Subtle Implementation of Technology
While my first Master's project had a different perspective on the subtleness of technology than the others, the goal of the other three projects was to include technology in a positively impacting but subtle manner. Working with vulnerable people, the goal was to use technology to realise certain goals without overcomplicating the system. Especially in the projects with elderly people with dementia, the interactions should be understandable. In my Master's second project, an emphasis lay around the interaction with a cardgame, leading to the exclusion of technology. To compensate this lack, I was able to explore digital application design in the third project. However, the end goal of my Final Master Project was to combine these two into one design with subtle implementation, with a successful result that could do the trick. In my Master's first project, the goal was to introduce new innovation and processing techniques in a relatively new ingredient to explore a not-yet-explored direction in food design with algae. Throughout the last two semesters I also became more fluent with the programming languages HTML, Java, CSS & Python while working on prototypes like the digital application, as well as the reduced coffee consumption system for the course 'Design for Behaviour Change'.
Explicit implementation in FMP
Communication difficulties are unfortunately part of dementia, research could find that audio and sounds work well with these people and can provide assistance in attaining social interactions. The goal was to develop a device that could trigger these audio files in a tangible interactive way that was understandable for people with dementia, without overcomplicating the functionality. Archiful, the design of the FMP, was able to perform this task and the elderly people with dementia were able to interact well with the device.