Hi, you! Thanks for stopping by.
I'm Mads and this site showcase a small part of my work. I am a positive person with a passion for understanding user needs, ideation processes, as well as conceptualizing, creating and analyzing novel digital experiences. I am experienced in interdisciplinary teamwork and solving complex problems, and I enjoy working on both a conceptual level (sketching ideas) and on a practical level (writing code). I typically work using an exploratory, experiment-driven process, where ideation, prototyping and testing in real user contexts with real users have high priority.
I was a PhD in Aarhus University researching Bodily Interactions and Game Mechanics. Since then I have also been a part of the research project: Creativity in Blended Interaction Spaces (CIBIS). I have had an awesome time working in academia, with a lot of great collaborators, engaging in interresting and novel projects. Now I am working at the Alexandra Institute, a non-profit company bridging novel research in digital technologies with industry. This gives me the opportunity to work on a lot of ground breaking projects, but I am not allowed to talk about most of them here. You can see some of the awesome stuff we do at Alexandra here
If you came to this site looking for something else than my portfolio, these links might help:
In the research project, Creativity in Blended Interaction Spaces, we worked with creativity and ideation on many different level and aspects. One of the subprojects, I was leading, was on sticky notes as a design tool, as these notes are ubiquitous in design processes because of their tangibility and ease of use. Yet, they have well-known limitations in professional design processes, as documentation and distribution are cumbersome at best. In this project, we compared the use of conventional sticky notes in ideation with a remediated digital sticky notes setup that we designed and developed. The project contributes with a nuanced understanding of what happens when remediating a physical design tool into digital space, by emphasizing focus shifts and breakdowns caused by the technology, but also benefits and promises inherent in the digital media. Despite users' preference for creating physical notes, handling digital notes on boards was easier and the potential of proper documentation make the digital setup a possible alternative. While the analogy in our remediation supported a transfer of learned handling, the users' experiences across technological setups impact their use and understanding, yielding new concerns regarding cross-device transfer and collaboration.
Related Papers:
Remediating a design tool: Implications of digitizing sticky notes. CHI 2018.
Physical Versus Digital Sticky Notes in Collaborative Ideation. JCSCW 2018.
A Postphenomenological Method for HCI Research. OzCHI 2018.
Keywords:
Design, development, creativity, ideation, qualitative analysis, video analysis
Technologies:
Javascript, Webstrates, Codestrates
Main collaborators:
Susanne Bødker, Roman Rädle, Clemens Klokmose, Sarah-Kristin Thiel, Eve Hoggan
The Bouncer a novel, interactive installation designed and developed for handball training as well as for leisure activities. The Bouncer is based on a rebounder, consisting of a 3x3 meter frame strung with wire (called an M-station), similar to an oversized tennis racket, with the ability to return an impacting ball with 95% of its speed. The rebounder is mounted with 8 sensors that can determine the position of impacting balls with an estimated 10 cm accuracy. Behind the rebounder a projector-lit screen is placed, and together these elements enable a ball-controlled user interface. We have developed games for The Bouncer in collaboration with handball players and coaches aiming to train in-air decision making in a playful learning perspective. I also developed balancing mechanisms allowing to players on different skill levels to compete and play.
Related Papers:
Keepin' it Real: Challenges when Designing Sports-Training Games. CHI 2015.
Design Strategies for Balancing Exertion Games: A Study of Three Approaches, DIS 2016
Keywords:
Game design, physical-digital installations, sports, playful learning
Technologies:
Flash AS3, Python
Main collaborators:
Majken K. Rasmussen, Kaj Grønbæk, Jacob Andersen, Floyd Mueller
Troldhedestien is a former rail-road that has been turned into a 10 km trail. The municipality of Kolding is doing a social inclusion project on the trail, making it accessible to people with physical and psychological challenges. Besides creating new and accessible facilities along the trail, the municipality also had a wish to incorporate digital technology in the project. At the Alexandra Institute, we assisted in early ideation of possibilities through an Inspiration Card Workshop. For the workshop, we created a deck of domain specific inspiration cards, and we facilitated we workshop with domain experts and local stakeholders.
Keywords:
Ideation, workshop, physical-digital, inspiration cards, social inclusion
Main collaborators:
Karen Johanne Kortbek, Rune Wehner
Football Lab is a public interactive soccer-training system created in cooperation with a Danish soccer academy and Munin Sports, a company that manufactures soccer-training equipment. It is an enclosed, 12x12 meter soccer field. Four rebounding surfaces, called M-stations, each measuring 2.7 x 2.7 meters, are positioned at the center of each of the four sides of the playing field. The M-stations consist of a large frame strung with wire, similar to a tennis racquet, capable of returning a ball with 95 percent of its original speed. The four M-stations are mounted with sensors that detect soccer ball hits and fitted with multicolored LED lights and a speaker. The combination of these elements creates a training space for soccer players, where the embedded light and sound signals facilitate game interfaces that players interact with by hitting the M-stations with soccer balls. Football Lab has been operating for more than two years. During this period we created a variety of games by continuously engaging with players and coaches
Related Papers:
Designing training games for soccer. Interactions 2015.
Design sensitivities for interactive sport-training games. DIS 2014
Exploring Opponent Formats: Game Mechanics for Computer-Supported Physical Games. ICEC 2013.
Interactive Football-Training Based on Rebounders with Hit Position Sensing and Audio-Visual Feedback. IJCSS 2014.
Keywords:
Game design, physical-digital installations, sports, playful learning
Technologies:
HTML, d3.js, Webpack, Visual Basic
Main collaborators:
Majken K. Rasmussen, Kaj Grønbæk, Jacob Andersen, Kaspar Rosengren, Jakob Fredslund, Søren Pedersen
ChillFish is a calming breathing exercise disguised as a biofeedback game. The gameplay is based on an underwater 2D world, where the player character (a puffer fish) has to collect as many star fish a possible. The vertical positon of the puffer fish is controlled by the child’s inhalation and exhalation through a physical LEGO fish controller. When the child breaths into the LEGO fish, the virtual puffer fish moves towards the top of the screen and at the same time the puffer fish expands in size. The star fish are positioned so that in order to collect them all, the child has to apply a relaxed breathing pattern.
Related Papers:
ChillFish: A Respiration Game for Children with ADHD. TEI 2016.
Evaluating the ChillFish Biofeedback Game with Children with ADHD. IDC 2016.
Keywords: Biofeedback games, physical-digital play, breathing techniques, children, LEGO, game design, playful learning, ADHD
Technologies: Unity, RFduino
Main collaborators: Tobias Sonne
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In 2013, I engaged in a project on running technologies. In the process I created a number of early prototypes ranging from two smartphones strapped over and under a runners knee, using duct tape, showing acceleration in the knee's angles, to a smart insole, sending foot strike type information to a smart phone using Bluetooth. I got overtaken in the process by Sensoria Fitness Socks and Retisense, before I could finish. I learned a lot in the process though and ended up supervising a group of students in a project about a device that assist runners in achieving rhythmic breathing patterns.
Related Papers:
Running with technology: Where are we heading? OzCHI 2014.
Strive: Exploring Assistive Haptic Feedback on the Run. OzCHI 2017.
Keywords: Running, gait analysis, prototypes
Technologies: Android, Arduino, Bluetooth, FSR sensors, stretch sensors
Main collaborators: Tobias Sonne, Kaj Grønbæk, Frederik Valsted, Christopher Nielsen, Jacob Qvist, Floyd Mueller
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