Generational succession represents the most critical transition in the lifecycle of a family firm (Calabrò, 2021; Poccia, 2015). In Italy, 92% of family SMEs will face one in the coming years, yet only 18% have a structured plan(Lozzi, 2025). Despite an extensive body of academic literature on the topic, this knowledge remains fragmented, inaccessible, and rarely translated into tools that firm owners can practically use (Baltazar et al., 2025; Romano & D’Allura, 2025). At the same time, strategic design, a discipline developed to support organisations in navigating complex, systemic, and human-centred challenges, has been designed almost exclusively for large organisations with substantial resources, dedicated research functions, and established design cultures (Micheli et al., 2018). Family SMEs operate in a fundamentally different condition, characterised by limited resources, no prior design culture, and deep resistance to external intervention (Millers & Gaile-Sarkane, 2021; Wrigley et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2021).
This thesis investigates whether and how strategic design can be introduced into family SMEs, and whether it can concretely support these firms during the process of generational succession. The research is structured around two extensive literature reviews, one on strategic design and one on family business and succession, followed by three rounds of semi-structured interviews, including professors, succession experts, consultants, and family firm owners in the Piedmont region. A co-creation process conducted over more than a month with a manufacturing micro-firm approaching its third-generation succession produced a realistic, field-tested representation of how succession actually unfolds in practice, and shaped the translation of strategic design principles into a management system grounded simultaneously in academic literature and organisational reality.
The result is a digital platform that translates this research into a structured support system for family firms navigating generational transition. The platform combines a five-phase succession process grounded in both strategic design and family business literature, a library of strategic design tools adapted for a non-design audience, a diagnostic system, and an interactive process canvas. The project sets out to demonstrate that strategic design can be meaningfully introduced into contexts distant from design culture, that it can be translated, adapted, and co-developed with its intended users to become a concrete and accessible instrument for family firms navigating one of the most complex moments in their lifecycle.

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The Dutch energy system is in transition. As the share of solar energy increases and net metering stops in 2027, households are being called upon to play a more active role in managing their own energy. Yet most current solutions are built around technology, not the people using them.

This thesis explores how design can help bridge that gap by guiding households in using their home battery more intelligently, aligning personal goals with system needs.

Conducted in collaboration with Vattenfall, this graduation project investigated how a behavioural, user-centred approach could transform the home battery from a technical product into an adaptive energy system.

Through extensive research across system, household, and user levels, the main barriers in the home battery journey were identified. The project then zoomed in on the use phase. Four key barriers emerged: the energy system does not speak the user’s language, fails to become part of daily routines, offers unactionable information, and treats all users the same. These four barriers shaped the core design challenge.

To address this, the concept is grounded in behavioural design. The Fogg Behaviour Model, the Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change (TTM), and the HOOK model were used to structure a strategic approach to behaviour change. Central to this is the behaviour loop; a cycle of trigger, action, feedback, and reinforcement, which served as both the lens and backbone for concept development.

Through interviews, behavioural mapping, and system-level analysis, the central opportunity was identified: to create a smart, adaptive digital layer around the battery that supports more conscious energy behaviour over time.

The outcome is Loop: a household-centred energy system that learns from the family, adapts to their situation, and motivates smart energy action through personalised feedback and stimulation. Two core system components were developed in detail:
1. The onboarding and learning system, which helps Loop tailor its guidance to each household
2. The motivation system, which reinforces helpful behaviour through feedback and stimulation.

The concept was refined through iterative sessions with Dutch families, internal Vattenfall stakeholders, and behavioural scientist Dr. BJ Fogg. The resulting system balances personalisation with clarity and aims to lower the threshold for smart energy assets in the home both now and in the future.

Loop is designed not only as a proposition for today’s battery users, but as a scalable logic for smart energy behaviour across different user segments, assets, and contract types.
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This report, titled Expanding Puerto Rawson: Enhancing Fishery Capacity and Project Cargo Logistics, presents a conceptual masterplan for the eco-friendly expansion of the Port of Rawson. The port’s proximity to a region abundant in marine resources makes it an attractive location for expansion. However, the port is facing strategic expansion problems and it could fail to accommodate the rise in demand from the fishery industry. This report carefully maps out the gap between the expected rise in demand and the currently existing infrastructure. After that, two models are created to transform the rise in demand that is expected by 2030 & 2040, to nautical demands for the port, like number of berths and required waterway width. The results from these model in combination with a strategic overview of the landscape, were used to come up with three conceptual designs that eventually converged into one final conceptual design by conducting an MCA. This conceptual design, together with the port waste management plan, could enable an eco-friendly and future-ready expansion of the Port of Rawson. ... Read more

Consumers have an impact on the sustainability status of our world in many different ways. In this project the focus lies on food consumption. Dietary changes are considered a great opportunity for fighting climate change, especially through the reduction of meat consumption (Poore & Nemecek, 2018). This graduation project is performed for Goodcase. The startup aims to accelerate the shift towards a sustainable diet by offering sustainable foods directly to the customer. The goal of this project is to empower food box customers to switch their diet to a more sustainable one by offering a support system that promotes long-term behaviour change. Literature research indicated that selfefficacy and social norms play the main role when it comes to changing to more eco-friendly diets (Eker et al., 2019). Lead users reported that they had initially increased their self-efficacy to switch to a new diet by challenging themselves to perform the new behaviour for a certain time. Therefore, the design solution focused on self-experimentation through self-challenging, paired with the facilitation of social interaction with other users online. This combination is also applied in other behaviour change services, e.g. the Weight Watchers programme which helps consumers to eat healthier. Based on these key insights, the design brief defined the following design goal: To increase the self-efficacy of consumers trying to change to a more environmentally sustainable diet by facilitating self-experimentation with a food box. Following this brief, a productservice system was designed which consisted of a food box with products facilitating vegetarian cooking, a physical guide that challenged users to reduce meat consumption, and an online group for users to motivate each other. In a subsequent user test, qualitative research with eight consumers suggested that the food products triggered experimentation with vegetarian food which helped consumers to increase their selfefficacy to eat less meat. Vegetarian eating might have been positively influenced by the meat reduction challenge. However, many users found it too inconvenient to monitor themselves daily with the guidebook. Finally, a second iteration of the design concept is proposed that incorporates the key learnings from the user test. The concept, called EcoEat, combines a food box with a supportive app which allows users to monitor and improve their behaviour over the long term and in a more convenient way. This design proposal could be tested in the future. The main conclusion from this project is that providing real experiences with unfamiliar, eco-friendly food products can positively influence the consumer’s attitude towards sustainable diets. It can open them up towards trying out more food of this kind and thereby helps them to switch to a more sustainable diet. More of these opportunities for trial should be provided to consumers. Food boxes are a good medium to provide these experiences regularly. With a complementary behaviour change service the experimentation with a sustainable diet can be upheld if the users are guided in a way that is convenient for them. ... Read more