Armağan Karahanoğlu

5 new papers published!

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Fri, 06 May 2022 14:37:55 +0000

I am thrilled to announce that the below-listed articles has been published in the first half of 2022. I thank all the reviewers, participants and colleagues for their contribution to these results!

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Ozkaramanlı, D. Karahanoğlu, A, Verbeek, P. (2022). Reflecting on Design Methods and Democratic Technology Development: The Case of Dutch Covid-19 digital contact tracing application. Published (in July 2022) online in She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation

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Coskun, A., & Karahanoğlu, A. (2022). Data Sensemaking in Self-Tracking: Towards a New Generation of Self-Tracking Tools. Published online in International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (in May 2022).

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Ekhtiar, T., Gouveia, R, Karahanoğlu, A. & Ludden, G. (2022). Reflection During Goal Setting: An Analysis of Popular Personal Informatics Apps. Published online in Design Research Society Conference Digital Library, Bilbao, Spain, June, 2022.

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Overdijk, R., Iren, D., & Karahanoğlu, A. (2022). Investigating the Design Opportunities for Mood Self-Tracking and Regulating with Moodie. Published online in Design Research Society Conference Digital Library, Bilbao, Spain, June, 2022.

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Karahanoğlu, A. (2022). Psychological Effects of Energy Gels: An investigation into Runners’ Energy Gel Choice and Consumption Strategies in Marathon Running. Published (in April 2022) in International Journal of Food Design.

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If you are interesting in chatting about these papers (or any other papers), hit me up!

Awarded with DesignLab Research Fellows Fund

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 11:03:41 +0000

I am happy to announce that in October 2021, I received the University of Twente, DesignLab Research Fellows fund. With this funding, I aim to explore the underexplored roles of design in personal digital health data communication. The knowledge I will gain will pave the way for future research into data literacy.

To achieve this, I will address the research question of “What roles can design practice undertake to improve health data literacy?” To address this question, I will carry out workshops and interviews with people with various expertise (e.g., health scientists, behavioural scientists, design researchers).

Most importantly, I will collaborate with different user groups of personal health data (e.g., children, people with visual impairment, athletes) and carry out focus groups to understand their challenges of understanding the health data they are provided. The facilities of Design Lab will be used to carry out these workshops and focus groups. The results will constitute rich insights, and shed light on creating an initial conceptual framework of “health data communication” and accompanying requirements for further deployment of data communication through design.

Are you a UT master student (of IDE, I-Tech or related programmes) who is interested working in this project?

Please do not hesistate to contact me: a.karahanoglu(at)utwente.nl

Last update: 3 November 2021

ICED’21 paper receives “Reviewers’ Favorite” award!

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 21:24:00 +0000

In 2020, University of Twente, Industrial Design Engineering Master’s graduate, Ceri Kamoen worked with Twente Miliue in her graduation assignment to understand citizens’ waste separation behaviour and the strategies that could guide design studies to promote it. Happy to hear that her work, co-authored by me, was accepted to be presented in ICED2021, International Conference on Engineering Design and received reviewers’ favorite award! This award was given to the top 10% of the papers presented in ICED 2021.

In the paper, we reviewed and combined theory with strategies and factors of waste separation behaviour to arrive at citizen profiles. We combined the notion of (1) Self-Determination Theory, and it’s adjunct-theories, with (2) behaviour intervention strategies and (3) the drivers that affect waste separation at home.

Our analysis showed that waste separation at home is complicated due to the interplay between various involved and interwoven factors. We admit that this societal challenge cannot be solved with single-solutions. We showed that different strategies can be combined to design interventions to increase the quality of waste separation at home. You may download the article by following this link.

New journal article: Sports-tracker use in goal-setting

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Wed, 26 May 2021 06:45:43 +0000

I am happy to announce that our paper, co-authored by Ruben Gouveia, Jasper Reenalda and Geke Ludden, has been published in Sensors MDPI, open access. Click here to access the article.

The article entitled “How Are Sports-Trackers Used by Runners? Running-Related Data, Personal Goals, and Self-Tracking in Running” was supported Pride and Prejudice project by the 4TU.Federation.

In this paper research, we explored the roles that sports trackers and running-related data play in runners’ personal goal achievement. A two-week diary study and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 22 runners to explore how runners engage with their running-related data to set and achieve their running goals. Our study provides insights into the psychological effects of running-related data and signals practical implications for runners and developers of tracking technology.

Design and Meaning – 2021

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 07:58:54 +0000

Dear Student,
Thank you for your interest in the online survey of Design and Meaning course.
I reached a sufficient number of responses to arrive at conclusions about the course.
Please do not hesistate to contact me if you have any suggestions.

All the best!
Armağan

Qualified as “senior university teacher”

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 07:56:00 +0000

I am happy to announce that on 1 April 2021, I received my Senior University Teaching Qualification (SUTQ) from the University of Twente and four universities of technology in the Netherlands (4TU). I received this qualificiation with my educational research project in which I developed peer-testing approach to teach how to identify and evaluate the opportunities for designing meaningful experiences.

What is Senior Teaching University Qualification? (SUTQ)

The SUTQ offers teachers the opportunity to work on an educational innovation project of their own choice. Through conducting this project, the researcher develop competencies in using evidence-informed approaches in education, and in participating in a community of practice where ideas and experiences are shared with peers within and outside the university. More information about the SUTQ trajectory at University of Twente can be found here.

What was my SUTQ project about?

During my SUTQ process, I explored the necessity and challenges of teaching experience design in higher education. I hypothesized that peer-assessment could be a suitable method to achieve the goals of this project. To test my hypothesis, I explored the possibilities of peer-assessment to teach experience design evaluation.

By developing a peer-testing method, I addressed one of these challenges, teaching how to assess experience design. I applied this method in the Design and Meaning course of Industrial Design Engineering bachelors’ programme in two consecutive years (2019 and 2020).

What is peer-testing?

In peer-testing activity, students, working in groups undertake two roles: designer and assessor. The designer groups present their interactive prototypes to the assessor groups.

The assessor groups undertake the user role, in which they experience the interactive prototypes as if they were the users of the designed experiences. The assessor groups then assess the experience design and provide feedback to the designer groups, as if they were the experience design experts.

After the peer-testing, the assessor groups are asked to write detailed feedback about the experience design and provide evidence for the designer group’s assessment results.

To prepare the students for this activity, I employed peer-feedback and evaluation-preparation sessions during the course. In 2019, the peer-testing activity was possible to be held on campus. However, in 2020, due to the worldwide Coronavirus outbreak, peer-testing had to be moved to online platforms. Unluckily, this was right before the students finalised their product prototypes. I also reflected on this challenge in my report and extrapolated the possibilities for applying peer-testing in online platforms.

Results from both years showed that peer-testing could significantly contribute to the evaluation-related learning goals of experience design courses when the students were provided sufficient guidance.

My conclusion was that peer-testing could be a method for teaching experience design evaluation in higher education design courses.

Value of SUTQ

During SUTQ, I got a more profound knowledge of peer-assessment and peer-testing tools and learned and developed a peer-testing approach to assess experience design works. My end goal was to contribute to the body of knowledge in experience design. I learned in the process that my personality as a design researcher affects my perception of how an education designer and educational researcher should be.

I was not born as a designer, researcher, nor teacher. My experience as a “design researcher” is more than my experience as a “design teacher.” I know how to carry out design research, but it turns into a challenging task to teach design.

To address this challenge, I combined my design research knowledge with my research interests in teaching in higher education. Making the below table, I illustrate my teaching vision by comparing the key strengths of being a good teacher with a design researcher.

A design researcher should;	*A good design teacher in higher education should;*
Value the human-centred research.	Value student-centred learning and search for ways to empower students.
Be flexible about the circumstances of the research.	Be flexible about students’ needs and expectations.
Seek novel ways of conducting research	Seek new means of delivering teaching, be open to using novel technologies in education.
Do proper plans to conduct research fluently.	Do the planning of the course and the lectures so that the learning process will go smoothly.
Always stay up-to-date in terms of topics of design research.	Update the contents of the courses by following the developments in the design field.
Communicate research outcomes properly.	Listen to students and improve teaching by taking the student feedback into account.

The strengths that I listed in the table are parallel to what I see myself as a teacher and education researcher. Learning is a life-long process and cannot be achieved only in-class lectures. Lectures in high education are the basis of understanding, but those should not be regarded as the core of learning.

Every student is unique in their needs. That’s why the teachers in higher education should be flexible in mixing the learning modalities by seeking new means of delivering knowledge, such as virtual environments, live classrooms, feedback, and peer learning. I believe in student-based learning, which should be supported with the teacher’s flexibility and creativity. I acknowledge that the project-based learning notion of the University of Twente is a very effective way of learning in that sense. It involves the active involvement of students in their learning. This enables the students to gain knowledge and skills at the same time while learning at an academic level rather than mere training.

I carry out research on the topics that I enjoy reading and writing. It turned out that reading up about educational design and the “psychology of learner” is what I like to do more. I believe my expertise in experience design has now been strengthened with the lessons learned in my SUTQ. I am confident that my SUTQ report has several learning points for both myself and future design educators.

I will be happy to share my SUTQ report if you are interested!

Trailer Alert!

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 20:44:54 +0000

Are you interested in the cool Design and Behaviour Change course of Human-Technology Relations master’s track Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) Programme at the University of Twente?

The below trailer has been prepared for the prospective masters’ students who are curious about the topics of Design and Behaviour Change course of the University of Twente. Check it out!

Upcoming CHI – LBW Paper

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 08:26:40 +0000

University of Twente, Industrial Design Engineering and Interaction Technology MSc students, Fredrika Åström, Jules Verkade and Thijs de Kleijn worked on the effects of seasons on people’s physical activity fluctutions and came up with “Seasons” self-management tool in our Design and Behaviour Change MSc course. Happy to hear that the work, co-authored by me, has been accepted to CHI2021, the top Human-Computer Interaction publication venue (h5-index=95), as Late-Breaking Work Paper (LBW).

In the paper, we explored how self-tracking tools could support realistic goal-setting and help individuals circumvent significant (re)lapses into sedentary behaviour, by acknowledging and managing seasonal barriers to PA. Two research questions guided our study: (1) How do barriers to PA, especially seasonal variability and personal circumstances, influence people’s PA patterns? and (2) How can a tool be designed to promote PA maintenance, by acknowledging the influence of seasonal variability and personal circumstances?

Our findings suggest that existing tracking tools do not identify the barriers that individuals face to remain physically active and do not acknowledge the common occurrence of physical activity variations. By encouraging a compassionate approach to managing unpredictable circumstances in an individual’s life, Seasons recognizes the significant influence of external and internal factors on PA maintenance, such as seasonal variability, a loss of motivation, an injury, a busier work schedule, or a global health crisis such as the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.

Please do not hesitate to send me an email if you are interested in reading unpublished copy of the paper.

Featured in UToday Magazine

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 07:39:45 +0000

As the project coordinators of Project: Human-Product Relations (HPR), my colleague Değer Özkaramanlı and I were interviewed about the results of Project-HPR by UToday Magazine of the University of Twente.

This year’s project was very broad but very familiar. We asked students to design for 1.5 metres university campus. During the interview, we emphasized the role of design in tackling the societal challenges, like Corona crisis.

A snippet of the interview:

“In the Industrial Design Engineering Bachelor’s course Human Product Relations, students are given the task to create a design in which the experience of the user is key. This year’s theme focused on social distancing. ‘We wanted to draw students’ attention to the added value of design’, explains course co-coordinator Deǧer Özkaramanlı. ‘When you enter the campus these days, it seems as if you are entering a hostile environment. Because of all the signs and stickers, it’s no longer a stimulating and carefree learning environment. These measures are necessary, of course, but a good design can make people embrace the rules, instead of imposing an extra cognitive burden on them.’”

Click here to read the interview.

Maraton deneyimleri araştırması

Armağan Karahanoğlu — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 07:57:22 +0000