Professional Doctorate in Engineering with Smart Sock Design at Eindhoven University of Technology

This project aims to explore intelligent wearable technology that will monitor the healing process after surgically treated fractures. Currently treatment is based on generic and historically based advice on the healing process, but not on a specific evidence regarding the healing of each patient. A sock or other device that will be able to measure the quality of the weight bearing and other parameters relating to the healing process, will enable evidence based treatment allowing physicians to tailor and optimize advice to different patients. This PDEng is part of a collaborative project, with engineers and clincial experts that will develop a working prototype of this device and evaluate its effectiveness, and wearability. The PDEng candidate will have extensive collaborations with project partners like Maastricht University and Adelante Zorgroep.

The candidate will work for twelve months on the PDEng project and will follow courses on User System Interaction during the remainder of the appointment. See www.usitue.nl for more information on the program. Upon successful completion the candidate will be awarded a Professional Doctorate in Engineering degree (PDEng).

Candidates should have a background in an area relating to interaction design (e.g., industrial design, software engineering, human computer interaction), andexperiencet in the design and/or development mobile applications. Candidates will be embedded in a multi-disciplinary team consisting of computer scientists, industrial designers, and medical doctors.

USI Program structure

The program consists in a course component and a project component. The course work is structured into modules of two or three weeks in which topics from different disciplines are taught, e.g. user experience, interaction technologies, user research methodologies, user interface system technologies and understanding user needs. This part of the curriculum includes interactive workshops, working lectures, practical training, individual and group assignments, self-study, experiment set-ups and laboratory work for design and evaluation. Furthermore, professional development courses are an important part of the curriculum. In the last part of the regular curriculum trainees work in small project teams on a design case, in which they apply their knowledge and skills to a concrete problem from a project outside the USI program.

Career perspective

USIs are trained in user-centered design methodologies. They focus on preventing user problems and are equipped with knowledge to come up with solutions that support users at work or at home with their information, communication and entertainment activities. In short, the USI designer's field of work is the design and development trajectory of user system interactions for new products, services, and systems. With this background, such designers become part of multidisciplinary design teams within industry, business services, or government institutions.
Examples of positions: user experience designer, usability engineer, usability consultant, human factors engineer, information architect, customer insight specialist etc.

Further details:
https://www.academictransfer.com