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Delft Design Stories

13 March 2025

Valedictory interview with Peter Vink: “I'm continually surprised by what designers know”

Professor of Environmental Design Peter Vink has spent decades working on the development of new products and environments that have a proven effect on comfort, performance, and health. What are the highlights of his career? How are the challenges of ergonomics and aviation evolving? Where is industrial design going in the future? Find out in this interview. Following a special Symposium on Vehicle Comfort and Design, Professor Vink gave his valedictory address at TU Delft on Friday 7 March 2025.

16 April 2024

How design can help local governments better serve their communities

Governments increasingly see the value of design practices in public service and policy issues, but there are obstacles when it comes to implementation. As an emerging field, there is not much knowledge on design in the public sector. Through her PhD research, Ahmee Kim set out to explore what hinders design for policy practices and how embedding design in organisations can create value, helping local governments to better serve their communities.

15 March 2024

A train car design for day and night

Did you ever watch the film 'Murder on the Orient Express'? Inspector Hercule Poirot tries to solve the mysterious murder of an American businessman on the infamous night train. The film paints a very romantic picture of the night train, but is that still the case? "Actually, the business case of the night train doesn’t quite stack up," explains IDE Alumnus Annabelle Out. That’s why Annabelle designed a carriage interior for both day and night trains for engineering firm Royal HaskoningDHV.

11 March 2024

Feminist AI: transforming and challenging the current Artificial Intelligence (AI) Industry

The Feminist Generative AI Lab is started by the Convergence-programme AI, Data & Digitalisation, and is led by Sara Colombo at the TU Delft. Feminist AI offers a new perspective on the AI industry by challenging the notion that AI design, development, and deployment should be guided by – and should mainly benefit, a limited group of individuals, predominantly from Western male backgrounds. Colombo advocates for other voices in data science and AI.

20 February 2024

IDE Alumnus Simon van der Jagt: “Designers give meaning to technology”

Simon van der Jagt is founder of green chip company Nowi. He sees great value of designers in the tech sector. "The university has so much knowledge. But what concrete problem is being solved for people? Where and when is technology the solution? Designers ask the right questions."

14 February 2024

Becoming healthier through smart game design

Valentijn Visch designs solutions to motivate people to pay attention to their health. For this, he uses techniques such as game design and interactive storytelling. Collaboration with researchers inside and outside TU Delft is key for him. "More and more health researchers want a designer to join."

13 February 2024

Designing a good fit starts with data

A good fit is desirable with lots of products, but it’s especially important when it comes to something like a ventilation mask for young children. However, it’s hard to design a close-fitting mask without relevant anthropometric data. For her PhD, Lyè Goto collected and analysed a unique and detailed 3D dataset that can support designers in achieving better product sizing for masks and other potential applications.

13 February 2024

Improving implants for a tiny joint with a big impact

From opening a jar, to writing with a pen, or tying shoelaces, thumbs play an important role in enabling numerous daily activities. But due to osteoarthritis, many people experience pain or loss of mobility in the thumb joint, which can limit their ability to function. For her PhD, Helen Yuan aimed to gain deeper insights into the structure and movement mechanics of this joint to help researchers and healthcare professionals improve and develop more effective treatments for patients.

Delft Design Stories

Read the stories of researchers and students at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, and discover the scientific questions on which they work and the solutions they present.

Valedictory interview with Peter Vink: “I'm continually surprised by what designers know”

Professor of Environmental Design Peter Vink has spent decades working on the development of new products and environments that have a proven effect on comfort, performance, and health. What are the highlights of his career? How are the challenges of ergonomics and aviation evolving? Where is industrial design going in the future? Find out in this interview. Following a special Symposium on Vehicle Comfort and Design, Professor Vink gave his valedictory address at TU Delft on Friday 7 March 2025.

Researcher and student collaborate to build pumptrack

Thursday afternoon, 23 January. The day is cool, the sun veiled, and the breeze fresh. There is more activity than usual in the square in front of TU Delft's Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Two undulating structures are lined up next to one another. They are being fastened together by two men – researcher Jelle Joustra and IPD MSc student Jesse Pupping. They are assembling a pumptrack, part of which is comprised of discarded wind turbine blades. ‘Today we are testing whether the structure holds up,’ Jesse says.

User-centred design for ambulance assistance tool

Pressure on ambulance staff and healthcare providers is increasing as ambulances have to be dispatched more often, and sometimes unnecessarily. To help them determine when treatment is urgent, some hospitals in the Hollands-Midden region have started working on a prehospital consultation triage tool. For her SPD graduation project, designer Joska Stoorvogel compiled how this tool could be designed in a service blueprint, based on end-user requirements.

A how-to guide for designing better digital health solutions

When it comes to managing health, more and more people are turning to digital health solutions. But despite technological advances, there are still certain challenges with using these tools. IDE PhD candidate Tingting Wang, together with her research team, has created a user-friendly, step-by-step guide that helps designers increase the quality of care in digital health by understanding, evaluating, and improving the digital patient experience.

New vaginal speculum design might motivate women to go for health checkups

Around 35% of women experience shame, fear or pain linked to vaginal examinations. One of the causes is how the vaginal speculum tool is designed. That is why TU Delft graduate Ariadna Izcara Gual and researcher Tamara Hoveling designed a new speculum, called ‘Lilium’, with benefits for patients and health professionals and the environment. “I hope this design motivates woman to get their health checkup,” Ariadna says. The project is now seeking partners to take the innovation further.

A human-centred design approach to self-driving vehicles

Self-driving vehicles are a hot topic amongst mobility experts. Some foresee a golden future. One with more possibilities for social interactions, safer roads, and fewer parking spaces allowing for more greenery. Others are more cautious, researching measures to ensure traffic safety. “Tech development is accelerating,” explains Nicole van Nes, professor at TU Delft. “It is important to align it with our societal goals and to make sure that safety is embedded. We need a user centred approach to achieve this.”

Experimenting with multipurpose textiles

Look around you. What’s on your back? What are you sitting on? What’s hanging in the windows? You guessed it – textiles. They are all around us. But the textile industry has a significant impact on our environment. “What if we start using our textiles in a more interactive way. Would we use them longer?” wonders design researcher Alice Buso.