Out of It ('De Weg Kwijt') is a dutch education boardgame created for the Utrecht School of Art and Technolgy project 'Drugs & the City'. With Out of It, our target group, youth in the age of 12 to 17 years, learns about a variety of different drugs and the effects and the risks that come with the abuse of these drugs.
The player battles up to five other players to lose his or hers drugscards first. Weed, XTC, speed, and heroine are among the drugs featured in the game. Once a player decides to use one of the drugs in his hands a die will decide if the player will experience a positive or negative effect. Each drug has its own ratio of risks and opportunities. It is up to the player to decide which drugs to use and which drugs to lose in some other way throughout the game.
My role in ‘Drugs & the City’ was the design of the game, together with Rami Ismail, playtesting and iteration of the concept and the production of a fully playable prototype of the boardgame.
Imagine puzzling like your life depended on it. Playing The Suitcase is almost like that. With this physical game, the player must dismantle a bomb in a suitcase, by solving several puzzles. Real bomb squad qualities are required: a steady hand, knowledge of foreign languages, a cunning mind and of course a good amount of luck.
The Suitcase was created as a seminar project for the Utrecht School of Art and Technology. Several mini-games, but also a detonation system and of course a timer were designed for the Suitcase and later produced with Arduino, sensors and other hardware.
During the two weeks of the project I worked on several prototypes and physical designs and the external and internal art of the Suitcase.
Fresh Wind is an interactive installation made for project ‘Design for Space’. The assignment was to design and create an installation for the public space that added to the the user’s experience with that specific location. My role in this project was the design and iteration of the installation, as well as some managing and organisational tasks.
The chosen location was, in our case, the passage that leads from the Utrecht railway station to Jaarbeurs Utrecht (a venue for events and congresses). Between the rush of the railway station and Jaarbeurs, the passage has a more quiet atmosphere, which is generally experienced as very pleasant.
With Fresh Wind we used the sound and movement of leaves to complete this peaceful experience. As if the user is walking through leaves, the system detects were someone is walking and will create a flow of leaves at this location. This flow will follow the user along the entire hallway.
Knåcke is the result of a minor Industrial Product Design at the Hague University. The assignment was to design and create a chair for toddlers that can both be adjusted to the growth of the child and can collapse to the maximum size of 90 x 60 x 25 cm.
The three adjustable parts of the chair: the seat, the table and the foot support can be set at any height, making the chair fit even 5 or 6 year olds. The collapsible function of the chair works with a spring: the horizontal and diagonal legs of the chair can easily be ‘clicked’ together for storage. The design of this system was my main focus during the project.
At the end of the project, after only 8 weeks, Knåcke was tested with children form a nursery, where the chair proved to be very stable and highly functional.