Papers by Henri Christiaans
User-Oriented Method as a Way to Humanise the User-Energy Relationship in Public Lighting, 2018
Current public lighting is predominately directed to reducing energy and often is understood as a... more Current public lighting is predominately directed to reducing energy and often is understood as a technical issue rather than a human one, mostly based on photometric visual performance. By taking advantage of the inherent flexibility of current lighting technologies, this research aimed to contribute to a more sustainable lighting design practice, through the design of adaptive lighting solutions that improve the relationship between users, the space they inhabit and energy use. To confirm the hypothesis, it was developed a user-oriented method that considers a specific user-space relationship and the user’s perception of wellbeing. Tested via two outdoor field experiment in an urban space in the south of Portugal, qualitative and quantitative statistical analysis of the collected data, suggest that the method can provide data to aid the design of more tailored and flexible public lighting solutions that can balance the user-energy relationship, improving the overall sustainability of our cities.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Design Studies, 2010
This paper presents an analysis of software design protocols as one of the contributions to the 2... more This paper presents an analysis of software design protocols as one of the contributions to the 2010 international workshop 'Studying Professional Software Design'. The aim of the study described here is to analyse the design process of software designers and to ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
ABSTRACT The current popularity of ‘design thinking’ in business and engineering presupposes an u... more ABSTRACT The current popularity of ‘design thinking’ in business and engineering presupposes an understanding of the decision-making process in design. However, knowledge about designing often does not go deeper than the superficial content of the process phases. In this paper we will discuss decision-making in design by showing the complexity of this hermeneutical process. How are decisions made in design which, first of all, has the nature of a dialogue, based on abductive reasoning in which both intuition and logic play a role? Even more relevant, designing is a multidisciplinary endeavor with players from several fields: designers, economists, lawyers, engineers, psychologists, anthropologists,and marketers. Hence, a designer must work effectively with a team composed of members of different disciplines. Every discipline will have its own way of decision-making according its educational tradition and type of problems to solve. To tune these different approaches in decision-making is the real challenge in developing innovative artifacts. The paper will be based on theoretical notions from literature and on empirical studies performed by the authors in the area of design and business.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
J. of Design Research, 2009
Abstract: This paper presents a comparative study of the design processes of final-year industria... more Abstract: This paper presents a comparative study of the design processes of final-year industrial design students of two countries, the Netherlands and the Portugal, while conducting an individual design task. This task was identical for both groups making this comparison possible ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
CoDesign, 2016
Teacher and student interaction in a design studio setting has always been the basis of design ed... more Teacher and student interaction in a design studio setting has always been the basis of design education. A fundamental difficulty of design education is that the content of these one on one meetings between teacher and students remains remarkably implicit. In this paper we present an explorative study that uses the Design Grammar Model (DGM) as an observational framework for teacher-student interactions. The DGM is rooted on the concept of design grammar that can be broadly defined as the visual language used to design. The study focuses on the industrial design junior students’ meetings with their teacher; our research proceeds from a protocol analysis of the transcripts that are coded according to the DGM. The resulting data is then used to develop a series of diagrams that are employed as a visual analysis tool. The diagrams synthesize and convey large amounts of data that permit immediate analysis and elicit new interpretations. The study resulted in encouraging results regarding the DGM’s potential as an analysis tool for teacher and student interactions, as well as a diagnostic tool for teachers.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Design Studies
This paper presents an analysis of software design protocols as one of the contributions to the 2... more This paper presents an analysis of software design protocols as one of the contributions to the 2010 international workshop ‘Studying Professional Software Design’. The aim of the study described here is to analyse the design process of software designers and to compare the results with that of product designers, an area familiar to the authors. Decision-making is the main focus of this study. A descriptive model of decision-making, developed by the authors, has been used to analyse the protocols of the three software design teams. The results give insight in how software designers process their activities, on the influence of individual or team differences, and what the consequences for their outcomes are.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
While sustainability in Design finds much attention in the literature, the education of sustainab... more While sustainability in Design finds much attention in the literature, the education of sustainability inDesign courses lacks discussion regarding curricula and importance. In an attempt to map the waysustainability is taught in Design Bachelor and Master Courses in the European Union, we begananalysing faculties from a number of EU countries and present the initial results in the form of graphics, and, in addition to that, we discuss curricular contents. Furthermore, we looked at the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014 – an initiative thatcomprehends the UNECE region (that includes several EU member states), which has contributed to publications related to Design and sustainability, in order to understand how it has been (and can be)supporting the education of sustainability in Design. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current practice in sustainability education in Design in the EU context and introduce the development of asustainabil...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
ijg.cgpublisher.com
The paper will describe an experiment done with Dutch and Portuguese design students working insi... more The paper will describe an experiment done with Dutch and Portuguese design students working inside a company for one week. The central aim of this experiment was to observe the students' performance while developing a design process in a real context. Also the fact ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
While sustainability in Design finds much attention in the literature, the education of sustainab... more While sustainability in Design finds much attention in the literature, the education of sustainability inDesign courses lacks discussion regarding curricula and importance. In an attempt to map the waysustainability is taught in Design Bachelor and Master Courses in the European Union, we begananalysing faculties from a number of EU countries and present the initial results in the form of graphics, and, in addition to that, we discuss curricular contents. Furthermore, we looked at the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014 – an initiative thatcomprehends the UNECE region (that includes several EU member states), which has contributed to publications related to Design and sustainability, in order to understand how it has been (and can be)supporting the education of sustainability in Design. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the current practice in sustainability education in Design in the EU context and introduce the development of asustainabil...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
… into Design: Supporting multiple facets of …, 2009
International Conference on Research into Design, ICoRD'09 ... Decision-making in Design: a ... more International Conference on Research into Design, ICoRD'09 ... Decision-making in Design: a comparative study ... Art and Design Department; Faculty of Architecture; Technical University of Lisbon Lisbon, Portugal Tel: +35-(1) 21-3615081 Fax: +31-(1) 21-3625138 email: ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The paper will describe an experiment done with Dutch and Portuguese design students working insi... more The paper will describe an experiment done with Dutch and Portuguese design students working inside a company for one week. The central aim of this experiment was to observe the students' performance while developing a design process in a real context. Also the fact ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Creativity Research Journal, 2002
Page 1. ABSTRACT: One of the most important criteria for per-formance quality in both art and des... more Page 1. ABSTRACT: One of the most important criteria for per-formance quality in both art and design seems to be the creativity of the product. Being original and innovative is by definition a feature of both areas. The primary ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
MX Design Conference 2009 32 Design for social construct & economic growth in the 21st century Pa... more MX Design Conference 2009 32 Design for social construct & economic growth in the 21st century Paulson Letsholo PB Letsholo@ tudelft. nl Henri Christiaans HHCM Christiaans@ tudelft. nl TU Delft, Industrial Design Engineering, Zuid Holland, The Nederland's Shorn ...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Over the past six decades designers and manufacturing companies have been increasingly open to us... more Over the past six decades designers and manufacturing companies have been increasingly open to user-centred approaches that define product designs based on what people need. They realize that it is the only way to satisfy these needs and to give added value to their design. Meanwhile recent studies note that designers are key cultural intermediates and must embody cultural values in the products they design. Research methods have been more and more derived from and shared with social science approaches, one of which is ethnography. The appeal of ethnography to design follows from the recognition by designers that the development of technologies increasingly relies upon an appreciation of the social circumstances in which systems are deployed and used. It allows seeing patterns of behaviour in a real world context, patterns that we can understand both rationally and intuitively. A second development is that people as users or consumers have been given more influence in the design pro...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Papers by Henri Christiaans
From literature review and professional experience, we considered that adaptability was an important technological and design factor to improve public lighting. Proposing the development of a user-oriented method that determines adaptive lighting scenarios for the most adequate and minimum acceptable lighting condition, for a specific user-space relationship, based on the user’s perception of well-being and the assessment of the perceived lighting quality of the scenarios. To support the implementation of the method, the Perceived Luminance Continuity framework was developed as a way to describe the adaptive lighting behaviour pattern. The gathered data - objective and subjective - provide an empirical basis for lighting professionals to design customized solutions.
We hypothesized that the proposed method, would allow the design of more tailored and flexible lighting solutions. Allowing the adjustment of standards based on objective data for a specific user-space relationship. Promoting a more sustainable design practice that give an effective response to the user’s well-being and energy management, improving the nighttime experience.
To test the hypothesis, an outdoor field experiment was conducted as a first case study, in the Village of Arraiolos, Portugal. A second experiment was carried out, aiming to test the consistency of the previous data and confirmation of the primary hypothesis. After analysis and statistical validation of the collected data, we can say that the tendency of choices in both experiments was very similar, meaning that the initial lighting scenarios considered as adequate were real and meaningful, with a high appraisal of lighting quality.
It also showed that there was a relationship between the lighting configuration, visibility distance and the perceptual illusion of a fully lit space. Moreover, it shows that the majority of participants would accept adaptive public lighting, as common practice within the Perceived Luminance Continuity framework.
Based on the results, we concluded that the proposed method is a valid tool for the design of adaptive public lighting solutions. Confirming the primary and secondary hypothesis, showing its relevance in the development of a more sustainable lighting design practice and
improving the sustainability of the urban nighttime space.
results – available by the deadline of this paper – of a
PhD research study on urban lighting design, which is
intended as a contribution to the design process, when
considering adaptive lighting solutions for night-time urban
pedestrian spaces. It uses as a case study Arraiolos,
Portugal. Through a multidisciplinary approach, we are
looking into psychological light perception, such as the
illusion of perceived continuity of luminance.