Onze aanpak

During the Future Workspaces project day we also introduced a social networking concept called ‘Borrelpraat’. Borrelpraat is a prototype of a social networking tool that can be used at networking events. Participants have a tag on their badge with which they can indicate their position (using RFID technology). Furthermore, they indicated their interests at registration. On a swipe of their badge their location and interests are visualized on a big screen. These interests are matched with other participants at that location to stimulate conversations. Due to the use of standard Web 2.0 and RFID technology, Borrelpraat is easy to extend. Below is a short movie (in dutch) that shows the working of this prototype

We tested this prototype at the future workspaces project day. The participants of this day reacted enthusiastically, which resulted in approximately 100 swipes of badges within the hour. We are going to explore this way of social interaction more and extend this concept. If you are interested please feel free to contact us.

Buzzcuit is a concept that is positioned in the concept area ‘Have a break’. Have a break focuses on the cutting edge of leisure, informal gathering and work.
In an information-saturated world, where people work at different locations, there is a need for an easy and more social way to keep office workers updated and better aware of surrounding activities. Coffee breaks are a good moment to do exactly this. This is why we developed Buzzcuit.

Buzzcuit is a large touch screen that is placed in a coffee corner at work. Buzzcuit was designed to provide co-workers with inspiring information and to get them to know each other a little better. Buzzcuit displays a constant flow of messages, or ‘buzz’. You can find ‘buzz’ in different categories, such as people, projects, twitter streams and RSS feeds. Buzz is linked to each other and to external news feeds.

By touching the buzz, you can zoom in on a message and see more information and links to related information.
A prototype of Buzzcuit was placed at the Rabobank last week. Already, people are starting to use Buzzcuit. We will evaluate the use of Buzzcuit at the Rabobank in a few weeks.

Buzzcuit was based on the Vista concept developed by Lucy Gunawan, Qarin Hjortzberg-Nordlund, Xu Sun, Nele Van den Ende, Marcin Wichar and Aga Matysiak.

This week we started to experiment with the Combine & Create application for the MS Surface table. The application allows two people to combine slides from two personal folders into one new presentation and subsequently receive the result in their inbox. It illustrates some of the possibilities of the Surface table: for instance, as you drag slides from the folders on the shared working area you can “staple” them (i.e., connect them) using a black pawn. This interplay of virtual and physical objects is an interesting topic for further research.

While much of the existing applications for the MS Surface table focus on communication with customers, Combine & Create provides an example of how the table can support knowledge work as well. Especially for working with visuals, or visual information, from different perspectives such an application could prove useful.

The coming weeks we will experiment with the application at the Rabobank, gather user feedback and evaluate this application. We’ll keep you posted on the results.

CommUnification is a design concept conceived to address the In Sync and In Touch challenges faced by nomadic and highly mobile workers.

The project is an initiative by five User-System Interaction students at the Eindhoven University of Technology: Wil Rijnen, Brian Pagán, Ying Li, Zhihui Zhang, and Natalia Gredina. It is based on interview findings that nomadic and highly mobile workers are challenged by such problems as communication fragmentation (across multiple channels) and disregard for time zone differences.

These problems signal a disconnect between colleagues and peers, especially when in different geographic locations. After qualitative research, the team has generated a design concept (which can be seen in the video below) which they then evaluated with their target user group in a focus group and using an online survey. 

The team’s final report, containing the design rationale for CommUnification and the results of the evaluation is available here.