Internet of Things

The Internet of Things group of the Department of Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology is in the making. The group aims to research the effect and possibilities of Internet of Things on aspects of design: design process, the way of thinking about design, the products & systems that are designed, and design research.

The motivation of the Department of Design Engineering for establishing such a group is that we recognize the growing impact of Internet of Things on our society and the possibilities it offers for designers both in way of thinking and in the type of designs that can be created.

The enormous (and rapidly growing) amount devices, sensors, and actuators that are connected to the internet provides a staggering increase in the amount of data that can be exploited to provide meaningful information to people and processes. The connectedness also implies that all kinds of applications (including games) can be run in a distributed manner over the internet. The design of distributed systems of this nature asks for a different way of thinking while designing.

The designer needs to have understanding of and experience with the internet, distributed processes, big data, the physical aspects and behavioural properties of the devices, sensors, and actuators that can be connected to the internet and, last but not least, the designer needs to design for values such as privacy, safety, and quality of life for the individual user participating in a distributed multi-user system that runs over the internet. The way of designing a system that will be loosely coupled to the existing applications and systems running on the internet requires a mind shift from designing the more stand-alone systems that until now formed the majority of designs.

The group will do research in this area as well as contribute to the teaching of the Bachelor and Master programmes in industrial design engineering running in the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering.