Interaction design at Aalborg University
Interaction design (IxD) is the practice of designing digital or physical products, systems, and services that provide engaging and meaningful experiences for users. It focuses on how users interact with products and how products respond to users, with the goal of creating a positive and effective user experience. IxD involves considering the user's needs, goals, and behaviors, as well as the context in which the product will be used, to create intuitive, usable, and desirable designs. It draws on principles from psychology, human-computer interaction, and design to create products that are not only functional but also enjoyable and satisfying to use.
First year as an Interaction designer
The first year at AAU was an introduction of what IxD was capable off. The first project was design understanding, where we worked on making Kino.dk a better website by interacting with users through usability labs and making them go through tasks to find improvements of the website.
The project after was design alternatives, where the subject for the project was about food sustainability. We designed an appliaction in Adobe XD where the application helped the user, to make food from foods that is about to expire in the fridge. It will be able to generate recipes from the foods that will expire soon. The purpose of the application is to fight food waste. To design this project it got through different iterations to design the application.
The first programming courses that we got introduced to was DMG(The mathematical basis of computer science), which are about the theoretical perspective of how a computer and programming languages operates and how different functions work and how it finds data. Afterwards we had the course Basic Programming, which was a brief introduction to the different languages(HTML, CSS, JS, PHP and MySQL).
Second year as an Interaction designer
The focus for our project with Aalborg Municipality is to work together with users to develop a product that they can benefit the process for international students to get their citizenship. When working with users it is important to getting a good understanding of their needs aswell it was from the municipality and therefore had to create workshops with them and using the right methods to accomplish a succesful workshop. Our product was a prototype made in Adobe XD that resembled what the finish product would look like, if we had to work further on the project.
Our second project was to design and construct a fully functional system. Here we partnered with Aalborg Seaport to make a new Bowling Terminal coded in C#. Aalborg Seaport is using a old system which we thought could use a newly upgrade and use a touchscreen. The new system would have new functions that will make it easier for the customer to order drinks and snacks, and adding a couple of more minutes if they are only a few rounds away from being done with their game .
This year we have course as Imperative programing using C and Object oriented programing using C#. In C was our exam to develop a system that could sort and arrange data from a datasheet. In C# we developed a system that could operate through commands in the terminal so the users could buy products etc.
Last year as an Interaction designer
Our 5th semester project theme was about coming up with our own problem area that needed a solution to be solved. Through the ideationphase, did we go through multiple iterations of ideas and sketches to come up with a problem area and a solution. In our final stage of ideation did we conclude that stress was a major factor and it appeared many times through the ideations. Our main focus was in a work environment in offices that the employees do not use many breaks in and can therefore lead to a stressful atmosphere. Our solution was to use the pomodoro technique into our product. The pomodoro consists of cycles which contains 25 mins of work, and 5 minutes of break and keeps repeating.
The purpose with making this tree that has built in timers was to notify when the user/employee needed a break and to reduce a stressful environment, without disturbing them with an alarm or a sound. To notify the user, they can look at the tree which will be in two stages. The first stage is when the stems are at the top to showcase the user that they have energy to work. The stems will slowly descent which are a metaphore of the users energy is getting drained. When the stems has reached the bottom position, the indicate the user that it is time for a break. The stems will rise to the top, when the user has taken a break.
The bachelor project was in collaboration with a company called Montem located in Århus. The company made a product called cityprobe which can track weather stats and pollution. These probes are located around in Aalborg and other cities. The data that the probes collects can be found here: https://www.cityflow.live/.
Montem wanted a product that could help the citizens to be informed about the data and compare the data between the year. Our final design was a datamap, which has footpedals that will show a type of data when pressed down. When pressed down the map will light up in colors where it will show if there is a high amount of pollution.
