The concept

4 Weeks to go, here is the final concept of my thesis project...I would love to write more about it - but it's just far to little time left. There will be a complete report published in summer, and my portfolio homepage will be updated as well.

So, here is the so-called 5 weeks before presentation:

Avaya workshop

After our experience prototyping course, we had a one-week workshop together with Avaya. We helped them to find some solutions on the future of remote-collaboration and office communication.

One part of the brief was creating a physical device. I focused on trying not to add any unnecessary things to the office desk, but using the existing environment and tools.

It was a quick ideation exercise that resulted in pretty diverse results in our class. I did a small animation you can find below.

summer break

The term ended with a great degree exhibition and party in the beginning of June.

Umeå gets very quiet during summer, as almost all students leave for their families and do not return before autumn. Jassi and me decided to spend some more time in northern Sweden as we don't know when we will be able to spend an subpolar summer again :)

We were in Umeå for the rest of the Euro-Cup and midsummer, which is really a special day not least for the lack of darkness during night. People go crazy here.

I took the opportunity to go for a hiking trip with my family, which was great, even though the mosquitos up here are pretty thirsty when it gets warmer. A net in front of your face and a bottle of "Mygga" is definitely recommendable.

We went to Skuleskogen National Park, which is located around 150km south of Umeå. Even though it is a pretty small area it is stunningly beautiful and offers pretty impressive sights. (This sounds like from a tourist ad)

I spent most of the summer in Germany (Berlin, Cologne and Munich) visiting family and friends. I also did some freelance work for Axiros, an IT company based in Munich. They offer hardware and software solutions for businesses and enterprises to manage networks and large amount of terminal devices. My task was creating UI / usability concepts for database and search-engine applications.

Jassi and me returned to Umeå end of August. In the meantime, the night returned and you could sleep without hanging another bed sheet in front of the window. We drove with the car from Munich to Stockholm and had stopovers in Hamburg, Copenhagen and Malmö. That way you realize how far north we actually are. In times of air travel i totally lost my feeling for larger distances.

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 :)

multi-layering

The last project we finished last friday was called 'multi-layering'. It was a 2-week project again, focusing on visualizing complex information on screens. We were free to choose a theme, but we had to create an animated visualization of at least 10 parameters on two different screen sizes. Additionally we were asked to make some narrative framework around the visualization.

I decided to create an application for rowers (athletes as well as coaches) that supports training and progress in real-time as well as in a later analysis.

One part of the app should support rower during training sessions by providing information about the forces they apply, if their rowing technique is synchronous, the current stroke rate and some other parameters....

The app should also provide information to help analyzing training sessions or races afterwards.

See some more frames here...

and the animated visualization...