Miguel Bruns Alonso

Miguel Bruns Alonso serves as an Associate Professor in the Future Everyday cluster of the Department of Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). He also holds the position of program director for the TU/e Innovation Space, which fosters interdisciplinary hands-on education bridging engineering design and entrepreneurship.

Bruns Alonso's research focuses on the aesthetics and emotional expressivity of interactive products with programmable material qualities, a concept he terms "interactive materiality," with particular emphasis on haptic and shape-changing interfaces. His work explores how interactive products can respond to behavioral expressions with haptic feedback and shape change, investigating how shape change and haptic feed-forward subtly affect human behavior. Analysis of his publications reveals a consistent trajectory in understanding how physical interfaces can create meaningful emotional connections through dynamic material properties and responsive behaviors.

• His 2018 work on "Grand challenges in shape-changing interface research" established foundational frameworks
• The "Ripple thermostat" (2018) demonstrated practical applications in home environments
• His earlier works established theoretical foundations in behavior transformation through interactive materiality

His research has been supported by significant funding including participation in GHOST (Generic Highly Organic Shape-changing inTerfaces), a successful Future Emerging Technologies project funded by EU-FP7. He has also been awarded a Fulbright Grant for his work as a visiting researcher.

Bruns Alonso has extensive teaching experience at both bachelor's and master's levels. At the bachelor's level, he teaches courses relating to creativity and the basics of designing form and aesthetics of interaction. At the master's level, he teaches courses on dynamic and interactive form/materiality and how this affects perception and behavior. He previously held leadership positions as Director of Education for the bachelor's degree program and Deputy Director of the master's degree program in the Department of Industrial Design.

His academic journey began with industrial design engineering studies at TU Delft, where he obtained both his MSc and PhD. His PhD research focused on "Relax! Inherent feedback during product interaction to reduce stress," exploring how interactive products can respond to behavioral expressions of affect through haptic feedback. He has also conducted research as a visiting researcher at the Center for Design Research of Stanford University (supported by a Fulbright Grant) and at the Design Research and Ubiquitous Computing Groups of Aarhus University in Denmark.