Most car drivers use a navigation system that can help find the best route and often also a closed parking garage. These systems, however, do not help finding a parking spot in the street. In this project, we investigate and design an app that makes this possible.
In collaboration with ICX – The Hague International Center for Civic Hacks – a prototype is designed, with students from the Faculty of IT & Design.
In The Hague, the crossing of Spui and De Grote Marktstraat/Kalvermarkt, is busy and complex because of the many different types of transport and because there is nog marking, no signage on the road or on traffic signs. In this scarcely regulated area, people use human communication to safely find their way through the seeming chaos, with any apparent problems. But what if soon autonomous vehicles will appear? Buses and taxis without driver? How will we communicate with them, if there’s no driver to look into the eyes?
In this project we analysed, through field research, the human behaviour and interactions in the crossing, in order to explore the solutions for interactions with non-human road users.
With the introduction of email, sending messages and letters has nog only become easier, but also faster. In general, we experience this as an optimisation and improvement of the physical letters we used to send. yet, sending mail on paper, in an envelope, certainly had its charm that we rarely experience any longer. This project is a search for new forms of communication that function with modern technology but retain the type of charm that hand-written paper post possessed. It appears to be difficult to let go of existing metaphors and known forms of interaction.
Buskers, musicians in the street, receive donations in cash, but society is rapidly moving towards plastic money or virtual payment methods. What to do when no-one has coins in their pockets? The challenge in this project is to create a convincing, robust and reliable payment method that can be used quickly and effectively by passers-by to make small donations to buskers The results from this project were surprisingly versatile.
The government of the municipality of The Hague has a strong need to bridge the gap between government and population. This relates to the political trend towards a participatory society where citizens increasingly take responsibility for their own wellbeing and that of their fellows. The question here, is how to stimulate and facilitate citizens to do this. How can the municipality meet the needs of citizens? What needs to be changed to make sure citizens feel at home and involved in their neighbourhood?
In collaboration with the Social Design Lab and with students from The Hague University of Applied Sciences, we explored solutions in service design that invite inhabitants to participate in thinking and doing in their neighbourhood.
