Industrial Design Portfolio

Final Bachelor Project

inTune is a collaborative musical instrument that aims to foster social cohesion among TU/e students. The concept is located in front of the bridge connecting Atlas and MetaForum and acts as an intervention to connect people through shared effort and creating music, due to the fact that the instrument must be played by two people. Social cohesion stimulates a culture of accessibility, connectedness, trust, and responsibility, which can be achieved through collaborative music activities. inTune was developed by means of the Reflective Transformative Design Process, through analyses, material explorations, and active user involvement, integrated in multiple iterations.

Creativity & Aesthetics

Throughout the design process, sketching was utilized as a tool for idea generation and inspiration. Sketching allowed me to visualize ideas, which helped me with communicating concepts, as well as building a conceptual foundation to base future iterations on. Translating a sketch into a storyboard proved beneficial in placing a concept in its context, which revealed elements of the concept as the story progressed.

inTune - Sketch

inTune - Storyboard

inTune - Additional Sketches

As a collaboration with Business & Entrepreneurship, a value exploration was performed by sketching while keeping those values in mind, in line with visual thinking.

inTune - Brand Exploration

inTune's aesthetics aimed to reflect both playfulness and interactivity, by combining colorful buttons with softer materials.

inTune - Interactions

User & Society

In the exploration phase of my Final Bachelor Project, potential stakeholders were mapped from the perspective of TU/e students. Based on this, explorative interviews were conducted with ESMG Quadrivium and TINT. Together with desk research, these interviews formed the foundation of the project. After the conversation with TINT, several values of social cohesion at TU/e arose that were useful as a tool to keep the context in mind. These values were placed onto a model, which was consulted in later stages.

inTune - Social Cohesion Values

inTune - Stakeholder Map

As inTune’s purpose is fostering social cohesion, active user involvement is crucial. Multiple user tests were conducted to ensure numerous opinions were taken into account when making design decisions. The first user test consisted of a probe with different interactions and different sounds that were created with GarageBand, which were tested by means of qualitative and quantitative questions. The second user test aimed to unveil the optimal dynamic in which people collaboratively make music, by dividing four different traditional musical instruments among two participants. Both user tests revealed information that formed the base of the instrument’s elements.

inTune - Collaborative Music-making

Technology & Realization

During my Final Bachelor Project, Technology & Realization was utilized for both exploration and prototyping. I applied thinking-through-making, in which I let my hands do the thinking while tinkering with different materials. This resulted in an intuitive interaction panel, which proved useful during user testing and defining the final design.

inTune - Interaction Probe

For the manufacturing of the final prototype, I made use of different techniques to convey the concept. I learned how to 3D model, which for this project was useful to 3D print with, but can also be used as a communicative tool in future projects. As electronics were previously a pitfall for me, I primarily made use of push buttons, but tried to give them different functionalities by means of coding. For the housing of the electronics, a laser cut box was used, which was painted with black paint. A personal milestone is that I have gained confidence in building circuits and especially soldering. As I had not had much experience with soldering, I started by practicing on a soldering board. As the final prototype had many wires to solder, I divided the types of wires into different colors and made use of a schematic.

inTune - Prototyping Elements

inTune - Heat Maps

Math, Data & Computing

In order to easily grasp the findings of the first user test, heat maps were created for the participants’ quantitative data for the interaction panel and sound explorations. The heat map was strategically organized in a way that would not merely show insights for each specific sound, but would visually reveal insights for grouped sounds based on their type. In future projects, I believe Math, Data & Computing can play a bigger role in the design process, by combining it with my stronger expertise areas, to attach more structure and measurability to concepts.

Business & Entrepreneurship

After Midterm Demoday, a MoSCoW prioritization was utilized as a tool to validate and analyze the concept’s feasibility. This was useful in making design decisions in between iterations.

inTune - MoSCoW Prioritization Model

Furthermore, the brand identity was established by mapping inTune’s values and personality as a company. Consulting Aaker’s dimensions of brand personality (1997), inTune fits best with excitement. Combining this personality with inTune’s values of providing social cohesion, collaboration, music, being in tune, and interaction, the colors orange and purple were chosen for the brand (The Logo Company, 2020). Creating a brand identity was useful in establishing a connection with inTune as a brand. This element of Business & Entrepreneurship had a strong connection with Creativity & Aesthetics, which allowed me to explore the expertise area by combining it with a more familiar expertise area.

Aaker, J. L. (1997). Dimensions of brand personality. Journal of Marketing Research, 34(3), 347. https://doi.org/10.2307/3151897

The Logo Company. (2020, December 27). The Psychology Of Color In Logo Design. The Logo Company. https://thelogocompany.net/psychology-of-color-in-logo-design

inTune - Brand Identity