Tag: user research

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Identifying core UX values and design opportunities for mobile experiences

Research conducted in collaboration with Samsung Electronics (Seoul, South Korea)

This project aims to identify the core User eXperience values and design opportunities that can guide the innovation process of developing mobile devices and services (e.g., smartphones, apps, tablets, smart speakers, wearable sensors, etc.). The approach is experience-driven: A set of users’ needs were specified that are relevant to enriching mobile experiences. The set was used as a framework to assess mobile devices and services, generating insights into the areas to improve. In addition, key enablers that are crucial for the implementation of mobile product-service systems were identified that encompassed the areas of artificial intelligence, camera, sensors, etc. Taking the users’ needs and key enablers into account, a series of design opportunities for mobile devices and services were proposed.

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The mood street, creating design interventions that support flight attendants

Research conducted in collaboration with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Publication:

  • Desmet, P. M. A. , Fokkinga, S.F., Ozkaramanli, D., & Yoon, J. (2016). Emotion-driven product design. In: H. L.  Meiselman (Ed.). Emotion measurement (pp. 406-426). New York: Elsevier. Download
  • Yoon, J., Pohlmeyer, A. E., & Desmet, P. M. A. (2014). The mood street: Designing for nuanced positive emotions (pp. 707–716). Presented at the NordiCHI, Helsinki, Finland: ACM. Download

The KLM Royal Dutch Airlines wanted to introduce products and services in the crew center that evoke positive emotions to improve the mood of flight attendants just before boarding the airplane. At the beginning of the project, 10 positive emotions were chosen to design for, which guided the design process: anticipation, confidence, energized, inspiration, joy, kindness, pride, relaxation, respect, and sympathy. For each emotion, several ideas were generated. Because the emotions differ in terms of causes and behavioral effects, with interviews, observations, and creative workshops, the designers explored when and why flight attendants experienced each of the 10 emotions, and how these emotions contributed to their professional activities. The gained insights were translated into a collection of 30 designed interventions, three for each emotion.

Two examples are “Good Night” and “The Curtain”, which were designed to evoke kindness and anticipation, respectively. Good Night is a smartphone application that enables team members to help each other to be on time when they have early flights. The application is aware of the schedule of a flight attendant and automatically sets the desired wake-up time for each team member. At wake-up time, the application gently reminds the team members to check who might still be asleep by showing each member’s state, and, if necessary, signaling to give them a friendly wake-up call. In this way, the flight attendants kindly look after each other and feel connected even before they meet. The Curtain intends to stimulate positive anticipation for the upcoming flight. As the flight attendants walk from the crew center towards the airport gate, the closed curtain slowly opens and lights around the curtain frame glow, one by one. When the lights are on, the curtain is completely open. This moment builds up a feeling of expectancy and signals that they are ready and prepared to go “on-stage.”

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Playing with paintings to enhance museum experiences in Mauritshuis

Researcher: HungChu Shih
Involvement: Research advisor (chair: Dr. Arnold P. O. S. Vermeeren)
Research conducted in collaboration with Mauritshuis Museum and Kiss the Frog (Delft, the Netherlands)
Publication:

  • Vermeeren, A. P. O. S., Shih, H., van der Lan., Calvi, L., Yoon, J., Keller, I. (2018) Designing trajectories of experience: In museums, around museums, or including museums. In: Vermeeren, A. P. O. S., Calvi, L., & Sabiescu, A. (Ed.). Museum experience design: Crowds, ecosystems and novel technologies (pp. 301-323). Springer international publishing. Download
  • Shih, H., Yoon, J., & Vermeeren, A. P. O. S. (2016). Positive emotions for inciting behavior: Playing with paintings to enhance museum experiences (pp. 222–230). Presented at the 10th International Conference on Design and Emotion – Celebration and Contemplation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Download
  • Vermeeren, A. P. O. S., Shih, H., & Yoon, J. (2016). Design for experiences beyond the museum: Classical paintings as an introduction to modern culture. Presented at the CHI ’16 workshop. Download

One of the current trends in the function of museums is the change from a single museum to connected museums or museums as part of large institutional ecosystems. In terms of designing for experiences, this trend implies that one no longer only designs for visitors’ experiences before, during and after museum visits, but that one should think in a more holistic way. This project explored possible implications of the above trend, based on a case of designing a mobile application (an app) for the Mauritshuis, a museum for classical art in the Hague, the Netherlands. The design of the app aimed at providing its visitors with a more engaging way of appreciating the classical Dutch paintings, at the same time, raising interest for and connecting visitors to modern Dutch culture.  The app contains the function of giving travel tips to the young adult travelers for exploring the Hague by means of a game ‘treasure hunting’. The treasures to be found are elements in famous as well as less famous paintings that connect to stories that are interesting for the young adult travelers.

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Redesign of bright stamps for Chinese market 

Researcher: Lin Fu
Involvement: Research advisor (chair: Prof. Dr. Jan Schoormans)
Research conducted in collaboration with IceMobile (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Publication:

  • Fu. L. (2015). Redesign of Bright Stamps for Chinese Market. Delft: Delft University of Technology.

The project was conducted in collaboration with IceMobile to investigate opportunities of using a digital stamp-based loyalty program in China. The stamp-based loyalty program is one of the basic and mostly used loyalty program types in Europe. With the popularity of smartphones, digital stamp program has become a new trend in loyalty marketing industry. The research focuses on the characteristics of Chinese consumers’ shopping behavior and shopping experience in supermarkets, and the determinants of a loyalty relationship between customers and retailers. A model of building loyalty relationship between a Chinese consumer and a retailer was proposed, based on which an app “easy sharing and early bird discount” was developed. The app intends to stimulate a sense of belongingness and engagement by making the experience social and vibrant. The app enables customers to share digital stamps through QR code scanning and offers a dynamic discount for customers by which they can redeem earlier with fewer stamps in limited time periods.

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PoEm – A toolkit for well-being-focused user research 

Researcher: Dwitya Prasasta Umaritomo
Involvement: Research advisor (chair: Prof. Dr. Jan Buijs)
Research conducted in collaboration with Philips Consumer Lifestyle (Drachten, the Netherlands)
Publication:

  • Umaritomo, D. P. (2013). Emotion-Driven Research in New Product Development. Delft: Delft University of Technology.

How can products and technology be designed to be purposeful to people that use them? The objective of this project was to invcestigate how user research had been conducted within Philips Consumer Lifestyle and to embed user-centered approach in it. Interviews and workshops that involved designers and user researchers in Philips were conducted. The results showed that it was necessary to broaden the scope of user research from usability to users’ emotional experiences and well-being in the early stage of product development. Based on this insight, a design toolkit ‘PoEm’ was proposed. PoEm was developed building on theories in positive psychology with an intention to assist designers and researchers to examine users’ values, needs, beliefs, and aspirations in three perspectives: pragmatic, hedonic, and eudaimonic. Pragmatic aspects refer to the degree to which a product fulfills a user’s goal, hedonic attributes mean how well a product fulfills an intangible need and/or provides an activity that evokes pleasurable emotions, and eudaemonic attributes are about how much a product contributes to realizing a purposeful goal and offers engaging activities that are considered virtuous. PoEm includes a set of adaptive questionnaires, a guideline for the interview, and a manual for analyzing the collected data.

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Q-sight, A product-service system for collecting customer feedback  

Research conducted in collaboration with NetQ (Utrecht, the Netherlands)

NetQ is a Dutch company that provides Internet-based tools for gathering customer feedback. In this project, NetQ asked to propose a new business direction and design interventions that enable the company to expand their product portfolio. Interviews with the clients who used NetQ’s existing solutions were carried out to explore design opportunities with respect to gathering and synthesizing consumer feedback. The factors that influence respondents’ motivation to participate in research or survey were investigated through focus groups. The interaction vision of the solution was that the customers voluntarily express their opinions with concrete underlying reasons, finding this process beneficial for themselves. We developed Q-Sight, an indoor customer feedback system that tracks the flow of customers’ movements, and measures their emotional states towards their surroundings (e.g., art pieces in the museum, the layout of a supermarket, etc.). Q-sight was devised to let the customers have the opportunity to create a memory of their experience: they can give feedback and keep it in the form of a photo album or share it through social media. The envisioned benefits for the client were: they can see how customers experience the space by seeing the tracking data, and gain insights into how they could improve the space or the services based on the reported customers’ emotions.