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Falls become increasingly common as we get older. They can be devastating for older people from a psychological and physical perspective, resulting in loss of confidence, loss of independence, pain, injury, depression and even death.

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.

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.

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.

Last week, fifteen organisations, including IDE (represented by our Design for Sustainability and Circular Product Design sections), celebrated the launch of CIRCONNECT – an online knowledge platform for circular design. The platform will act as a central location where knowledge and experience in the field of circular design is shared and developed together. The website already contains nearly 100 knowledge contributions from the CIRCONNECT partners. The contact person for this project is IDE’s Bas Flipsen.

Dutch Design Week (DDW): it’s one of the highlights of the European design calendar and an event in which IDE design research plays a prominent role together with 4TU.Design United. This year, DDW runs from 22-30 October and as is tradition, you can expect a stellar programme from Design United featuring researchers and projects from IDE and TU Delft. Keep your eyes peeled for the next newsletter, where we'll cover what else you can expect from Dutch Design Week.

Just before the 2022/2023 academic year began, TU Delft hosted the Soft Robotics Summer School for PhD students. The two-week course, which ran from 22 August to 2 September, featured a riveting schedule, which included talks by IDE researchers Jun Wu, Zjenja Doubrovski, Sepideh Ghodrat, Jiwei Zhou, and Guoxin Gang; and two workshops in IDE’s Applied Labs.

Most people, according to PhD candidate Mirjam Visser, say they want to shop sustainably but few consumers actually purchase the most environmentally-friendly option when shopping. For her thesis research, she set out to understand why some consumers will buy green options while others won’t - and how to encourage people to make more sustainable choices.

Did you get a chance to attend the 2022 Visual Science of Art Conference (VSAC) in Amsterdam? If not, don’t worry. We’re here to tell you all about it. The conference took place from 24 – 27 August in and around Amsterdam’s Oudemanhuispoort. Its aim was to bring together artists and scientists who shared an interest in the visual aspects of art. The result? 130 scientists and artists from 20 countries gathered for a four-day event. The conference was co-organised by members of IDE’s Perceptual Intelligence Lab (Maarten Wijntjes, Jeroen Stumpel, Catelijne van Middelkoop, Cehao Yu, and Yuguang Zhao) and the University of Amsterdam’s Art History department.

At this year’s Outstanding Security Performance Awards (OSPAs), the TU Delft Risk Management Summer Course took home the Benelux OSPAs’ Outstanding Security Training Initiative award. This year’s edition of the course was organised by IDE’s Sicco Santema, alongside IDE alumna Rinske Geerlings and TU Delft strategic risk advisor Regina Edoo. Of all the nominees in this category, Santema’s group was the only one to be nominated by the participants.

IPD master’s exchange student Konstantin Wolf took home the 2022 James Dyson Award (the Netherlands) with his invention BREATHE. Konstantin, who was on exchange from Muthesius University Kiel, spent six months at IDE. During which, he was able to bring his award-winning invention to the prototype phase. BREATHE was developed as a passive and sustainable ventilation solution to improve indoor air quality in small living spaces and to meet the needs of the growing Tiny House community.

IDE graduate student Anne Arzberger was chosen to be a part of the ASME’s Design Engineering Division’s (DED) Broadening Participation (B-Part) Fellowship and Mentorship Program. As part of the fellowship, Anne received a travel scholarship that covered her costs to go to the ASME IDETC-CIE Conference (St. Louis) and gave her the opportunity to present a research proposal at a poster session for early-career graduate students.

From an early career in experimental psychology to Professor of Informational Ergonomics at TU Delft’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE), Professor Huib de Ridder has learned that there are a lot of ways to look at things. But one point has always remained central: it all begins with the human.

Once a designer is no longer actively involved in the development process, UX insights are often neglected, reducing the UX quality of the product or service. This phenomenon inspired Lilian Henze’s PhD research into how designers can prevent it from happening and actually facilitate the use of UX insights in the entire development process

IDE Professor Pieter Desmet and Assistant Professor Haian Xue, alongside researchers Xin Xin and Wei Liu from Beijing Normal University took home the award for Best Paper in the Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship category at this year’s Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics Conference 2022 in the US. Their paper is entitled: "Emotion deep dive for designers: Seven propositions that operationalize emotions in design innovation".

It’s been a long and well-deserved summer break. Before we headed off, we had a lovely chat with two international student editors of IDE. Yuka & Jack already share their experiences as international students as student editors on the IDE website. For this bonus episode, they talk with Ianus and Producer Marc about work-life balance, what’s it like studying Delft Design and much more. Enjoy! We will be back with our final episode on design & health soon.

A team of researchers from TU Delft, Imperial College London, and Aalto University have received a EIC Pathfinder Challenge grant of 4 million euros for their NextSkins research project on Engineered Living Materials.

On 25 June, the Child Brain Lab celebrated its official opening with a symposium at Erasmus MC. During the event, Assistant Professor Mathieu Gielen presented student work from his Play Well Lab. Their work, alongside his own and that of other design researchers, will play an important role in the type of experience that children with neurological pathologies have when they visit the Sophia’s Children Hospital in Rotterdam.

Addressing the complex challenges of today and tomorrow requires many actors, perspectives and disciplines. But forming effective and mutually beneficial collaborations can be challenging. Designing with Delft aims to facilitate this process, bringing researchers and educators from the university together with innovators from organisations to identify common goals, define a shared vision and develop concrete plans for collaborations.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could achieve structural optimality and visual appeal at the same time? Well, the recent work of IDE researchers Jun Wu, Paul Hekkert, and DfI master’s students Shannon Loos, Sytze van der Wolk, and Nina de Graaf demonstrates that it is possible. To find out how, be sure to click the link below and read their paper, “Towards intentional aesthetics within topology optimization by applying the principle of unity-in-variety”, which was published last week in the journal of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization.

The Design for Sustainability team at IDE has acquired three collaborative NWO circular design projects. While each project is unique, they collectively contribute to a knowledge pool that addresses how products can be designed from the start to keep them from entering the waste stream for as long as possible. The projects range from investigating how wind turbine blades can be designed better to improve their re-use and material longevity (LICHEN-Blades), to developing electronics that can be recycled better (Circular Circuits), to addressing harmful substances in products so they can be used over multiple life-cycles (Safe-by-Design Circular Products).

On Thursday 9 June, the TU Delft campus will be buzzing like never before. On that day, students will be presenting their ideas on how to accelerate the energy transition. Over the past six months, more than 15,000 TU Delft students have followed a course on energy transition. This has resulted in a large number of ideas and prototypes that can be seen on 9 June during the Energy Challenge Event, which is part of TU Delft's anniversary year.

Do you have a cool project you have been working on and that want to share with the world? Then here is your chance to show it off. On the 20th of June, students from all of the Dutch Industrial Design and Engineering faculties will gather in Eindhoven to present their coolest projects. You can even win some awesome prizes! Sign up here before the 7th of June.

Need a spare part to repair your product with? The TU Delft Repair Group (Julieta Bolaños Arriola, Alma van Oudheusden, Bas Flipsen, and Jeremy Faludi) has got you covered. They released their 3D Printing for Repair Guide and it's chalked full of useful examples and videos. If you, or anyone else in your network, is interested in developing spare parts with 3D printing – make sure to check out this guide. You can find the guide here.

4TU.Design United is once again taking part in Dutch Design Week (22-30 October 2022) in the form of the Design Research & Innovation (DRIVE) Festival, Up Close & Personal, and a corresponding expo in the Klokgebouw. If you would like to participate and/or contribute, please submit your proposals before the 15th of June.