MA thesis work

I haven't really posted things about my degree work here on the blog, as I mostly use SlideShare to share my presentations...So far we had three of them:

The kick-off, end of January:



A research presentation, end of February:

The mid-review, end of March:

itaú: transformative transactions

The last project before i started with my master thesis was an individual project in cooperation with the biggest south-american bank, Itaú. The brief asked us to think about the future of banking. We could choose our own focus almost unrestrictedly. That led to a very diverse range of great results in our class. 

I decided to work on the aspect of shared living expenses. It was a choice based on personal experiences, but I received feedback from countless people that supported my ideas.

Here is the result in form of an animation and the abstract.



"Companion is a banking service aligned with the special needs of shared living communities.
A lot of people live in shared flats as it offers numerous benefits. Even though the motivation to move into a shared flat is as different as the people who live in them, it is apparent that sharing goods supports a good atmosphere and vice versa. Companion supports this reciprocity by providing a flexible solution every shared living community can adapt to their needs.

The service consists of a bank-account, a web- and a mobile application and physical tokens, the companions themselves. The bank account can be used to collect monthly contributions to do regular payments like rent, electricity and internet and to save money for other shared expenses.
Each tenant owns one companion, that is recognizable by a color
chosen before. The companions visualize the shared flats financial situation in a simplified way: If there are debts amongst the flatmates, if one tenant is very successful in saving money for the community or if the shared accounts balance is growing or getting smaller.

As the companions are placed in the shared space of a flat, they become a part of everyday life, supporting the sharing and saving behavior by using the rules the tenants agreed upon."

I got a lot of insights from a workshop i conducted at UID. 12 people from the Interaction-, Advanced Product- and Transportation Design program shared their ideas and experiences they had on my project.

One personal goal I set for myself was building an experiential prototype that is as close as possible to the final products physical appearance. Using an Arduino Mini Pro, the TexasInstruments TLC5940 LED driver and an "optimized" breadboard layout made it possible to achieve that goal.

The prototype was part of an exhibition at school. The next step would have been fitting the technical components into the product design i did for the project.

planet eyeth

The last project we finished before the summer-break was a service-design project about language learning.

My team ended up doing a service which functions as a hub for people concerned with the topic of deafness or hardness-of-hearing. The service is build upon social local networks, which facilitate information sharing within Deaf communities. It supports the existing, rich culture with tools which connects hearing, deaf and hard-of-hearing people on a local level. By providing a web- and a mobile app, it makes it easier for people to get in contact and take first steps in this diverse world.

This video shows some of the impressions of the meetings that do already exist and our service makes more people aware of.



One result of our project was a detailed blueprint and ideas how a mobile and a web touchpoint could work and look like.

As the project was sponsored by Microsoft, we took the chance to look into the styleguides of WindowsPhone applications.

To see more details on the project, pleas check back on my portfolio this summer :)

Police Command & Communication Center - research

The project started with a introductory visit to the Command and Communication Center (CCC) in Umeå. Being a rather small center it is still representative for a pretty modern working environment.






In a couple of sessions we conducted an extensive research by shadowing and interviewing the so called "dispatchers".

The working stations of the dispatchers contain tons of equipment: radio, telephone paper work and, most important for us, a PC workstation with an interface on 3-5 widescreen monitors. The dispatchers workload reaches from idle time to extremely stressful peaks were they have to handle multiple tasks at once (some former dispatchers now work as fighter jet pilots).
Of many hundred applicants a year only about three to four are suitable for the job. Mostly women.

The first challenge was to understand the whole system of emergency calls, managing ressources and dispatching patrols. It is a very complex system witch even more complex decision-making processes.


We got a deep insight on as the police officers patiently explained almost every detail. We had the chance to visit the CCC a couple of times, so we were able to build on a well-founded knowledge.

After the first week of research, the class of 11 students split up in three groups based on different opportunity areas.







I decided to team up with Siri, Ayse and Shelagh to work on the area we called "cooperative environment". We saw big potential in taking the whole CCC as a system to improve not only focusing on the screens itself.

Analyzing the interaction workflow was important to understand the interface and all peripherals in detail. The analysis revealed many opportunities and potentials for improvements, as shown later.

One excerpt of our analysis: The interaction flow during the case of a hit reindeer (which is super-kliché but very common in northern sweden) As you see, the dispatcher has to go crazy in the interface, as he needs to switch between three monitors all the time. This means turning the head a lot of times, and travelling (literally) meters with the cursor.

Police Command & Communication Center - ideation workshop

 After two weeks of research we developed two rough paper prototypes. Both were quite different to what the dispatchers are used to and we were pretty curious to test their reactions.

In a one-day workshop, in which police-officers and dispatchers participated, we tested the low-fi prototypes by playing through a quick scenario with them. We learned a lot of useful lessons, some of them were quite surprising, as many of the subjects were most familiar with some of the more radical approaches.

I had the opportunity to learn a lot about quick prototyping and early-stage user testing, which was one of the most important steps in the whole project.

As our group also addressed the whole room as an opportunity area, we asked the officers and dispatchers to show us how they like to work. We gave them a toolkit of desks, projection areas etc. to play with. By that we found out, that today's room layout is almost the opposite of what the people working in it want to have.

After the workshop we perused all the feedback and worked out a more detailed concept. We went through many iterations of wireframes like you see on the left, refining them more and more every step.

Police Command & Communication Center - final demo & user testing

For the second workshop we built a back projected prototype to come as closest to the final experience as possible.
We would have loved to have a fully interactive prototype, but that was impossible to do in that short period of time (10 days between workshop 1 and 2).












We prepared a case we played through with the police-guys: First we gave a 5 minute introduction to our interface followed by a crime event we simulated and the officers / dispatchers had react to on the interface.

The result was mind-blowing, as all of the subjects were able to conduct all tasks without any mistakes at the first attempt. Considering the fact, that the old system needs weeks to get familiar with, this was a big success.

The feedback on our approach of using a touchscreen paired with a special keyboard and a special communication device was really good. The concept improved workflow as well as ergonomics and provided a more compelling experience of use.

Police Command & Communication Center - animation

For the final presentation we prepared an animation showing the most important features of our concept. It is not optimized for external use, yet, so it's still four minutes long. The first two minutes give an introduction to the most innovative features, at 2:12 it shows an example of application.
I think i will prepare a condensed version for using in my portfolio some time...Hope you enjoy it anyways!