Creative facilitation sessions come to solve the complex problems the world is facing nowadays. Using participants from different work areas to walk through a problem together, these sessions are guided by facilitators. They are the ones expected to bring a creative mindset to the involved people. LEF Future Center, part of Rijkswaterstaat since 2008, brings a contribution to the power of change and the problem-solving capacity of their stakeholders. They have a set of creative environments to properly stimulate participants during the facilitation sessions. This project, done in combination between TU Delft and LEF Future Center, focuses on supporting participants’ creativity during sessions at LEF. The creative diamond (Guilford, 1950) is the basis approach
for facilitation sessions, distinguishing between participants’ divergence and convergence thinking. During the first, many ideas are generated, while comes to a final idea/decision when converging. It is common to let participants make use of different means to generate ideas, like whiteboards, sticking notes, and markers.
It is known that people might underrate their own creativity, and the facilitators' work is to facilitate participants’ creativity. Written, visual and verbal communication is important to let participants express their ideas to each other during sessions. Besides the classical creative diamond, newer studies have shown the need to differentiate
a step in-between the divergence and convergence phases (eg. Tassaul and Buijs; Kaner; Heijne and Smit). It is called revergence and aims to revisit and rearrange every generated idea during the divergence, by making clusters. A literature study was executed to investigate further developments in the creative diamond approach, as well as what influence people’s creativity. At LEF, facilitators let participants generate as
many ideas as possible (when diverging), and to come up with a final solution to the indicated problem (when converging). Further investigation with context observations and interviews with facilitators was performed. It was confirmed that not every facilitator does the converging phase of the session, and that many are not aware
of the reverging as a separate stage from converging. In the end, clusters of ideas can be created in a messy mean, leading to deliverables for clients that may not show the full creative potential of the session. As a way to stimulate participants’ generation of ideas and the creation of clusters, the design of the tool thus focuses on supporting facilitators to perform the revergence phase of sessions. Joining findings from both the literature review and context mapping, a promising direction was identified in the use of combination tools for the three phases of the sessions. Using rapid prototyping tests
of the tools, a toolkit structure for performing the reverging phase was designed: the Clustalk toolkit.

This graduation project is a collaboration between the Inclusive City Hub (part of Delft Design Labs) and the Gemeente Delft. This project focuses on the topic of participation for creating people–centered cities. The initial problem definition of the project was to understand how the municipality of Delft can design with the people of the city by moving towards a participatory approach such that they can address the needs of people at optimal moments during the process. Based on the analysis and findings from research the problem addressed by this project was redefined. The redefined problem was how can we reduce the threshold of the municipality to embrace and adopt participation as a part of their daily way of working. From this question the two problem areas to be addressed were defined as; one, a lack in ability of the municipality to act on participatory frameworks and two, a lack of willingness of the municipality to make participation a part of their culture. The resulting solution and final outcome proposed was to design a sensitizing participation journal or booklet for use by the people working in the municipality. The main goal of this journal is to equip folks at the municipality to act on the participatory framework of Delfts Doen by means of the tools provided in it. The journal also hopes to inspire and sensitize the municipality about participation, paving the way to increase the willingness and bring about a culture change in the municipality regarding participation. To conclude, the challenges with participatory design lie in the adoption of a new mindset within large organizations such as municipalities, since this mindset strongly challenges the existing power structure and hierarchy within an organization. It is expected that the findings of this thesis can contribute to this knowledge by building on how these challenges can be overcome by focusing on the needs that must be fulfilled for people working in organizations such as municipalities.

This project is an inquiry into design for mind-wandering experiences. The project has applied a blend of Introspective Design, Research through Design and Co-creation methods to gather a nuanced understanding of mind-wandering experiments. The scope of the project is situated on the overlap of six dimensions that allowed us to form a fruitful stance. The project focused on individual creativity of novice designers, who are working from home. The proposed design solution is a product that will support a deliberate mind-wandering break of novice designers with homogenisation of perceptual information. The proposed design concept focuses on providing low variability organic change of visual information to create homogenisation of visual sensory information. The project provides arguments for conceptual understanding of the effect of homogenisation breaks to support deliberate mind-wandering. The proposed design was a result of the insights gathered throughout four phases of the project: theory research, context research, co-creation, and research through Design. The effect of the product on creativity was measured with a predictor of creative performance—self-efficacy.

This graduation project is about the reframing services that Flatland provide during their facilitation sessions. The consideration within this project is about the reframing activities, abilities and opportunities of the Flatland team. The team of Flatland is unconsciously skilled in reframing, because of their knowledge gained out of experience, which is tacit (undocumented, unstructured and based on experience). When reframing, Flatland focuses on the interaction with the client while overlooking the knowledge about reframing itself. In order to make Flatland consciously skilled in reframing, various deliverables were made to improve on Flatland’s understanding of reframing and to structure and improve what reframing knowledge already exists in the team. Four deliverables were made where a new reframing process outline is found, together with an overview of reframing tools, a reflection approach to improve the use of the reframing tools and a practical component where reframing is put into a canvas for explicit interaction with clients. The deliverables are founded on a new reframing process that has been formed during the project that guides the reframing process in four steps. The first stage is to make frames & situation explicit, the second stage is to discuss frames and objectives, the third stage is to find alternative problem directions and make a choice on what to focus, and the last stage is to form a goal and approach. The conclusions per stage are translated in a definition of the problem, objective, refined problem and solution direction. The deliverables allow the reframing knowledge to be outlined, discovered, instructed and improved by the (new) Flatland employees.

Purpose - In my Master Thesis titled "Shaping an innovative play space," I was inspired by the realm of playground design, particularly the concept of 'adventure playgrounds' and their profound influence on creativity. I embarked on this journey to harness the power of play and apply it to the office context of VONK, the innovation center of the city of Rotterdam. Design/methodology/approach - I adopted a comprehensive approach that delved deep into the intertwined concepts of play and innovation. Through literature reviews, hands-on observations, and user interviews, I aimed to uncover the nuances of these concepts, especially focusing on the overlapping themes of making and creativity. Findings - My research illuminated the indispensable role of play in fostering attributes like confidence, creativity, problem-solving skills, a sense of belonging, cultural growth, and overall well-being. These findings underscored the potential of integrating play into professional settings to spur innovation. The research resulted in a theoretical framework of the interaction between the creative process and the environment. On this framework the insights from user and expert interviews where plotted, which lead to multifaceted opportunity and threat zones for VONK within this context. Based on these zones a possible roadmap was developed for the coming 10 years, including 5 horizons and playful idea suggestions tailored to the team of VONK to act according to these horizons. Research limitations/implications - While the research provides valuable insights into the role of play in fostering innovation in office contexts, it is primarily based on the specific context of VONK. The findings might need adaptation when applied to different organizational settings. Also I have struggled with my personal process, as described in the personal reflection, which led to a suboptimal documentation of my findings. Practical Implications - My insights suggest significant implications for VONK, the innovation hub of Rotterdam. By integrating the principles unearthed in my research, VONK has the potential to transform its space into a vibrant ecosystem that champions learning, experimentation, and innovation. For VONK, the research suggests a focus on co-creation, connecting actors, and project management. Organizing events, such as festivals or business fairs, can also serve as an effective strategy for showcasing achievements and expanding the network. Value - This research offers a unique perspective on enhancing innovation in office contexts by leveraging the concept of play. It provides actionable insights for organizations like VONK, aiming to foster a more interconnected, innovative, and vibrant environment. The crux of my research lies in its potential to revolutionize the innovation landscape of VONK. By weaving in the principles of play, I believe we can usher in a new era of creativity and innovation, making VONK a beacon for innovators and pioneers.

Youth participation is becoming increasingly important in municipal governance. However, despite the introduction of new tools, podcasts, and events designed to foster participation, engaging young voices in policy-making remains a challenge. This project explores whether a different perspective on this challenge can lead to more meaningful engagement. This project is part of Healthy Start, a collaborative initiative between the Delft University of Technology, Erasmus Medisch Centrum and the Erasmus University Rotterdam, which seeks to enhance the well-being of young individuals. Among its ambitions is the enhancement of youth participation. The project will emphasize youth participation in municipal policy in Rotterdam. Using the Frame Innovation method, a design approach focused on redefining problems to uncover innovative solutions, this study aims to discover unique insights by ‘reframing’ the issue of youth participation. Achieving an understanding of the stakeholders and their values was accomplished through a Research through Design approach. A variety of design activities were undertaken, including engaging policy advisors in creative sessions at Het Timmerhuis, and deploying cultural probes during dialogues with young individuals in a sounding board group and at the Rotterdam Blaak library. The findings reveal that stakeholders have diverse needs. Not all officials view participation the same way, and differences among young people are significant. Four main themes emerged, reflecting the values of these diverse groups: Open Hearts, Open Minds: This theme underscores the importance of genuine interactions and empathy, highlighting how prejudices can complicate matters. For example, officials may fear being perceived negatively by the public, while young people worry about being seen as inexperienced. Navigating the Unknown: Participatory processes involve uncertainties, requiring both youths and officials to venture into unfamiliar territory. This theme explores how they can feel in control despite these uncertainties. Driven by Responsibility: This focuses on the sense of duty and how it affects engagement. It questions when stakeholders consider something important enough to warrant their involvement. What You Do Matters: This theme emphasizes the significance of feeling that one’s contributions are impactful and explores the dynamics of power within participation. Both youths and officials can feel powerless, doubting the impact of their efforts and not seeing the success of their actions. Reframing the problem based on these themes offers new perspectives on addressing the challenges of youth participation. Navigating the Unknown might suggest a future with a municipal “travel agency” for participation, providing guidance, resources, and connections to make the participatory process less daunting and more accessible. Or adopting an “open hearts, open minds” approach one could imagine facilitating transparent discussions about roles and aspirations, enhancing engagement and ensuring participation leads to meaningful outcomes. This report proposes new strategic approaches to youth participation in Rotterdam’s policymaking. By gaining a deeper understanding of the problem space and reframing it, these new perspectives offer avenues for further exploration. Insights into the frame innovation methodology are also shared to inform future studies.

This report describes the development of the Ford Concreate, a data immersion toolkit designed for the Innovation Management for Smart Vehicle Concepts team (design team) of Ford’s Research and Innovation Centre Aachen. The collaborative data physicalisation toolkit consists of three elements: an instruction process, the physicalisation tool and a set of reflection cards. Together, these elements lead the target group to collect inspiring insights from quantitative data by stimulating reflection and creative thinking through physical interaction with data. By consciously engaging with data while creating a physical representation of a dataset, users better understand the data and reveal patterns that lead to new insights. The toolkit is designed for use during creative sessions, led by a session facilitator. With recent advances in data-based technologies like AI, machine learning and IoT, designing with data is becoming impossible to avoid. Within Ford, the amount of collected data is growing, forcing the design team to look for new ways to integrate its data to improve continuous product and service innovation. This led to the initial goal of ‘using data as creative material’, as quantitative data is currently solely being used for testing and validation rather than to inspire the entire design process. To specify and achieve this goal, the fields of creativity and data representation were identified and studied, focusing on answering the following research question: How can data be represented in a way that stimulated creativity during the design process at Ford? It was concluded that data physicalisation could stimulate creativity and lead to better insights as it encourages reflection and creates deepened understanding through active interaction with the data, which led to the development of the toolkit: the Ford Concreate.

From the internet to the sensors in wearable devices, people leave their digital traces behind both online and offline. Data is getting ubiquitous and cheap. Some new fields, like business intelligence, are recognized and emerging. As a trustworthy and precise material, data is also a valuable source for designers. It provides accurate and detailed data on users’ behaviors and brings some new perspectives on users’ needs in the design process. Meanwhile, big data is a new field for most designers. Most designers, especially novice designers, often lack big data related knowledge and skills. When they face big data, they usually feel clueless and anxious. It is difficult for them to deal with big data well. This thesis's foundational objective is to support designers in applying big data in the design process effectively and confidently. It is about keeping exploring the possibilities of design and making sure that design stays at the cutting edge of the big data era. This project focused explicitly on novice designers who are inexperienced with projects involving big data. To provide this appropriate support, the key pain point was targeted from designers’ big data related project experiences, which is the feeling of being overwhelmed by big data when designers face it. In the end, I designed the data management platform to help designers relieve this feeling and have a better performance at big data involved projects. This thesis will introduce the project process. First, I did the literature review to learn about big data, how the relationship between big data and design is, and how the relationship between big data and design process is. Afterward, Context Mapping was conducted to learn about the designers’ experiences in applying big data in the design process. With the literature review and Context Mapping, I understood the project from both a theoretical and design practice perspectives. Then, I held a session to explore the problem space. The session was organized with designers to learn about their difficulties when dealing with big data. After the session, I realized that the biggest challenge for designers is being overwhelmed by data when translating big data into insights. It results from the massive big data content and cluelessness when designers face big data. It affects designers’ efficiency and confidence in the design process. To explore the solution space of the challenge, I held a co-creation session with novice designers. In the end, Data Management Platform was proposed. The concept's goals are to relieve designers from data overwhelmingness and assist designers in dealing with big data. The Data Management Platform can provide designers an overview of the project and prevent designers from feeling lost in the big data content. By guiding designers to apply big data in an appropriate process and assisting designers with some tools to collaborate with different people, designers can confidently and effectively make full use of big data. In the end, the concept was evaluated.

Jolly Dutch is a Dutch board game company that is trying to grow within the board game industry. The Dutch board game industry is growing rapidly, and it is perfect for new companies to take advantage of this. This report will show the possible opportunities for Jolly Dutch in the Dutch board game market. It will look into new possible strategies for Jolly Dutch and possible board game designs that fit that strategy. To find the answer to the research question “How can one create a future proof strategy for Jolly Dutch?” different methods were used. First of all, market research was done through multiple interviews with experts of the board game industry, a questionnaire on a board game forum and desk research. With the market research information, search areas were found and eventually converted to a new strategy. As a final step, this strategy was explored through the use of an online interview with potential customers. This resulted in a new strategy for Jolly Dutch and a board game that fits this strategy. This strategy suggests that Jolly Dutch should continue to focus on their sustainable games and expand this. Jolly Dutch could take the opportunity to focus on creating a subscription service that combines sustainable games with the principles of the subscription model.

This design report focuses on exploring the opportunities for technology-driven interventions to address health inequalities in children during their first 1000 days of life in Lamu, Kenya. Children’s health during the first 1000 days of life is crucial for their future development and overall health. Interventions that focus on improving health inequalities in the first 1000 days are cost-effective and help to reduce inequalities. In Lamu, Kenya, there is a young demographic and children’s health is worse than the national average, due to financial, geographical, and cultural constraints which make it difficult for communities to access quality healthcare. Technologies and innovation could help bridge the gap between communities and healthcare facilities to improve children’s health. The main research question that this report aims to answer is “How can we improve the healthy start to life in Lamu using available technologies within the local current context?”. First, a focus for a health challenge for this project is found, which had to be a relevant burden in Lamu in the first 1000 days, be culturally relevant, and present opportunities for technology. After mapping and eliminating health risks and problems in the first 1000 days based on these criteria, two health challenges stood out as relevant and offering opportunities: stunted growth and pneumonia. Experts from the KRCS recommended reframing stunted growth and focusing on (un)healthy nutrition, as it had not been focused on much in the region, was culturally relevant, and had the potential to make a significant impact. Next, fieldwork interviews, observations and generative sessions were used to understand the context of (un)healthy nutrition in Lamu, as well as the local opportunities for technologies. Lamu is a diverse region with strong informal networks and social cohesion, but food insecurity, lack of awareness on the importance of healthy diets, and healthcare accessibility concerns are challenges. Community Health Volunteers are central in a wider approach to improve community health. Opportunities for technological enablers were found in the widespread adoption of phones, as well as the potential for anthropometric measurement tools as they are available and affordable. The opportunities that were found from the context research were used to ideate and describe six different intervention scenarios, in which Community Health Volunteers use anthropometric measurement tools to enable various basic nutrition-based health services for children in the first stages of life at the community level. The basics of these scenarios were evaluated and co-created with Community Health Volunteers during the fieldwork. The scenarios vary mainly on the purpose of doing the measurements, how the technological enablers are used, and the impact that is generated. Two scenarios, the community-based growth monitoring scenario and the remote follow-ups scenario, were selected as the most promising after evaluation with local experts from KRCS. Further evaluation on the desirability, feasibility, and viability of these two scenarios resulted in the community-based growth monitoring scenario being identified as the most promising. One of the main barriers to implementing these interventions is the compensation of CHVs, and ways to overcome this issue are suggested. Finally, recommendations are given for further design and implementation

Over the past decades, multiple HR constructs have emerged that organizations strived to adopt and integrate into their daily businesses. The most recent development is Employee Experience (EX). EX is essentially a framework for creating engaged employees. Engaged employees have been linked to multiple desirable business outcomes, such as smoother employee recruitment, increased employee retention, increased employee efficiency and higher organizational profitability. EX can be defined as the sum of perceptions employees have about their interactions with the organization, and how this aligns with their expectations. This graduation project aims to explore how organizations can improve EX. It was carried out for Livework, a Rotterdam based Service Design studio. The project explores how organizations are currently working on EX, what creates excellent EX and how organizations can receive the tools to understand and improve EX. A literature review is conducted on the evolution of HR constructs. Relevant insights from established constructs, such as motivation and job satisfaction are collected and related to EX. To understand how organizations understand and currently address EX, a set of interviews is conducted. This set of interviews yields a three-step model that describes what needs to be done to improve EX. The three steps are: 1. Learning about the value of EX 2. Learning how to improve EX 3. Measuring impact. To structure the large amount of information available on EX, a model is selected. First, six different models are compared to assess their suitability for structuring EX. Finally, one model is selected and further adapted to create the EX pyramid. The pyramid depicts five employee needs that organizations need to satisfy to create excellent EX: Safety/Security, Rewards, Connection, Growth and Work/Life harmony. The EX pyramid and the EX cycle provide all the information an organization needs to improve EX. Ideas are generated to design the way this information is communicated to Livework, who this project was carried out for, and their client organizations. The problem statement used to guide the phase of idea generation and prototyping is: How can organizations adopt fitting EX strategies? The final design is the EXcellent process: a process towards excellent EX. This process consists of three phases: prepare, understand, and imagine. During the prepare phase, Livework consults the EX pyramid to create a better understanding of the model, which is used throughout the process. During the understand phase, Livework and the client conduct qualitative and quantitative research to understand how well the organization is satisfying their employees’ needs. In addition, the business objectives of the organization provide direction for the pyramid levels that needs to be improved. During the imagine phase, Livework and the organization define interventions that will be used to improve specific levels of the pyramid. A digital slide deck of over seventy interventions provides inspiration for these improvements. The outcomes of the EXcellent process are a better understanding of employee needs, business objective and how they together deliver concrete steps an organization can take to improve EX.

Organisations need to go through continuous change in order to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. This change is often expressed in a vision which should engage and involve all stakeholders. However, implementing change successfully turns out to be a challenge since two in three change processes stall. Ink Strategy is a visual consulting agency that helps organisations to formulate their vision. They use visual thinking to create a shared image of the vision, with a tangible visualisation as concrete output. This is accomplished in co-creation sessions with their clients. While vision formulation is important, Ink aspires to extend their service to later phases of the change process. They want to offer a more holistic solution to their clients and collaborate on longer projects. However, Ink’s clients approach them as visualisers and not change consultants. To overcome this, Ink needs to discover the needs of their clients and develop their service accordingly. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate how Ink can extend their visual thinking services to add value in later phases of the process of organisational change. To reach this aim, literature research, internal and external analysis, observations and client interviews were performed to find the strengths and weaknesses of Ink and the challenges their clients face in the change process. Ink’s strengths and their clients’ challenges were matched to form opportunities. The most promising opportunities for Ink Strategy are: Planning the change; Translating vision to daily work; Training ambassadors; Training and activating people; Sharing results; Changing daily work routines. These opportunities provide a general answer to the aim of this research. The opportunity “Changing daily work routines” was developed into the new service “Redesigning Routines” to show more specifically how Ink can extend their portfolio. Redesigning Routines is a service that follows Ink’s services on vision formulation. The aim of the service is to translate the abstract vision to concrete, daily work, help people to understand the values that drive their behaviour and give them direction on how to change. This is achieved by a workshop with a co-creative, visual approach. The workshop provides a safe space for reflection, helping people to make their values explicit and formulate concrete steps for change. The end result of the workshop is a visualisation of a newly designed work routine, that is in line with the new vision, and a concrete list of actions to ensure people will start to experiment with desired behaviour. Eventually, this should result in behavioural change among employees, to accomplish the company vision. The service connects well to Ink’s current portfolio since it bridges the gap between an abstract vision and concrete, daily work that needs to change. The service mostly helps to empower people: it helps them to understand underlying values that drive behaviour and to gain direction on how to change. This approach might be rather unique: consultancy firms do provide services on change activation, but they do not consciously take into account the underlying needs of employees.

Vehicles are becoming more and more connected, and in combination with various services, they generate large amounts of data, which is mainly used in development processes for testing purposes in Ford. However, sensor data has more potentials for product development, and one valuable potential is to contribute to product innovation in the early design stage, which can be seen from existing studies on data-enabled design. However, the large amount and complexity of data make it hard for the Ford Research and innovation (R&A) team to approach data, nevertheless apply data in the design process. In addition, there are no available methods and tools that fit in with Ford’s data availability and workflow to guide them to apply data for product development, which can make the R&A team feel clueless in their practice.  Based on the challenge, I framed the initial research question of this project as: How to facilitate the Ford R&A team to apply user data to enhance creativity in their ideation process? Then, I conducted research, product development, and evaluation to deliver the final design intervention. Afterwards, the concept "A toolbox for creative problem solving with data "was developed and tested. Based on the evaluation of the toolbox, I designed a guidebook containing a three-step method as a guide to applying the toolbox. The second-round evaluation shows that the final design intervention is believed to provide innovative methods and tools for the R&A team to generate insights from data combinations for the problem framing process and cultivate creative thinking during the session. Moreover, the three-step method for combining data fills the method gap for the implementation of data-enabled design in organizational practice. In conclusion, the final design intervention sufficiently fulfils the design goal and contributes to the method study on data-enabled design.

Creativity is becoming increasingly essential in today’s workplaces and organisations. However, though everyone is believed to be creative, not everyone feels confident enough to express their creative ideas. The organisational culture plays a remarkable role in shaping the creative climate. If its core cultural value does not support and encourage creativity, employees may experience a lack of creative confidence. Therefore, to address creative confidence in organisations, it is crucial to study the organisation’s creative culture and implement interventions that are culturally sensitive. For this project, Rabobank and PostNL were selected as the organisation cases, specifically their innovation project teams within the innovation departments as the project focus. The project was carried out qualitatively to study the innovation contexts of Rabobank and PostNL, in which the main participants consisted of the innovation coaches and coachees from the innovation project teams. By analysing and mapping out the creative cultures of these two companies, several key cultural values were identified. These include: high power division, reverence for company history and traditional way of working, adherence to clear rules and aversion to uncertainty, emphasis on group connections and collaborations, and a drive for success and achievement. To help the innovation coaches in fostering greater creative confidence in the coachees, an intervention called “CreatOrg workshop” was designed. It is a templated journey (a workshop with 4 activities) that encourages coaches and coachees to reflect on their previous coaching and workshop experiences together. The workshop aimed to increase sensitivity and awareness towards the creative cultural values of ‘care’ and ‘fun’, while inspiring participants to generate potential ideas for fostering creative confidence in future coaching and workshop settings. Later the concept was evaluated with respondents from Rabobank and PostNL, as well as other relevant stakeholders from different organisations. The results indicated that CreatOrg workshop effectively increased participants’ creative confidence and enhanced their sensitivity and awareness towards both ‘care’ and ‘fun’ creative cultural values. Participants also found it inspiring and acknowledged its potential for long-term use. Rabobank and PostNL could directly benefit from CreatOrg workshop and the insights from their creative cultures. Other organisations might also find it helpful to reflect on their own creative cultures by studying the demonstrated creative cultural values of Rabobank and PostNL. However, further communication and follow-up validation within Rabobank and PostNL is needed. Future research could utilise the combined cultural model proposed in this project to explore organisation/culture-related subjects. Additionally, the intervention itself could be experimented with more types of organisations in the future.

This graduation project is based on the services that Flatland, a visual consultancy company, provides within the strategic visual design market. The discussion within this project is about what the role of the facilitator is and what the balance should be between gathering content for deliverables, and managing the collaboration and interaction of a client team. The latter is something in which Flatland is unconsciously competent, and hence have a lot of tacit knowledge. In order to create consciously skilled strategic visual design practices, tools were designed that allow this knowledge to be systematized, taught and learnt, and improved. The final deliverables address Flatland's understanding of collaboration in sessions and create a way of structuring these processes. A framework identifies twenty-seven aspects of good collaboration and makes Flatland aware of what to focus on within their sessions. In addition, a new concept called soft moments explains the interactions and expressions to focus on in order to create insights about a certain situation. The poster of collaboration places the framework in context, which can be used to analyze and observe sessions in order to create insights about a client's situation or collaboration. The toolkit for group interventions combines all deliverables and allows them to become more aware of what to focus on within sessions, but also how to respond accordingly with substantiated actions.

This thesis focuses on fostering creative confidence within the context of entrepreneurial education for the VMBO/HAVO/MBO levels. Recognising the creative potential in everyone, the challenge is to bridge the gap between being creative and having the confidence to use it. The literature review identified the importance of giving students the freedom to experiment and immerse themselves in experiences, emphasising the overlap between entrepreneurial and creative attitudes such as risk-taking, critical thinking and openness to ambiguity. It became clear that in a creative learning process it is not the end result that is important, but the process itself, encouraging reflection and learning from mistakes. However, the fieldwork revealed that the existing tasks within GoFuture were seen as too framed, limiting students’ exploration of questions. Teachers expressed an openness to more active and creative teaching, but faced challenges in preparation due to time constraints and a lack of tools from the platform. Students and teachers agreed on the importance of creativity in education and entrepreneurship and expressed a desire for more opportunities to integrate creativity into learning. Hands-on, group-oriented tasks were seen as more motivating and challenged the prevailing focus on rational thinking. Moving to the design phase, three critical design directions were identified, emphasising the need for an experiential, step-by-step approach to learning. The potential of GoFuture to foster creative confidence by encouraging risk-taking behaviour was recognised, leading to the formulation of a new design goal that prioritised creating awareness and courage to take risks and fail. A secondary literature review was performed within the context of risk-taking. A set of guidelines was created that support within the development of designing a solution. The subsequent stages of ideation, prototyping and testing led to the development of a creative teaching module for teachers. Build upon the proposed design guidelines, this module includes several themes, assignments and a sharing platform. The module supports teachers in fostering a creative mindset in the classroom and provides a pathway for innovation within the education system. Alongside the module, a roadmap has been developed, consisting of four horizons. The initial focus is on raising awareness through the creative teaching module, and the end vision focusses on fostering a culture of creativity, innovation and confidence in both students and educators, preparing students for a dynamic and innovative future.

The need for companies to innovate continuously has never been greater, due to the complex and dynamic conditions in which they compete today (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Tellis et. al., 2009). The ones who need to innovate, are the employees of an organization. However, to properly innovate, the employees need to understand and be engaged with the vision and know how to apply strategy in daily practices. Yet, this is exactly what is missing. Most employees currently don’t have a clear idea of what their company’s vision and strategy entails (Kaplan & Norton, 2005): research shows that only 8.7 percent of employees rated their knowledge of the company’s strategy above moderate, although they would like to know more about it (Alexander, 1994). This led to the following research question to explore in collaboration with P2 Strategy (an innovation consultancy): “How to enable P2S to get their clients’ employees to better understand, be motivated about, and apply the client’s vision and strategy into their daily work?” As an answer to this question, the Visual Storytelling toolkit has been developed. The toolkit consists of tool suggestions on cards. These cards can be used by P2S to set up a tailor made workshop for a specific client, as well as staying involved with the client over a longer period of time. Visualization, materialization and storytelling are applied throughout the toolkit. The toolkit cards are divided into five steps that need to be completed by the participants (employees) during a workshop in order to reach the goal of engaged employees that can innovate in line with the vision. The five steps are: 1. Valuemapper: participants individually retrieve personal values as preparation of the workshop. 2. Vision Sharer: the vision and value shift are shared with the participants in an engaging way. 3. Connector: the retrieved personal values are explicitly linked to the vision(‘s values). 4. Content Stormer: the participants playfully explore ideas to implement strategy. 5. Reflectioner: participants keep the vision on top of mind and reflect (with others) on the progress over a long period of time. The graduation enhance the understanding of the actual use of strategy tools in both innovation consultancies and their client’s organizations. Furthermore, this study enhances our understanding of how to incorporate design in strategy activities, and that there are interesting opportunities for design (visual storytelling) in the organization field regarding routine change and engaging employees. The findings of this graduation suggest that innovation consultancies need to change their own routines, before being able to change routines of their clients - and that design, and specifically visual storytelling, is a way to do that.

This graduation project was in cooperation with Ontzorghuis, a Dutch charity that is focused on supporting the parents of children with special needs (CSN). It is crucial that CSN parents receive extra support, especially in the early stages when the child's diagnosis is still unclear. Parents of a CSN have extra responsibilities and care, which can easily overwhelm them and lead to burnout. In fact, 78% of CSN parents started working less after getting their child, and 60% ended up overworked and burned out (Okma, Naads, Vergeer & Berns, 2014) . Their extra care can also lead to an escalation: if the parents' well being is declined too much, the CSN has to be placed out of home. However, currently the Dutch care system is focused and structured around the child with special needs, not on the parents. Parents of special needs children are currently not seen as informal carers, giving them no right to extra support (Ross, 2020). This leaves the parents in a vulnerable position. The goal of this project is to use systemic design to develop a strategy for Ontzorghuis, to have a long-term impact on these parents. After researching the context, several key actors in the system around CSN parents were identified: the national government, municipal councils, the care domain, charities and network. Ontzorghuis is part of the charity actor. For each of the actors, one or more interviews were conducted with someone working in this domain, 12 in total. The insights of the interviews were combined with those from literature research, to analyse the interactions between the actors. This forms the basis of the system map. The map consists of 25 points, representing the challenges actors have to face together. This system map was then used to investigate the possibilities for systemic impact for CSN parents. Leverage points were identified, and used to map out future interventions. The insights were converted into an actionable strategy for Ontzorghuis. The first step of the strategy is to make CSN parents visible within society. The graduation design therefore had the goal of helping actors reflect on their role in the system around CSN parents. Storytelling was chosen as the mechanism to convey the system, as "storytelling allows for thorough understanding of complex systems with limited time investment and without requiring expertise on systems design" (Talgorn & Hendriks, 2021, p. 50). Using storytelling also allowed room for the empathy needed for this vulnerable but inspiring target group. The end result is a children's book for any actors of the system, using a metaphor to tell the story of a CSN parent interacting with the system, and inviting readers to reflect.