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Delft Design Stories

24 October 2024

Including residents in energy hubs could solve energy poverty

Wind turbines, solar panels, batteries. We are producing, consuming and distributing energy more locally. This offers opportunities to solve challenges like energy poverty. “But if we want to create just, fair, and successful energy hubs, we must make them understandable and relevant for everyone," says researcher Abhigyan Singh.
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Delft Design Stories

Read the stories of researchers and students at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, and discover the scientific questions on which they work and the solutions they present.

Design that makes us happy

Design that makes people happy. It sounds like the holy grail. Or as a sales pitch. Yet things can contribute to our sense of well-being. Mafalda Casais researched how they do this and gained important knowledge for designers.

What can mussel shells teach us about the circular economy?

In a circular economy, design is about more than just creating a sustainable product. In this system based on eliminating waste and minimising the use of resources, the design process is aimed at preserving the value of products and materials and keeping them in the economic system for as long as possible. So how do you do that? PhD candidate Marita Sauerwein came up with a novel material based on ground mussel shells and showed through 3D printing technology that the end life of a product is really just the beginning.

The circular economy needs your old phones (and other things)

The transition towards a circular economy (CE) requires that products be returned for reuse, refurbishing or recycling. But getting people to follow through is not always easy. Looking at this issue from the user perspective, PhD candidate Flora Poppelaars researched ways to increase the return of mobile phones after use, helping to close the CE loop.

How circular business models keep consumers in the loop

The circular economy is a hot topic these days. Moving away from the old linear model of take-make-consume-throw away, the circular model is a closed-loop system that involves more than simply recycling waste. It’s a process that involves several inter-dependent phases, including sustainable design – or designing out waste. And there are many actors involved in making it work. For her PhD, Vivian Tunn looked at things from the consumer perspective to investigate how circular business models can be designed to enable sustainable consumption.

What a comfortable seat

How can you objectively determine whether a car seat is comfortable? Develop a measuring instrument that imitates human skin. Max Wegner will be awarded his PhD for his work on this measuring instrument, which could prove to be a real breakthrough.

Training for surgery? Get (more) real

The field of general surgery has been transformed over the past few decades with the rise of minimal access surgery (MAS), making it possible to perform major surgeries via small incisions. But as with any rapidly developing technology, there are often challenges related to training and implementation. Through his PhD research, Sandeep Ganni set out to explore the key elements required for designing safer and more effective training methods related to MAS.

Designers need to catch up on their user data

“Designers don’t know how to use data,” says Péter Kun, who recently defended his PhD thesis ‘Design Inquiry Through Data’. In it, he developed a framework for guiding designers through incorporating data in their research practice.