Biography/Background
Stoffel studied Industrial Design Engineering at the Technical University of Delft. He graduated in 2002 on a wearable, tangible social interaction product, in a project largely carried out in the Affective Computing group at the MIT MediaLab in Boston.
Stoffel has worked as a strategic, conceptual and technical designer, and has led design and development projects for various interaction and communication products for the consumer market, including several patent applications.
He has taught and coached students and professionals in this field of design in the Netherlands, Norway, Italy and Brazil.
Stoffel headed the R&D department in a multinational company, where, apart from running product design and innovation projects with an international team, he gained hands-on experience with mass-production systems in western Europe as well as in low-cost labour countries such as China and Mexico.
Since 2008 he has been working on design projects and workshops, concerning the convergence of fashion products and personal, mobile, consumer electronics.
In October 2010 Stoffel joined the design research group at Umeå Institute of Design. His research focuses on the physical side of social interactions. Through designing tools for people to get a grip on their social context he is researching how designers can create products that result in complex systems and the emergent behavior of groups of people that use them.
Area of interest
Emergent behavior of (complex) systems, social dynamics, game and play, communication/interaction media, convergence of physical and virtual (social) environments, social (bio) feedback, corporal literacy.
Recent work
Pierre Lévy, Stoffel Kuenen, Kees Overbeeke et al. (2011) Ohlala: Content-completeness, communication and emotional experience, [on CD]. In Proceedings of the International Association of Societies of Design Research 2011.
Metamorfosi - Metamorphosis, edited by Cianfanelli, E. and Kuenen, S., Polistampa 2010, ISBN: 978-88-596-0787-8 (order at Edizioni Polistampa or from Plug and Wear).
Feel the Vibe, a visceral channel of communication. masters' Thesis 2002.
Recent Teaching
Experience Prototyping, Oct/Nov 2011, 5 week skills building course for IxD2 students at UID, Umeå, Sweden.
Advanced Product Design, 2009, 4-month Masters' course concerning interactive, wearable technology at Industrial Design, University of Florence, Italy.
'Cultural Waves', 2008, 3-week Masters' workshop concerning interactive, wearable technology at Industrial Design, UNISUL, Florianopolis, Brazil.
