Anne Kok

Hi! I'm Anne, a recent Human-Technology Interaction graduate curious about the way technology can shape and influence society. Currently working as a research officer at Eindhoven University of Technology, looking for a new challenge starting February 2021.

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User experience of carbon footprint calculators

Qualitative research project — Role: Research Officer — Eindhoven University of Technology

I am currently researching people's experiences with carbon calculators (tools that estimate your personal carbon emissions), by reviewing existing literature, designing and executing a qualitative study, analysing data, and writing a paper for publication in a scientific journal.

After graduation, I was offered a temporary position as a research officer to perform further research into the topic of carbon footprint calculators (the topic of my master’s thesis). The goal of this six-month research project is to (1) set up and perform a study detailing users’ experiences with carbon footprint calculators, and (2) based on these findings, formulate design recommendations for these tools. To achieve this, I am collaborating with an assistant professor at the Human-Technology Interaction group of Eindhoven University of Technology. My tasks include the following:

Reviewing existing literature on the topic to decide on a research method, and subsequently formulate interview questions based on a theoretical framework.

Collaborating with organizations like MilieuCentraal and the WWF to recruit users of carbon footprint calculators.

Performing semi-structured interviews with these users and transcribing the interviews.

Performing a thorough thematic analysis of the data.

Writing an academic paper detailing our findings, for publication in a scientific journal.

This will result in a list of recommendations for the design and functionality of carbon footprint calculators, so that future calculators can be developed for better user experience and increased engagement. We aim to share our findings with calculator developers (like MilieuCentraal and WWF) and to publish them in literature.

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Fairytale forest — Scotland

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The shape of a footprint: How values, knowledge, and income relate to environmental footprint calculator outcome

Education — Master’s thesis — Grade: 9

I investigated the relationship of people's values, environmental knowledge and income with the size of their environmental footprint. I used these insights to formulate recommendations for design and future research, in order to help make footprint calculators more effective at helping people to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle. Available for download here.

This five-month (full-time) research project was the graduation project for my master’s degree in Human-Technology Interaction. The goal was to set up, perform, and report on a study related to environmental footprint calculators. These are tools that allow people to calculate their environmental impact, including their carbon emissions, with the goal of raising awareness and helping people to live a more environmentally friendly life. 

I approached this by:

Reviewing existing literature on the topic to arrive at a research question, formulate hypotheses, and decide on a research method.

Recruiting 400+ participants through a market research company and analysing their environmental footprints, in relation to their values, knowledge and income, using Stata and SPSS.

Writing an academic research report detailing my findings.

This resulted in a master’s thesis which was awarded grade 9, and the opportunity to write a manuscript of my study for submission to a scientific journal. I’m proud of my work, but if I could do it over again, I’d like to do a project that’s more applied. This study was very theoretical, and while it has very interesting practical implications, I’d have enjoyed it even more if it had led directly to an improvement in the design of footprint calculators.

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Promotional flyer for a pub quiz — Students’ association

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Software project management

Education — Course: Software Project Management — Grade: 8

I managed a team of 12 Computer Science students who, in 10 weeks, developed a software product as their final bachelor’s project. This was part of a course on software project management where I learnt about Agile ways of working, especially Scrum.

Having previously done my own final bachelor’s project for Computer Science, I was in a position to guide this team through their project, together with another project manager. We did this by:

Organizing and leading weekly sprint reviews and sprint plannings.

Having individual meetings with the team members throughout the project to monitor their progress and to help them solve any issues they encountered.

Reviewing their project deliverables (such as a User Requirements Document and an Acceptance Test Plan) and communicating with their client to make sure the product they were developing was properly designed, developed, and tested.

Keeping an eye on the general project planning to keep the team on track.

This was my first time managing a team and I asked the group for feedback on several occasions. They told me they were happy with me as a project manager, but gave me some pointers as well, for example to communicate more frequently with the other project manager (which we immediately took to heart, and the team noticed this). What I found most difficult was the fact that I wasn’t a full team member — I only had a day or so each week to spend with the group, while they were working together full-time. This meant it was sometimes difficult for me to get a clear idea of what was going on in terms of group dynamics. Thankfully, the team came to me when there was an issue, and I think with more experience, I could get better at ‘reading’ the situation without always being part of it.

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Making Work A Work-Out: AR At The Office

Internship — Greenhouse Group

I explored the potential of augmented reality eyewear to improve quality of life, by doing desk research and designing, developing, and user testing a screenless workspace using Meta 2 AR glasses. I wrote about it on HackerNoon.

Between my bachelor’s and master’s degree, I spent six months as an intern at Greenhouse Group, a digital marketing company. I worked at the Labs department, where the potential of new technologies is explored to keep the company ahead of the market. 

My assignment was, together with another intern, to report on the current state of augmented reality glasses and to show their potential by developing a prototype AR office environment using the Meta 2. Together, we tackled this by:

Interviewing Greenhouse Group employees to identify whether there were issues in the office for which AR could be a solution. We discovered that people would like to move around more during the workday without losing productivity.

Reviewing literature on AR and user experience, and inspecting documentation of existing AR glasses. This resulted in a report for Greenhouse Group on the current state of the field, including an overview of design recommendations for AR environments.

Developing an “active, screenless AR workspace” consisting of augmented reality versions of three common office tasks: logging in, sending an e-mail, and (if you’re still sitting down for too long) taking a short break, by playing a game with a coworker. We used Blender to create 3D graphics and Unity3D with the Meta 2 SDK to develop a working prototype.

User testing our prototype with Greenhouse Group employees, most of whom said that they would be interested in using this kind of product on a regular basis once AR glasses are more lightweight.

Demonstrating our prototype at the Night of the Nerds tech event in Eindhoven.

Creating a video to showcase our project.

The article I wrote about our project was published on HackerNoon, and our story was covered by VentureBeat. Given more time, I would have liked to have implemented the feedback we got from our user tests, to further improve our prototype. It was so rewarding to hear that people would like to use the product we came up with, and I’d love to one day see our dreams become reality.

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BBC Sherlock character poster — Fan art

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Plumix

Education — Final Bachelor’s Project — Grade: 8

As a final project for the Computer Science & Engineering bachelor’s degree at TU/e, I worked in a (scrum) team of 10 people for 10 weeks to develop a software product. We developed Plumix, a mobile and web app which is essentially Uber for plumbers: using the mobile app, a customer can place a plumbing order, and a plumber who is near this user’s location can respond and add it to his/her planning. Additionally, the web app allows plumbers to review their administration. 

This was an assignment from a real-world client. The goal was to apply the skills I obtained throughout my bachelor’s degree. I contributed by:

Eliciting requirements from the client, resulting in an extensive User Requirements Document which I was able to translate into software design and technical requirements.

Developing the front end of the web app in Angular.

Setting up an Acceptance Test Plan and executing this with the client to ensure the software product met all its requirements.

Writing additional documentation.

For the grading of the project, the design and end-user experience were secondary to meeting all technical requirements, meaning UX was not given priority by the team. Given more time, I would have liked to improve the front end further and perform real user tests rather than only acceptance tests.

The product was unfortunately not brought to market by our client, so I cannot link to it here, but you can view our project poster (including screenshots of the web and mobile app) here.

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Miniature photography — Studio session

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The remorseful robot: Effects of a robot's expression of emotions after a moral transgression

Education — Quantitative research project — Grade: 8

I investigated how a social robot’s expressions of emotion after a moral transgression affected the extent to which people blamed the robot and thought it deserved punishment. These insights can be used to determine the best way for a social robot to respond after a moral transgression in order to repair or preserve its social relationships.

This five-month (part-time) research project was part of my master’s degree in Human-Technology Interaction. The goal was to set up, perform, and report on a study in the domain of human-robot interaction and morality. As part of a team of 3 students, I contributed to all aspects of the project, by:

Reviewing existing literature on the topic to arrive at a research question, formulate hypotheses, and decide on a research method.

Programming a NAO robot to hold a short conversation with study participants.

Collecting data in the robotics lab in a Wizard-of-Oz setting.

Analyzing the quantitative data using Stata.

Writing an academic research report detailing our findings.

This was my first time doing a complete research project, and I learnt a lot from it, not only about research methods and scientific writing, but also about the ethics of technology. Looking back, I think I could have done better by diving deeper into the topic of social relationships between humans and robots, in order to better explain the practical relevance of our findings.

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Two maps/hearts in one — Commission

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Star Trek: Into Darkness, custom poster — Fan art

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Above the clouds — Switzerland

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Geopinion

Education — Course: Web Technology — Grade: 10

As part of a group of 4 students, I created a sentiment analysis tool for Twitter. This is a web app which allows users to enter any search term and visualizes Twitter users’ sentiment about this topic. 

This was an assignment for a course on web technology. The goal was to learn to work with Node.js/Express and to create an API. The Google Maps and Twitter APIs were used for our project, and we created our own sentiment analysis REST API.

As part of a team of 3 students, I contributed to most aspects of the project, by:

Creating mock-ups as a project proposal (as shown above).

Developing the front end of the web app in Node.js.

Integrating the Google Maps API.

Developing the sentiment analysis functionality.

This resulted in a working Twitter sentiment analysis tool, shown below. The sentiment analysis and performance were secondary to learning to work with the technology, so the app was conceptually simple and not very fast. If I were to continue with this project, these would be the first aspects I would focus on. 

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Freezing sunshine — Scotland

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Company logo — Contest entry

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Yodifier

Education — Course: Web Technology

I developed a simple, but fully responsive website that translates user input to Yoda’s “language”. I used HTML, CSS and Bootstrap for the design, and I used jQuery in combination with the “Yoda Speak” API from Mashape (which is no longer available) for the functionality. This was my first experience with Bootstrap, jQuery, and APIs.