Hands-on experience: working together to create useful gadgets

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Nina Binder sits in the workshop of the Institute of Computer Science. One week before her final presentation, the 24-year-old has a problem: the air pump in her prototype has stopped responding. The workbench in front of her is something of a mess: a breadboard bristling with wires, a microcontroller, two power banks, and … a limp bead-filled balloon that is not supposed to be limp. “It’s actually meant to reduce stress and panic,” says Arzu-Sayan Aslan, 26, as he joins her at the workbench. Together with fellow LMU student Milos Veljovic, 28, they are developing a gadget for people who are afraid of flying. “We asked ourselves how we could recreate the feeling of having one’s hand held when there’s no-one else there,” explains Binder. Their answer is a modified stress ball that responds to hand pressure and continually reinflates. Or at least is supposed to …

For more than ten years, students from a wide variety of disciplines have been developing prototypes in the block course “Experience Design.” The set topics, which change from year to year, have included connectedness in times of Covid-19, experience design with babies, and this year’s edition: airports and air travel. It is always about using technology to meet human needs and generate positive experiences. Or as lecturer Dr. Daniel Ullrich from the Chair of Media Informatics puts it: “VR goggles only work if somebody wants to wear them.” Together with Sarah Diefenbach Professor of Economic Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction at LMU, Ullrich wants to demonstrate what happens when we combine media informatics with psychology.

Für die Studierenden, so Ullrich, sei das Praktikum oftmals ein Kulturschock. In den meisten Kursen wird ein Problem präsentiert und die Lösung anschließend nach einem bestimmten Kriterienkatalog abgearbeitet. Im Experience Design laufe das ein bisschen anders: offener, kreativer und ja, auch arbeitsintensiver. „Man geht eher wie ein Detektiv oder eine Detektivin auf Spurensuche”, sagt Ullrich. Die Studierenden führen Interviews, sammeln positive Erlebnisse, identifizieren Muster, erarbeiten eine Produktidee und machen sich dann an die Arbeit mit den Prototypen.

Internship „Experience Design“: Finding solutions together

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For the students, Ullrich explains, the practical is often a culture shock. In most courses, students are presented with a problem and work out the solution according to a defined set of criteria. In Experience Design, the process is more open, more creative, and, yes, more work-intensive. “It’s more like a detective looking for clues,” says Ullrich. Students conduct interviews, collect positive experiences, identify patterns, develop a product idea, and then get to work on their prototypes.

Back in the workshop, saws and earmuffs hang on the wall, and it smells of wood. Binder leans over the jumble of cables in front of her and says: “It’s a bit like cooking.” If you are lucky, she explains, then somebody has already tried the dish and uploaded the recipe to a forum. “If there’s no recipe, then you have to try it yourself.” And that takes time: buying the right ingredients, finding the cooking utensils, seasoning to taste. Several days have already gone into the stress ball. Binder summarizes the process as follows: “You don’t know anything. You have to ask a load of questions, and in the end it works.”

But for now the pump simply refuses to work. Binder grabs the multimeter that Veljovic has just fetched from the tech workshop next door. Maybe it’s a power issue? She connects the air pump to the power bank and checks the reading: five volts, steady, correct. “Too bad,” says computer science student Veljovic. For the prototype, he had 3D-printed a perfectly fitting black enclosure from instructions he programmed himself. Now he has no idea why the technology is suddenly failing. Perhaps an error in the code? After all, this is what ultimately determines how the individual parts interact. “Coding is all about writing logic,” observes Binder. The code itself is straightforward: one page, 76 lines, just two hours of work with the help of the chatbot Claude. The trio of students huddle over the laptop, run the program again, and suddenly there is a vibration. The pump springs into life, the balloon inflates, rejoicing breaks out. “Again,” says Binder and presses the button that is supposed to actuate the pump. Nothing.

At the interim presentation a few hours ago, everything was still working. Binder and her team presented their “haptic handhold” to the rest of the course. Having discussed their storyboard, they described the interview that sparked the idea in the first place: An acquaintance of Veljovic’s was afraid of flying, making travel an awkward business. But one time, so his acquaintance told him, it was all different. Before takeoff, the pilot made an extra announcement in a reassuring tone. Suddenly he felt less anxious and safer. A feeling of control. And it is precisely this feeling that Binder’s team wants to recreate with the modified stress ball.

Exactly the right approach, reckons economic psychologist Diefenbach, who supervises the course with Daniel Ullrich. “The students must have a clear idea of the need they are trying to fulfill,” she says. This can be safety and control, for example, but also things like belonging, connectedness, and the feeling of being appreciated. Only when students have worked out the core of the positive experience can they develop a prototype designed specifically to achieve it. The rest is left up to the students. “We give them a lot of freedom so as not to suffocate the creative process,” explains Ullrich.

“Puffy: Your Flight Companionr”

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One week later, Binder is in a seminar room at the Institute of Computer Science, rummaging around in two cardboard boxes. The final presentation is due to begin in a few minutes. In the meantime, the problem with the air pump has been resolved – an incorrectly inserted cable was the culprit. Binder takes out the finished prototype: a shiny yellow stress ball with a rubbery fringe. Sort of a tactile upgrade on the inflated balloon. “We decided to lean into the cute,” notes team colleague Aslan. What emerged is Puffy: Your Flight Companion.

Ullrich thinks this was a wise decision: “Puffy has got something we call ‘affordance’ in psychology,” something that invites us to play and interact. Basically, Puffy looks so cute that everyone wants to touch it. And this is exactly what happens now. The yellow stress ball is passed through numerous hands, prompting much grinning, squeezing, and general enthusiasm. “Delightful,” says a student. “It’s so cute!” says another. “I’m impressed,” remarks Professor Diefenbach, observing that the concept had been narrowed down, focused on the key functions, and that everything had been done correctly.

A former flight attendant is part of the expert jury, which gives feedback after the concept presentations. She talks about a toolkit that is standard equipment for every crew, containing everything that could become important during a journey: headache tablets, little gifts, tissues. “Wouldn’t it be great in the future if the kit included two Puffies.” It is certainly not outside the realms of possibility. The results of the practical are often incorporated into scholarly papers by Diefenbach and Ullrich and prepared for real-world applications – for the Munich public transport company MVG, for instance. The topic that time was Respectful Technologies and the project sought to prevent pushing and jostling when boarding the subway.

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A few minutes after the final presentation, Binder and Veljovic are back in the workshop next door. Before they definitively hand in the project, they want to make a few final improvements. Binder is inspecting a cable under a magnifying glass and consulting with Veljovic. Time for a recap: For two weeks, the students have been working on this one project, conducting interviews, developing a concept, drawing storyboards, programming, building a prototype, and shooting a product video. How are they feeling now that the work is done? After all the workshop hours, presentations, and planning?

“I’ve got more hope again,” says Veljovic, who went straight into the workforce after his bachelor’s degree. For a year, he worked as a programmer for a geological company, computing data for construction projects, analyzing how deep posts have to be driven into the ground for everything to be stable – things like that. At some stage during this period, he realized that he had an awful lot left to learn. But he did not really feel like it. “For me, studying was one thing above all: being alone.” Lectures, theory, and each man and woman for themselves. But here, in this project, they were a team. And not just for a few hours, but for an extended period. It was clear from the outset: We are doing this together and we are not stopping until we have created something. “This is precisely what it should be about,” says Veljovic. Binder agrees: “Studying should be a lot more like this. Struggling together, finding solutions together.”