by Magdalena Samonigg -

Interactive Print: Augmented reality in print media

There are several other methods for creating an interactive paper. For example with the use of barcodes and QR codes, social media codes, shortlinks. But most of all, the term “interactive print” is used to describe the combination of Augmented Reality and the traditional print media.

Through the development of mobile technologies, Augmented Reality is becoming more and more accessible, which opens new opportunities of its usage. At the beginning of the development of Augmented Reality, it was much more difficult to create interactive print. Printed images needed markers in order to work with AR content. Nowadays, this is no longer the case. Any high-quality print can be used to trigger an AR application.

There are several apps, which make it easy for users to experience Augmented Reality. The most well-known one of them is probably the free app “Artivive”.

“Artivive is an AR tool that allows artists to create new dimensions of art by linking classical with digital art.“ – Artivive

With this mobile app, the user just needs to point the camera at the print object. Then, there is a layer with an animation overlaid, so that it seems like the print object is starting to move. By using several layers, it is also possible to create an 3D environment.

Interactive print in education

Interactive print has a great potential in education. Through already familiar paper-based activities, combined with Augmented Reality, it is possible to create immersive learning experiences. It can be integrated in textbooks to showcase complex and abstract concepts by using for example interactive animations. The interaction with the content may help people to get a better understanding of it. Another effect is that it increases the users motivation to study. Not only schools could profit of the use of Augmented Reality for educational reasons. Also in exhibitions, interactive print can be used to provide information about specific topics.

Questions

  • What tools can be used to create interactive print?
  • How can all the senses be included?
  • For what topics can interactive print be useful?
  • What is the best balance between Augmented Reality and traditional print media?
  • In which fields can it be used?

by Kerstin Slany -

Smart living – a luxury?

Life can be so simple when you can preheat the oven, dim the lights or open the blinds while on the go. But what exactly is this smart system that makes my everyday life easier?

Definition.

Smart home or home automation is an umbrella term about various smart technologies that includes and controls different factors such as lighting, climate, entertainment systems, kitchen appliances, ventilation or even the security systems such as access control and alarm systems. What is important here is that the devices include the feature of connecting to the Internet and are part of the Internet of Things (“IoT”). 

The smart home system combines these devices through an overview platform, a central smart home hub or also known under the term “gateway”. The user interface used to connect, control and monitor the systems is usually a wall-mounted terminal, tablet or desktop computer, a mobile application or a web interface that can be operated from outside the home via internet access. 

There are already some products on the market, which are configured according to one’s own interest or offered as starter sets, mostly combined with a smart home app. The purchase of the devices is definitely a costly effort, yet these systems simplify the everyday life of many people and provides information about their own consumption. 

Can this be sustainable?

Sustainability is on everyone’s lips and this is also reflected in the various smart home applications. The Bosch Smart Home app, for example, includes the climate manager function. Rooms can be cooled and heated more smartly, and rooms can be ventilated more sustainably. As a result, rooms are used more effectively, heating costs are saved and energy consumption is reduced. In addition, the system also monitors the radiator valves, thereby extending the service life of the devices and protecting the radiator from calcification in summer and a smooth reactivation in winter. 

Sources.
https://www.onpulson.de/lexikon/smart-home/
https://www.bosch-smarthome.com/at/de/produkte/starter-pakete/
https://www.bosch-smarthome.com/at/de/blog/klimamanager/

by Raphaëlle Garnier -

Design and living beings

For this first blog entry, let me explain you a bit my subject : Design and living beings.

These last years, ecological awareness has risen in a way as it never has before in the occidental world. However, when people think about protecting the planet, they mostly think about climate change and CO2 emissions.

Radically changing our society not to harm the planet anymore, gathers several different topics: climate change, CO2 emissions, economy, consumerism, waste, water, biodiversity… just to name a few of them. Nevertheless, protecting nature and biodiversity is often seen as something kind, but not serious at all.

And people shouldn’t think like this as we are extremely dependent of nature. Each human is living in a very complex ecosystem which provides him water, food, and every change in the ecosystem can have really big consequences for our lives too.

Why, then, have we lost this link to nature?

Part of the answer is that we mostly live in cities full of concrete, we don’t grow anymore the food we eat, we have lost our know-hows about nature and we have lived for centuries with the concept of nature versus culture.


So, how can we rebuild this link between human beings and nature? How can we really see nature and communicate with it?

Those are the questions I’m asking now to start my research. And I already found a few solutions trying to make nature more tangible, more close to our perception of life, but this will be in my next post.

by Kerstin Slany -

ENERGY DATA VISUALISATION

BE THE ENERGY YOU WANT TO ATTRACT

What better way to start a blog post series than with a motivational quote. With this in mind, sit back and dive into a world of data visualisation of your own energy household. Sustainability and securing our resources play a big role in the current times. In one’s own household, however, one relies on external providers to take care of one’s own resources and energies such as water, gas and electricity. With the help of smart home systems, it is possible to live intelligently, because heating, lighting, shading, the energy household and also security and surveillance systems can be monitored and controlled from the smartphone while on the move. A smart home system involves sensors (thermostats, motion detectors, weather stations, smoke detectors, daylight sensor, smart meters, etc) and actuators (switches, dimmers, blinds, ventilation, air conditioning, etc). These sensors collect data that activate certain activities in the actuators. These systems are controlled either at a permanently installed control center, switches or with the help of mobile devices. Smart metering in particular is computer-controlled measurement, determination and control of energy consumption and supply. Smart metering is an aspect of Big Data and generates large amounts of data from the user’s own household and the energy industry, giving the user key figures on what amount was consumed at which point in what time. One speaks of intelligent energy management when smart metering is applied and one’s own energy use is efficiently monitored and controlled.

But how comprehensible and transparent is this for the end user? And what form can the visualisation of in-house consumption data take so that it is comprehensible and has a lasting effect on the user and his behaviour?  

I will deal with these questions and with the individual areas and sensors of in-house energy management in more detail in the next blog posts. Let’s see which energy will attract me. 

Sources.
https://wirtschaftslexikon.gabler.de/definition/smart-metering-53998
https://www.energie-experten.org/haustechnik/smart-home
https://www.dke.de/de/arbeitsfelder/home-building/normung-roadmap-smart-home-living/energiemanagement
https://www.talend.com/resources/what-is-data-visualization/

by Hannah Nopp -

AR in Education #1: Intro

Hello there! This is my very first blog entry about my journey of finding a suitable topic/project for my master’s thesis, so here we go: I chose “AR in Education” as an overall topic, which I would like to approach rather broadly at first and then gradually narrow it down in order to find a specific research question to work with. The aim of this first blog entry is to give a quick overview of 1) what AR is and 2) how it’s used in the educational sector. Let’s get started:

AR in a nutshell

Augmented Reality (AR) allows to enhance the real physical world through digital visual elements, sound or other sensory stimuli delivered via technology. It incorporates three basic features: 1) a combination of real and virtual worlds, 2) real-time interaction and 3) accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. AR thus provides both the real and virtual world simultaneously to the users – either in a constructive (i.e. additive to the natural environment) or a destructive (i.e. masking of the natural environment) way. Further information on the technology behind AR (i.e. hardware, software, algorithms and development) will be covered in another blog entry.

AR in the educational sector

AR techniques are already used in various fields like entertainment, tourism, health care or cultural heritage – just to mention a few. But it’s the educational sector, that caught my attention – especially children’s education. I asked myself “Can AR be used to make learning faster, better and more fun?”. As far as I know at this point, the answer is yes. There is already a range of educational materials like textbooks or flashcards that contain embedded “markers” or triggers that, when scanned by an AR device, produce supplementary information rendered in a multimedia format. But that doesn’t mean that I am not sceptical about AR as an educational tool – In my opinion “children & digital devices” is a double-edged sword. That’s why I would like to take a very close look at where AR has added value and where it doesn’t (in another blog entry).

My next steps

  • Dive in deeper into the technology behind AR 
  • Find out, what already exists on the market (and hopefully find a niche, where there’s a need)
  • Discuss, where AR has added value and where it doesn’t

That’s it for today! 🙂

_____

Sources:

Afnan, Muhammad, K., Khan, N., Lee, M.-Y., Imran, A., & Sajjad, M. (2021). School of the Future: A Comprehensive Study on the Effectiveness of Augmented Reality as a Tool for Primary School Children’s Education. Applied Sciences, 11(11), 5277. MDPI AG. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app11115277

Elmqaddem, N. (2019). Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in Education. Myth or Reality? iJET, 14, 234-242. doi: 10.3991/IJET.V14I03.9289

by Fridtjof Agnalt -

Two types of decisions

All decisions are not created equal. Examining my own choices I have a theory of two extremes with a sliding scale in between. The two extremes are passive and active decisions. Active decisions are taken at your own initiative while passive decisions require a decision to be made. An example of a good active decision would be sitting at home without any obligations for the day and deciding to go on a run. It is not required by anyone that you go for a run, you do it purely because it is beneficial to yourself. Either because it feels good or because you know that it is good for your body, or a mix of the two. An example of a passive decision would be picking your elective subject for this semester. There is a set time-frame that you have to make the decision in and the number of choices are limited. The active decisions are often harder to make as there is no accountability to any external force involved and that the number of choices that can be made are practically limitless. You can go for a walk, run, bikeride, play the guitar, buy new socks, learn to paint, write a poem, learn to paint and infinitely many more things. Structure is required to make a meaningful choice. There are also decisions that are a mix of active and passive and many chores fall in this category. You have to do the dishes eventually or you will run out of forks, but you do not really have to do it right now. It is the same with laundry and house cleaning. Choosing what and where to study and similar ‘key decisions’ also fall in between. You can of course take another path than studying, but for a lot of people studying is a given and so the choice is in a sense already made. However, the amount of study programs and universities in the world is so vast it would take a lifetime to look through it all. But, as the years go on the need to get an education and then a job becomes more pressing for most and so like the chores you have to make a decision in the end. Making no decision is also always a choice, but I do not think anyone would count drifting through life without doing anything a fulfilling existence. There already exist tools to help you make passive decisions. Career counselors, study counselors and quizzes that help you decide which political party to vote for. However I am not aware of any tools that help you make good active decisions except for your own discipline. Often we know what the best thing to do is, we just do not really want to and cannot force ourselves to do it every time. It would be interesting trying to create a tool that helps you make good active decisions.

by Olena Davletshyn -

Digital symptom tracker for doctors treating cancer patients.

Today, all areas of our lives are experiencing a global digitalization. The field of medicine is no exception, but unfortunately, cancer still remains one of the worst diseases in the world. “Cancer” is the term used to describe a group of diseases that vary in type and location, but share one thing in common – remarkable cell growth beyond control. Under normal circumstances, the growth of all our cells is tightly controlled. But when the control signals of one cell malfunction and the life cycle of a cell is disrupted, the cell divides. Uncontrolled growth continues and the result is an overgrown mass called a “tumor”. From global austrians statistics we can see that there are 41,200 people newly diagnosed with cancer. Risk of getting cancer before age 75 is 25.5%. Every year 20,400 people dying from cancer. As we can see, this is still a global problem.

As a designer, it always seemed to me that we should use all our skills to help people. That’s why I want to develop in the direction of design for medicine, because that’s where we need to invest a lot of our resources. The pandemic has shown that the global health system is not working as it should and we need to fix it.

The purpose of this project is to help doctors collect data at all stages of the disease. The program should allow them to monitor medication, record treatment progress, and create visualizations of the disease in the patient’s body. The program should help monitor many cases of cancer in different patients, which in the future could help fight the disease more effectively.

The next step is to contact organizations that help people with cancer. The goal is to understand the needs of one of the audience of the program.

Olena Davletshyn

by Laura Varhegyi -

How will user experience shape exhibition spaces?

Museum visits are quickly becoming more personalized and interactive with the help of technology. The traditional medium like painting, drawing, and sculpture has been transformed into new forms such as virtual reality, digital installations, and projection mapping. Touch, physical participation, and social interaction become essential qualities. Interactive exhibitions have the power to pull the audience closer to artworks, performances, and installations. An act of engagement creates a more memorable experience. Digital art installations offer new opportunities for viewers to actively participate in the artwork. Nowadays, the adoption of VR exhibits is increasingly common both in large and small museums because of their capability to enhance the communication of the cultural contents and to provide an engaging and fun experience to its visitors.


Not only museums want to give their visitors an incredible experience, brands often use interactive elements and AV Installation for an astonishing experience. What ways are there to invite people to engage with an object? How much information does the user need for the interaction and how does he/she continue the journey of exploring? How can storytelling be implemented with different media in exhibitions?

The possibilities are endless when it comes to telling an interactive story in an exhibition space. This is what it makes it so fascinating. Creating individual solutions based on the theme, space and the mission of the exhibition.

There are a lot of potentials because, there are no rules or methods yet. You are not limited in terms of technology, you can use what already exists, like VR headsets and screens. But you can tinker and fiddle with technical components, like buttons and interactions to create new experiences. Design, technology and psychology intertwine for this working area.


Literature:
• Designing Interactive Museum Exhibits: Enhancing visitor curiosity through augmented artefacts, by Luigina Ciolfi
• Exhibition Design, by David Dernie
• Interaction Design: From Concept to Completion, by Jamie Steane and Joyce Yee
• The Future of Museum and Gallery Design: Purpose, Process, Perception, by Suzanne MacLeod, Tricia Austin, Jonathan Hale and Oscar Ho Hing-Kay
• Designing Science Museum Exhibits with Multiple Interactive Features: Five common pitfalls, by Sue Allen and Joshua Gutwill

by Ole Petter Klaestad -

Utopian Design

How might we develop “ideal” societies by
designing experiences from user journeys
made in blank isolated environments?

Society is made up of lots of complex systems, such as the subway system, the roads in our cities, postal networks, and health systems. These stem from a long history of inventions and iterations. Throughout these year our culture and varying needs have changed, as has our societies which have evolved with it.

Back in the 60’s Walt Disney aspired to build a utopian city, starting with the blank canvas of 111thousand m^2 in Florida. The city was supposed to be governed by himself. The project was never realized. It did however make me think of using this mindset within service design. If such a system was developed today with concerns to the needs of people using them today, 45 years later, with the technology we have available at our hands, what would such a system look like?

Sources:
https://theconversation.com/walt-disneys-radical-vision-for-a-new-kind-of-city-167022

by Antoine Dessaint -

Productivity tools

How far productivity tools can improve our experience and performance for management and collaboration?

This topic is focused on the productivity tools that we use every day and that are more accessible nowadays. It is a revolution in the software market because the productivity tools emancipate themselves from the standards of the interfaces of editions (spreadsheet, text editor, slideshows, blog…) by proposing a hierarchy of more advanced and complex features such as collaboration, management, planning, sharing, and communication. All these interfaces meet the needs of collaboration and management while minimizing their visual importance to make navigation simple.

We find elaborate software such as Notion for note-taking, but which has many features such as task organization, collaborative work, planning, database creation, etc. Trello, a project management software where the user distributes tasks on cards arranged on boards. Or Asana, which is a team communication software that includes features such as workspaces, projects, tasks, tags, notes, comments, and a mailbox with real-time updates. Other productivity applications such as Miro, Harvest, Evernote, Zapier, etc.

How well are these tools designed to allow quick actions?

We can say that these softwares have been designed to break the standards of note-taking, tabulation, presentation, and other software. Their visual impact has great importance in the understanding of the actions related to their functionality. The great strength of these tools is the capacity for quick actions and the extension of the new possibilities offered.

However, is the global understanding of these interfaces allowing the facilitation of these actions? Would a novice user feel confused by some of the interface’s biases? Can we evaluate the accessibility of these interfaces by novice users?

But how to allow potential users to take control of these tools?

Students from l’École de Design Nantes Atlantiques have demonstrated through a usability test of Notion that novice users make redundant mistakes. Furthermore, they must go through a learning phase to get to know the software. Despite knowing how to master some features, the results show that users have difficulty creating a tree structure, creating a workspace, and modulating some elements.

Through these researches, I would like to focus on usability reports of this software to understand their efficiency at the user level and to interview experimented users about their regular use of these tools.

Best Practice:

Library: