B3 uid report

JVS

FINAL REPORT B.3.1

Jolijn van Sleeuwen s142577 External Learning Activity: Internship Abroad Company: User Interface GmbH Berlin September 2016 - Januari 2017 Company coach: H. RieĂ&#x;, M. Uhlig Teacher coach: dr. ir. P.J.F. Peters Berlin, 22 January 2017

INTRODUCTION

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This report is the final deliverable of my internship at User Interface Design GmbH in Berlin. By means of descriptions of activities, pictures and reflections I try to describe and visualise my professional development.

My internship start in September 2016 and ended in Januari 2017. Throughout my internship I worked mainly on four different projects; working on a research project, designing interfaces for Thermomix, conceptualizing for an Automotive client and planning/organising workshops. By means of these activities I was able to fulfill my predefined goals and develop my potential in design agency based environment.

ROUGHLY A FEW WORDS. 24, adventurous, curious kid and adult, proactive, plays clarinet, entrepreneurial family, Bachelor of Business Administration, marketing internship in Sydney, active association and social life, semester Design Thinking in Berlin, enthusiastic, designed a chair during minor Entrepreneurship, started Bachelor Industrial Design in 2014, participating in honors track Empowerment for Health and Wellbeing.

WHO AM I AS A DESIGNER? I would describe myself as a designer who questions answers, is critical, is looking across borders, inspired by understanding contexts, is quick thinking, is curious, seizes opportunities and feels responsible for people. I have an eye for detail and aesthetics, I strive for quality and I am an excellent communicator and a skillful networker.

These characteristics are defining my way of design. I take quick steps in the design process in order to fail early and often. I believe iterating is a highly valuable part of the design process in which I like to learn from mistakes in order to come to the best design possible. At the same time I design in a very structured and organised way which is helping me to understand all the steps I am taking. When I am working in a team, the leading role is my natural preference. Making plans, divide roles and taking initiative. I learn new skills very fast, especially when it is needed to achieve a specific goal.

I design in a physical way and I see hands on explorations with materials and low-fi prototypes as an important step within the design process.

Translating thoughts into actions, forms, samples and concepts which triggers inspiration and serves as a means for communication.

IDENTITY

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I believe that designers should design for great experiences. A great experience is something that is easy, enjoyable, satisfying and fixes a problem. Two important factors that enhance experiences are integrating a sense of touch in interactions and optimizing touch points within a service.

Sense of touch Our touch sense is such an integral part of our everyday experience that few of us really notice it. Within and beneath our skin lies a diverse network of tactile receptors that make sure that we can feel. These receptors enable us to recognise textures, feel temperature and material, find a page’s edge to turn it, and indicate the mood of a friend from a touch of his hand.

In stark contrast to the importance of touch in our everyday experience, the use of touch is diminished in contemporary computer interfaces and products. The integration of touchscreen in cars, kitchens and music playing devices deny the power of touch, not to say anything about the smooth surfaces and materials that are being integrated in interiors and products. As designers we should enhance the human ability of touch by using tactile qualities of materials and using haptic feedback.

Touch-points within a service Another form of touch is the encountering of touch-points within a system. Users of products and services are daily utilising touch-points when making use of a specific service. For example the touch points of a General Practitioner include its web-site, the physical building, the woman at the reception desk, the waiting room, a medical application, the pharmacy, a referral letter to a hospital etc. Touch points form the link between the service provider and the customer, and in this way, touch-points are central to the user experience. As designers we should be aware of the importance of touchpoints within a service. We should make them simple, personal and satisfying.

In order to optimize these touch-points we should collaborate, with other designers, other stakeholders, governments and maybe with competitors. The problems that were once owned by one organisation now cross boundaries of several organisations, stakeholders, producers and user groups. Problems are shared, so their solutions need to be too.

VISION

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COMPANY hello, Technology. User Interface Design GmbH (UID), is the company I have worked for during my external learning activity. With a team of more than 100 experts for design, software, and usability, UID is focusing on user interfaces and supports customers from idea generation through product implementation. With their expertise in usability engineering, interaction design and user experience they design for mobile apps, consumer products and focus on solutions for corporate, industrial and medical applications. UID is market leader in User Experience Design and have worked on more than 3000 project over the last 20 years.

I was working in the office in Berlin, a relative small unit in which about 12 people are working. Their focus is on interface design and user experience consultancy and they have the honour to work for a couple of renown user brands. One of them is Vorwerk Thermomix, an advanced cooking machine, for which UID won different prices with the design of the user interface (Red Dot Award communication design // UX Design Award). UID has integrated agile working methods in cooperation with their clients, which makes it continuous improvements of the system possible.

Next to interface design, the Berlin office is working on strategy workshops and research projects in which they apply design thinking processes and human centered design methods. In the research project “Interactive Memories” (InterMem), UID is currently investigating how to “revive” memories of people with dementia using digital media in order to increase the quality of life of the patients and to improve care.

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GOALS

VISION AND DECISION Competency areas: SDCL

Throughout my portfolio I made developments in interaction design, using new technologies, aesthetics, use of explorations, research methods and quality. But there is more to learn to improve my design skill-set.

Diving into a new working environment, with new colleagues, working methods, projects, clients and a different language is definitely a guarantee for learning opportunities. However, being part of a company means also that I am not always in charge to follow my own path and learning goals. Next to this it is difficult to estimate how UID works, in which projects I could participate and what role I could take on in the team. I wrote down what I want to learn and apply during my internship and I tried to be as specific as possible in how I would like to achieve the goals. However, being part of a bigger company means also that I have to be flexible and anticipate on opportunities.

Working for clients or together with other departments and disciplines in a company means that a designer is not always in the position to decide according to a personal vision. However, I believe that designers should always try to communicate their vision and opinion for ‘great’ design in order to convince clients and colleagues in specific decision moments. Therefore a designer needs crystalclear and easily communicable examples of the “ingredients” of great design and needs to be able to explain in simple terms what constitutes great design. Having pointed out the importance of a personal vision, I am curious how it is to work with other design professionals, other disciplines and clients and how all the different stakeholders in a design project decide together.

I want to improve my own vision with the focus on user experience, interaction design and examples of great design. I want to be able to give my opinion on design and to define my personal most sophisticated ingredients of design. I want to be able to communicate my own vision and try to convince others in specific decision moments.

Activities: • Discussing the terms User Experience, Interaction Design and ‘great design’ with my colleagues and write the insights down in a reflection.

• Reflecting on 3 decisions that occurred in projects I am working on during my internship. In this reflection I will explain my opinion and an alternative design proposal.

• Defining the ingredients of great design in a visual collage supported with defining words.

• Implement the insights in a new written version of my vision.

• Involving myself actively in discussions and brainstorms in projects and I will write three reflections, divided over my internship period, about my learnings and insights.

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DEEPDIVE UX

CONCEPT AND COMMUNICATION

WORKSHOP

Competency areas: C&A // T&R

Competency areas: C&A // T&R // T&C

Competency areas: C&A // T&R // T&C

UID has a lot of expertise in developing User Interfaces and I see this as an opportunity to develop my skill-set of designing interfaces.

I want to get a better understanding of what a good User Interface (UI) is, how User Experience (UX) and Usability are playing a role in the design of interfaces. Next to discussions with my colleagues (learning goal 1) I would like to dive deeper in UI UX and Usability in order to learn about the psychology behind it, be aware of the principles of good UI UX and Usability and to improve my skill of designing interfaces.

There are a lot of different methods to use during a conceptualisation phase in a design process. Using brainstorming to generate ideas and building prototypes to iterate. I am curious how UID works with the conceptualisation phase and how they communicate in-between and final concepts internally and externally. I would like to develop my conceptualisation skills and learn about the communicative quality of those methods.

Activities: • Building different // wireframes // mock-ups // low-fi prototypes // sketches // 3d-models during conceptualisation phases of projects I am involved in and compare the results to each other in order to reflect on learning process.

• Communicating those concepts and reflecting on the communicative quality of methods I used.

UID organises a lot of workshops for clients, events and conferences. Many of those workshops are focussed on Design Thinking and contain all sorts of creative methods to rethink problems, generate solutions or create user profiles. I would like to be able to set up an interactive Design Thinking workshop which suits to the audience, fits in the timespan and contains the right materials and methods. Next to this I would like to be able to explain, guide and motivate participants of the workshop.

Activities: • Making an agenda for the workshop and ask feedback from my colleagues • Creating aesthetically appealing templates to use during the workshop • Guiding the workshop • Writing reflection on the learnings

Activities: • Read the book The Design of Everyday Things of Don Norman and write a reflection about my insights.

• Follow the course “Affordances: designing Intuitive User Interfaces” of the Interaction Design Foundation.

• Follow the course “User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide” of the Interaction Design Foundation.

• Writing down my own definitions of UI // UX • Designing three different interfaces using three different methods/programs, asking feedback from colleagues and writing a reflection about it.

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ACTIVITIES DURING MY INTERNSHIP PERIOD

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INTERMEM “Interactive Memories” (InterMem) is one of the research projects of UID. This project started in June 2015 and will run for three years.

The goal of the project is to use technology to support biographical work and memory maintenance in order to improve the wellbeing of people with dementia. Developing detailed concepts and innovative user interfaces by means of real working prototypes is one of the responsibilities of UID. In order to ensure a high level of acceptance, the project includes residents of nursing homes and their family members in all phases of the project and test the concepts with people suffering from dementia.

The research phase, in which contextual inquiries were done in two elderly homes, was already finished when I started at UID. From the analysation arose different design opportunities and together with my colleagues we brainstormed about how we could integrate a memory stimulating system in daily objects.

I sketched, I made paper models and I explored different interactions by using and filming my interaction with the paper models. I used the

method of scenario-based-design [1], to present the ideas and concepts in the context of the elderly homes.

Accordingly, I made visual sketches to visualise the scenario’s. During a consortium meeting in Stuttgart, I presented our ideas, sketches and video’s at together with my colleague and we gathered feedback about the ideas. We decided to continue with three ideas and I supported my colleagues during the development of the ideas. Additionally, I made two prototypes for one of the partners in the project: Vertigo. They needed a box in which specific thematic postcards should go, in order to support one of their interactive projection systems.

RESEARCH CONCEPTUALISATION SKETCHING PAPER MODELLING LOW-FI MODELLING 3D-MODELLING COLLABORATION IN CONSORTIUM 9

AUTOMOVTIVE CLIENT /nda This renowned automotive client approached UID to work out different foresight scenarios. By means of different workshops me and our project team developed different scenario’s in which the final concept was integrated.

For one of the workshops I designed a future vision poster, a collage.

For the end-deliverable, I was responsible for the sketches that communicated the scenario’s. I made different iterations on the sketches and delivered six sketches in a blue industrial sketch style. All the sketches were integrated in the hard-copy final deliverable for the client.

Due to a Non-Disclosure-Agreement I am not able to communicate any other information of the project.

SKETCHING CONCEPTUALISATION COMMUNICATION 10

WORKSHOPS Throughout my internship I was involved in the planning, organisation and set-up of four different workshops. Me and my colleague both followed a course on Design Thinking at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam and together we were forming a strong “workshop-duo”. We brainstormed on methodologies, warm-ups and formats we could apply and discussed the time-planning, set-up of the room and use of materials.

I made the setup of the Design Thinking Workshop that was given by our User Experience Manager at a team buildings weekend.

The first setup of the Design Thinking Workshop for a client was also my responsibility. On the MakerFaire me and my colleague gave workshop in making your own glowing pumpkin with integrated lights and a sensor: “Dein leuchtender Halloween-Kürbis”.

I designed one of the templates and supported the kids during the workshop in German. A workshop that required more preparation was the ‘Do your know your Users’ workshop for the Brand Innovation

Conference in Warsaw organised by the IDZ (International Design Centre). Brainstorming on the setup, designing the templates, planning and organising the persona boxes were part of my job.

Together with the Creative Director of UID we traveled to Warsaw where we met a lot of interesting people and companies. On day two of the conference we hosted the two hour workshop together and I supported and guided the three teams that were present at the workshop.

WORKSHOP PLANNING GRAPHIC DESIGN PERSONA BUILING DESIGN THINKING ORGANISATION SKILLS 11

THERMOMIX /nda On a daily basis there are lot of colleagues busy with the design of interfaces for the Vorwerk Thermomix. My colleague, manager of the project, asked me to brainstorm on new features of the Thermomix considering the theme of personalisation.

I tried to find a relationship between parameters from users and ideas and categorised them.

The categorisation helped me to understand the underlying value of ideas better and gave me the opportunity to iterate on ideas.

Thee analysation of already existing personalised interfaces pointed out how complicated those personalised systems can be and inspired me for further idea generation.

CONCEPTUALISATION INTERFACE DESIGN USER EXPERIENCE 12

RESULTS OF MY PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

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INTERMEM

AUTOMOTIVE CLIENT

THERMOMIX

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DECISION AND VISION A

B

I do see a lot of user experience graves nowadays.

But in the end it is the client who decides..

C

One client asked us to design a feature, I decided to put time and effort in it and redesigned the whole concept. It was great from a design perspective but in the end the client decided to deny it. It was harder from an engineering perspective and it would have cost more money.

Whatitfrustrates nowadays that is so my own Toisget aneverything idea of improving During my internship happenedme one To get a better understanding of the there is no room vision from crazy ideas I made a collage on design, time that I got thesuperficial, feeling that a wrong drive and vision of my colleagues products and services I like, decision is made.anymore It has to and do with the fail to of I interviewed them one on one. In budgets explore other which is visualised on page 17. I got interface of the new version of the addition I made a reflective visual possibilities . inspiration from different magazine Thermomix. The client wants that the including statements of the interviews. and platforms. I also visited a few knob of the device is only being used It surprised me that ‘having a vision experiments otherover the period conferences and talks for speed control,Maybe powerwe onshould and off.focus I on selling as a designer’ seems not so important then advise in oder to give our ideas more live.. of my internship: Brand Innovation argue that it would be better to use the in a design agency. I realised that the conference - Warsaw, World Usability control knob also for scrolling through conversations were more about having Day - Berlin”, two morning talks the different modes, menus items, a specific focus as a designer and at the IXDS lab, a talk of the UX/UI steps of the recipes and using the being able to justify your decisions and community in Berlin and an evening responsibility.

Questions about vision from press User experience: Nutzererfahrung the functionality of the knob to use organised by Troy Nachtigall to show select.

This makes that we can scroll and product, user experiences ended in ‘the positive experience, if people tell you the work of the PhD project he is trough list faster, more precise while client decides’. something about the product, experience of involved in and. using less precision of our fingertips. soft and hardware Usability: simple to use, intuitive use, is not always the case because products are complex nowadays.

Our job if oft about making compromises. How creative are you in problem solving. My job is the best in no perfect solution, but you have to make sure that you have a reason for your decision. It is a hard world und ‘scheisse gold

D I rewrote my vision, see page 4 of the report, with a strong focus on experience, touch and touch-points within service design.

E Although I actively involved myself within discussions at the company, I did not manage it to write three reflections throughout the period of my internship.

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DEEPDIVE UX/IXD/USABILITY A This book made me aware of the responsibility I have as a designer.

Designers often put aesthetic value over practicality. This results in award winning products with almost invisible buttons or as few of them as there can be, each of which controlling multitude of functions. This confuses new users and may even cause competent ones to make mistakes if they have to use these products in times of emergency.

Norman also highlights the importance on mapping the functionality of a product. And it is important that users can straightaway see the result of their action, such as pushing a button resulting in audible of visible feedback.

Oftentimes a designer’s mapping does not match that of the users’.

Human brains work with the logic that B happens when A is triggered so A must have caused B even if the fact is totally wrong and it is designers’ job to accommodate this.

B On the interaction-design.org platform I took the course: “Affordances Designing Intuitive User Interfaces”.

I reached the score of 83% and I am waiting for an official certificate.

The course took more time than I expected. Therefore I was not able to finish the course: “User Experience: The Beginner’s Guide”.

The course thought me how the concept of affordance has been evaluating over the past years.

Design experts have made different statements of the meaning of affordance which helped me to understand how to analyse interfaces.

In the same time I learned what important principles are according to the concept of affordance. In combination with the book of Don Norman I have clear understanding of how affordance, mental models and feedback play an important role in interaction design.

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C Definitions of UX // IxD UX: is the experience that a user or customer has when they interact with that product or service. To make this experience as best as possible UX designers do research, finding out who the users are, why and under what conditions they would need a product. A great user experience is something that is easy, enjoyable, satisfying and fixes a problem.

IxD: it is the design of the interaction between users and products. The goal of interaction design is to create products that enable the user to achieve their objective(s) in the best way possible. Most often when people talk about interaction design, the products tend to be software products like apps or websites.

D During my internship I had the chance to design different interfaces for the Thermomix cooking machine. Due to confidentiality I am not able to touch upon details of these interface. What I learned from the feedback that I got is that designing ‘nice’ mock-ups is not per so good. Especially in a conceptualisation phase it is essential in the communication with a client to only focus on critical elements of the interface. This helps to get the feedback you want, focused on the main elements, not on the thickness of a stroke. It took me a lot of hours to come up with my first mock ups, they were neat and worked out in detail. In this project I learned that it is desirable to show simple and dirty mock-ups to your client if the phase of the process allows this.

CONCEPT & COMMUNICATION During my internship I tried different communication methods within the design project.

Sketching, paper modeling, 3D modeling, video prototyping, making mock-ups of interfaces and real physical models. Using these methods in daily practice made me aware of the distinguishing qualities the methods have.

At a meeting of the Intermem consortium it was my task to present the idea of the pyramid. Next to overcoming a barrier of speaking in the German language I learned that supporting a scenario of a concept with a communicative visual is super helpful.

Without saying a word, the audience understood the basic idea behind the pyramid and we gathered valuable feedback about concept.

For exploratory goals I prefer rough sketching and making paper models to explore interaction possibilities. Making 3D models is valuable when the concept needs feedback about the details: colour, finishing off, material.

A

3D modelling

3D modelling

Explorative sketching

Presenting idea’s

All pyramid sketches, models and final prototype togehter

Paper modelling

Sketching scenario’s

Consortium Meeting

Woodworking

Woodworking

Working on whiteboard

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All models of postbox

WORKSHOPS During the different workshop planning experiences I learned to estimate which tools and methods I could use for different Design Thinking workshops. I got also a better feeling of how much you can do in a specific time slot and what resources we could use. Being flexible is something that I learned in the workshop during the MakerFaire.

The workshop in Warsaw was the first workshop I planned and co-moderated.

Reflecting on this I felt a bit insecure in guiding the teams. I struggled with interrupting them and I noticed that the advise I gave was not really constructive.

In the end I had the feeling that the participants enjoyed the workshop but that we missed out in giving them some practical hands on information in how to conduct your own user research.

The next time I would focus more on what is in it for the participants. The conference gave me the ability to follow other workshops as well and I saw great examples of empowering workshop leader. Creating expectations, creating context around the workshop, where could we apply learnings, doing different rounds in team and plenary and giving examples are insights I gained from other workshops.

A

Workshop Markerfair

Workshop “Do you know your user?� Warsaw

Preparations of formats

Organising personaboxes 20

Guiding workshop

Workshop Markerfair

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

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First of all I would like to thank Dr. P. Klein, the directing manager of UID, for giving me the opportunity to do an internship within the agency.

For me it was a unique experience to be in Berlin and to be part of the team.

A special thanks goes to Henrik RieĂ&#x;, creative director of UID. Without your crazy ideas, interesting visions, critical opinion and tons of patience my internship would not be that great.

Also my colleague Martina Uhlig supported me with many opportunities on the Intermem project. The trip to Stuttgart, was an interesting and conducive experience for me.

Furthermore I would like to thank all my former colleagues for their patience, openness, creativity, lunches with soup and vibrant energy. You made my internship!

At last I would like to thank dr. ir. P.J.F. Peters for his coaching and supportive advise throughout my internship and towards the delay of my assessment.

REFERENCES [1] Mary Beth Rosson and John M. Carroll. 2002.

Scenario-based design. In The human-computer interaction handbook, Julie A. Jacko and Andrew Sears (Eds.). L. Erlbaum Associates Inc., Hillsdale, NJ, USA 1032-1050.

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APPENDIX 26/01/2017

https://dpf.id.tue.nl/sites/s142577/Goal 4/assessments.aspx

Request: Personal Development Plan B3.1 Peters, P.J.F. Jolijn, In principe denk ik dat dit wel ok is, je zou nog wat kunnen toevoegen welke competency / expertise areas je specifiek zou willen adresseren. Een 'goedkeuring' voor je Internship kan pas als je weet wat/waar, en hoe het zit met de begeleiding (de eisen hiervoor staan in de studyguide (website)). (een typo: developping ­> developing) Groet, Peter

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