Dr. ir. A. Freudenthal (Adinda)

Associate Professor

Biography

Industrial Design Engineer from the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft.
Dissertation (1999) about the designing of home appliances for young and old consumers – emphasis on user interfaces.
From 2000 specializing on healthcare.
Dr. ir. A. Freudenthal is in charge of ‘Intelligent Healthcare’ program, which focuses on cognitive systems engineering for complex information intensive medical systems. Essential is the development of collaborative co-design methods to integrate expertise from medical users/experts with technological and Human Factors. Research about user centred design methods is case based in collaboration with more than 60 partners (hospitals/ companies/ academic partners). Examples of ‘Intelligent Healthcare’ research are Augmented Reality and Silent Alarming for surgery, intensive care and radiotherapy.

Education

Bachelor courses:

• Interaction and electronics (coach)
• Bachelor End Project (research coach)

Masters electives:

• Telematics Products and Services Design (responsible professor)
• Cognitive ergonomics for designers (responsible professor)

Experience

Research and Design:

• Designing user interfaces and linked intelligence for personalized and context dependent responses – special intest in the elderly and the handicapped
• Prototyping to test such interfaces
• Usability and user experience testing
• User centred design of emerging medical device technologies, e.g. imaging and robotic aids for minimally invasive surgery and intervention radiology
• Development of co-design methods: e.g. of community-based co-design
• Management of development/research projects
• Various courses teaching Ma students all the above.

Dutch grants for the program are from STW for ‘The interventional cockpit’ - User Interface and technical development for 4D ultrasound, from Senter Novem to improve usability and safety design of respiratory devices and from NWO/SANPAD to develop communication devices for the Deaf in South Africa. A previous EU grant was ARIS*ER Augmented Reality in Surgery, Marie Curie RTN network http://www.ariser.info/.

Specialisation/Field of research

Domain: Design of ICT-involved (medical) socio-technical systems

Design phases:

• Earliest design phases: Identification of design target and early concept generation
• Radical concept generation: finding solutions for healthcare. Examples are: silencing alarms, image guidance for minimally invasive surgery and intervention radiology, communication tools for Deaf to hearing communication.

Methods:

• Action research
• Prototyping for user testing, in the lab and in medical practice and conducting tests.
• Cognitive systems engineering
• Collaborative co-design (multidisciplinary design with multiple engineering backgrounds, human factors/industrial design and medical).

Publications

Click here for an overview of my publications.