups to communicate and stay connected with others over long distances, it fails to satisfy this fundamental human need of social touch and young adults often question the value of even attempting to imitate these connections with devices (e.g. mediated social touch devices – remotely sending tactile sensations to imitate social touch). Although in-person social touch can not be replaced, sensory comfort can offer some relief. Young adults often seek comfort and distractions to avoid dealing with the negative feelings they experience. As found, touch deprivation is a hidden struggle, however, raising awareness of our touch needs is crucial for initiating self-reflection and active mitigation.

Designing garments as a response to address touch deprivation offers a subtle way to embrace these young adults and help with their negative experiences. Clothing not only influences how others perceive us but also how we perform (enclothed cognition). As a visual display, it can convey direct and symbolic messages and as ‘our second skin’ intimately touches our bodies every day. Through the design of these items, the intention is to invite affective social touch – provide sensory comfort to the wearer, act as a catalyst for creating in-person connections, and lastly raise awareness of the personal touch needs and the issue of touch deprivation. The project aims to stimulate and foster real-life connections and challenge the stigma surrounding touch while supporting individual comfort.

Ultimately, this project aspires to enhance the well-being and life experiences of touch-deprived young adults by providing them with designs tailored to their needs. By incorporating subtle messaging within an accessible format (choice of clothing), we aim to empower touch-deprived individuals to take a step toward facing the issue and improving their well-being. The project hopes to make a meaningful impact and spark a broader discussion on the importance of touch in human well-being.

Sound in UX design can be used in a variety of ways; to navigate the interaction, for branding, to set the ambience etc. The importance of sound for the user experience of a product is undeniable; however, this is not represented in the practices of UX designers. UX designers lack the tools and knowledge needed to integrate sound design into their prototyping activities. As a result, the sound is often considered last-moment, limiting the creative potential and added value of sound in the interaction. This report explores the possibilities of integrating sound design activities into the practices of UX designers. This is done through design research activities such as interviews, co-creation sessions, creating (interactive) prototypes and user testing. The aim of the project is to provide UX designers with prototyping tools for sound design. Common sound design tools are difficult to integrate in prototyping activities as UX designers often lack the skills and knowledge needed to operate these tools in a quick-paced and iterative way; which is needed in order to facilitate prototyping. Furthermore ways of bridging the semantic gap between the stakeholders is explored as well as the potential of tangible interfaces in making sound design more intuitive and engaging for UX designers. Finally, a concept is introduced: The Timbreworld, parts of which are embodied in an interactive prototype. The Timbreworld is a (tangible) interface for sonic sketching, it enables its users to create quick and iterative sound prototypes. The interactive prototype has been tested with participants and evaluated based on the design guidelines provided in the report

The Tensile headphone is a redesign of the HD6xx line for Sennheiser, to showcase new ideas of haptic aesthetic headphones and explore innovative directions. The project as a whole followed the Research through Design approach. That is, the design detailing of the Tensile headphone was used as a medium to gain knowledge about how aesthetic theories for product design (usually developed for the visual sense), are applicable to the haptic sense.
It was found that the researched aesthetic theories (unity - variety and novelty - typicality) can be applied to some extent to the haptic senses, with some factors to be considered. The RtD also helped understand how to better design for haptic aesthetics in headphones, but also expanding to other product categories.
There were three main design activities that led to these findings. An exploratory session with four groups of design students helped guide the design process to a haptically novel outcome. Once the design was completed, an empirical test was conducted on one aesthetic principle, testing iterations of the design. The chosen iteration was incorporated into a final design with which the second aesthetic principle was tested in a qualitative study with audiophiles (sound and audio gadget enthusiasts).

This project respond to the goal of an existing company to design an improved version of a pinpoint erotic product. This type of very targeted stimulation gives the opportunity to many FBP to explore their preferred hotspots, get to know themselves better and enrich their masturbation process. Apart from the fact that the stimulation of these targeted hotspots can be an effective way to reach orgasm, designing a product that focuses on clitoris stimulation also communicates the importance of this organ for sexual pleasure. Due to the typology of this product (different options for the stimulating part can be included), it is possible to make it customizable until a certain degree, which can result in a versatile product that adapts to different needs.

Based on previous studies from the company and a literature review, a list of hypotheses was created. By user testing prototypes and current products, these hypotheses were accepted or rejected, thus resulting in a list of requirements that considered the desired interaction, the competitors and the internal positioning of the brand. These requirements focused on three areas of development: the physical stimulation, the ergonomics and the aesthetics. This project explored these areas with the purpose of fulfilling the design requirements and giving recommendations for the further embodiment of the project. The project resulted in a functional prototype that “works like” but “does not look like” and “it is not produced like” and a guide for embodiment that includes some proposals for the ergonomics and aesthetics of the product.

Today, thanks to digitization, publications are no longer fixed, but dynamic and fluid. The convenience of carrying, the diversity of interaction and the convenience of resource acquisition provided by e-reading make e-reading more and more popular. However, there is still a lot of room for exploration in this field based on the more reading experience brought to readers by electronic screens, and it is also the direction that more laboratories and companies want to develop. There are many interactions and feedback that cannot be achieved in physical reading, such as how to make readers immerse themselves in the scene and truly feel the objects in the book; the reader establishes an emotional connection with the objects described in the book through touch and generates emotional resonance; or through touch senses attract readers' attention, enhance their reading concentration, etc. And these can be achieved through e-reading.

Furthermore, in the process of reading, because the reading medium is mostly limited by paper books, most people memorize the contents of a book by vision, except for some auxiliary tools, such as bookmarks or dog-earing pages. But with the development of e-reading, readers can have more forms of interaction with e-books, not limited to visuals; at the same time, e-books can also provide more feedback modes. So, will this multi-sensory reading mode provide new opportunities for people's long-term memory of reading content?

This graduate project explores how to improve the readers' e-reading experience and the long-term memory of the content through haptic technology. I gained more relevant information through literature reviews on topics such as haptic exploration and reading comparisons of print and e-books, as well as research with target users. The target group was identified as 20-30 year olds who are familiar with and own electronic reading devices. In order to achieve the design goal, an interaction vision with three qualities of immersed, focused and playful is proposed.

Based on the insights gleaned from the research phase, I designed 5 initial prototypes and tested them with 11 participants. After this, test results are collected and analyzed for a second iteration, resulting in an integrated prototype. Then, the test was conducted again with 3 participants, and the test results were collected and analyzed, resulting in a third prototype. Finally, I tested the third prototype again with 6 testers and finally got the final design. A total of three test evaluations and prototype iterations are used to continuously refine the design prototype to improve its usability and functionality.

The final design of this project is a mobile-based e-reading application. It can transmit the emotional changes of characters in the story through vibration, thus bringing users a more immersive, focused and playful reading experience.

Domestic kitchens are the heart of modern households, a space that embraces social gatherings and most importantly, where pleasures associated with interacting with food arise while cooking and eating. Nevertheless, the way technology is being introduced in this context moves away from this ritual aspect of kitchens as it focuses on a rather rational side, focused on efficiency and functionality to fix undesired problems.

The goal of this project has been approaching the introduction of autonomous agents in domestic kitchens in a celebratory way, emphasising the positive aspects of Human-Food interaction with a special focus on culinary creativity. Speculative design has served as a means to set the mindset in the near future and design according to a scenario where kitchen appliances will be smarter and capable of gathering more information from the cooking process. The project has been executed with a strong focus on research, both on a theoretical and user-context level, resulting in the design of a concept that conveys a potential solution for the above-mentioned challenge.

Sous, the cooking assistant designed in this thesis responds to the following Design Goal “Gaggenau users should feel like Home Chefs when cooking in their kitchens”. Feeling like a Home Chef involves being the leader of the (domestic) kitchen, feeling in control, exploring creative opportunities, and having a certain level of culinary knowledge. The design revolves around celebratory technologies based on principles of autonomy and embodied interactions, the theoretical background from this project. Sous is a wearable that allows Home Chefs to have a deeper understanding of the preparations being cooked by providing real-time feedback about doneness or sensory aspects among other information. With this, the aim is that Home Chefs would be able to enjoy more the cooking process while ensuring the best result for the dishes they cook.

The collaboration that is created when Home Chefs cook with Sous aims to maximise human capacities while maximising the possibilities of technology in a way that ensures both entities’ autonomy and richness of interactions.

This project was meant to explore social connection between people through haptic interfaces based on tactile vibrations, but it ended up being a reflection on how technology has been influenced by our understanding of human cognition and how new trends in cognitive science can help to create interfaces that make our digital interactions emotional, rich and engaging. It started with an open and experimental approach to the space, which helped to understand processes of participatory sense-making through tactile vibrations and the usage of haptic vibration interfaces for communication. This shaped the image and set foundations of what was possible to achieve as a final interaction. The result was an interface that allowed people to emotionally connect using their breath as an input to create haptic vibrations. To do so, a new concept called Vibrification was used, a technique inspired by Sonification that transforms data, in this case biosignals, into tactile vibrations. We successfully tested that Vibrified biosignals are an input that participants perceived as emotionally intense and that allowed them to react and feel the other’s presence. During the tests, the vibrations helped participants to concentrate on the breathing exercise and created an immersive and intense interaction with themselves and each other. The experience was highly rated and participants praised the interface in helping them to feel their breath when they were feeling themselves, and eliciting an emotional and empathetic response when feeling each other. Most of the technology and development was done in house, developing sensors, designing interfaces and programming software that allowed the experiments to happen. This is the main contribution of this project, in the search for emotional social interaction, we propose a new way to design for haptic interaction. Vibrification of biosignals is a new approach that enables us to capture and share human experience to design new ways in which to emotionally connect through technology, inspired by the wide range of possibilities that we, as humans, have to experience the world, ourselves and each other.

There are approximately 285 million people worldwide living with a visual impairment and the rate of acquired blindness is expected to continue increasing. Assistive technology for them is progressively being developed in order to enable independent living. For the blind and visually impaired, the tactile sense is the primary source of understanding non-audible information. Therefore, haptic technology is being incorporated more in assistive devices meant for situations in which one cannot rely on sight to manipulate objects and conduct various activities.

An issue with currently available haptic solutions is that they typically use electromechanical systems that are heavy with large, obtrusive forms, produce sounds that hinder their usability and sometimes even provide unpleasant haptic feedback. A way to mitigate these problems is by incorporating soft, flexible and lightweight smart materials as actuators into these systems. Shape memory materials are a specific category of smart materials that have the ability to recover their original shapes from a deformation when certain stimuli are applied. They have the potential to bring hedonic characteristics to haptic technology such as providing organic sensations. Consequently, the haptic assistive devices become effective and comfortable interventions for the visually impaired.

This project demonstrates how these materials can successfully be incorporated to produce different types of tactile feedback as a form of an assistive-wearable and enrich the lives of the blind and visually impaired. The end demonstrator provides two types of sensations- dragging and squeezing.