Portfolio of Herjan Van Den Heuvel

2009: 9-month design project at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs.

Goal: Designing concepts to support smooth and natural initiation of informal opportunistic communication by distributed knowledge workers.

Process: Research and design, including literature study, observations, interviews, diary studies, brainstorming, sketching, conceptualization, video prototyping, expert reviews, and user evaluations.

Results: Six new concepts, two video prototype visualizations, and much valuable user data collected through several evaluation sessions.

2008: 3-month design case for Philips Research.

Goal: Designing and testing a persuasive technology concept to increase the physical activity of sedentary office workers.

Process: Literature study, user studies, several design iterations of prototyping, user testing, and re-designing, a final implementation, and a three-week user evaluation.

Results: The ActiveShare concept (video on Vimeo) with many valuable user data, and a publication at CHI 2009 in Boston (paper at ACM).

2008: 1-week design project on multi-modal perception with Jim Juola.

Goal: Design or re-design a daily product using the user’s multimodal perception.

Process: Brainstorming, sketching, and video prototyping.

Result: Based on next generation mobile phones with GPS, a camera, and fast internet, we came up with an augmented reality navigation concept, using the camera’s live footage to augment navigation information on. We also envisioned automated detection of road signs. (Read more)

2008: 3-week UX evaluation study for Philips Research.

Goal: User testing the Philips Extended Homes project, part of the EU-project Amigo on ambient intelligence.

Process: We connected two living rooms with an interactive TV, digital photo frames, lights and a social robot. 40 test users performed several tasks, while being observed and interviewed afterwards.

Results: Results of the interviews were analysed and transformed into an extensive design recommendations report. Have a look at our video report.

2008: 3-week observation study with Emiel Krahmer and Marc Swerts.

Goal: Measure emotional engagement in a multiplayer game on the Nintendo Wii, to decide what is more engaging: cooperative (together against a computer) or versus (against each other).

Process: Observation of non-verbal behaviour by observation rating techniques, similar to this paper.

Results: Participants played tennis in two conditions. Their observation videos were rated by a second group of participants. We statistically analysed differences across cooperative/versus and won/lost conditions.