Interaction Design projects

Health Tech: TEMP Port

TEMP Port is a concept de­veloped as the fi­nal res­ult of a co-design pro­cess with nurses, through work­shops, shad­ow­ing, in­ter­views, and feed­back ses­sions. This pro­cess took place  at the eld­erly pa­tients private homes, nurse of­fice, and the design stu­dio. It is par­tic­u­larly de­veloped for nurses who have to del­eg­ate and en­sure that the eld­erly pa­tients get the cor­rect medi­cine doses at the vari­ous private homes. The main two prob­lems we iden­ti­fied and which the concept aims at al­le­vi­at­ing is the com­bin­a­tion of 1) the over­bur­den of doc­u­ment­a­tion time re­quired for nurses, tak­ing them away from what they are best at and is highly needed: be­ing with the pa­tients, and 2) the tech­nical and or­gan­isa­tional lim­it­a­tions of the non-cent­ral­ized IT sys­tems. The TEMP Port is light, port­able, and has the size and shape of a note­book, much like the ones the nurses bring along (A6) their vis­its. The TEMP Port al­lows a nurse to doc­u­ment while be­ing with the pa­tient, in­stead of hav­ing to go back to the of­fice. The in­ter­face cent­ral­izes all the ne­ces­sary and most used func­tions the nurse needs to make: medi­cine dose look-up, changes, and ad­di­tions of new medi­cine doses. There are four rows rep­res­ent­ing the box pills they work with (morn­ing, noon, af­ter­noon, night) so they have the over­view they need. Sim­ul­tan­eously, nurses can re­cord new dose changes based on pa­tient feed­back (bad medi­cine ef­fects, re­cent changes not up­dated yet, etc.). Any change made with the TEMP Port  will syn­chron­ized to the app nurses have on their phones and to the IT sys­tems where these need to be doc­u­mented. This al­le­vi­ates the doc­u­ment­a­tion time. The pres­sure sensors can be used with gloves to make it com­pat­ible and com­fort­able as nurses wear these when del­eg­at­ing pills in con­tain­ers. A func­tional pro­to­type was de­veloped, util­iz­ing Ar­du­ino, elec­tron­ics wir­ing, Bluetooth, NFC tags and reader, LED for visual feed­back and piezo for au­dio feed­back.

Music & Posture — AM#CHAIR

AM Chair takes a bal­ance board into your seat, and im­ple­ments prin­ciples of fysio­ther­apy and er­go­nom­ics to sup­port act­ive sit­ting. Fur­ther­more, the move­ment can be turned into a mu­sic con­trol device, where you choose to add dif­fer­ent ef­fects to your mu­sic as you move (Midi). It is de­signed for people with sedent­ary work and who need to keep an act­ive back. As people of­ten listen to mu­sic when do­ing desktop work such as study­ing, the mu­sic helps you to keep in dy­namic in­ter­ac­tion and thereby re­gain body aware­ness. You can change a song by mov­ing to the sides(right and left) and add ef­fects by mov­ing back and forth. The chair can be pro­grammed to alarm you after 20 min. of in­activ­ity. One ef­fect og in­activ­ity can be a slow des­cent into deeper tones of whatever mu­sic you ls­iten to, lower­ing volumes or adding a flanger ef­fects. This chair was de­veloped in col­lab­or­a­tion with mu­sic stu­dents at Sønder­borg Mu­sic school, and tested with uni­ver­sity stu­dents. The func­tional pro­to­type used ar­du­ino, ba­sic wir­ing, an ac­cel­er­o­meter and midi pro­gram­ming.

Interfaces — Identity display

This pro­ject ex­plores al­tern­at­ive ways to con­struct, de­con­struct and share iden­tit­ies and nar­rat­ives about iden­tit­ies. As a re­sponse to the ste­reo­types and fear of the un­known, en­countered by both the local com­munity and the newly ar­rived asylum seekers, these con­cepts aim to ex­pose the pos­sib­il­it­ies of de­fin­ing one­self and oth­ers. There are two ba­sic as­pects — a weare­able device and app. Within the eco­nomic lim­its of the end-users (asylum seekers) we wanted to ex­plore util­iz­ing the phone ( a device most of them used) as a weare­able device which dis­plays act­ively to people who pass by. By util­iz­ing the idea of badges, more pop­u­lar among punk groups or scouts, we ex­plore the pos­sib­ilites to flip­ping the screen to the outer world. As asylum seekers flee from wars, pro­sec­u­tion or dev­ast­a­tion, they of­ten leave friends or fam­il­ies be­hind.  Their world be­come en­cap­suled in their mo­bile phones and they can close in to the stor­ies shared across the world. Sit­ting most days at the asylum cen­ter wait­ing for a reply to their case, this isol­ates them fur­ther to the broader so­ci­ety. as their iden­tit­ies col­lapse in to ebi­eng a refugee. This device does not pre­tend to solve the com­plex is­sues in these area, rather ex­em­plify the pos­sib­il­it­ies for in­ter­ac­tion with simple ele­ments avail­able. 

Through vis­its, cul­tural props, in­ter­views, and one large work­shop — the ele­ments which can be dis­played to oth­ers were defined. This res­ul­ted in the design of badges to com­mu­nic­ate visu­ally. Asylum seek­sers were part of the whole pro­cess in this pro­ject.

Educational Tool — Offline MyMe Box

As the di­gital in­fra­struc­ture and con­nectiv­ity im­proves in My­an­mar, solu­tions that de­liver con­tent from the world wide web will be a sig­ni­fic­ant factor to con­sider. The im­mense on­line data­bases that most pop­u­lar plat­forms e.g. Google or Face­book con­tain are lim­ited when it comes to My­an­mar lan­guages, mak­ing ac­cess­ib­il­ity of know­ledge, en­ga­ging re­sources and thereby edu­cat­ive ma­ter­i­als scarce. Fur­ther­more, and in terms of the phys­ical space, the dis­tance to nearest edu­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions from can prove chal­len­ging for some chil­dren. One of the groups least be­ne­fit­ting from over­all na­tional de­vel­op­ment of edu­ca­tion are out-of-school chil­dren, in the rural areas as well as the urban areas. My­an­mar Mo­bile Edu­ca­tion Pro­ject (myME) is cur­rently work­ing on the de­vel­op­ment of the myME box concept, which aims at the de­liv­ery of edu­ca­tional con­tent in Burmese and some eth­nic lan­guages near or at the student’s homes.
The ma­ter­i­als are de­sired to be en­ga­ging and al­low chil­dren from an early age (5 years old) and up­wards. The myMe Box uses af­ford­able and open-source tech­no­logy as Rasp­berry pi®. Hand­held devices e.g. mo­bile phones with wi-fi com­pat­ib­il­ity, are the in­ter­face of the con­tent from the device. My role was lead­ing and co­ordin­at­ing with all memebers of the team, the design of the in­ter­face, data gath­er­ing, ana­lyz­ing, test­ing and doc­u­ment­ing.

The re­port can be ac­cessed HERE.

Innovation in schools — Research in Myanmar

 How can the ne­ces­sary 21st cen­tury skills be in­teg­rated in cur­rent cur­riculum and in the Burmese edu­ca­tional sys­tem? That is the ques­tion I brought along in what star­ted as an in­quis­it­ive solo jour­ney from Den­mark, to a col­lab­or­at­ive im­ple­ment­a­tion of work­shops in a school in Yan­gon. As my first time in My­an­mar and without on-ground sup­port or a leader to dir­ect, I spent most of the time re­search­ing, in­ter­view­ing, net­work­ing and eval­u­at­ing the po­ten­tial and op­por­tun­it­ies in every en­counter. After ap­ply­ing eth­no­graphic meth­ods of in­quiry, and data ana­lysis I fo­cused on non-formal meth­ods which sup­port in­nov­a­tion and act­ive par­ti­cip­a­tion of stu­dents. The teach­ers were presen­ted to dif­fer­ent con­cepts and games, while sim­ul­tan­eously be­ing given the plat­form to point out where they would like to see a change. The school prin­cipal was in­volved, the teach­ers and the stu­dents, in a vari­ety of work­shops that ex­plored the lim­it­a­tions and pos­sib­il­it­ies of im­ple­ment­ing new ways of learn­ing at a private school. The will­ing­ness for change is there from both the man­age­ment, teach­ers and stu­dents. Nev­er­the­less, more im­port­ant act­ors ex­cerpt­ing pres­sure are par­ents and the ex­pect­a­tion of tra­di­tional ways of learn­ing. More re­forms to up­date the cur­riculum is also needed. These men­tioned act­ors and as­pects need to be fur­ther taken into con­sid­er­a­tion in fu­ture in­vest­ig­a­tions. An­other con­clu­sion of this re­search was the op­por­tun­ity of mon­astic schools as en­trance to im­ple­ment­a­tion of pro­gress­ive and more ex­per­i­mental meth­ods, as they are of­ten more open to de­vi­ate from the main cur­riculum de­mands. This pro­ject was ex­ecuted with guid­ance and col­lab­or­a­tion with the World Edu­ca­tion Found­a­tion in Yan­gon, My­an­mar. You can see the re­port HERE

Design Consultancy — ANDURA

ANDURA was a sim­u­la­tion con­sultancy design com­pany spear­headed by three in­ter­ac­tion Design stu­dents, one be­ing me. Through a col­lab­or­at­ive semester, we offered our ser­vices to fel­low en­gin­eer­ing fac­ulty peers (Mechat­ron­ics and In­nov­a­tion & Busi­ness). We sup­por­ted with design tools, meth­ods and de­liv­er­ables to total of 4 teams (11 ‑13 people in each team) with dif­fer­ent pro­jects. Each pro­ject was done in col­lab­or­a­tion with in­dustry act­ors such as Dan­foss, Linak, Pro­jectZero and Gre­en­Wa­ter. The video is part of our mar­ket­ing ma­ter­ial to com­mu­nic­ate our skills as In­ter­ac­tion de­sign­ers for our peers and oth­ers with fu­ture in­terest. 

Sustainable Design projects

large containers of nitrous oxide

Emission reduction at Rigshospital — N2O

The pur­pose of this pro­ject was to re­duce green­house gas emis­sions from the use of N2O as a pain
re­liever at the ma­ter­nity de­part­ment at Rig­shos­pitalet. At the time the hos­pital util­ized ap­prox­im­ately 4.5
tonnes of N2O an­nu­ally. As N2O has a GWP-value of 273 it is a huge con­trib­utor to the hospital’s total emis­sions. Mean­while, N2O is a highly valu­able pain re­lief dur­ing la­bour and have, based on find­ings, been deemed ir­re­place­able for both pa­tients and mid­wives. Based on Unruh’s “Un­der­stand­ing lock-in” (Un­ruh, 2000) the­ory, we iden­ti­fied or­gan­iz­a­tional, in­sti­tu­tional and tech­no­lo­gical sub-sources have over time con­struc­ted a Techno-In­sti­tu­tional Com­plex. Three concept pro­pos­als were iden­ti­fied and pro­posed: A tech­nical End-of-Pipe solu­tion “N2O De­structor”,  the concept of im­prov­ing pa­tient ex­per­i­ence in or­der to in­crease birth hor­mones which has shown to re­duce the need for pain re­lief, and lastly a concept of re-cir­cu­la­tion of the used gas. We did re­search„ field vis­its, in­ter­views, work­shops and col­lab­or­ated closely with en­vir­on­mental con­sult­ants at Rig­shos­pitalet.

Co-design through WhatsApp — Waterpump in Uganda 

This pro­ject took place dur­ing the COVID19 pan­demic in 2020, which means that all parts of the pro­ject cycle were digital/online and some­what ex­per­i­mental. We col­lab­or­ated with a small dan­ish com­pany, Much More Wa­ter, who had a pro­to­type of a bike wa­ter pump to be in­stalled in rural Uganda.  Nev­er­the­less, much lit­er­at­ure about de­vel­op­ment pro­jects in par­tic­u­larly African coun­tries un­der­line the is­sue with long term main­ten­ance and suc­cess of tech­no­lo­gies in­stalled by out­side com­pan­ies. Our fo­cus was to reach out and get an as­sess­ment of such a concept, with local people in the re­gion. We cre­ated a 5‑day-chal­lenge to gather in­sights and gamify our know­ledge ex­change with loc­als. The needs as­sess­ment res­ul­ted in key in­sights for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the product and busi­ness pro­posal from Much More Wa­ter.

Forest  protection through GIS & indigenous community empowerment

We col­lab­or­ated with IWGIA, an in­ter­na­tional NGO who ad­voc­ates and sup­ports in­di­geneous com­munit­ies world­wide. We fo­cused on sup­port­ing their part­ner prgan­isa­tion CPTA, a local Bolivian or­gan­isa­tion, which provide ca­pa­city train­ing for in­di­gen­ous com­munit­ies in the rain­forests of the TIM re­gion. Al­though the pro­ject was en­vi­sioned to be done with phys­ical pres­ence in the field, the pan­demic kept us work­ing on­line. We sup­por­ted in find­ing strategies to im­prove their in­volve­ment, en­gage­ment and over­all think­ing form a sus­tain­ab­il­ity stand-point. We pro­posed ways where they could en­sure long-term be­ne­fit for the in­di­gen­ous people, once their pro­ject would ter­min­ate.

We con­duc­ted on­line in­ter­views, work­shops and at­ten­ded their train­ings. Fur­ther­more, due to the lan­guage bar­rier, we also en­gaged 5 vo­lun­teer stu­dent trans­lat­ors from Aar­hus Uni­ver­sity, who helped us with tran­scripts from Span­ish — Eng­lish.

 

Study of the funding, design and evaluation systems of government funded development — NGOs

In this pro­ject we ex­plored the fol­low­ing ques­tion: How might NGOs nav­ig­ate the ten­sions cre­ated within the gov­ern­mental fund­ing sys­tem to design sus­tain­able in­ter­na­tional pro­jects? To grasp the de­vel­op­ment field, we en­gaged and staged ‘ne­go­ti­ation’ spaces as in­ter­act­ive di­gital in­ter­views with vari­ous NGOs e.g. CARE, Dan­Church Aid, Peri­amma, WWF and more. Through this pro­ject we out­lined the ten­sions of liv­ing up to the pre-writ­ten con­tracts and ex­pect­a­tions as fund-re­ceiv­ing or­gan­isa­tion vs. the high un­pre­dict­ab­il­ity nature of the con­text these pro­jects usu­ally take place. We pro­pose three con­cepts ideas to fur­ther ap­proach the strategies and aim­ing to re­con­fig­ure the net­works, with no­tions from Autonom­ous Design (Esco­bar, 2017) and Par­ti­cip­at­ory Design.