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 master thesis is the report of the graduation project ‘Supporting citizen initiatives - the design of a platform for the neighbourhood budget of the Frederik Hendrikbuurt’ for the municipality of Amsterdam and more specifically the municipal participation innovation team OpenStadsdeel. The report describes the design of a platform that aims to stimulate residents of the Frederik Hendrikbuurt, a neighbourhood located in the west borough of Amsterdam, to start and realise an initiative for the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood budget is a subsidy for the support of citizen initiatives. In some neighbourhoods of the west borough of Amsterdam, including the Frederik Hendrikbuurt, this budget is managed by a neighbourhood agent, a civil servant who is particularly active in a specific neighbourhood, and a neighbourhood committee, a group of volunteering residents. In a bi-monthly meeting they discuss and decide which request for the budget are granted a subsidy. The neighbourhood agent of the Frederik Hendrikbuurt approached OpenStadsdeel with a problem: the neighbourhood budget could be used more widely. Currently, only residents who are aware of the existence of the budget and know how to reach it are using the budget for their initiatives for the neighbourhood. These residents are also referred to as the ‘usual suspects’. The neighbourhood agent, neighbourhood committee and the municipality would like to see more people make use of the budget. A project goal was formulated: Stimulate more residents, other than the ‘usual suspects’, to use the neighbourhood budget for the realisation of initiatives for the Frederik Hendrikbuurt by opening up the process. The project was divided in three phases. In the first phase, named ‘Research’, the involved and (yet) uninvolved stakeholders of the neighbourhood budget in the Frederik Hendrikbuurt were analysed. Interviews, street interviews and a creative session with stakeholders resulted in an overview of stakeholders and their experience of an initiative that is funded by the neighbourhood budget. Residents often did not know about existence of the budget or how to reach it. When an initiator knows about the existence of the budget, requesting it is experienced as a difficult and unclear process. The neighbourhood agent had to spend too much time and energy on guiding initiators through the process of a budget request, which resulted in a lack of time to support initiatives on their content. The neighbourhood committee experienced difficulties in evaluating the requests, because neighbourhood support is hard to estimate and requests are often in- or overcomplete. The research phase was concluded with the formulation of a design goal. A design goal was formulated for all stakeholders individually. These individual goals have as aim to reach an overall design goal: “To stimulate more residents to actively participate for the Frederik Hendrikbuurt, I want to help potential initiators to realise their ideas for the neighbourhood by supporting them at the right moment and connect them to people who can help them.” In the second phase, named ‘Design’, ideas, two creative sessions were organised to generate and select ideas that aim to reach the design goal. The first session was held with stakeholders of the neighbourhood budget. The second session with Industrial Design students and the OpenStadsdeel team. The ideas of a neighbourhood budget competition, online platform and initiative support flyer were selected to develop. In an iterative process of prototyping, testing and designing, the three ideas were developed into a final design. The final design is an online platform where residents can request a budget, find support for their initiative, share and develop ideas for the neighbourhood collectively and share experiences of realised initiatives. The support flyer is tool that is offered by the of the platform and can be used by initiators to find residents who want to support or become involved with an initiatve. The neighbourhood budget competition is an engagement strategy that aims to stimulate residents to start an initiative for their neighbourhood. In the last phase, named ‘Evaluate’, the final design was evaluated with stakeholders of the neighbourhood budget, OpenStadsdeel and the municipality. The stakeholders and client of the project want to launch the platform before the end of 2017. From the evaluation with the developer of OpenStadsdeel it became clear that to reach this deadline, the design has to be simplified. Therefore, recommendations are given in the form of an advice for a minimal viable product and a roadmap, containing a planning for the further development of the platform, is provided.

Within the Energy Transition, citizen involvement is essential. In the end, we have to change together to succeed within the Energy Transition. Because of the local character of the Energy Transition and a responsibility shift, the municipalities have got the challenging task to increase citizen involvement. Local energy initiatives can be a promising solution for the Energy Transition. Therefore, the local energy initiatives can be interesting for municipalities when increasing citizen involvement. The aim of this research is to find a way for the municipality to make use of these local energy initiatives when trying to increase citizen involvement in the Energy Transition. The specific context of this research is the city of The Hague. The following research question has been formulated for this purpose: How can the municipality of The Hague increase citizen participation in the Energy Transition through local energy initiatives? In order to answer the research question, a collective case study and a design process are executed. In advance, preparatory research was conducted to explore relevant theoretical concepts for the research and to analyze the stakeholder ecosystem of the local energy initiatives. The collective case study was performed by conducting nine in-depth interviews with local energy initiatives based on a research framework. This research framework was substantiated by the Transformative Social Innovation framework. Furthermore, the design process is based on the Double Diamond approach using divergent and convergent thinking. Within this design process, multiple participatory elements were included like workshops and prototyping sessions with local energy initiatives and civil servants of the municipality of The Hague. From the research, it appeared that the local energy initiatives in The Hague fulfill a basic role and five specific roles, namely ‘awareness creation’, ‘action perspective creation’, ‘collaboration with the municipality’, ‘voice at the table’, and ‘execution and ownership’. It also came forward that the potential of the contribution of the local energy initiatives to the Energy Transition is not reached. This has three reasons. Firstly, there is no shared vision among the stakeholders. Secondly, the relationship with the municipality is undefined and inconsistent. Thirdly, there are several small challenges as keeping the initiative going, reaching out to people, and not being representative for the neighborhood. When looking at the relationship, the core challenge seemed a way to prioritize and choose the municipal support to provide, to which initiative, and at which moment. Based on this, a final concept was developed to create a strategy and action repertoire for the municipal support per neighborhood and initiative. The strategy is created based on three main questions regarding which roles to support, which support to provide, and how to provide the support. These questions are answered through the three perspectives of Design Thinking (desirability, feasibility, and viability) to cover the multiple aspects to consider when creating the strategy. Possible further research could focus on the development of the final concept in real-life cases and on the applicability of the five initiative’s roles and final concept in other contexts.

The green pioneers of Rotterdam are actively making the city a greener living environment. Through the infrastructure provided by the municipality of Rotterdam, citizens can apply to take over a green space from the municipality or to introduce green elements to the predominantly grey streets in which they live. They not only improve the neighbourhood experience, but also have the potential to contribute in addressing local climate challenges such as climate adaptation, climate mitigation and the mitigation of biodiversity decline. However, it depends on the interpretation, the actions the creators take, if this potential is utilised. The goal of this project is to create a toolkit that supports the green pioneers of Rotterdam in their actions to improve their contribution in addressing their local climate challenges. I research the green pioneers of Rotterdam, to figure out how they approach their projects, why they are involved, and what they do exactly. Moreover, I investigate their current contribution to the local climate challenges and how this can be improved. Therefore, I conduct different explorations, including three case studies in which I meet three initiators who are involved in a green initiative in the city. This resulted in the following main insights. 1) the most promising challenge for green pioneers to improve their contribution in, is the mitigation of biodiversity decline. This challenge is therefore chosen as a focus for this project. 2) Most green pioneers want to contribute to biodiversity where they can, but are not always aware when they are able to do so and how. 3) Green pioneers can improve the contribution to biodiversity with their green initiative, by adopting an ecological gardening behaviours. By analysing the difference between ecological gardening and current behaviours, I arrived at four options in which the design can help improve the contribution of the green pioneers of Rotterdam: 1) By providing green pioneers and the citizens they influence inspiration on possible actions and their ecological effect 2) By stimulating green pioneers to make decisions with a focus on the effects on animals and plants. 3) By broadening the perspective of green pioneers and the citizens they influence by including unfamiliar/unattractive animal- and plant species. 4) By encouraging an interplay-experience between the actions of green pioneers and the input of natural processes. These four solution spaces lead to the development of a toolkit concept. The toolkit provides inspiration and support to help the green pioneers of Rotterdam to optimize the ‘natural site’ that they created in the city. The toolkit can be incorporated in any approach, initiative type and group structure.

Over the past decades, a culture that rapidly produces, consumes and discards earthly resources is established. The extraction and processing of these resources lead to an increasing amount of greenhouse gas emissions which are warming the planet day by day. In 2016 the European Union signed the Paris-agreement. This agreement aims to avoid this dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to 1.5°C (EU, 2016). To accomplish, the Dutch government (Rijksoverheid), introduced the Klimaatakkoord. Among other things, the Klimaatakkord acknowledges the transition to a circular economy as an essential strategy to accomplish the EU goals. By 2050, the Netherlands aims to be a circular economy where products and materials are reused in endless loops. This thesis focuses on the disposal of bulky waste, such as household goods or private construction materials. These type of products are usually discarded at the municipal recycling facility. The assignment explores on behalf of de BUCH (Bergen, Uitgeest, Castricum, Heiloo) municipalities alternatives for bulky waste disposal. The project takes off at the idea of a circular centre; a concept developed by Rijkswaterstaat. Circular centres are municipal recycling facilities, where not only waste is processed but also various recycling alternatives are offered. The role of the residents living in de BUCH area is identified as key-enabler in the transition towards a local circular economy. The plans for a circular centre in de BUCH also describes the active involvement and contributions of residents as an essential success factor. Currently, only a limited amount of people is actively engaged in circular activities. To make the circular centre a broadly supported success, it requires a different attitude and behaviour towards used materials for many residents. This project investigates how resident participation in circular initiatives can be encouraged in various ways. Literature on behavioural change has been consulted and models developed by Fogg (2009), Tromp (2013) and van Lieren (2018) were practised. The current attitude and the behaviour of residents regarding product disposal was obtained through interviews and a questionnaire. New roles for the residents has been established according to this data. The roles were held against Fischer’s model for richer ecologies of participation (2011). The obtained knowledge was translated into concepts and discussed with residents. A research-through-design approach was practised to identify barriers for participation and apply universal behavioural strategies in more tangible ways. These concepts were assessed by the residents using video prototypes. The following interviews provided insight into the barriers for participation and the possible strategies that could lower them. Based on these insights and insights from earlier phases, a toolkit has been developed which helps the municipality to design initiatives together with its residents. The toolkit aims to design interventions that overcome the barriers for participation and enhance resident participation at higher levels. A number of the barriers and behavioural strategies have been evaluated through an intervention at the municipal recycling facility. The toolkit consists of 3 design canvasses poster and a card set. During the use of the toolkit, interventions are created by means of a user journey. The user journey provides an easy way to identify the barriers for participation. The included cards present a set of common barriers. The barrier cards link to strategies that can be applied to overcome them. The strategy cards can be used as an inspiration during the enhancement of new participatory circular initiatives.

In the last decade, European citizens had to overcome multiple severe disruptive events like Covid-19, extreme weather and war at the EU-boarder. With ongoing climate change and political instability, more crises are expected to arise. To deal with these crises an increased resilience of individuals, organisations and society is needed. One organisation eager to contribute to building resilience in Hamburg (Germany) is Cociety. The name is a contraction of a collaborative society. To create resilience, multi-stakeholder knowledge and an interdisciplinary approach is needed, to be able to deal with the high interdependencies of the system within society. Cociety has the potential to collect and generate this diverse knowledge, as it is an umbrella organisation of over eight non-profit foundations, founded by Dr. Otto, that contribute to diverse aspects of social and environmental sustainability in Hamburg. However, Cociety is in the start-up phase of an organisation. It still needs to develop a clear strategy to unlock the potential it has. This project clearly defines the potential of and strategy for Cociety, using systemic design and social innovation as theoretical background. Desk and field research, including interviews and a co-creative workshop, formed the basis for a gigamap, showing the system of Cociety and its perspectives. The rest of the project focuses on the internal perspective of Cociety, meaning the collaboration between the foundations and their employees. A Social network analysis (SNA) shows the interconnections and collaboration levels in the current network. From the insights generated in the SNA, a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis discovers the leveragepoints to design for the improvement of Cociety’s internal network. The final design of this project is a strategy. An overall vision and a vision for the internal network of Cociety are formulated. A roadmap outlines the key actions need to achieve the vision, supported by three interventions to make the first steps, including an organigram to visualise and access the knowledge available in the network, a meeting format to share the knowledge with the network and an onboarding guide to keep the network active and alive.

Many resources are becoming depleted, and waste is a global issue. For accomplishing sustainable growth, the European Commission set the objective for achieving a circular economy in 2050. Rijkswaterstaat pushed this ambition even further, wanting to be circular in 2030. In the province Noord-Holland, the municipalities Bergen, Uitgeest, Castricum and Heiloo work together in the organization called ‘de BUCH’. They have the ambition to be the leading municipalities in circular economy. For their transition, they questioned the ‘Delft Design Lab Participatory City Making Lab’ at the University of Technology Delft: how to change the norm behaviour of their citizens towards circular norm behaviour at a local level? To answer this question, first the context was explored on the topics of waste, circular economy and behaviour change. After that the ambitious question of the BUCH is researched by researching how the citizens in the BUCH can be facilitated to the transition towards a circular economy. This is researched by 1) an intervention, 2) a competitor analysis on circular practices, 3) a survey on the behaviour of citizens in the BUCH, and 4) multiple semi-structured in-depth interviews. The key insight of the research is that a large proportion of the citizens in the BUCH is motivated to practice circular behaviour. However, the opportunity to do that is experienced as low. Various designs for those opportunities were made and evaluated. While operationalizing these designs, there was the critical insight: a circular initiative network is missing that brings together the ambitious and motivated citizens in the BUCH. This resulted in the final design: De BUCH rond maken: Samen doen we het. Consisting out of: •A Circular Initiative Network administrator: This person functions and acts as the network administrator of circular initiatives in the BUCH. The person enables to establish novel relationships between people and groups of people, which catalyses value to emerge between those people. •Initiative makers package: The package is a tool that citizens can request. It contains the essential steps to explain a circular initiative idea from multiple facets. The tool than helps to have conversations with other people, helping to operationalize the idea. •Do together: This is in essence a collaborating process. In order to catalyse this process, it is key to follow certain principles and have a certain mindset. Also, the role that the Circular initiative network administrator takes in such collaborative effort is key. The final design also contains a plan with key actions to follow, in order to facilitate the citizens in their transition towards a circular economy. A key action point is the communication towards the BUCH citizens, as having communication from multiple various sources will help in changing the norm. The design showed promising results in a creative session with initiative leaders and citizens from the BUCH municipalities. It is recommended that the final design is put further into a pilot for testing and development. This to, while doing that together, operationalize the transition of the BUCH citizens towards a circular economy.

In 2015, due to decentralisations in the social domain, municipalities became the key public authorities for youth participation in the Netherlands (RAND Europe, 2021). One year later 66% had made youth participation a policy goal, while 18% was planning to. At that time most municipalities involved young people to some extend in their policy-making, but were dissatisfied with the results and expressed a need for tools (Mak, Gilsing & Wróblewska, 2016). In 2020, despite considerable effort, the dissatisfaction had not changed (Movisie, 2020). This thesis aims to design a new approach that allows youngsters aged 14-17 to structurally participate in municipal policy- and decision-making, in the context of the energy transition. The energy transition, which refers to the transfer from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the Netherlands with 95-100% in 2050 (RIVM, n.d.), is seen as the largest strategic challenge for municipalities and one of the main societal challenge of our time (Ebskamp & Verbraak, 2019). Municipalities ask Citisens, an organisation specialised in reaching and involving (adult) citizens and this project’s client, ever more frequently if they can support them in involving young people in shaping this transition. This project is their first step in exploring this new market. Three methods characterize the project approach. Frame creation, a method well-suited for the open, networked, complex and dynamic problems of today, provides the main structure to the project (Dorst, 2015, p. 73). Within the structure of Frame creation, the project adopts a participatory approach, involving 163 stakeholders and experts in 15 co-creation sessions throughout the project. Besides bringing in new perspectives, giving stakeholders a voice in the design and building stakeholder support (Boeijen et al., 2020, p. 61), these co-creation sessions all generate insights on collaborating with the stakeholders in a Research through Design approach. While most co-creation sessions use prototypes or artefacts to generate new knowledge, the sessions themselves can also be seen as prototypes for collaboration (Stappers & Giaccardi, 2017). Following an in-depth analysis of the challenge, this thesis creates an overview of frontrunners that have a new and promising approach to (youth) participation and/or involving people in climate issues. Looking at common factors of these frontrunners, four themes emerge: equity, ownership, collaboration and action. Based on these themes, several new frames to approach youth participation are developed. The final design, Design your dream places, is based on the frame Holacracy. Design your dream places involves all youngsters through guest lessons at schools and facilitates them to create their own, sustainable dream places in the municipality. It allows everyone in the municipality to vote on their favourite place, and encourages the municipality and youngsters to collaborate on next steps. The final design was tested and evaluated during a pilot session with key stakeholders, yielding encouraging results while showing the importance of testing it in a real-life setting with actual follow-up. Finally, an implementation and integration plan was created to envision next steps for the project.

We have come to a point in time where we can no longer just vision, but must act. We are talking about the transition from waste to material. The normal course of business around raw materials is a heavily environmentally polluting business, which contributes to global warming. In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, agreeing to a plan to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. The Netherlands also contributed to this and translated this into its own Climate Agreement. In this agreement, attention is paid to the transition to a circular economy in order to limit the dependence on new raw materials. Circular craft centers are part of this circular economy. Points that replace the recycling centers and where material reuse is central. The clients of this graduation project are the BUCH municipalities: Bergen, Uitgeest, Castricum and Heiloo. These municipalities are faced with an extremely high level of bulky residual waste per household, which must be reduced to 5 kg by 2030. This thesis focuses on connecting local socio-economic entrepreneurs to the material flows in order to reduce bulky residual waste. The transition to a circular economy is not so much a technical challenge but a social one: how do we connect the necessary parties? Local entrepreneurs are key partners in this. Together with them, we are looking at the possibilities of setting up circular initiatives around the material flows. In addition to establishing a link between the entrepreneur and the material flow, this thesis examines the possibility of a circular network: a group of entrepreneurs who support each other in setting up circular businesses. To set up this network, a participatory approach has been designed in which circular capacities and collaborations are central. This approach consists of three layers, inspired by the Open4Citizens project, creating 1) Immediate value for the participants, 2) Tools for supporting the participants and 3) An network of actors. Setting up the network has been a research through design process, in which design questions were answered with a design that was immediately tested. Over a period of 3 months, local entrepreneurs participated in this project and met, talked, formed first collaborations and exchanged circular ideas. Worksheets were designed for the sessions in which this took place, which were improved or supplemented on the basis of the output. In this way a twofold design was made as a result of a participatory process with local entrepreneurs. Firstly, a vision for a circular network in the BUCH municipalities has been designed, with a name, website, shape and vision for the future. Second, a Circular Community Startkit was designed based on the formats used in the project. The aim of this starter kit is that the process can be repeated in the BUCH municipalities, but can also be applied in other regions. The start kit consists of an overview of the process and six worksheets in which circular activity is stimulated. By using this starter kit, municipalities can inspire local entrepreneurs to start circular business during a participatory project. The start kit ends with an exit phase in which the facilitator hands over the baton to the participants.

Public management field needs to keep pace with contemporary and evolving problems, and therefore invest in and harvest capabilities to meet future scenarios. It is crucial to have a clear vision on the back end of social advising and a staff who is aware of the wideness of its impact. Public managers need to advocate for critical discussions between them, with the organisations they are cooperating with and with people who are going to benefit their decisions. By exploiting typical Participatory Design paradigms, such as a thorough exploration of the problem space, collaborative approach, and iterative development, the dASAP Learning Environment aims at adapting the design practice to the public management domain. The main goal is, therefore, to strengthen the foundation of the public management approach by reframing Design as a new policy competency. The Learning Environment is the result of a participatory and iterative process, carried out in a team setting. This endeavour to create a safe space in which sharing and nurturing capabilities provides a view on the potential of setting up and running a Design-Enabled Innovation process, while also creating an environment that supports innovation within the public domain. The dASAP Learning Environment does not only provide an array of tools and methods, but it goes beyond them by focusing on underlying factors such as values, knowledge, skills and attitudes, creating appropriate conditions for methods and tools to work.

The project is an initiative to revitalize a multicultural shopping street in Rotterdam, called Middellandstraat. The design question was how to support the shops to attract more visitors to the shopping street through the food diversity. Investigations into the visitors' experience in the street, the context, and market research were done to define opportunities for the design development. The final design aims to enable people to be inspired and informed about the shop's authentic identity and historical value, make visitors feel comfortable in the shops to allow them to explore the Middellandstraat.

Our society is facing a major challenge: to combat climate change. This requires transformation into a society that does not emit greenhouse gasses. This is known. However, it is not known, how to realise this transformation. This is experienced by Gemeente Rotterdam, as they are responsible for realising the sustainable transformation of the city, and leads to the question: what can Gemeente Rotterdam do, in addition to their current strategy, to realise the sustainable transformation in IJsselmonde? This project answers the question as following: Gemeente Rotterdam can further develop and organise the design intervention Schoonschip Week in IJsselmonde. The Schoonschip Week is an organised declutter event, with provided declutter facilities. Decluttering is personal relevant to IJsselmonders, as it increases mental health (tidy house, tidy mind). Decluttering is considered to be a reflective activity, in the climate adaptive behaviour category belongings. Reflection on behaviour in a climate adaptive category, is expected to lead to (receptiveness for)climate adaptive behaviour - which is needed to realise the sustainable transformation. By organising the Schoonschip Week, it can be evaluated if this is indeed the case. If so, this design intervention can also be used (or adapted) for the sustainable transformation of other districts in Rotterdam. The question of Gemeente Rotterdam, is a question in a sustainable transition context. Creating an answer for this question through a design project, is designing for transitions. This project is carried out with the help of a map and design approach, which are created based on the indicated limitations and recommendations for research for the transition design practice. Both are experienced as valuable within this project. The creation, use and evaluation of the map and design approach, inform the transition design practice how to design for transitions - and contribute to the development of this emerging discipline, that aims to realise sustainable transitions with a design-led approach.

In recent years, the EU and its member states have perceived migration as a significant challenge, leading policymakers to adopt prediction and control strategies that fail to consider the nature of migratory patterns (PACES Consortium, 2022). Research on migratory patterns in social science is extensive but not widely used in policy development, highlighting a significant gap between scholarly discussions and their impact on policymaking. PACES is a research project aiming to bridge the gap between social science research on migration patterns and policy development in the migration sector. In doing so, PACES aims to involve multiple participants in discussions about migration policies, as it appears that the lack of citizen involvement is a factor contributing to the inefficiency of migration policy. This project’s goal is to help PACES empower citizens and promote dialogues to create more informed opinions. The objective of this thesis is to facilitate a two-way information exchange between PACES and native citizens. PACES provides scientific knowledge on migration and policies, while citizens contribute their perspectives. The aim is to foster evidence-based opinions among citizens to achieve greater engagement and participation in in the public debate. To approach this objective, an analysis of the context of the public debate on migration was initiated, and system mapping was used to better define the stakeholders and dynamics between them. This analysis highlighted the lack of a direct connection between the world of research and citizens, who struggle to form opinions based on evidence, as the knowledge they receive is often shaped by political and media narratives. To better understand this distance, a smaller group of citizens was selected, specifically Italian emerging adults, to explore their perception of the public debate and their experiences in staying informed. Subsequently, a group of experts in the field of migration was consulted to understand their perception of the role of research and expert knowledge in the debate. The empirical exploration revealed that both experts and Italian emerging adults agree on the need to shift the way migration is portrayed in the debate, but they also agreed on the presence of a gap between research and citizens. To bridge this gap and support Italian emerging adults in forming opinions on migration based on scientific knowledge, this thesis developed a workshop that PACES could use to “co-create narratives about migration” with Italian emerging adults. In this workshop, knowledge is shared by focusing on different perspectives on a chosen topic and assisting Italian emerging adults in developing their own point of view and reworking it into new narratives to share with their peers The results of the workshop include an increase in the participants’ awareness of migration patterns and information that can help PACES in further research development that takes into account the point of view of native citizens. These results become the basis for initiating dialogues about alternative migration policies with policymakers, representing the perspectives of citizens on migration matters developed from scientific knowledge. The workshop can be further developed in the future to reach a broader audience and increase participation in the discourse on migration policymaking. In conclusion, the value of this project lies in its representation of the public debate, providing a simplified yet complex representation of the debate while placing citizens at the center. It also offers a strategy that PACES can scale further to lay the groundwork for a more open discussion on migration policy based on expert knowledge and resilience to social changes.

Connecting through Information is a participatory tool for citizens to map their Information Ecosystem. The aim is to foster citizen participation while developing data literacies through design methods. Through the use of Connecting through Information during a participatory session, members of citizen initiatives discuss and reflect on their role in their hyperlocal information ecosystem. Going through the path of expression during the session (current situation, past experiences and possible future, at the end of the session participants have concrete actionable ideas to carry on their goals as an initiative. Connecting through Information is adapted from a framework of information ecosystems for resilience. Through a set of requirements (effective, engaging,and actionable) based on literature on participatory design and design for infrastructuring , the researcher's framework was translated into a citizen tool, and three iterations of the tool evaluated. The final iteration of Connecting through Information was validated in context with citizen initiatives in Delfshaven, Rotterdam.

This project focuses on enhancing the accessibility of 3D printing for repairers by designing a system in which repairers can collaborate with makers. Repair has become rare in societies with an abundance of cheap goods. However in recent years repair is making a gradual comeback in western culture. Citizen repair initiatives such as Repair Cafés have popped up in cities all over the world. They support people to fix their broken things. The increasing popularity of the ‘Maker Movement’ and 3D printing has allowed skilled individuals to create, share and produce their own spare parts for repair. While most modern makers also repair things, most repairers are not capable of making things using digital fabrication methods like 3D printing. To analyse why most repairers can’t use 3D printing and how the 3D printing process can be changed, the context of repairers, makers, 3D printing and reverse engineering was explored. The main findings were translated into design requirements that were used as guidelines in a conceptualisation process. During this phase multiple ideas were tested and iterated on in three different layers: information for repairers, physical tools for part measurement and communication with makers. After a number of iterations a final concept was proposed that enables repairers to ‘manually’ 3D scan an object, using a caliper, and digitally share it with makers so that they can support them in replicating the object through CAD modelling and 3D printing. The system was tested with a small group of repairers and discussed with experts. After implementing those insights, the final design is proposed. The final design is a product service system that consists of a toolkit for repairers and an online platform through which repairers can collaborate with makers on 3D printing for repair projects. The toolkit contains a CyberCaliper, which is a special caliper that makes it easier for repairers to ‘manually’ 3D scan their desired part and post it on the platform. The platform is designed to become the place to be for requesting 3D printed spare parts online. This graduation project is part of the ShaRepair project funded by the Interreg North-West Europe programme under grant agreement NWE982.

Numansgors is a village seeking to improve sustainability by housing renovation. In this process, the effective participation of homeowners faces multiple challenges. The Pattern Language Theory (PLT), a design methodology first proposed by Alexander Christopher in 1970s, shows its potential in tackling these challenges. However, as PLT has been applied in broadening domains, various approaches to using PLT are different from the original one taken by Alexander. As these differences and their basis generally go unarticulated, practitioners referring to such cases may fail to choose an appropriate approach and hence use PLT less effectively. Therefore, to support the effective ue of PLT, either in Numansgors or in other domains, this graduation project aims to support differentiating between diverse PLT approaches, and deciding on a PLT approach. In the beginning, to better understand the topic, a literature review of PLT was conducted. The benefits of PLT were identified, which later confirmed its suitability in Numansgors. Besides, eight purposes of using PLT were summarised and were later found essential in deciding on PLT approaches. Next, to understand the different approaches, an integrative review — which I called deconstruction, identifying and reconstruction — of multiple cases was performed. The external manifestations and internal reasons for different approaches were identified. On the outward, the different approaches are manifested in four components. On the inward, the approaches root in practitioners’ diverging values and needs. These insights were concretised into three tools, which were later incorporated into the final research output. Afterwards, to find out how the three tools could be used in practice, workshops were organised for inspiration. In these workshops, some other issues in deciding on PLT approaches were found. These issues were tackled by formulating a procedure to use PLT and refining the classification of activities around PLT. All these insights were synthesised into the final research output, the Activity Kit, to support practitioners in deciding on their PLT approaches. With this Activity Kit, practitioners can first consider their project purposes, then find the activities recommended for the purposes, and finally execute the activities with the support of relevant tools. To validate the use of Activity Kit, the Numansgors project was taken as an example. A three-stage plan for Numansgors was generated by using the Activity Kit. It is recommended to evaluate the Activity Kit with more cases and keep up with the influence of the pattern language in Numansgors.

Participatory Design (PD) has been used as a medium to democratize the design practice and include in the process the people intended to use the outcomes. When working for social change and justice, the practice intends to maintain its democratic nature by giving voice and agency to the most vulnerable in society. However, when engaging in complex societal problems PD can perpetuate systemic oppression and reproduce in the design process the same harmful mechanisms that are intended to be changed. For this reason, it is crucial for the PD practice to engage in matters of power dynamics so more socially just processes can be developed. Acknowledging this urgency, this research project has the aim of proposing an alternative understanding for a decolonial PD process that accounts for more power balanced and socially just dynamics between designers and members of marginalized communities. To accomplish the alternative understanding, the project was performed in three main phases. The first phase (research for design) is formed of a literature review and interviews with design practitioners familiar with participatory processes with oppressed communities. With these activities it was understood that the PD practice can reproduce systemic oppression in three different levels (individual, communal and systemic) because the role of the designer entails advantages in decision making, project ownership and process control among others. To overcome these oppressive practices, the work of the philosopher Paulo Freire was studied to find analogies between his pedagogy for liberation and the PD practice. In this study, it was learned that to create more horizontal relationships, it is necessary to create the space for a co-learning process based on dialogue between the designer and the members of a community. The second phase of the project (research through design) started by proposing a detailed structure for a process inspired by the research for design to be carried out with the community. However, earlier in the initiation of the phase, it was realized that in order to decolonize the PD process also the PD designer inside the process needs to be decolonized and that the structure could be propose if and only if it was developed together with the community of Afrikaanderwijk. Accordingly, the second phase of this research was based on non-structured explorations in the neighborhood allowing different moments of engagement between the designer and the community based on horizontal relationships and dialogue. In this phase was found that a decolonization of the designer and the design process entails a constant re-evaluation of the designer’s role that can move in a spectrum from facilitator to participant in the context. Other statements about the alternative understanding of PD processes were drawn including the need to see the process as a collaboration instead of just participation and to intend the project as something bigger than just what design is able to frame. The last phase of this project intended to make the insights of the research practical and useful for other designers. In this way, the final findings were translated into a series of reflective questions to challenge assumptions and biases in the initiation of a PD process.

Many active citizens that work on improving their neighborhoods have in-depth local knowledge (small data), but are oftentimes not directly involved in the decision-making processes of city officials. A top-down push is witnessed to make smart use of open data for the development of social solutions and services. However, this creates a gap for those citizens that are willing to work on social innovations, but lack technical skills and people that do have these required skills. Numbers and facts have taken a leading role in the decision-making process, which makes data concrete building blocks for argumentation to make knowledge claims about the world (D’Ignazio, 2017). To also include those active citizens in the decision-making process, this graduation project explores how data can support active citizens in their participatory activities and how they can make a valuable connection to their local knowledge by means of design. In Delfshaven Rotterdam, active citizens have taken over the control of public parks and have realized many green initiatives to improve the livability of the neighborhoods. Organizing and managing these parks themselves does not come without facing issues. The context of these green initiatives is taken as a case study for the project to research what problems and obstacles occur in self-managing and organizing these parks and to understand how data can be off support. The conducted research with the green initiatives revealed that they can find common ground with the municipality to show that they are working on mutual goals to improve the liveability of the neighborhoods. Furthermore, combining their deep-rooted insights (small data) gained, by being actively involved in the neighborhoods, with factual data can create a more complete picture of the problems that occur in the neighborhoods. Literature review substantiated that in order to form a complete picture of these real-world problems, both numbers and stories should be combined (Wang, 2016). Standing stronger in political debate happens when stories can be combined with numbers which compels others. In order for factual data to support their initiatives, the challenges the initiators face should be clearly defined. To support citizens to work with data, hackathons can be used as a means to facilitate this process. A more human-centered approach has been identified for such an event by focussing on collective issue articulation as a design practice (DiSalvo & Lotado, 2011) to support defining and analyzing a problem through the sharing of local stories. Stimulating multiple stakeholders to bring their perspectives on a problem into a discussion helps to gain an understanding of the underlying, factors, relations, consequences and actors. This ‘data-analysis process’ can be seen as story-finding, which has a more appropriate approach for non-technical citizens to work with data (Bhargava et al., 2017). To explore the potential of story-finding as data analysis process, several workshop have been conducted that all included data explorations. For these workshops, tools were prototyped as means to facilitate the process. The insights gained showed that in order to find relevant data to explore, first problems that are faced should be clearly defined and communicated. This lead to the the design vision: “A co-creation/ participatory process that helps expert initiators to translate neighborhood problems in a structured way into local cases by combining their local perspectives with factual data to tell a compelling story.” This projected resulted in a process toolkit ‘Blik op Buurt’ which proposes a clear structure to collaboratively surface and define problems in the neighborhood and helps to select potential partners and communicate these insights to them. By going through a story-finding process, initiators are stimulated to make use of their contextual data (small data) about the neighborhood problem in order to reveal missing information and knowledge. This process is facilitated by a set of tools. A collective setting not only stimulates shared ownership to commit to tackle these problems, but also support the self-organization in how they can break down the problems so that their stories can be comprehended and be supported with data from different perspectives. To evaluate the finale outcome and validate the effect, the Blik op Buurt process and tools should be tested by a citizen initiative through conducting a problem case study.

A circular economy is a means to an end of achieving a sustainable world, a lot of traction has been gained in the recent years into the concept of a circular economy and many new products and business models have been created around the concept. But most of the exploration of the concept lies in the possibilities of new product and market opportunities, this makes the concept difficult to move towards a societal level change, where circular economy becomes the norm. To enable this societal level change, ecosystem level innovations are important and collaborations play a key role in enabling eco-system innovation. This is what this project tries to explore, collaborations for a circular economy, in the context of the urbanspace. The findings suggested that a shared vision is important for collaboration to take place but the organisations did not actively pursue for having a shared vision and values with their various collaborators, instead the thing that they focused on for operationalizing their innovation was engagement. They focused on engagement to showcase the value of their organisation’s offering beyond the end product. As they increased their visibility in the urbanspace and increased their ways and number of engagements, the organisations grew and people with similar values collaborated with the organisations. They scaled through engagement. Scaling through engagement is a mindset for growth of the organisation based on engagement as opposed to the linear model of thinking of making more. The final design, tried to enable organisations operating in the urbanspace to scale through engagement. This was pursued by creation of an online tool-kit for circular organisations operating in the urbanspace, which aimed at creating awareness into the concept of scaling through engagement, it’s relating ideas and also help organisations create ideas around scaling through engagement for their own organisation. In conclusion, this project is a step in the right direction away from scaling by making more and towards scaling through engagement. Apart from the tool-kit, the findings from the research add valuable insights into how circular organisations operating in the urbanspace innovate and collaborate in a circular economy. On a broader perspective, this project gives a glimpse into how societal level transitions for a circular economy could take place and what it would mean in practice.