Stephan Wensveen

Eindhoven University of Technology | TUE · Department of Industrial Design

Data-enabled design (DED) is a promising new methodology for designing with users from within their own context in an iterative and hands-on fashion. However, the agile and flexible qualities of the methodology do not directly translate to every context. In this article, we reflect on the design process of an intelligent ecosystem, called ORBIT, an...

Human values play an integral role in any design that aims to improve the quality of human life. However, only a few design approaches concentrate on human values in their design, and there is even very little agreement between them in identifying human values. Considering this, we created a design tool based on a comprehensive value framework to s...

Designers increasingly need to collect data to design per-sonalized, contextualized experiences. The act of collecting such data-often in context-is hard, and collecting the right quality and quantity data is even harder. By applying approaches such as Data-Enabled Design (DED) we can remotely collect data. The DED process involves operational, beh...

In this paper we investigate how a combination of “speculative” design methods can be used to generate theoretical understandings for dynamic, colour-changing fabrics for garments. Specifically, we combine a first-person, autobiographical, research through design (RtD) approach that draws strategies from speculative design. We call this approach al...

The significance of human values in everyday life highlights the integral role of this concept in any design that aims to improve the quality of human life. By emphasizing the need for a comprehensive value framework for design, the present study explores a new value framework to be used as a common ground in design. For this purpose, we empiricall...

3D scanning technologies provide designers with tools to generate a digital representation of the human body that can be used in the design of ultra-personalized appareland wearables. However, prior work shows that the body scanning process can be an uncomfortable experience for users. In this work, we take a first-person perspective to identify fr...

In this pictorial we present a prototype of a novel personalized garment that provides rich haptic feedback for posture awareness in the context of repetitive strain injury (RSI). Unlike prior work concerned with posture correction, our aim was to design a garment that would allow the user to gain an awareness of his posture with a help of sensoria...

Schön describes the way a designer engages with their materials as a "conversation". In clothing design this typically involves tangible and situated actions such as draping, ripping, and cutting-actions that evoke responses from the fabric at hand. Dynamic fabrics-surface-changing fabrics that combine digital and physical states-are still novel fa...

This paper describes an approach to designing wearable technology that sees and uses the technology expressively in terms of fashion, and minimizes the notion of its technological function. We do this by presenting an account of the research-through-design project Phem, a fashion brand concept for garments constructed with surface-changing, animate...

Technology and electronics have given us many positive things, but also changed our ways of interacting and relationships with products, and not always for the better. As humans are emotional beings, why not make interaction a more fun and beautiful experience, based on all human skills? We have explored for several decades how physicality of elect...

To strive for the incorporation of fun in product use is to design for engaging experiences. In order to do this we should respect all human skills in human-product interaction. So while most current electronic products appeal to cognitive skills, we believe that a person’s perceptual-motor and emotional skills should be taken into account as well....

In this case study three designers supported by multiple stakeholders created a pair of fully personalized printed high heel shoes in a period of two months for a single user. The shoes are made with soft and flexible materials for dynamic fit and use. The shoes are not only uniquely formed to the user's feet but the geometry of the material is des...

We explore the future scenario of wearing garments with digital display capabilities, or dynamic fabric, in everyday life. Our study, called Greenscreen Dress, investigates the experience of wearing dynamic fabric and how this type of garment quality might alter our daily interactions with clothing and have implications for designers. In the study,...

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...

In this paper we describe Greenscreen Dress, a material speculation inquiry (Wakkary et al., 2015) that investigates the wearing experience of dynamic fabric in everyday life. In this study the researcher has worn a "greenscreen garment" every day for seven months. Coupled with a chroma-key smartphone application, she has photographed the garment a...

Smart textiles are becoming more integrated with service ecosystems that go beyond the current horizontal textile value chain. This will extend the material and tangible properties of smart textiles to intangible properties from services, such as the ability to measure and store data and change the functionality of a material over time. It is thus...

When combining the tangible properties of Smart Textiles (such as the hand of the fabric) with the intangible properties from services (such as dynamic properties and business models) the result can be considered as a Smart Textile Service. Practitioners in a healthcare context are used to an embodied approach to examine and improve the bodily abil...

The Human Values Timeline is a visual overview of the most important contributions in human values from the last century until the present. By using the human values lists provided by the scholars, we investigated whether spiritual values have been included in human values research over time.

This article describes tests that have been conducted with Tactile Dialogues, a textile pillow that can react to touch with vibrotactile stimuli and haptic sensations. Tactile Dialogues is designed to stimulate movement and interpersonal contact for patients in the late stages of dementia, their family members and their caregivers. The most recent...

There is a renewed interest into crafts and what it can mean when integrating new technologies into textiles. This paper proposes to embed craft qualities and sustainable values into designing smart textile projects. Our design iterations QR-Coded Embroidery and Bedtime Stories combine textiles, augmented reality and a storytelling service. Those c...

Engaging formats are required to communicate designerly understandings of field studies to a broader audience within organisations. Here we present a case where the format of an exhibition, consisting of a collection of open-ended provocative design concepts, has been used to disseminate knowledge and to engage two medical device manufacturers in t...

In this pictorial we visualize the growth plan for an inspirational test-bed of smart textile product service systems. The goal of the test-bed is to inspire and inform the Dutch creative industries of textile, interaction and service design to combine their strengths and share opportunities. The pictures exemplify the characteristic tools, approac...

Stakeholders who are part of the development process of a new Product-Service System (PSS) could use interactive prototypes during meetings to exchange different point of views. Based on the findings of a conversation analyst and the reflections of a design researcher we compared three explication techniques of how a prototype was involved during s...

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 perc...

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...

Most early writings on design research are built on rationalistic assumptions. Design became an exercise in mathematics, and the task of design research was to describe the natural and human rationalities that govern it. Rationalistic assumptions were particularly strong in the 1950s and 1960s. At that time, the studio model of the Bauhaus became t...

Any research program worthy of its salt needs to function in society, not just during the project. Successful programs keep designers dialoging with society; unsuccessful ones are unable to keep this dialog going long enough. This chapter reviews constructive design research in society. As soon as researchers leave the university, they face rationa...

The program one calls ‘Showroom’ builds on art and design rather than on science or on the social sciences. Nowadays research is presented in shop windows, exhibitions, and galleries rather than in books or conference papers. Still, a good deal of the early work was published at scientific venues, most notably human–computer interaction. This work...

This chapter outlines the ways in which constructive design researchers use design things in their research process. Design things are indispensable tools for transforming designers' intuitions, hunches, and small discoveries into something that stays—for instance, a prototype, product, or system. They provide the means for sketching, analyzing, an...

This chapter gives a few tips for establishing and maintaining constructive design research programs. To anyone interested in entering constructive design research, the main advice is to think in terms of programs. If one looks at places in which constructive design research has taken shape, one sees variety, but also many connecting dots. The key...

Many design researchers have borrowed their methods from interpretive social science rather than experimental research. If there is one keyword to describe the field approach to design, it must be “context.” Researchers are interested in how people and communities understand things around designs, make sense of them, talk about them, and live with...

This chapter discusses the theoretical background of constructive design research. It elaborates on the methodological approaches. At the surface, the approaches may seem like independent silos; if one goes beyond the surface, one will find a more common core. This shared core also explains why constructive design research differs from the rational...

This chapter discusses that it is impossible to study a phenomenon like design in the laboratory in its entirety; design has many faces, only some of which are appropriate for laboratory studies. The trick, however, is to see which ones are. This chapter is about the logic of laboratory studies. Actual research tends to be impure in terms of logic;...

Progress in research ultimately lies in research programs rather than individual studies. Progress happens when some piece of research adds new knowledge to or corrects a research program. A successful research program generates new content and new problems in the long run. Any successful research program also has a negative and a positive heuristi...

This chapter discusses the “constructive design research,” which refers to design research in which construction—be it product, system, space, or media—takes center place and becomes the key means in constructing knowledge. Typically, this “thing” in the middle is a prototype like iFloor. However, it can also be a scenario, a mock-up, or just a det...

Aesthetics in product design is commonly related to secondary functionality, i.e. expressing a specific lifestyle. We propose a broader scope for aesthetics in interactive product design, one that ties into a design's ethical dimension. Products change people's behaviours and experiences in interaction. Design is not only about incorporating primar...

This paper presents a design approach tackling the transformation of behavior through 'interactive materiality' from a phenomenological perspective. It builds upon the Interaction Frogger framework that couples action to reaction for intuitive mapping in intelligent product interaction. Through the discussion of two research-through-design cases, t...

The goal of Smart Textile Services is to integrate existing knowledge from the separate domains of textile technology and services. As no single actor can meaningfully understand and realize the creation of Product Service Systems multiple actors need to team up with relevant partners. The contribution of this paper is to describe the initiation of...

Businesses and the HCI and Interaction Design communities have embraced design and design research. Design research as a field blends methodologies from several disciplines - sociology, engineering, software, philosophy, industrial design, HCI/interaction design -- so designers can learn from past successes and failure and don't have to reinvent th...

Smart textiles with its vast range of possibilities provide a considerable opportunity for societal sustainability for the waste-oriented fashion industry. May the new textiles react to the environment, wearer, have a mind of its own or simply provoke and inspire people – it is a great tool for the transition from the product-oriented industry to t...

In this paper, we present the Sensible Alternative, a concept that enables smart-phone users to navigate between applications by accessing action-possibility-depending and personalized-associated applications. A single added touch-sensitive spot on the back-side of the smart-phone provides an alternative layer of interaction between human and machi...

In this paper, we describe the Augmented Speed-skate Experience (ASE), a case of movement sonification in professional speed-skating. We designed and developed a system that provides feedback on technique to a professional speed-skater through an extra sense-modality, i.e. sound. Complexity is incorporated directly by the athlete and not through an...

Clothing is the most intimate artefact that interacts with both body and society. Over the past quarter century, with the introduction of new technologies, people are experiencing unprevented changes in their behaviours and way of living. Technology is becoming a large part of daily life and its unchecked influence has many emotional consequences,...

Design research is an emerging area in design that has increasing relevance to the field of HCI. While we have made advances in integrating design research methods, approaches, and outcomes in HCI, we still have a way to go. This is due to fundamental differences in the development of design knowledge as compared to scientific knowledge and knowled...

In this paper we describe our research on how to design for perceptive activity in artifacts in order for perceptual crossing between subject and artifact to happen. We base our research on the phenomenology of perception [19] and on ecological psychology [10]. Perceptual crossing is believed to be essential to share perception and thereby to feel...

In this video we show PeR, short for 'Perception Rug'. The design is created as part of our research on how to design for perceptive qualities in objects. This research is conducted around the educational and research theme 'Wearable Senses' and has a theoretical departure in the 'phenomenology of perception' and 'ecological psychology'. The integr...

The authors of this volume (Ilpo Koskinen, John Zimmerman, Thomas Binder, Johan Redstrom, and Stephan Wensveen) argue that design research needs more than mathematics: it needs many other vocabularies as well, including art, cultural studies, anthropology, cognitive psychology, and communication. The book is clearly written and helpfully designed,...

Due to the huge impact of communication technologies, the meaning of social existence is changing towards the use of electronic devices as extensions of senses. While technology is becoming intimate, reaching farther into user’s lives than ever before, wearable technology has emerged as a new research field where technology is worn to provide a sen...

»Wissen« und »Forschung« sind zu Schlüsselbegriffen für das Design avanciert. In der Designforschung wird derzeit die wechselwirksame Beziehung zwischen Praktiken des Entwerfens, Wissens und Produzierens eingehend befragt. Von zentraler Bedeutung ist dabei der Aspekt des Anwendungskontextes, der das Paradox beschreibt, dass die gegenwärtige Produkt...

As design moves into the realm of intelligent products and systems, interactive product behavior becomes an ever more prominent aspect of design, raising the question of how to design the aesthetics of such interactive behavior. To address this challenge, we developed a conception of aesthetics based on Pragmatist philosophy and translated it into...

This study explores how distributing the controls of a video game among multiple players affects the sociality and engagement experienced in game play. A video game was developed in which the distribution of game controls among the players could be varied, thereby affecting the abilities of the individual players to control the game. An experiment...

Much has been written concerning the factors that contribute to the aesthetics of human-artifact interaction. However, to our knowledge, no framework or conceptual model of the structure of the interactive aesthetic experience that incorporates these factors has appeared in the literature. In this paper we integrate an information-processing model...

In this paper we integrate an information-processing model of the nature of an aesthetic experience with visual art with a framework proposed by Wensveen et al. [11] that describes the coupling of a user's actions (i.e., handling an artifact) and a product's function to form a general theoretical framework for understanding the nature of a user's a...

Light affects our behaviors and experiences. Research into this field mainly focuses on the effects of lighting conditions on people. The current paper focuses on human interaction with lighting systems, and the way this interaction transforms people’s behaviors and experiences. Technological developments, such as Solid State Lighting and increasin...

ABSTRACT This paper presents the vision behind the /d.search-labs within the Department of Industrial Design (ID) of the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e). The /d.search- labs is a coordinating organizational structure within the ID department. Through its facilities and activities, the /d.search-labs aims to use the power of design to stren...

To develop the concept of user experience in HCI, McCarthy et al. introduce the notion of enchantment in interaction design. They describe five sensibilities that support exploration and evaluation in design for enchantment. In this paper, we discuss design for enchantment in light of our approach to design for interaction, called design for meanin...

Physical controls are now ubiquitous in everyday interactions. Empirical studies of physical interactions have traditionally been exploring instrumental aspects such as error rate and experienced workload. Recently, affective aspects of physical interaction have attracted an increased interest. In this paper we further argue that physical controls...

This paper reports on the design process and iterative development of two tangible artefacts that aim to encourage and explore playful interactions and dialogues between grandchildren and grandparents living at separate locations. These designed prototypes respond to the Magic Box which is a cultural probe specifically created to explore playful ac...

An abstract is not available.

Received: 31 October 2003 / Accepted: 7 February 2004 / Published online: 31 July 2004 � Springer-Verlag London Limited 2004 Abstract Over the past decade, our group has ap- proached interaction design from an industrial design point of view. In doing so, we focus on a branch of design called ''formgiving''1. Traditionally, formgiving has been conc...

In this paper we present a design framework to analyze person-product interaction in terms of the couplings between the person's action and the product's function through the use of inherent and augmented information, i.e., feedback and feedforward. Instead of using the notion of 'coupling' in an abstract sense, our framework tries to give six prac...

In this paper we describe how we applied the method of cultural probes to get empathy with and inspiration from families. We illustrate this with a concrete research study in which we applied this method to investigate 'the need to stay in touch' present in different families. Firstly we discuss the problems that emerge when applying this method to...

In this paper we report on how we grew in design research. We begin with the first author's discoveries on 3D imaging on a flat screen, and we end with the second author's latest endeavours on creating meaningful couplings between action and function. In the mean time we sketch what we gained between these two landmarks. We think wise lessons were...

In recent years, affordances have been hailed by the interaction design community as the key to solving usability problems. Most interpretations see affordances as 'inviting the user to the right action'. In this paper we argue that the essence of usability in electronic products lies not in communicating the necessary action and instead shift our...

The mood or emotional state you are in colours the way you interact with people and systems. Future interactive systems need to recognise emotional aspects in order to be truly adaptive. We designed an alarm clock, which elicits rich expressive behaviour and demonstrated that it is able to read your mood from the way you set it. We validated film c...

In recent years, affordances have been hailed by the interaction design community as the key to solving usability problems. Most interpretations see affordances as 'inviting the user to the right action'. In this paper we argue that the essence of usability in electronic products lies not in communicating the necessary action and instead shift our...