DELIVERABLES
- Functional prototype
- Report
- Video
PROGRAMME
Bachelor
LENGTH
16 weeks
YEAR
2019
My Final Bachelor Project was part of the DIGSIM squad (Designing Growing Systems in the Home), a squad focusing on systems design, Internet of Things and data sharing, in the setting of a house. It familiarizes students with systems of interactive products and encourages them to explore new ground in systems design.
The design challenge for this project revolved around the topic of energy: designing for the near future practices around the distributed production and use of energy. The IoT Sandbox , a model house populated by the Dvorak-Donaldson family, was provided as a tool to help tackle the design challenge.
FLOW is a learning tool to raise awareness of the energy consumption in your daily life by making energy physical. It’s a system in which energy is represented by marbles. Centrally located in the house, there is an energy source form which users need to collect energy into so-called energy blocks. These energy blocks need to be attached to a device in order to be able to switch it on. The higher the energy consumption of a device, the higher the flow rate of the marbles. When all energy is gone, new energy needs to be collected from the source. The scarceness of the energy will determine the speed with which the energy block is refilled. With FLOW, energy awareness is increased, and a barrier is created by the need to physically get up to collect energy. The physicality of the product such as the weight, noise and visual feedback of the marble all adds to the act and awareness of using energy. FLOW will be provided to households by their energy supplier. They can sign up for one of the FLOW packages (depending on the size of the household) and can use the learning tool for two weeks. They can decide themselves which devices they want to connect to the system in an online installation guide.
See the full report for further information.