Projects

Orthopedic operating rooms are very loud environments, exposing the medical staff to a significant amount of noise. But little is known about how the sound exposure distributes among the different kinds of surgeries, whether there is a difference among the professions. We developed an app – together with a smartphone and a microphone attached to their collar, individual staff members can easily measure their sound exposure during surgical procedures.

On the ICU, sounds are the most direct way in which the nurses receive information about the patients. However, there are a lot of problems with the number and loudness of these sounds. The Cacophony Mapper creates insight in which types of sounds, and when and where on the ICU these sounds are the most problematic.

Doplor is an interactive, inaduible painting created by Roel Redert. A new team - Studio Reverb, a project team of industrial design engineering master students - is developing Doplor further by working on its physical appearance and the actual sound categorization.

Graduate student Yoon Lee created Cacophony Mapper: a mobile data collection platform that nurses in the ICU can use to get insights in all the noise they make all together or individually and how they experience the sound environment.

Graduate student Marije Schokkin captured and typified sound cultures in intensive care units (ICUs). She discovered that different nurse types exist and that they all deal with the sounds differently. When ICUs want to reduce sound with a bigger impact, Marije proposed that ICUs need to create 'sound-issue-awareness', for which she designed a campaign.