Empowering Energy Community Nichein Flanders: A Study on Social Innovation, and Transition Strategies

The global shift towards sustainable and renewable energy sources is an undeniable necessity. Energy communities, grounded in principles of community participation and environmental sustainability, are emerging as key players in driving this transformation. Flanders, a region in Belgium, has witnessed the rise of energy communities as they take...

Healing by transforming: Creating the empowered healing environment

According to the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM), there will be more focus on tackling the unhealthy effects of urbanization in the near future. This together with the presence of a large stock of vacant buildings and other developments within these urban areas and the challenges which are formed by the developments in...

Demonstrating the impact of participatory design on citizens’ empowered citizenship: A framework and tool for understanding and demonstrating the impact of participatory design on citizens’ empowered citizenship

Society is increasingly faced with complex and wicked problems (Hervieux & Voltan, 2019). As a result, organisations face complex and open challenges and design has become more popular as an approach to address this (Dorst, 2011). Due to these global changes, the social design field is growing (Tromp & Vial, 2022). Participatory design...

Empowering teenagers in their interactions with social media sexualisation: Educating teenage girls to be in control when interacting with sexualised social media content

This master thesis report is the result of a six-month-long graduation project for the Design for Interaction master track at the TU Delft. The goal of this project is to improve the interaction between teenage girls and sexualisation on social media. It does so by generating awareness and empowering them to avoid negative influences that affect...

Living with Water. Resilient homes for low-income communities in water inclusive environment in Bandung

In many rapidly growing cities of Indonesia, including Bandung, the areas of informal settlements are increasing. They are erected on hazardous lands, often in flood-prone areas. The communities struggle with an inadequate water supply and uncontrolled water flows during heavy rainfalls. The problem of water management rises with a decrease in...

A Design Tool-Box to Scale Social Innovations from one context to another: Unfolding the Scaling Journey of Designscapes Initiatives

In the last decades, more and more complex societal and environmental challenges are rising. Social Innovation is an emerging and promising framework to tackle complex global challenges at the local level of urban contexts. These projects are socially, culturally and contextually embedded and highly dependent on the local ecosystem of resources....

The adventure to yourself: A tool that helps teenagers discover their talents and opens the conversation with teachers and mentors

This thesis aims to help teenagers, aged 14-16, feel confident to express their thought and feelings. By doing so, we aim to create an environment in which teenagers can seek help. Where they can learn how to cope with uncertainties before they turn into bigger and long lasting mental health issues. The thesis does not aim to solve the problem...

Empowering parents with mild intellectual disabilities through design

In the Netherlands 1.5% of persons with an intellectual disability have children, most of these parents only have mild intellectual disabilities (Willems, De Vries, Isarin & Reinders, 2007). In practice this means that a few thousand children have parents with a mild intellectual disability (De Vries, 2005). Research shows that there is a...

Aquaframe

A social, cultural and technological solution designed to combat food deserts in the United States through encouraging people to engage with the food system in a more positive way.