Eindhoven University of Technology

Graduate Student, Industrial Design

About

I am doing a Phd project in which I apply principles from embodied cognition theory to the design of interactive artifacts (mixed physical-digital elements figuring in people's activities). My case environment is the creative group session (or brainstorm). I focus now on the aspect of shared understanding within such creative group processes (i.e. to what extend do I understand what you try to bring forward during a conversation; and; to what extend do we as a group understand the issue at hand). Together with potential users and designers I develop tools that are intended to help create shared understanding, building on the function that the environment (physical and social) can have in that respect (e.g.: shared attention, joint action, external representations, etc). The tool is ideally a seamless mix of what people 'already' do, using the conventional physical-social space, plus some new (and useful) possibilities for action and perception by means of elements modern digital technology. Through my design process and the research that is part of that process I intend to find out what an embodied 'shared understanding' might actually be and how the environment (including the designed tool) may play a role in bringing about that understanding.

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