Ir. D.P. Saakes (Daniel)

Assistant Professor 
Industrial Design Engineering

Biography

Daniel Saakes MSc. is trained as an industrial designer at Delft University of Technology. He worked at Sara in Amsterdam in their CAVE virtual reality setup to improve the user experience of architectural walkthroughs. There he realized that fidelity is not about nice graphics only and that the most interesting concepts reside in a mix of the virtual and physical. Although he learned to work with c++ he was able to do most prototyping without much programming.
He worked as a proactive freelancer on tangible/electronic toys and sports applications. The inexpensive motion sensing technology that he developed for a tangible kung fu toy is nowadays used in music toys and golf products. During this period he got hooked to experiential prototyping with electronics and phidgets. Daniel now works in Delft as a teacher/ researcher and is writing his PhD thesis regarding "exploring materials in product design". The prototypes used in his project have been shown at various exhibition.
Daniel likes gaming, mountaineering and extreme gardening.

Specialisation / field of research

Daniel works in the field of design research:

• experiential prototyping
• design visualisation
• augmented reality
• interactive prototypes

Lectures and/or coaches students on:

• ID5211 Elective Computer visualisation for Designers
  http://studiolab.io.tudelft.nl/compvis/
• ID4135 Advanced Design Support
• ID422 Interactive Technology Design
• ID4210, Product Understanding, Use and Experience
• IO3010 Cross media interaction design
• IO3030 Visual communication
• Graduation projects

Publications

Click here for an overview of my publications.