Item 1 of 1

Delft Design Stories

19 November 2024

Card game addresses sexism within police

IDE alumnus Noortje Kwakernaak visited two police stations to investigate the role of female officers there. During her visits, she was struck by the use of humour – much of it crude or sexist. To address the topic, and perhaps change behaviour, she developed a quartet card game that makes players reflect on these types of jokes.

29 October 2021

A better environment from the comfort of your chair

A modular chair made of blocks in which CO2 has been stored and that can be converted into other pieces of furniture. With his special design - Unito - Riel Bessai, who recently graduated from the Faculty of Industrial Design, wants, above all, to tell a story. “With my chair I am making the global CO2 problem tangible and I hope to encourage people to view our consumer society from a different perspective.”
Marco Rozendaal photographed in the AI factory

19 October 2021

How do you design objects with an intention?

Designing smart objects for everyday life demands a new approach: no longer focused on a single object and a single user, but on an ecological system of countless objects and users. This approach is central in the new Delft Design Lab for Expressive Intelligence and the recently published book Designing Smart Objects in Everyday Life.

19 October 2021

Design for Deaf culture and health

Patients failing to take their medication in the prescribed manner is a widespread problem across society. But a combination of social barriers, discrimination and difficulty with written language mean that the Deaf community has a greater struggle. This medication non-adherence can be dangerous for patients, prolong sickness and strained healthcare systems. Ph.D. researcher Prangnat Chininthorn wanted to find ways to improve this and help Deaf people better manage their own health.
Is het gewaad op dat schilderij van fluweel of van satijn?

22 September 2021

Is the robe in that painting velvet or satin?

Staring at one of the richly drawn paintings in Amsterdam’s famous Rijksmuseum, you might recognise that the robe worn by the subject of the painting is made of velvet and the cup on the table is made of silver. Your eyes only see swirls of paint but your brain understands what the artist was depicting. As part of his thesis research, Mitchell van Zuijlen wanted to understand how this is possible.
Waarom belanden innovaties in de Vallei des Doods?

15 September 2021

Why do innovations end up in the Valley of Death?

When it comes to innovating in large organisations, why do so many concepts die before they are realised? Barend Klitsie’s PhD research explored what organisational conditions help innovators to mitigate the Valley of Death and achieve sustainable implementation.

20 May 2021

What makes a circular designer?

It makes sense that designing for a circular economy requires something different than the traditional linear approach. Because it’s not just about creating sustainable products, it’s about an entire system aimed at reducing resource use and waste. For her PhD research, Deborah Sumter wanted to find out what competencies designers need to develop to be successful at circular design.

18 May 2021

How to paint convincing stuff

If you see a bunch of grapes, how does your brain understand that those are real grapes and not ones made of plastic? And if you see those grapes in a painting - say a 17th-century piece of Dutch Golden Age art - how does your brain understand that those are also grapes? That’s what Francesca Di Cicco wanted to know for her PhD thesis.

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.

Designing to inspire more sustainable consumers

Shifting towards the Circular Economy is not just about sustainable products, it’s also about sustainable behaviour. So how can design influence people to take better care of the products they use? PhD graduate Laura Ackermann says for designers, considering the consumer perspective is the key.

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.