- Sports , Campus
- 06/04/2018
Braving the cold to present Vitality projects
Where would you present projects about vitality and making the campus a healthier place? Why, outside, of course! And so from 9 a.m. this morning, Bachelor's and Master's students of Industrial Design were stood outside Aurora in the cold ready to pitch their plans to their study coaches and fellow students.
Laura Casella, Laura Bijl, Anna Smulders and Rong-Rong Zhang are standing on the grass outside Aurora, waiting for their assessors to come by. Presented on a board is a short summary and a little while later they add their own spoken explanation. They are looking at which resources make life easier in a meeting that involves walking. Personally they favor a notebook, a camera and a place to write. From the coaches they get the question why they chose these particular items rather than, say, a cell phone. Bijl: “We want to prevent people becoming distracted by Whatsapps, Facebook messages and the like.” Study coach Carl Megens: “On the other hand, you can make both notes and photos with a telephone and you can switch off certain messaging functions. I'd certainly bring a phone along.”
A little way away - luckily for them also a little more in the sunshine - stand Rick van de Ven, Stephanie Slee and Robin Zillekens. Their plan of approach is ambitious. A little too ambitious perhaps is the feedback they receive. So they have to make choices. They want to look at ‘dexterity movements’. Slee: “Basically, rapid movements from left to right. We still have to decide exactly how we will study them. By making photos and film clips or by making a sensor.”
Master's student Yu Qi Hu talks enthusiastically about her project: helping women to give up running less easily. “Women who have recently taken up running are often uncertain, it turns out. They make frequent use of an app; listening to a voice telling them what to do. I want to look at the effect of their listening to that voice more often or less often.”
Having viewed the five outdoor projects, it is time to warm up in the Laplace building, where various students are busy building their prototypes-in-progress. Seated on the floor, Krishnaa Seck is trying to repair various parts, so that she can still go ahead and demonstrate something. She had the bad luck of having a part break yesterday. The aim of her creation for her Bachelor's graduation project is to get people up out of their chairs, quite literally, with the help of music. “The idea is that as they get up from the chair, the music starts. I want to see if I can link this to Spotify.”
Industrial Design is divided into various research areas, known as squads. These mid-term presentations are for the Vitality squad. It is the first time that presentations have been made outdoors. The students have a couple of weeks yet to prepare the final results of their work; demo day is scheduled for June 8th.
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