Melek Akan
User Experience Research & Product Design
PUBLIC PROJECTS
I am a human-centred UX professional with experience in emerging technologies. During my 6+ years of experience, I've worked on several projects as a product designer, user experience designer, user experience researcher.
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Please get in touch for professional projects.
HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION
Topics:Â Speculative Design, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Interaction Design, Explorative Research
This Speculative Design project aimed to explore the autonomous delivery robots’ specific perception of the world through various factors: their purpose, intent, state, mood, personality, attention, responsiveness, intelligence, and capabilities, and through this understanding, design unique robot emotions that will foster them to communicate their unique needs.
MEDICAL DESIGN
Topics: Product Design, Interaction Design, User Research, User Experience Design
In the Intensive Care Units (ICU), nurses, patients, and their visitors all strive for the patient's recovery. The ICU is a working and healing environment, accommodating people with different needs and behaviours. To do so, patients need to sleep, and nurses need to consult with colleagues or visitors. The noise caused by multiple auditory behaviours makes intensive patients unable to sleep well, negatively influencing their health. To improve the sound quality in the ICU, the Critical Alarms Lab at TU Delft initiated research projects and design projects in recent years in collaboration with the Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam.
PARCEL DELIVERY
Topics: User Experience Research, Product Design, Interaction Design, User Experience Design
Online grocery delivery is a fast-growing sector, especially in developed European countries. As technology facilities improve, it is easier to order products everywhere with an online connection. This higher accessibility of technology changed shopping habits from in-store shopping to online shopping. This product focuses on designing the optimal combination of shelves in the vehicle and boxes of grocery delivery packages. The aim is to examine the efficiency of space to fit more boxes in one vehicle while considering the cost of production of the delivery boxes.
LONELINESS AMONG IMMIGRANT ELDERLY
Topics: User Experience Research, Participatory Design, Co-Creation, Contextual Mapping
Elderly people with a migration background often poses psychosocial problems, including loneliness. Leaving the homeland is an intense life event. So not only do they lose close contact with family and friends, but they are also confronted with other manners, customs and beliefs, a different eating culture, landscape and climate, and a different language. Culture shock often occurs in the new country. TU Delft and Delft Municipality collaborate on this project to help the elderly create meaningful connections in their daily interactions.
ZEN DESIGN
Topics: Product Design, Interaction Design, User Research, Mindfulness
This project focuses on creating a mindful form of serving coffee inspired by Turkish coffee drinking rituals. The concept focuses on developing three emotions; feeling excited, relieved, and receptive. These emotions encourage users to communicate more openly and trustfully. The interaction needs only two people; a listener and a storyteller. They are invited to play with the sand to create a deeper level of connection with each other while enjoying a cup of coffee.
EMOTION DESIGN
Topics: User Experience Research, User Experience Design, Interaction Design, Speculative Design
Anxiety is a subjectively unpleasant feeling of dread over things to come. When people do not have control over what will happen and how it will happen, they feel nervous and anxious. This project focuses on demonstrating the emotions of anxiety during the snack eating experience by analyzing elements that cause anxiety and the results of anxious behaviour.
ONLINE DATING APP
Topics: Co-Creation, Participatory Design, Co-Design
Breeze, a dating app founded by students of IDE and EWI of TU Delft, set out to make online dating more human again. Breeze team wants to encourage people to meet each other face to face instead of spending endlessly swiping and chatting on their phones. It is easier for people to meet their aim to get rid of the pressure and expectations associated with dating since dating should be like a Breeze. For this project, I have facilitated a workshop for the Breeze team to discover pathways to connect people online.
Let’s
Connect!
Thank you for reading so far!
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If you have any questions, feedback, or just want to chat, or if you’d simply like to learn more about my professional projects, feel free to reach out.
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