In 2017, when I was involved as a guest lecturer in one of the Master’s course of Industrial Design Engineering at UT, Wessel Fletterman, Folkert Prins, Joran van der Sluis and Mark Zwart started working on an idea of reducing loneliness among elderly. They came up with a very cool idea of bridging the gap between analogue interaction and the fast modern world. To achieve this, the group worked on a translation between analogue and digital communication through which elderly people can get connected to their loved ones. The idea was to help the elderly people to be able to post a letter, which is then automatically interpreted and sent as a chat message to the recipient, and chat messages to elderly should be printed in a readable letter format.

Starting as a university project and developed further, the group presented their demonstration prototype at the Mind the Step exhibition during Dutch Design Week. 

It is my pleasure to be involved in the supervision team of this great teamwork!

(Above description is inspired by the project idea’s Vimeo description, credits to Mark Zwart)