Tobias Rachl / UX Designer

Table of contents

Case Studies

Kyana – A digital assistant as a virtual employee.

Zeyko Rack – A new approach to kitchen configuration

Systemdialog – Interfaces in the age of artificial intelligence.

Selected Projects

Mercedes-Benz

XR Interface Study

Yuna

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Case StudyKyana

Customer: Koenig & Bauer, Design and SystemsRole & Responsibilites: Project-Lead Chatbot, Digital strategy, Development of a digital assistance system, Pretotyping

Project trailer

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Problem Statement

Customer & product

The labeling systems from Koenig & Bauer Coding GmbH enable industrial customers to print barcodes and best-before dates on a variety of packaging materials and products. In day-to-day operation, the printing machines must prove themselves particularly in terms of printing speed and reliability—failure threatens the efficiency of the entire production chain.

User   Due to their use in a variety of industrial sectors, customers and factory workers do not necessarily have a high level of expertise in the operation of printing machines. Ease of use is the best way to prevent errors in daily use.

Challenge → How can the usability of printing machines in

industrial use be improved? → How can customers be supported in carrying

out maintenance work and troubleshooting independently?

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Development of a Virtual Employee:Kyana

Kyana is an AI-based software solution that engages in dialogue with the customer or production staff using natural language.

As an intelligent assistant, Kyana can take on a wide range of tasks and is available to the user 24/7 as a virtual employee. In addition to completely autonomous monitoring of material consumption, system status, and wear on the printing machines, Kyana explains maintenance processes and service procedures, thus training employees.

Questions can be directed to Kyana at any time by voice or text input, which makes the system an intelligent intermediary between manufacturer and customer.

Extended Intelligence

With the help of augmented reality, Kyana obtains a spatial presence.

The digital overlays allow a precise view of the inside of the printer and, in combination with the voice output, ensure that maintenance work or repairs are simple. In addition, the AI extension allows the integration of virtual hands that provide direct assistance in the event of remote support on the customer‘s machine.

Ideally, possible errors can be remedied more quickly in the future and long, costly journeys by service personnel can be prevented.

Predictive Maintenance

The Koenig & Bauer printing machines are already equipped with numerous sensors that were previously only used for internal control of the device.

In order to be able to make intelligent decisions with regard to optimal pressure settings, wear, and maintenance cycles of the machines, the sensor data should be analyzed and processed by machine learning algorithms in the future.

This data will allow anomalies and optimization potential to be identified. The information obtained can be synchronized by Kyana with the customer or manufacturer.

Concept

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Research

For designing an extensive digital assistance system, problems in support, sales, and product development were identified and compared to new technological solutions.

Pretotyping

To test customer acceptance of virtual employees, the FachPack—a European trade fair for packaging, processes, and technology—was chosen for the presentation of a pretotype of the Kyana project to a specialist audience.

Change Management

The development of assistance systems should not be seen as a parallel strategy to in-house product development. It requires new points of contact within Koenig & Bauer.

Process

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Product Development

Within a period of two years, starting from initial research as well as development and testing of prototypes, the Kyana project was expanded into a comprehensive digital strategy for the Koenig and Bauer Coding GmbH. Based on this, future products and digital services can be designed to incorporate dialogue-based solutions for supporting customers in their everyday production.

AwardsSteinbeis Foundation‘s Löhn Award 2019

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Case StudyZeyko Rack

Customer: Zeyko, Design and SystemsRole & Responsibilites: Digital strategy, Pretotyping, Augmented Reality Development

Project trailer

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Problem statement

Customer

As a small manufacturer with roots in the German Black Forest, Zeyko mainly produces high-quality kitchens with high aesthetic and ecological standards. The manufacturer stands for quality workmanship with a special focus on the processing of solid wood.

Product

With the introduction of a modular kitchen system named »Rack«, Zeyko is breaking new ground: today, a small kitchen has to do more than just »work« in a small space. It should be able to adapt to individual lifestyles and variable forms of living. Therefore, a modular kitchen system was developed that can act as a platform with a highly customizable design.

Challenge

An app solution with a clear focus on end users should not only simplify the process of ordering a modular kitchen system but also enhance the virtual product experience during the whole configuration process.

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Creating digital moments

Instead of planning a kitchen based on abstract schematics, the Zeyko configurator relies on direct manipulating a three-dimensional kitchen model.

In the »Design« view, individual ideas for color and shape as well as for electrical appliances and sinks can be realized by simple touch interactions. Templates from existing designs are intended to inspire customers during their own configurations and make it easier for them to get started.

The »Discover« view provides a virtual experience of a planned rack at different times of day and visualizes various usage scenarios and lighting situations.

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Augmented Reality

After designing a personal Zeyko Rack, the kitchen can not only be viewed from all sides in the app, but also—thanks to augmented reality—be virtually placed within the customer’s space.

The customer has the opportunity to have an early live experience of the dimensions, choice of colors, and even the ergonomics of the virtual kitchen because of its 1:1 scaling. Changes can also be made directly in the »Augmented Reality« view.

When ordering a personalized Zeyko Rack, customers need not worry about their design choices; on the contrary, thanks to the app’s digital planning experience, the anticipation of the kitchen delivery date becomes even more intense.

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Case StudySystemdialog

Masterthesis, Master of Arts

Topic: Interfaces in the age of Artificial IntelligenceSupervisors: Prof. E. Schöls, Prof. Dr. phil. G. Schweppenhäuser

Project trailer

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Research Challenge

With the launch of artificially intelligent assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Home, consumers are now deliberately making contact with digital actors for the first time.

Despite the fact that these systems fall far below the expectations of general artificial intelligence, it is clear that the concept of having a spoken dialogue with machines brings in completely new parameters for designing future AI interactions: recent studies prove that users of digital assistants not only rate their devices according to their technical skills but also show empathetical reactions to them.

The goal of the research project Systemdialog is to use the capabilities of artificial intelligence to redesign the connection between humans and machines. The principles of human emotional psychology and communication play major roles in the development of language-based agents.

To test theoretical specifications in practice, the development of a hardware and software platform was essential. It formed the basis for research prototyping in the field of artificial intelligence. An open and expandable system architecture overcame the existing hurdle of technological complexity and enabled design-oriented development.

With the help of the platform, context-sensitive scenarios for dealing with a digital actor were designed, which were characterized by proactive behavior, personalized experiences, and multimodal interactions.

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Tobias Rachl Masterthesis

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Challenge

The following requirements were defined for the development of the Systemdialog platform:

Mobility

To ensure a seamless link between analog everyday life and digital information, the physical distance between the digital device and the user must be kept as small as possible. A reduced form factor allows for unlimited mobility, which means that interaction with a system is possible at any time.

Personalization

The study was designed to analyze the effect of individualized digital actors in practice. The dialogue system had to generate insights about the user’s personality and emotional status to adapt to or explicitly contradict distinct human behavior.

Scalability

An open system architecture was defined to enable continuous expansion of the prototype. Therefore, only freely available, inexpensive hardware components were used in the development of the Systemdialog platform. This open source characteristic was continued in the software interfaces.

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Implementation

In contrast to today’s digital assistants, which only respond to human calls, the prototype has the option of proactive behavior. Sensory events, as well as the analysis of user behavior, inform the digital actor about the current context of the user.

The system can thus determine a suitable time for its own action goals. Despite the special focus on verbal communication, the system is able to address several sensory modalities of the user.

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Mercedes-Benz

Role: Ideation, Prototyping

Advancements in automated driving, connectivity and urban mobility are rapidly transforming the relationship between driver and vehicle.

How will we communicate with a vehicle that we no longer have to drive ourselves? What new experiences can Mercedes-Benz offer its passengers in the light of new technological possibilities?

In order to provide answers to these questions, it was the aim of a whole series of projects to deliver tangible prototypes for better evaluation of future digital values.

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XR Interface Study

Role: Ideation, Concept, Technical Development

The technical combination of a see-through augmented reality headset and high-resolution hand tracking allows for a speculative view into the future of user interfaces.

Natural gestures and spatially arranged three-dimensional content promise a much more natural interaction with digital information than we see today in modern touchscreen applications.

Project trailer

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YUNA

Bachelor Thesis: Creative Collaboration with Artificial Intelligence

Supervisors: Prof. E. Schöls, Prof. Dr. phil. C. Bauer

The bachelor thesis »Yuna« pursued the goal of identifying new potentials for creative collaboration with artificially intelligent systems. It turned out that in the future, even in creative areas, machines can play an important new role: with the use of AI-mechanisms, a digital system is no longer limited to merely being a tool. Rather, it has the ability to play an important role in generating creative ideas.

With the help of virtual reality and an artificial intelligence called »Yuna«, users can create spatial experiences through spoken dialogue. The web here serves as an almost unlimited source of inspiration and valuable data in the creative process.

Project trailer

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Thank you!

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