Products and services increasingly get smarter and more interconnected, forming intelligent eco-systems that allow the generation and sharing of large amounts of data through the internet. These new data often find their way in the evaluation of new products, but only after the design process has been concluded. Janne van Kollenburg and Sander Bogers, designers at Philips Design, have developed a design method which puts data right at the heart of the design process. For their work they will be awarded a Ph.D. by the Department of Industrial Design of the Eindhoven University of Technology on Thursday 28 February.