Clothespins that notify you when the laundry is dry or socks that keep track of how many times they were washed indicate how shortsightedly IoT could be executed. Being smart, however, IoT has a lot more potential if we do not take technology as the starting point of designing. The main argument of this project is that we can create meaningful and empowering smart products through putting users’ needs and context in the center, as well as carefully designing the form, behavior, and intelligence of these products.

This project aims to develop a model with its supplementary design tools and methods for designing smart products for human empowerment. By following a research-through-design methodology, the project intends to tackle which forms, intelligence and behaviors respond to the needs of users and contexts, and under which conditions and to what extent the users are willing to delegate control to smart products.

Empowerment, in the context of this project, is defined as extending people’s skills and knowledge, adding to their autonomy and self-esteem, allowing for new capabilities (Schneider et al., 2018). Products that ‘have information processing capabilities and are connected to the internet’ fall under the description of smart products in this proposal.

This connectedness and intelligence allow smart products to be situated (recognize the context they are in), personalized (tailor themselves to the users’ needs), adaptive (change from interactions with users), pro-active (anticipate users’ plans), and autonomous (make decisions). In other words, smart products are agents that are capable of action and making an impact on users’ lives; and eventually, empower them.

Nazli Cila, researcher at the Digital Life Centre and involved in this project, has already made an initial attempt to develop a theoretical angle focusing on the agency of smart products to discuss their design and use (Cila et al., 2017; Giaccardi et al., 2016). Yet more work is needed to develop and validate hands-on guidelines, methods, and tools that designers can use for creating meaningful smart products and designing their agency, as well as good demonstrators on how smart products can empower people. This is the intended outcome of this project.

Publications

Things as Co-ethnographers: Implications of a Thing Perspective for Design and Anthropology

(2016 )Elisa Giaccardi, Chris Speed, Nazli Cila & Melissa CaldwellDesign Anthropological Futures

Thing Ethnography: Doing Design Research with Non-Humans

(2016 )Elisa Giaccardi, Nazli Cila, Chris Speed & Melissa CaldwellProceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ’16)

Products as Agents: Metaphors for Designing the Products of the IoT Age

(2017 )Nazli Cila, Iskander Smit, Elisa Giaccardi, & Ben KröseProceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Near future cities of things: addressing dilemmas through design fiction

(2018 )Maria Luce Lupetti, Nazli Cila & Iskander SmitNordiCHI ’18 Proceedings of the 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

Project duration

1 Apr 2019 -1 Apr 2021

Researchers

dr Nazli Cila

prof. dr Ben Kröse

Ben Schouten

Funding

Regieorgaan SIA HBO Post Doc

Partners

What is the purpose of our research?
The aim of the Simba research is to make children with asthma move with pleasure and confidence. If you enjoy doing something, you will quickly do that more often. That is why we have created the Foxfit app together with children with asthma, which they use to learn how to exercise more in a fun way.

Why is our research important?
Many children with asthma move too little, for example because they are afraid of stuffiness, while moving is very important for them. It can reduce asthma symptoms, so that they can better participate with their peers, for example on the playground and with children’s parties.

There are already many ways to help children exercise more, but these are often not aimed at children with asthma or, on the contrary, are very much aimed at ‘being sick’. Children often do not use it because it does not match what they need or because they do not like it.

In order to create something that is fun and really useful, we in the Simba study work together with children with asthma. We asked these children what they think helps themselves to move more if you have asthma. We also asked this question to their parents and caregivers.

What does the research yield?
We have built the Foxfit app based on all the answers. Several children with asthma and caregivers have tested the first version of the app. With their advice, we have made our exercise app even more convenient, fun and beautiful.

In the app, a fox travels with his rocket to different planets. The children wear a movement meter that keeps track of how much and how fast they move. For movement they get points with which the fox can reach the planet with his rocket. The children also get ideas for fun activities and they get playful tips about asthma, exercise and medicine.

A caregiver, such as a nurse or physical therapist, guides the children while using the app. On a secure Foxfit website, the caregiver can see how much the children have moved and how they felt. In this way the caregivers can easily see whether the children are less moved by asthma complaints. Together with the child, caregivers also set personal goals and hand out trophies to reward the child. The child sees these trophies in the prize cabinet of the app.

How is the research conducted?
Fifteen children and their caregivers tested Foxfit for seven weeks. The children are very enthusiastic. They like using the app to use and move with pleasure. The health care providers also see many benefits of Foxfit. We have now mainly tested the user-friendliness of the app so that Foxfit can be used in practice. The first results of our research are positive. We hope that many children with asthma will take a space trip with Foxfit and learn in this way that exercise can also be fun with asthma.

Image & Video

Publications

Promoting factors for physical activity in children with asthma explored through concept mapping

(2019 )Annette Brons, Katja Braam, Annieck Timmerman, Aline Broekema, Bart Visser, Bart van Ewijk, Suzanne Terheggen – Lagro, Niels Rutjes, Hellen van Leersum, Raoul Engelbert, Ben Krose, Mai Chinapaw & Teatske AltenburgInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16(22) download

Beweegtool Foxfit voor kinderen met astma

(2019 )Annette Brons, Katja Braam, Aline Broekema, Annieck, Ricken – Timmerman, Bart Visser, Karel Millenaar, Raoul Engelbert & Ben KröseInspiratie 29(1) download

Effectiveness of serious games to increase physical activity in children with a chronic disease: Systematic review with meta-analysis

(2020 )Daniël Bossen, Aline Broekema, Bart Visser, Annette Brons, Annieck Timmerman, Faridi van Etten – Jamaludin, Katja Braam & Raoul EngelbertJMIR 22(4) download

Project duration

1 May 2017 -1 Aug 2019

Project manager

Bart Visser

Researchers

Annette Brons

prof. dr Ben Kröse

Bart Visser

Katja Braam

Aline Broekema

Annieck Ricken – Timmerman

Karel Millenaar

Funding

This research has been made possible in part by the RAAK Public Regulation (SIA management body).

Partners

• Amsterdam UMC
• Kinderkliniek Almere
• Tergooi Blaricum / Hilversum
• Merem Medische Revalidatie
• Longfonds
• VvOCM
• Fitkids
• GainPlay Studio

Until now the existing health and exercise apps in app stores lack a scientific base. Different apps use different ways to stimulate people to be physically active (e.g. feedback about physical activity, motivational messages, games). Some researchers argue that what type of app works, is highly individual. This means that the right type of app may depend on e.g. your current physical activity level, health, personality and residential context. However, how to make the optimal match between app and user is still unclear.

This project aims to answer these questions, by developing an exercise app with different forms of feedback. We will also develop a method to find the optimal match between app and user. We will use the app to collect data about the physical activity and location of the users. Since these data is collected every 5 seconds, this will give us very large data sets (big data). We will use ‘data mining’ techniques (automated search programmes on a computer) to find out which app works best for different types of users. We will then give each person his or her optimal app, and measure if the physical activity further increases. Based on the data, we can determine what the effect is of different types of exercise apps, and what app is most suitable for a particular person.

Image & Video

Project duration

1 May 2017 -1 May 2020

Project manager

Marije Baart de la Faille-Deutekom

Researchers

prof. dr Ben Kröse

dr Shihan Wang

Nicky Nibbeling

Monique Simons (Wageningen University)

Prof. Dr. Victor Zuniga Dourado (UNIFESP, Sao Paolo)

Karlijn Sporrel (Utrecht University)

Remi de Boer

Funding

Nationaal Regieorgaan Praktijkgericht Onderzoek SIA RAAK-mkb

NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek)

FAPESP (Sao Paolo research Foundation)

Partners

• UvA – University of Amsterdam
• UNIFESP- Federal University of Sao Paulo
• UU – Utrecht University
• UFSCar – Federal University of São Carlos
• INFO
• IoT Living Lab BV
• ZappYou
• Municipality of Amsterdam
• Municipality of Utrecht
• HP2consulting

Results

Within the project we organized 5 focus group sessions, several user test sessions and 3 workshops. These activities have so far resulted in 2 papers (ACM SIGACCESS 2019 en ACM MobileHCI 2019), 4 abstracts, 8 presentations at scientific or professional conferences and 4 demonstrations. We were present at the international Vision2017 conference, we gave a presentation to the association for the rehabilitation of partially sighted people (VRS), and actively discussed at the ZonMW Inzicht meeting. Moreover, we gave a workshop and demo at the ZiezoBeurs2018, we gave a demo and workshop on the Orientation and Mobility Day and we presented the EyeBeacons project to the residents of Amsterdam during the WeMakeTheCity event. More than 50 students made an active contribution to EyeBeacons through project assignments and internships. The students’ work was presented at the Thingscon2017 conference and other students actively participated in the ZieZoBeurs 2018 and 2019. The EyeBeacons project has been mentioned on national and international websites such as vvrbs.nl, nationalezorggids.nl, natuurzonderdrempels.nl, debelgischeoptiekgids.be, zonmw.nl, visio.org, saxion.nl en hva.nl. Recently we made a video in which we summarize the status of the project.

Image & Video

Publications

Guiding the visually impaired through the environment with Beacons

(2016 )Joey van der Bie, Britte Visser, Jordy Matsari, Mijnisha Singh, Timon van Hasselt, Jan Koopman & Ben Kröse,Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing: Adjunct

Better wayfinding for visually impaired people: Integrating haptic feedback via a smartwatch

(2017 )Joey Van der Bie, Christina Jaschinski, Timon Van Hasselt, Jan Koopman, Somaya Ben Allouch & Ben KrösePaper presented at Vision 2017 download

Communicating multimodal wayfinding messages for Visually Impaired People via wearables

(2019 )Joey van der Bie, Christina Jaschinski & Somaya Ben AllouchMobileHCI’19 download

Sidewalk, a wayfinding message syntax for people with a Visual Impairment

(2019 )Joey van der Bie, Christina Jaschinski & Somaya Ben AllouchASSETS 2019 download

Lessons learned from co-creating a personal wayfinding app with people with a visual impairment

(2020 )Joey van der Bie, Christina Jaschinski, Somaya Ben AllouchVolume 4, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Design4Health, Amsterdam, 2020 download

Project duration

1 Mar 2017 -1 Sep 2019

Project manager

Joey van der Bie

Researchers

Michel Mercera

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch

prof. dr Ben Kröse

Students

Corne Lukken

Remco van Swieten (UvA MSc)

Bernard de Mare

Mijnisha Singh

Jordy Matsari

Britte Visser (CMD)

Jeroen van Dam

Nikki Joosten

Matys Welle

Tim Moesgen

Pinar Kesenci

Konstantinos Partheniadis

Edwin Mello

Roselinde Loeffen

Genevieve Korte

Ondra Kochalaty

Bambi Boland

Beatriz Ibeas

Clement Breger

Peter Sabel

Paras Kumar

Merijn Molenaar

Tijmen Stor

Thijs Timmermans

Erik Wolters

Kenan Simsek

Laura van der Oord

Dieva Groenberg

Eyse Bethlehem

Freek Koldewijn

Ivo de Maijer

Joel Ruhe

Marco Wever

Ivo Markus

Jack de Bree

Jeroen van Velzen

Jordy Schaatsbergen

Junior Witteveen

Niels van Marion

Funding

“EyeBeacons, wayfinding in public spaces” is een ZonMW InZicht project, nr. 94312006.

Partners

• Research Centre Technology Health & Care (Saxion Hogescholen)
• Royal Visio
• Bartiméus
• Info.nl
• Lectoraat Media Design (Hogeschool Arnhem Nijmegen)

In the Netherlands, every week 300,000 elderly people with early functional limitations participate in a programme “More Exercise for the Elderly” (MBvO). The goal of the program is to stimulate independent functioning of older physically, both mentally and socially. The current structure of MBvO does not appear to have sufficient effect on fitness and health indicators. Our hypothesis is that older people benefit more from MBvO if 1) it is enriched with the specific training of functional capabilities, 2) the training frequency is increased, and 3) the nutritional status of the elderly is optimized.

VITAMIN will be evaluated in a randomized study (3×80 MBvO participants). In a preliminary feasibility study the intervention components with users (trainers and participants MBvO) will be examined. Specific attention is paid to the diversity of the city of Amsterdam.

Project duration

1 May 2014 -1 Sep 2019

Project manager

prof. dr Ben Kröse

Researchers

prof. dr Somaya Ben Allouch

dr Sumit Mehra

Funding

The project is funded from the Centre of Expertise "Urban Vitality" of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.

Partners

• TNO
• Nutricia
• NISB