Delft Design Stories

From The Start: The Early Design Bird Gets The Remanufacturing Worm

The circular economy. Sustainability. Refurbishment. Remanufacturing. Recycling. We hear these buzzwords used all the time when talking about how humanity needs to lessen its impact on the planet. For her PhD research, Nina Boorsma looked into how to get companies to make more sustainable products and found that the process needs to start early.

02 March 2023

Circular composites - design is the missing link

Composite materials have a lot to offer in terms of fine-tuning material properties, optimising functionality, and ensuring a long-life span. Despite those advantages, they still leave a lot to be desired when it comes to reuse and recycling. For his PhD, Jelle Joustra explored strategies for making composite materials that support a circular economy, proposing that design is the missing link.

08 December 2022

IDE researchers launch open-source online emotion typology

IDE researchers have just launched one of the most comprehensive emotion resources in the world. The emotion typology is an open-access online database that provides detailed information on positive and negative emotions.
Atleet op een hometrainer, met technologie in snoertjes bevestigd aan sportkleding en op het lichaam.

03 November 2022

Using sensors to stop sports injuries

All athletes, from amateurs joggers to elite footballers, experience sports injuries. What if medical professionals could predict when those injuries were going to occur and stop the damaging activity before the injury happens? In her PhD research, Annemarijn Steijlen takes a step in that direction.

26 October 2022

Bubble Games: can we design for empathy?

Building a better society is no solo endeavour. It needs people to join forces and tackle problems together. But this can only happen if there is a foundation of trust and understanding. In an increasingly polarised world, a group of Dutch designers asked whether it possible to create this strong foundation? Can we design for empathy?
Podcast cover art

06 October 2022

Out of the Blue #26: Conversations on Design & AI

We have a fun one for you this time. Recently, our colleague Eric Gu hosted three Delft Design researchers in a conversation on design and AI. Alessandro Bozzon, Maria Luce Lupetti and Kars Alfrink talked about the needs and challenges of designing AI. About the role of the designer in its development and how the design practice itself can change through the relationship with AI.

05 October 2022

The expanding design universe

AI is turning static products into dynamic ones that change while we use them. This requires new design methodologies. The European network and PhD programme DCODE, coordinated from the TU Delft Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, is all about rethinking the future of design in a world full of AI.
IDE alumna Anne Raspoort met haar reef tiles

04 October 2022

Could oysters hold the pearl of wisdom for reef restoration?

A TU Delft Master’s project tries to make large-scale reef restoration possible with a pilot project to re-establish oysters in the North Sea.

Delft Design Stories

Read the stories of researchers and students at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, and discover the scientific questions on which they work and the solutions they present.

Games that are always a success

After a long day at work, you somehow force yourself to go to the gym for some valuable exercise. Our sense of ‘get-up-and-go’ (thankfully) often has the upper-hand over our passive inclinations. But this does not hold true for elderly people suffering from dementia: their ability to take the initiative disappears in the early stages of the illness. With her innovative design, Hester Anderiesen Le Riche – PhD candidate at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) – helps elderly people to break out of this cycle.

Seeing, understanding and designing the light

On 31 March, Sylvia Pont held her inaugural lecture as Antoni van Leeuwenhoek professor at TU Delft. She conducts research on light and the design of light. In Sylvia Pont’s work, fundamental knowledge and applied design are woven in, out and between each other.

These days it’s all about transparency

This year marks Sicco Santema’s 25th anniversary as Professor of Marketing and Supply Management at TU Delft’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Over the past quarter of a century, Santema has witnessed many changes in the field of industrial design. We shared a conversation about innovation, co-operation, and a new type of transparency which is changing everything.

Tailored Healthcare

Unfortunately, it can be a regular occurrence in the medical world: a perfectly successful operation, but a patient who is still not completely satisfied with the treatment process. Healthcare professionals are eager to improve the situation, but often have no clear image of what exactly is wrong. IDE designer Bob Groeneveld and psychologist Tessa Dekkers are working together to investigate how patient satisfaction can be improved by tailoring the care as far as possible to suit the individual patient.

Looking over Vermeer’s shoulders

In 2018, Johannes Vermeer’s world-famous Girl with a Pearl Earring underwent a total ‘body scan’: using state-of-the-art techniques, the painting was studied in painstaking detail from top to bottom. It provided a wealth of new insights about the painting and the painter. Four TU Delft faculties worked on the project.

Airplanes cross borders, so do their environmental effects

When it comes to the health effects of aviation, reducing total fuel burn may not necessarily be the optimal strategy. And, perhaps even more surprisingly, your flight from Amsterdam to Rome contributes to premature deaths in Asia. Dr. Irene Dedoussi models the global human health impact of air pollution from aviation emissions, helping both airplane designers and policy makers in weighing the various mitigation strategies to make aviation sustainable.

Autonomous robots protect the lives of emergency services in disasters

Search and rescue robots play an important role in rescue missions following disasters. Dr. Jamshidnejad is trying to make these robots even more intelligent so that they can make decisions autonomously in complex situations, thereby relieving rescue workers of life-threatening tasks and making rescue operations more efficient.