Druktemeter Hilversum

Our team created an ecosystem of products within our customer journey with the goal to make an existing service, called the Druktemeter, become more visible for the citizens of Hilversum.  This project was part of the Master Digital Design (2020-2021) of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences in collaboration with Robot Kittens.‍

Client: Robot Kittens & Smart City Hilversum

Agency: Master Digital Design

My role: Research, Concept development, Installation Design, Experience Design, UI

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About

The city of Hilversum is always trying to stay at the forefront of the digital and data revolution. The municipality developed a service named Druktemeter for the inhabitants to help them move freely and to plan their visits to the city center. However, the citizens of Hilversum do not use this service at the moment. Our task was to help the municipality of Hilversum to make their service on city center crowding more visible and accessible for the citizens. That’s why our team developed products like a data-driven origami within an installation for first encounters with citizens, a Web App for daily use, and campaigns to familiarize locals with the products.

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Data-driven installation

The insights of the research, shows that many citizens do not check an App, before going to the city centre. Our challenge shifted and became more focused on building a physical product that displayed the data of the druktemeter during their journey to the city centre. To familiarize citizens with the data and to refer them to the digital version of the Druktemeter. 

We’ve had many idea’s, from large curtains, light installations, till kinetic art installations. In our lab we experimented with several digital technologies to test which ones would be suitable. We came across origami that is used within several art projects and even by NASA to block the light of stars, so they can look at surrounding planets. This scalable origami shape looked very suitable for our idea of buidling a physical installation to display data. 

The origami flower is connected to a mechanism that makes it open and close based on the received live data - the busier a certain area of the city centre is, the more the flowers in that area of the installation opens up.

The installation, became a showcase with the data-driven origami flowers, based on a grid. On the glass is an abstract version of the map displayed. This map is based on the size of the areas and zones of the druktemeter. We’ve included landmarks and street names within the map. On the back or other side of the glass is a legend of what the states of the flower means. Small is calm, medium sized is lively, and fully expanded means that its busy. 

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Digital platform

The installation and digital Web App are part of a large strategy. To increase the visibility and use a scalable semantics like circles to show crowd density.

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Universal design language

To heighten the level of harmony in both digital and physical ecosystems, we created a full-fletched design language for SmartCityHilversum.The design language, we based on their core principles and will create unity in their brand and within future projects, thereby more presence in the city.  

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The design principles of this system are based on square grids and the golden ratio. They form the base of these recognizable geometric shapes. Geometric shapes that represent the building blocks to build the future of Hilversum.

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To compliment both products, we suggest to launch a social media and marketing strategy with public screens. With the purpose to increase the visibility of both products and increase brand representation within the city. The combination of a physical installation, digital product and marketing make an eco-system of products that compliment each other. 

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Design strategy

All the elements of the ecosystem - the installation, the web app and visuals on social media and on street screens are meant to reach the citizens of Hilversum at different moments of their journey through their city, as well as form a full-fledged design language for our client. The goal of SmartCityHilversum is to engage more with the citizens and to develop new smart solutions and to become the digital capital of the Netherlands. All these factors helped in our decisions to create a strategy consisting of a digital and physical product.

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