The current gap between what municipalities do and what citizens expect, is demanding a new approach for creating public services. This is portrayed by the amount of complaints that the Nationale Ombudsman received about municipal actions which have increased with 15% in 2021 in comparison to 2020.

An opportunity to make room for the citizens’ perspective is to apply the design expertise in the policy-making process. Since design has shifted towards Human-Centered Design in combination with co-creative practices, it has become highly suitable in addressing the challenges that municipalities face (Norman, 2013; Camacho, 2016). Consequently, Human-Centered Design has become valuable in the context of policy-making, because of its tools and methods which can carefully consider the human perspective throughout the policy-making proces.

Together with the municipality of The Hague, a project was set up to research how the design team contributes to human-centered policy-making in collaboration with policy and policy execution experts. The research revealed that some challenges arise within the collaboration between designers and experts. Among these challenges are the fact that the working procedures of designers and experts are diametrically opposed to each other, and that the true value that design offers is not entirely seen within the municipality. Therefore, the design vision for this project is that before designers can take on a larger role in policy-making and add human-centered value to policy-making at the municipality of the Hague, policy and policy execution experts need to truly understand and see the added value of applying design.

The insights from the research have led to the design of the Ontwerpwijzer, a conversation tool which aims to build a bridge between the two worlds of design and policy-making and to guide the collaboration in its early stages. The Ontwerpwijzer is used during the intake meeting, in which the details of the project and potential contributions of the designer are discussed. Consequently, this forms an interesting opportunity to show why, what and when design has something valuable to offer to the policy-making process.

Project Motivation
In 2013, Dutch politicians longed for more rigorous actions against fraudulent applications for financial support. They were all done with residents taking advantage of the system and decided to adopt an all-or-nothing approach. Child support applications would be assessed thoroughly and mercilessly. Consequently, that would also mean that the good can suffer from the bad, as stated by the state secretary of finance Frans Weekers (Frederik, 2021).

In the years that followed, about 30,000 parents were wrongly labeled as fraudsters by the tax authorities. These parents had to repay their allowance in full at the slightest mistake. In some cases, a single missing receipt was enough to make parents pay back tens of thousands of euros. To this day, some parents are experiencing the financial, mental, and physical consequences of the fraud hunt. We now label this the Toeslagenaffaire (Eng: The Child Welfare Fraud Scandal). Within public organizations, every effort is made to prevent these kinds of debacles in
the future.

The Toeslagenaffaire shows that the government sometimes imposes unrealistic demands on residents. Policymakers assumed that residents understood the rules for applying for benefits and had sufficient capacity to submit applications fully and correctly. However, not all parents can submit monthly forms and indicate changes in their wages in practice. Sometimes they are not even aware of the conditions. Here we see a difference between the policymakers’ expectations (the rationalistic perspective) and the capacities of the resident (the realistic perspective). Adopting a realistic policymaking perspective makes public services accessible to more residents, reducing process costs and stimulating residents’ self-sufficiency (NL: redzaamheid).

Within a realistic policymaking perspective, civil servants create realistic assumptions about the mental capacity of residents. This mental capacity consists of two components: the ability to understand the process (NL: denkvermogen) and the ability to act accordingly (NL: doenvermogen). When the procedures of implemented policies match these abilities, the resident will be able to follow the process. If the cognitive load of the policy exceeds the denkvermogen and doenvermogen, the resident faces more difficulties. They might require a customized process, which is costly and inefficient. Assessing the cognitive load of the context and the residents’ mental capacity supports policymakers in creating realistic assumptions about residents.

De ‘Erkenningsmethode’ (Eng: Acknowledgment Method) supports policymakers in creating this realistic assumption. Through empathy exercises and context assessments, stakeholders realize the different mental capacities of residents and consider the challenges they face in the policy process. Some residents might not be able to enter the process or get stuck along the way. When participants experience the challenges of certain residents, they can make an informed decisions for the innovation approach.

First, participants can choose to let the current process’s cognitive load and the residents’ capacity remain the same. This might be the case when resources are scarce, or not all profiles receive the same prioritization. Alternatively, the next phase can increase the mental capacity (stimulating residents) or make the process easier (less complexity and more support). Whatever option is chosen, the stakeholders should all be aware of the prioritized approach, acknowledging the consequences for the self-determination profiles.

This way, a more diverse image of residents can be considered when innovating public services. Understanding these residents and acknowledging their problems is the first step in creating more realistic assumptions about the mental capacity of residents.

Young adults with Concerns about their mental health issues (YAMHI) seeking support in the Dutch mental health system struggle with long waiting times.
Enliven aims to develop a virtual peer mentor support platform for YAMHIE to bridge these waiting times. This thesis explores the design process and development of a concept with the following design goal:

To Enable young adults with concerns about their mental health issues to engage with a peer mentor through interaction in a virtual reality environment while waiting on the professional health care, with the aim to support them in addressing their problems.

The design process involved participatory design methods like contextmapping, co-design sessions and prototyping. The tools used for prototyping consisted of Minecraft to design the virtual environments, Figma and paper prototypes.
The outcome of this project is:

A design concept:
1) consisting of ten virtual environments that can be used to design a virtual peer mentor support platform.
2) An experiential prototype to demonstrate the intended interactions between YAMHI and peer mentors of some of those environments (6 of the 10)

As an addition on the side:
3) Because the platform does not exist yet, a manual to support the design team to further integrate these environments in their platform has been created.

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 is part of this field and has also gained more acceptance over the years (Smith & Iversen, 2018). The concept of citizen participation is experiencing growth due to rules and regulations that encourage this in government projects (e.g. the Omgevingswet (IPLO, n.d.)). Municipalities hire design studios like Zeewaardig to help guide these participatory processes, because of their expertise in the field of participatory design. Literature shows that there is often still a need to demonstrate the value of design to clients (Schmiedgen et al., 2016). This research is commissioned by Zeewaardig, a design studio working on participatory design, who also want to demonstrate the value of their approach. However, little is known about the impact of a participatory design approach on participating residents.

This research proposes the concept of empowered citizenship as a key form of impact that can be made on residents through a participatory design approach. It further details this concept in a framework that outlines the various components that make up empowered citizenship and the participatory design activities that are related to this impact. Empowered citizenship consists of two components: citizen empowerment (which consists of voice, agency and opportunity structure) and responsible citizenship (which consists of a sense of collectivity and citizenship abilities).

This framework was evaluated with designers. Furthermore, it was used to explore how the framework could be used to evaluate impact through a case study analysis. The findings from the case study further validated the framework, but also provided more learnings on participatory design and the measurement of impact.

Based on the learnings from literature and the case study the ‘Are we making impact?’ tool is introduced. This impact demonstration tool consists of a poster and a booklet. Both are set up around the same three elements: 1) What is impact in the participatory design context, 2) How to think about impact in participatory design projects, and 3) Demonstrating impact, step by step. The first two elements use the framework and impact considerations to help designers become aware of impact in their projects, better understand it, and be able to make informed decisions about it with clients in a kick-off. The third element provides an overview of the steps designers need to take to demonstrate the impact of their participatory approach.

The tool was evaluated with Zeewaardig and other participatory design studios. This demonstrated its value as a tool that helps designers to make more effective agreements at the front end of a project. This in turn will give them more freedom to work towards empowered citizenship. In addition, the tool helps to demonstrate impact and thus improve their practice and have more credible arguments towards (future) clients.

The aim of this research was to investigate if and how the project performance of integrated construction projects can be improved by focussing on empathy during the preconstruction phase. Big infrastructural construction projects often face a poor project performance which causes the sector is aimed at searching for strategies to deal with this. Looking at what drives project success it is said the people involved and their competences are main factors of influence. These people need to integrate working processes and collaborate with each other to successfully deliver the project. Experiences from practice and a literature review resulted in a strong expectation that especially the competence empathy is important to this in construction projects. This would be important during the preconstruction phase in specific to support the alignment and integration between project team members. The research focusses hereby on the preconstruction phase of integrated construction projects and follows the Integral Project Management (IPM) structure to describe the structure of construction project teams. Empathy is defined as ‘the ability to understand and share the feelings of another’. The research adopts a difference in internal empathy ( = empathy between people within the project organization) and external empathy (= empathy with the client and/or stakeholders).

The research first investigated in interviews with experts from the industry if and where during the preconstruction phase it would be important for the involved people to be empathic. Second the empathic ability of a construction project organization has been measured to indicate how empathy is distributed across project participants. The results showed that the construction professionals on average score low on empathic competence and that in certain situations it would be important for project participants to be empathic for a good project outcome. This results in a gap in the construction sector between required empathy and actual empathic competence which demonstrates there’s room for improvement in this area.

Based on the results of the research it seems that the project performance of integrated construction projects can be improved by focussing on stimulating more empathy between client and contractor and towards stakeholders during the preconstruction phase (= external empathy). Especially in the relationship between client and contractor there’s room for improvement as there’s a gap in required empathy of the contractor. The reason that the performance of construction projects can be improved via external empathy is that when looking at what mostly causes projects to perform badly, it is said this is often related to a bad collaboration between client and contractor and/or insufficient involvement of stakeholders. The research results also showed that project performance can be improved by focussing on stimulating more empathy internally in the project organization within teams and between people from different disciplines. However, this has a lower effect on improving the performance of the project compared to stimulating external empathy. The research finally presents The Empathy Framework as a recommendation for the construction sector to be used as a strategy to improve project performance via empathy.

Empathy is one of the 8 design competences of the study Communication & Multimedia Design at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. However, there is a gap within the curriculum regarding actively teaching students what it means to be an empathic designer, and it has not been completely clear what it actually means to be an empathic designer. Based on my research, I came up with the following design goal: to help students use empathy consciously throughout their design projects. Within this context, I came up with the following design focus: Offering structure and clarity within the development of empathic abilities.Based on literary research, field research and designing by doing, I came up with my final concept: the Empathic Habits program. The Empathic Habits program clarifies the meaning of professional empathy in design, helps students reflect upon their own abilities, and helps them increase their abilities in an easy way At the start of the second year, CMD-students who join the program participate in their first Empathic Habits workshop. At this point, most students are not aware of what they have yet to learn; they are unconsciously incompetent. Before the workshop, students do an empathic abilities-test in which they are rated on 5 empathic sub-abilities. Together, these abilities make up what it means to be an empathic designer. At the start of the workshop they analyse their results: what are their strengths and weaknesses? In this introspection process, students move from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. During the next part of the workshop, students get to practise their weakest empathic ability by interviewing each other. They are to use at least 3 mini-activity-cards corresponding with the empathic ability they are going to practise. These cards contain short, simple assignments which students can use in any user research setting. At the end of the first workshop, the students reflect upon what they have learned and how they want to further develop their empathic abilities. For students who join the follow-up program, it continues over the next 6-8 weeks with weekly or bi-weekly reflection sessions with fellow students and a teacher. Every week, they are to try new activities and reflect upon what works for them and why. By adding mini-activities to their repertoire one by one, they develop empathic habits, making them more empathic designers. They move from being consciously incompetent to consciously competent. Assuming students keep using the mini-activities, through the years that follow, the mini-activities will become second nature: they will become unconscious habits. In this process, students and/or graduates move from being consciously competent to unconsciously competent.

The value of customer relationships appears to be a hot topic at the moment as companies need to move from competition to collaboration, or how I will largely refer to: from transactional to relational. However, the value which current customer relationships generate is far from the claimed collaboration. For many years, transactional relationships kept companies in a stable comfort zone with easy cash flow, measurements and ongoing linear chain processes. However, they need to survive, but large corporates might find difficulties in acquiring new approaches to their relationships but start recognizing that their internal operations may be the key reason (Junginger, 2017). Looking at my personal motivation towards interactions and relationships between people, I see customer relationships not as on the interaction between companies but people. Although the word “customer” is largely used along with the thesis because of the Philips terminology, a relationship between people from different companies - a partnership, should equalise both sides of individuals as partners. Removing the roles of customer and provider helps to step out of the unwanted transactional approach. The same happens with customer-centricity. Although customer centricity seems to be the saving boat, companies struggle to apply it. Because it is not the company itself that needs to be customer centric, but the employees. To overcome the transactional approach of Account Management, Philips needs to understand that there are external factors to account managers that influence the behaviour of these and consequently, the outcomes of the customer interaction. Incentivisation on new deals and commercial education takes a big role within the context but this project will focus on the education side - training. Companies deliver education to their employees so that they perform under the assumed company strategy. In the case of Philips aiming to improve customer relationships, the organisation provides training to its account managers to sell better. This project aimed to develop a solution space to reframe the approach, knowledge and behaviour gaps in the dialogues between Philips Account Managers and Philips customers - hospitals.

Societies are aging. This means the older population is not only growing in size, but also in proportion. Apart from this, generations are changing. The elderly of the future will in all probability not have the same needs as the elderly of today. These changes lead to new challenges for society and ask for new solutions spatially and socially. There is a lack of understanding how these factors will influence our daily lives. Which impact will this have on aspects like safety or social cohesion? How will public space look like and how will it feel to live in a society with a lot of elderly and highly developed technology? Currently the public space of neighbourhoods in general and in Nieuw Waldeck in particular, does not anticipate this phenomenon of aging and the unknown needs of the elderly of the future. This thesis aimed to integrate the human perspective of imagining the future neighbourhood, while spatial plans are made for the neighbourhood. With the purpose of empathizing all the stakeholders involved with the future elderly residents of Nieuw Waldeck, so they are able to create solutions which meet the residents’ needs. Observations, interviews and a literature study were done to gain insight in the current context. After ideating and additional literature research the concept for future life stories was created. Prototypes were assessed and evaluated multiple times by the stakeholders. By constantly validating and iterating the concept with the stakeholders, it was improved and adjusted to the needs of the stakeholders. “I live in.. the future” was created as a toolkit to share experiences of future residents with the stakeholders involved in planning the restructuring of the public space of the neighbourhood. The carrier of the toolkit contains different life stories of different future residents about their daily life in the neighbourhood. This carrier is presented in a session in which the stakeholders get a clear introduction and are individually immersed into one of the residents’ perspective by the carrier. This is followed by an open conversation about the stories and the stakeholders’ personal reflection on them. Evaluation tests revealed that all the stakeholders were able to empathize with the future elderly residents. The toolkit can be used as a conversation starter between the stakeholders about the future of their neighbourhood, since everything was easily comprehensible for everybody regardless of their background. The urban planners can use the outcomes of the session(s) to create spatial advices and plans, incorporating solutions which meet the residents’ needs. This toolkit can be integrated into the process of making plans for the public space of neighbourhoods.

Even though there has been an enormous effort to tackle the problem of gender-based violence against women in Mexico, within legal terms, the landscape still seems uncertain, and the need for innovative approaches that bring new meaningful ways to look at the problem becomes highly relevant.

In those lines, the University Center for Dignity and Justice Francisco Suárez, SJ (CUDJ for its initials in Spanish), is working in making a diagnosis of the problem to propose strategies that ensure a life free of violence for women by triggering the discussions with the authorities in charge.

This report presents the research, analysis, design and development process of a proposal that seeks to provide tools to foster dialogues for an empathetic perspective, which encourages the emergence of shared knowledge and meanings, unveiling new perspectives to drive innovation and promote change.

Through a service design study, a set of dialogic visual tools translated women’s experiences into visualizations that enable the viewer to understand, empathize, and take an active responsibility towards women’s needs.

At the end of each chapter, a summary of the key insights that drove the design process is presented. The project aims to contribute to the discussion of the role of visualization in the emerging design landscape and how it is possible to contribute to the understanding, in human-scale, of complex contexts such as violence against women.

This graduation project aimed to enhance the patient handovers at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) by design based on experienced qualities and pain points by the ICU team, existing of doctors and nurses. At the ICU, care is delivered by multidisciplinary healthcare teams who strongly rely on teamwork and communication. Patient handovers are scheduled moments of communication, where information between different healthcare professionals is exchanged. However, there exists an unaccepted rate of unintended patient harm which can be attributed to failures in communication. These failures can be the result of educational, psychological, and organisational factors. To discover how design can overcome these failures in information sharing, observations and interviews within the ICU context were done. The aim of the observations was to understand and interpret the behaviour of ICU doctors and nurses throughout the day and during handovers. The purpose of the interviews was to get a deeper understanding of their personal experience with the different handover moments. The observations provided insights in the interactions between doctors, nurses, and both groups. Discovered communication breakdowns were captured in three different work models. The interviews revealed the experienced qualities and pain points during handovers. Altogether, both activities resulted in three ingredients which need to be considered while designing for enhanced handovers: information sharing, teamwork, and context.
Based on the findings, ICoon was developed in extensive collaboration with the ICU team. ICoon is a tool facilitating that the patient handovers are experienced as more effective and efficient. The tool exists of three different components: ‘overdragen’, ‘overhebben’, and ‘overzien’. ‘Overdragen’, allows that the complete ICU team will have the same expectations of each handover moment and entails that only relevant information is shared in an efficient way. ‘Overzien’ is an addition to the current Patient Data Management System (PDMS), allowing the ICU team to have a proper overview of the patient population on each unit and is supportive in efficiently handing over patients during shift changes. The last component, ‘over hebben’, will enable the ICU team to continuously reflect together on their handover process triggering organisational change. The last step of this design process was to elaborately evaluate ICoon with the ICU team. The aim of the evaluation was twofold: figuring out the added value of ICoon within the ICU regarding the experienced effectiveness and efficiency and assessing the support ‘overzien’ facilitates during patient handovers. Compared to the current situation, the ICU team agreed that ‘overdragen’ provides focus and structure, ‘overzien’ brings overview, and ‘over hebben’ can have a positive impact on the teamwork within and between the team of nurses and team of doctors. The concept ICoon in combination with the involvement of the ICU team resulted into tools and capacities for the realization of innovation at the ICU. The adopted human-centred design approach and engagement with the doctors as well as the nurses resulted into co-commitment of the ICU team, which turned out to be an important first step towards implementation of design solutions within the ICU. Therefore, ICoon turned out to serve as tool for transformation rather than a design solution only.

Every Dutch person has to deal with the court on average once in his life. There is a good chance that if this happens, you will have to deal with the subdistrict judge. In The Netherlands, this judge is the most accessible form for justice in (legal) conflicts. The subdistrict judge is relatively cheap, fast and deals with a big range of topics. However, in practice, questions can be put about the actual accessibility. Currently, defendants often do not take action when receiving a summons, appear at the wrong moment at the court or have wrong expectations of the subdistrict judge. As a result, there is a good chance that legal processes escalate unnecessarily and that defendants do not receive the right help for underlying problems. All these aspects ensure that the court cannot properly provide its core service: provide justice. Traditionally, the court can be seen as a wise old man on a hill, waiting for people on the top. However, waiting for the arrival of defendants at the court is often too late. Therefore, the court needs to take up an active role in activating, informing and guiding defendants before going to court. Precisely because of the neutral position of the court, the court should create a level playing field: offer equal access to all people. This new role should take shape by extending the service of the court with three new touchpoints: A visual leaflet as a neutral starting point, An online environment to experience the court in advance and An online and physical helpdesk for human guidance and questions. Hereby, the first session in court (roll session) can be changed to a more personal setting, without the formality and expectations of an actual judge. In this way, the roll session becomes a session fitting to its content: a qualitative moment for verbal responses. After implementing the service, more defendants are expected to take a right legal decision in their situation, to appear in court at the right moment and to have a better court experience. In the longer term, more people will have a realistic view of the court and the general sense of justice is expected to rise.

Het huidige systeem rondom schulden biedt weinig ruimte voor een menselijke aanpak en dus voor het aansluiten op de behoeften van het individu. Dit heeft een slecht mentaal functioneren door stress als gevolg. Daarnaast zorgt het ervoor dat je gedrag meer aangestuurd wordt door emotie, wat kan leiden tot een grote stapel ongeopende enveloppen en het verzwijgen van schulden. Door beide redenen hebben veel mensen met schulden het gevoel dat ze niet meer deel kunnen nemen aan de maatschappij. In sommige gevallen leidt dit tot sociale isolatie en depressie. Dit alles wijst naar het taboe dat bestaat rondom schulden, wat ervoor zorgt dat veel schulden onzichtbaar blijven voor bijna iedereen. Het doel van dit project is daarom het ondersteunen van mensen met schulden bij het doorbreken van het taboe, door hun persoonlijke behoeften te beantwoorden. Waardoor uiteindelijk al deze negatieve consequenties kunnen afnemen. In het onderzoek heeft de persoon met schulden telkens centraal gestaan. Het onderzoek heeft zich gefocust op de wijk het Oude Noorden in Rotterdam, omdat 21% (Idem, 2016) van de huishoudens in deze wijk problematische schulden heeft. Daarnaast is de wijk aan het gentrificeren, wat een diversiteit in cultuur en inkomen als gevolg heeft. Daarom moet men behoedzaam zijn voor de verdringing van oorspronkelijke bewoners of conflicten tussen beide groepen. Uit dit onderzoek blijkt dat mensen met schulden het gevoel hebben geen erkenning te krijgen voor hun problemen en bestaan als persoon, bijvoorbeeld van hulpverleners, kennissen of buurtgenoten. Ook moeten zij vaak al hun autonomie uit handen geven wanneer ze hulp krijgen, hoewel het over belangrijke beslissingen gaat. Daarnaast verliest iemand het vertrouwen op zijn kunnen en is er tijdens het oplossen van schulden vaak weinig mogelijkheid tot het ontwikkelen van nieuwe competenties. Daarnaast blijkt dat er een mentaliteitsverandering nodig is, om ervoor te zorgen dat het taboe doorbroken kan worden. Daarom focust dit project zich op het teweegbrengen van een mentaliteitsverandering bij buurtgenoten en tegelijkertijd op het vervullen van de 3 fundamentele psychologische behoeften die mensen met schulden op dit moment missen: competentie, autonomie en erkenning. Dit alles wordt bereikt met het concept DEBT. Dit concept biedt de debiteur een podium om erkenning te krijgen voor zijn problemen door de nadruk te leggen op zijn eigen kracht. Het concept begint met een creatieve workshop waarin mensen met schulden brainstormen over wat ze allemaal kunnen doen met hun oude enveloppen die ze krijgen. De productideeën die in de workshop bedacht zijn worden uitgewerkt tot design producten, gemaakt van bijvoorbeeld belastingdienst of gemeente Rotterdam enveloppen. Om deze producten heen wordt vervolgens een campagne georganiseerd gericht op yuppen in de wijk het Oude Noorden. Door het in aanraking komen met de campagne, lezen zij het verhaal van een wijkgenoot met schulden. Dit zorgt ervoor dat ze uiteindelijk anders over hen gaan denken en zich meer betrokken voelen. Door DEBT. voelen mensen met schulden zich weer sterk genoeg om over hun schaamte heen te stappen en zo samen het taboe rondom schulden te verbreken.

Empathy is an essential part of a collaboration and is often referred to in the design field. Not only it helps designers to step into their users’ shoes, but it also smoothens the communication between the designer and their stakeholder, client and, team members. If empathy is so important for collaboration in design and establishing human-centered working alliances, how come, then the focus is mainly on the user research and how come designers are not taught of the related skills, attitudes and behaviors? The gap in the design education field about empathy training for professional contexts creates an opportunity for design. In this project based on knowledge from multidisciplinary literature review, the following design goal has been formulated: designing a training material which can be used in the educational setting by design educators & coaches to help design students increase their awareness of the six key attention points of empathy as a design skill.’’To create the basis of the training material, a long list of skills, attitudes and behaviors related to empathy is structured from fields of healthcare, human-centered therapy, business, social and positive psychology and design. Then, in collaboration with the design educators and design students from the Delft University of Technology, the long list has been scaled down to six key attention points; willingness, active listening & attending, open-mindedness, embracing differences, sensitivity and holistic view.With the inspiration of training methods used in above-mentioned fields, these six attention points are used in the ideation rounds as the basis of the training concept. After several iterations, the concept is refined and tested with design students. ‘‘Empathy as A Design Skill : Practicing Six Key Attention Points’’ is a training material set consisting of printable materials which are designed to be used during the five steps; describe, internalize, sensitize, apply and evaluate. Each attention point is described with examples, internalized with exercises and the students are sensitized with homework each week. After six of the attention points are introduced, a real-life interview is arranged as a means of applying the six attention points. This interview is asked to be video recorded which is used for the final step; evaluate in which the design students are asked to reflect on their performance. The final test for user evaluation with design students reveals that this self-reflective training material helps design students to be more conscious of the attention points then, recognize these points both in their professional life and their daily lives.

This report presents the design process and the design proposal of a non-stigmatising stabilised bicycle designed for the bicycle company Beixo. With the trendy three wheel cargobike that has been designed for the problem of stability and stigma, insecure cyclists, including elderly, can cycle with confidence and stay mobile and independent. A literature study and user research using contextmapping methods were conducted to identify and understand the problem that this thesis deals with. Age-related disabilities, such as reduced balance and strength, can cause elderly people to fall with their bicycle. A fall often leads to injuries and fear of falling again. This feeling of insecurity causes many elderly to stop cycling, giving up an important part of their mobility. Assistive devices that help elderly to stay mobile, like tricycles, already exist, but these aids are perceived as stigmatising and are not easily accepted by users. Stigma is a negative judgmental reaction from bystanders to a person or person using a product caused by the visible characteristics of the person or product that are perceived as socially undesirable. This master thesis deals with the question if a bike can be designed such that it provides stability without being stigmatising. Existing research was used to find design strategies to deal with the problem of stability and stigma. The chosen design strategy included disguising the stabilizing function of the third wheel, adding additional benefits, making the design age independent and creating an association with an accepted product category. The design process consisted of design and research activities. The chosen design direction ‘cargo tricycle’ which has the potential to solve the problem of stability and of stigma was developed further into a concept and later the design proposal. The proposed design provides a solution to the problem of stability and stigma by creating a reference to cargo bikes. The bike has two front wheels in between which the cargo container is located. The bamboo container is compact and allows for easy loading of small cargo, for example groceries. The designed steering system steers the wheels around the container, allowing for light steering. The frame has a low entry and large adjustability to allow for an ergonomic cycling position for all users. The integrated shaft drive motor provides pedaling support, making cycling effortless. Its function and appearance could make this compact cargo bike suitable for many more target groups than elderly insecure cyclists, for example people who have never learned to cycle, ALS patients, people with reduced balance due to hearing impairment, people who wish to transport small loads, etc. To validate the design, a ‘looks-like-real’ working prototype was created. This prototype was showcased at the Embassy of Health during the Dutch Design Week 2018 where it received positive attention from visitors. The stability of the bike was tested by using it in everyday cycling situations in bicycle infrastructure. The subjective stability and stigma was tested with potential users, by letting them test ride the bike and asking about their experience. The design provides stability when cycling a straight path, but stability in turns can be improved. Potential users feel instable when taking turns and need to get used to the feeling of cycling on this bike. The bike is a tricycle and will never give the user the same cycling feeling as a bicycle. With a tricycle there is a trade-off between stability and a bike-like feeling. The opinion about stigma of the design differs between people. The reactions of the visitors of the Dutch Design Week were positive and indicated that avoiding stigma has been succeeded. However, not all the participants in the user evaluation agreed on this. Which product category the user compares the bike with when evaluating stigma is thought to influence the opinion about stigma and needs to be considered for the positioning of the product.

When you are ill, a visit to the hospital is often a stressful and worrisome experience. Especially when you are a child and you cannot fully understand or imagine what is going to happen to you. A clinical environment that contains ‘scary’ looking medical equipment does not make you feel at ease. On the contrary, this can be experienced as confronting and can create anxiety. This master thesis focuses on improving the treatment experience of children that visit the Reinier de Graaf hospital.

The research that was done during this project gives insight in to the aspect that have a negative and positive influence on the experiences that children currently have when visiting the hospital for treatment. It shows that, at the children’s department of Reinier de Graaf, the medical staff already provides good support to children and their parents, by preparing them for and guiding them through treatment with care. This ensures a reduction in the initial stress and anxiety experienced by the child. However, the medical appearance of their treatment room causes the child and its parents to feel uncomfortable. The high amount of negative stimuli that is present in the treatment room, caused by the medical equipment, reinforces the initial stress of the child. This is in conflict with the effect that the medical staff tries to achieve and negates their efforts. In this master thesis a solution to this problem is explored, which resulted in the concept of Treatment Tales.

Treatment Tales transform a visit to the treatment room into an engaging and lively experience for children and their parents. This is achieved by turning the room into a fantasy world that comes to life during their time in the room. It is visualized with an illustration on the wall, which becomes dynamic with the use of projection and audio fragments of calming nature sounds. A short tale is printed to introduce the story behind the dynamic illustration. This tale can be read to the child before or during the treatment.

Treatment Tales makes children and their parents feel more comfortable before and during the procedure and reduces their level of stress and anxiety. The ultimate goal is to improve the treatment experience and to decrease risk of traumatic experiences. This is achieved by creating a friendlier atmosphere in the treatment room, by providing a distraction for the children, and by providing opportunities for the parents and the other people in the room to be engaged.

Altogether these components provide a system that creates a layered experience by providing visual, audio, physical, and interactive distractions. This is desired, as the research that was done within this project has shown that a layered and dynamic experience captures the attention for a longer period of time. Additionally, it provides a solution that stays interesting for children that visit the hospital on a regular base, because the animations and the stories can be easily changed and updated. Overall, Treatment Tales provide an easily implemented and effective solution to transform a clinical treatment room to a child-friendly environment.

A framework to implement social learning in online solutions for educational consultancy TinQwise

People with diabetes who are treated with an intensive insulin treatment have to manage their disease independently. The success of an intensive insulin treatment is dependent on the ability of someone to determine his carbohydrate intake: when you know how much carbohydrates you eat, you know how much insulin you have to inject. However, determining your carbohydrate intake is experienced as ambiguous, complex and confusing. This assignment focuses on people in an intensive insulin treatment who have to enter the grams of carbohydrates that they are about to eat into a blood glucose meter.

Research shows that people need more support at home to be able to learn to determine their carb intake than is currently offered. Four design research cycles uncovered how and when people need extra support the most. A final design proposal is made that trains people with diabetes in intensive insulin therapy in estimating their carb intake by supporting them with exercises and insights so they can learn to intuitively apply their knowledge and skills.

Introduction: The context of mobility is changing rapidly and new mobility solutions are gaining momentum. Ford is expanding towards an auto and a mobility company and experiments with offering mobility solutions. These experiments should help Ford in discovering emerging opportunities. Traditional product development is not suitable for the creation, development and realisation of mobility solutions, so a different approach is needed. The Innovation Management and Mobility team within the Research and Advanced Engineering department in Aachen is seeking and learning to adopt new approaches to research and design. Service innovation is proposed as a user-centered design methodology to help the team develop mobility solutions. Within Ford, service innovation is a multi-disciplinary design approach focused on creating and developing mobility solutions from a holistic user perspective. A multi-disciplinary design approach Service innovation is a design approach in which designers are able to facilitate and execute the process. They can help to bridge research, design and engineering by inviting all stakeholders in the process. Creating mobility solutions Service innovation is an approach that balances user, technology and business aspects of a concept to create a valuable and feasible solution. A holistic perspective on users
To know what is valuable for the user, service innovation is a methodology that helps to create a holistic user perspective. It is essential to create something of value for the user in their everyday live, so this methodology helps to investigate (future) user needs and wants. Method: Research is done to discover the specific needs of the team to be able to adopt the methodology to offer the most value to the team. After an internship period of sixteen weeks in which I was active participant, interviewer and observer I collected insights that informed the rest of the project. Results: The results of this project can be grouped into three aspects. A user-centered design methodology The Mobility team was introduced to a user-centered design methodology through workshops from ID-Studiolab and application to specific projects by me. Helping the team to apply it In my internship I have helped the team to apply the methodology to specific projects and use the proposed methods and tools. This helped the team to put users more central in their innovation efforts. A service innovation toolkit. The created toolkit helps the team to structure the innovation process and apply the methodology in a diverse set of projects. A manual is designed as reference guide for the methodology, methods and tools and the templates and posters are designed to help facilitate the innovation process in specific projects. This helps Ford put users more central in their innovation efforts and create valuable and meaningful solutions for real people. Recommendations: To further develop the user-centered mindset within Ford, I propose to introduce other departments to service innovation and the user-centered design methodology. A more strategic place for design in combination with research including user research, technology development and business model innovation would greatly benefit the development of mobility solutions. Investing in user-centered capabilities helps to facilitate the service innovation process.
For now, Service innovation and the service innovation toolkit help the team to create and develop mobility solutions by adopting a holistic perspective on users.

This graduation project was part of a collaboration between the Ford Motor Company and the Delft University of Technology on the topic of Service Innovation for the Light Commercial Vehicle market. The goal of the University Research project is to infuse service design into Ford’s DNA by introducing design research and service design methodology, and to explore the future of Light Commercial Vehicle mobility services using this new approach. The Plugs concept was developed in several workshops with Ford stakeholders, and through iterative rounds of research and prototyping. Handymen are a big user group of Light Commercial Vehicles, consisting of a big number of niches with highly specific needs, like plumbers, electricians and carpenters. A handyman’s van is not only his transport, but also his office, toolbox, lunchroom, stock room and corporate identity. Handymen are busy, proud professionals that need to stay in control of every aspect of their job. Throughout the day they keep track of many things around their van-supported business, like used materials, current inventory, working hours, driven kilometers and many other things themselves. This is often done by hand, and takes copious amounts of time, rather spent on the job they love doing. Thus, an opportunity was recognised for the automated tracking, logging and processing of business information through a connection with the vehicle. This insight lead to the Plugs concept. Plugs are smart hardware and software add-ons that add new connected features or functionality to the Ford Transit. Every Plug provides a different service. Plugs can help with many daily handyman tasks and pains using live (vehicle) data. Plugs minimise the time that is needed for arduous office work, and help the handyman to customise their van to their business’ needs. And so, the handyman can focus on the job he loves to do. It was recognised that to be able to offer a wide range of Plugs, Ford would need to involve third parties in the development process. An open-source approach was chosen. This is done through an open, collaborative and open-source process. A lead user community, called the 100, and third party developers can develop Plugs together through an online platform. By involving handymen in the development process, Plugs are user-centered and solve real handyman problems. Any handyman can completely tailor his van to his daily needs, regardless of if he owns the van, leased it, bought it 2nd-hand, or only uses it.
This approach is a cost- and resource-effective way to develop a large amount of Plugs for many handyman niche markets: democratising commercial vehicle technology for handymen.