Coffee, a beverage consumed by nearly every (young) adult on this planet. Black gold, the drink that keeps you awake and gets you through the day. Whatever the occasion, coffee is always there to accompany you. Coffee drinks consumed out of house are most often consumed with the addition of milk foam. The addition of milk fundamentally alters the sensory experience of coffee, it reduces bitterness, astringency and adds a degree of sweetness. Frothed milk especially enhances the texture and overall mouthfeel of the drink, contributing to a luxurious and novel sensory experience.

This luxurious feeling is especially present when consuming the drink, served with beautiful latte art, in a café. At home, this luxurious feeling is far from achieved by many people. Most often, the coffee drinks with milk are served with thick, airy and dull foam. An affordable product that can reproduce café quality milk from the comfort of your home currently not offered.

The need for such a product was identified during the master elective Build Your Start-up at the Delft University of Technology. This thesis aims to develop a working prototype of stand-alone milk steamer for coffee enthusiasts that allows them to create café quality milk foam at home. The results of this thesis will serve as a starting point for the further development to one day be used by many people around the globe.

During this project, the target group for such a product was formed and product wishes were identified through user research, market analysis and expert interviews. These wishes were combined to identify the required theoretical knowledge about milk foaming and foaming technologies for the further development of prototypes.

Fluid and thermodynamics models were created to aid the identification of promising technologies. Three heating technologies were identified that could showed promise for the creation of a stand-alone milk steamer. These technologies were evaluated using physical prototypes. Eventually, custom nozzles were designed to complete the prototypes. These prototypes were evaluated with experts and deemed very capable of reproducing café quality milk foam.

The final prototype that is revealed during the final presentation will serve as a prototype that serves multiple purposes. It serves as a technology demonstrator which can be further developed. Furthermore, it can be used as a tool to gather funds for the further development of the concept. All with the goal of eventually manufacturing and shipping a product to many customers.

This report details the design of a decentralized water treatment system for use in Nepal, which currently lacks improved sanitation for 10.8 million people and a water contamination rate of 71 percent. This contributes to the approximately 140,000 deaths per year from diarrheal illnesses caused by such bacterial contamination. To combat this, the Phutung Research Institute (PRI) in Nepal has developed a low-cost optical sensor that can detect pathogenic bacteria in water. This sensor is a vast improvement over existing tools used to assess water quality, such as consumable test kits or laboratory analysis. However, detecting contaminated water is only one of two steps necessary to provide safe water to those who need it - the water must be cleaned. Such is the purpose of this project: to integrate this sensor in a design that both detects contaminated water and purifies it for people in Nepal. In addition to providing a practical application for PRI’s technology, this project applies other areas of design to create a holistic product intended to operate through its complete life-cycle within Nepal. User ethnography was researched to identify a ubiquitous water tank system as the implementation point, allowing for a single design to be applicable throughout Nepal’s diverse population. This also yielded additional pain points that are addressed to increase the acceptability of this product design in Nepal. Manufacturing and maintenance research yielded a modular architecture that can be constructed in Nepal as much as possible, thereby shortening supply lines and reducing costs while stimulating the local economy. Such a system also allows for the maintenance of sensitive components in the field without specialist intervention. These elements were combined to create a TRL 6 prototype designed to detect bacteria within a home’s water supply and automatically eliminate it with chlorine treatment. It is intended to both demonstrate PRI’s technology and to facilitate field testing in Nepal. This was done while improvising a design method called ‘Who, Why, How into What’. A new method was necessary to organize a project in which multiple diverged areas of design development had to occur simultaneously over a short period of time, barring the use of more traditional and better-defined design methods.

Morphing Matter is a soft-robotic material with a bit of a personality. When applied to the seated context, it can sense posture and simply nudge the user in the right direction by providing support through the contact surface. This project focuses on developing a scalable soft robotic material with programmable behaviour. The project is aimed at creating a tool for the exploration of how dynamic seating can be designed to trigger behavioural change for health and wellbeing. This highlights a quality that we can expect most materials of the future to demand: the ability to be dynamic! With

IMO - Millennium is a smart, modular au- dio mixing system. It is designed to cater to the music routing needs of a modern household. High fidelity, uncompromising, analogue audio pathways mixed with digital controls. Aesthetics that compliment music equipment of any era, and materials that
will last for ever. Starting off with two audio inputs and one output, it can also expand, with the installation of additional audio mod- ules, in order to accommodate more audio sources. Moreover, with extension plug-ins, it can support music protocols other than a raw audio signal, in order to keep up with new technologies. Those form fitted blocks can introduce Bluetooth, AirPlay, Optical, or even Phono Pre-amplification functional- ities and so on. Wi-Fi connectivity enables remote control of the console’s motorised volume knobs, through a mobile application. IR receivers and transmitters, hidden out of sight, can identify pattern signals of tradi- tional remote controls and replicate them, gaining this way control of other devices in the room. Each audio channel is also equipped with a customisable button and its function can be programmed to the users liking.
Sustainable design, with minimised environ- mental impact and great repairability. IMO is using a short bill of materials, most of which are either already recycled or great for recycling at end of life. Reversible fasteners are dominating the structure, without the use of any destructive adhesives. The sim- ple assembly of the housing and the elec- tronics, make repairs easy and essentially fool-proof. A single HEX key (Allen key), is needed to fully dismantle the entire product. Common, off-the-shelf electronics, that are easy to understand and identify, are used for the internal circuits. Internal circuitry communications are handled by connectors widely available to the public, making re- pairs even more manageable.