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F. Del Caro Secomandi

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Design philosophy: Amplifying the unheard

Journal article (2026) - Fernando Secomandi, Daniel Portugal, Virginia Tassinari, Philippe D’anjou
At a time of intersecting planetary, social, and epistemic crises, design philosophy must confront a central question: whose investigative ideas and knowledge count? This theme track, Amplifying the unheard, challenges the consolidation of design philosophy into predominantly North Atlantic and Anglophone frameworks. Rather than stabilising the field, it seeks to reconfigure it as a plural, contested, and situated space shaped by diverse cosmologies, practices, and epistemologies. The contributions gathered here move beyond inclusion toward transformation, foregrounding Indigenous, decolonial, posthuman, and practice-based approaches that reconfigure design’s conceptual and ethical conditions. Together, they demonstrate that amplifying unheard voices is not merely additive, but constitutive of new ways of thinking, teaching, and practising design philosophy. ...
This half-day symposium at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE), TU Delft, explores ethics, values, and culture in design research and education across IDE's three departments: Human-Centered Design (HCD), Strategic Product Design (SDE), and Design for Interaction & Social Innovation (DOS). The program features four 20-minute presentations of four IDE researchers (Özkaramanll, Colombo, Secomandi and Singh) from the three departments, followed by Q&A and a final panel moderated by Tassinari, addressing Design Anthropology for Social Change; Design under Pressure: Exploring the Tensions in Design Ethics; Designing for Mutual Recognition and Human Freedom; and Designing Feminist AI: Towards Inclusivity and Empowerment. An accompanying exhibition of provotypes, developed by approximatively 400 master students, creates a material dialogue with researchers. The symposium is conceived as a dialogic and generative space of encounter and co-creation, engaging researchers, educators, PhD candidates, and students, aiming to generate internal discussion within IDE, strengthening the dialogue across the departments on the ethical and political implications of its ongoing design research and pedagogy and connecting it to the international design community through PDC Places. By hosting this event, IDE creates a plural, reflexive space that acknowledges the entanglements of design with patriarchal, colonial, and anthropocentric frameworks while exploring embodied, feminist, and decolonial ways of knowing, practicing, and teaching design, inviting participants to collectively reimagine what it means to do and teach design otherwise. ...

A Design Ethics Framework for Revealing User Oppression

Journal article (2025) - Fernando Secomandi, Frederick van Amstel
Book chapter (2025) - Frederick van Amstel, Fernando Secomandi
This chapter explores the relations between oppressed and oppressor bodies in service design through Theatre of the Oppressed, a dramaturgical approach that harnesses contradictions of body. In a workshop setting, designers enacted a service interface of a ride-hailing app introducing a new silent-ride feature that discourages drivers talking to customers. The analysis of this workshop revealed the contradiction of capitalising human bodies as an extension of a digital service interface. This chapter concludes that, by taking a dialectical-existential perspective over the body, service design can contribute to rehumanising historically oppressed bodies in the design of service interfaces. ...
Book chapter (2025) - Frederick van Amstel, Bibiana Serpa, Fernando Secomandi
Systemic oppression is the enduring dehumanization of certain social groups, thereby maintaining their political, social, and economic disadvantage. Service design, most notably in digital labor platforms, has become entangled in the reproduction of oppression through capitalist, patriarchal, and colonial systems. Collaborating with the social movements that challenge these systems is a possible way forward for systemic service design. Still, self-criticism is needed to avoid reproducing oppression while trying to overcome it. With this aim, this chapter scrutinizes service design’s role in the cascading effect of systemic oppression, taking digital labor platforms as a paradigmatic example. By mapping the oppressive cascade from metadesigners to designers and from users to infrausers, this research identifies the crucial role played by the theater model in oppressive service design. To furnish an alternative model for systemic service design, we draw from Theatre of the Oppressed and Black intersectional feminism. ...

Mock Trials in Design Education

Book chapter (2025) - Fernando Secomandi

Democracy is a formidable concept with numerous intersections in design and, specifically, design education. This reflection explores a pedagogical experiment using the mock trial method and its potential to cultivate basic democratic principles in design students. Mock trials can enhance students’ ability to engage in public debates, articulate their opinions on societal issues, substantiate their viewpoints while respectfully challenging others, and uphold equality in discourse. This innovative approach transforms the traditional design studio into a “courtroom,” where students simulate legal proceedings on real-world controversies, navigating conflicting perspectives while honing their professional expertise. ...

Refections on structural inequities in research publishing

Journal article (2025) - Fernando Secomandi
Review (2024) - Fernando Secomandi
Like its author, The Book of Cal’s is a beguiling and authoritative read that spans fifty years of design practice and design education from 1951–2001. Written by someone who was there, it gives witness to both profound technological changes that were reshaping human communication and the ways we might educate ourselves. [...] ...
This white paper aims to provide an introduction to the topic of Design for Justice for a wide audience. It demonstrates ongoing research on this topic by the TU Delft community and contributes to the exchange of relevant knowledge and expertise, as one of the outcomes of the activities organised for the Delft Design for Values Institute’s annual theme ‘Design for Justice’. This document includes recommendations on how to foster Design for Justice, which are not just relevant for designers, engineers, and academic researchers, but also for educators and policy makers. ...

Breaking Free from the Marketing-Dominant Logic

Journal article (2024) - Fernando Secomandi
Journal article (2024) - Judith A.C. Rietjens, Ingeborg Griffioen, Jorge Sierra-Pérez, Gaby Sroczynski, Uwe Siebert, Alena Buyx, Barbara Peric, Jasper B.P. Brands, Fernando Secomandi, More Authors...
Background:
Patients with cancer often have to make complex decisions about treatment, with the options varying in risk profiles and effects on survival and quality of life. Moreover, inefficient care paths make it hard for patients to participate in shared decision-making. Data-driven decision-support tools have the potential to empower patients, support personalized care, improve health outcomes and promote health equity. However, decision-support tools currently seldom consider quality of life or individual preferences, and their use in clinical practice remains limited, partly because they are not well integrated in patients’ care paths.

Aim and objectives:
The central aim of the 4D PICTURE project is to redesign patients’ care paths and develop and integrate evidence-based decision-support tools to improve decision-making processes in cancer care delivery. This article presents an overview of this international, interdisciplinary project.

Design, methods and analysis:
In co-creation with patients and other stakeholders, we will develop data-driven decision-support tools for patients with breast cancer, prostate cancer and melanoma. We will support treatment decisions by using large, high-quality datasets with state-of-the-art prognostic algorithms. We will further develop a conversation tool, the Metaphor Menu, using text mining combined with citizen science techniques and linguistics, incorporating large datasets of patient experiences, values and preferences. We will further develop a promising methodology, MetroMapping, to redesign care paths. We will evaluate MetroMapping and these integrated decision-support tools, and ensure their sustainability using the Nonadoption, Abandonment, Scale-Up, Spread, and Sustainability (NASSS) framework. We will explore the generalizability of MetroMapping and the decision-support tools for other types of cancer and across other EU member states.

Ethics:
Through an embedded ethics approach, we will address social and ethical issues.

Discussion:
Improved care paths integrating comprehensive decision-support tools have the potential to empower patients, their significant others and healthcare providers in decision-making and improve outcomes. This project will strengthen health care at the system level by improving its resilience and efficiency. ...
Book chapter (2023) - Fernando Secomandi, Frederick van Amstel
This chapter discusses how human bodies can be approached as materials for service design. Service design often involves human-to-human exchanges and the way humans use their bodies to mediate these exchanges can be designed and enacted as artifacts. Using a postphenomenological perspective, the chapter frames the human body as a key service interface, acknowledging that human bodies, like other forms of technology, can be designed as artifacts. The chapter also discusses how body schemata and body images, which are not necessarily co-extensive with the boundaries set by the human skin, can be extended and influenced through technology. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding and designing human bodies as a material in service design to create meaningful and effective service experiences ...

The Design of a Digital Scribe for Orthopedic Consultations

Journal article (2023) - Reka Magyari, Fernando Secomandi
This case study explored the application of the service blueprinting method during the conceptual design of an AI-enabled digital scribe— an intelligent documentation support system—tailored for orthopedic consultations. In this paper, we discuss how this method can be used to enhance collaboration between user experience designers and machine learning engineers. Specifically, we show how service blueprinting can help innovation teams create a common foundation for understanding design challenges, enrich data with user-related insights, and highlight the value of AI capabilities as an organizational resource. Building on recent academic research in the field of human-computer interaction, our findings provide additional insights for addressing the design challenges associated with developing human-centric AI and incorporating service design approaches. ...

For more than human-centered worlds by Ron Wakkary, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2021) (2021), 312 p. ISBN 978-0-26-254299-9

Review (2022) - Fernando Secomandi

Embracing the Complexity of Energy Challenges in Low-income Markets

Buscar soluções para o setor elétrico de mercados de baixa renda representa uma oportunidade favorável de satisfazer a demanda por energia elétrica em economias emergentes de forma alinhada às metas do desenvolvimento sustentável. No entanto, designers têm, muitas vezes, dificuldade em au-xiliar comunidades de baixa renda a melhorar seus padrões de vida, por meio de soluções sustentáveis de energia. Existe consenso de que, sem acesso a produtos e serviços de energia sustentável, não é possível criar sistemas de energia sustentá-veis, e consequentemente, não se pode alcançar o desenvolvi-mento sustentável. Por outro lado, problemas sociais comple-xos enfrentados no setor elétrico de mercados de baixa renda estão longe de serem óbvios, de forma que as soluções atuais para esses problemas estão longe de serem ideais. Esses pro-blemas geralmente são muito difíceis de solucionar devido a informações limitadas sobre a situação em questão e falta de conhecimento específico do contexto local. No entanto, são demandas que afetam a vida cotidiana da população de baixa renda e que, portanto, merecem atenção urgente. Embora problemas complexos envolvam altos níveis de complexidade técnica, o termo problemas sociais comple-xos adotado nesta tese refere-se a problemas complexos em que a complexidade técnica está entrelaçada com a comple-xidade social e as relações entre humanos e instituições são centrais para a solução do problema. Além disso, o conceito de complexidade adotado nesse trabalho também se refere à falta de conhecimento das características do sistema em vigor, à falta de compreensão do problema em questão e à falta ou incerteza do conhecimento necessária para lidar com o problema. Esta investigação sugere que a integração do pensamento sistêmico e o campo do design é uma abor-dagem promissora para enfrentar a crescente complexidade dos problemas sociais. A pergunta de pesquisa central pro-põe obter insights sobre abordagens orientadas ao design 1. INTRODUÇÃO Os problemas enfrentados em mercados de baixa renda são cada vez mais percebidos como complexos devido às preocupações ambientais, sociais e econômicas envolvidas. Os enormes impactos negativos e a dificuldade dos designers de lidar com a complexidade desses problemas não podem ser superados sem uma mudança de paradigma na maneira como entendemos, abordamos e ensinamos so-bre essas questões. No processo de enfrentar esse desafio, podemos nos fazer a seguinte pergunta: "Qual é a melhor abordagem para lidar com um problema social complexo?" Tradicionalmente, uma abordagem para lidar com um pro-blema complexo é simplificá-lo. Em contrapartida, a presen-te tese visa oferecer uma nova abordagem para lidar com problemas sociais complexos: abraçar a complexidade. Esta pesquisa defende que abraçar a complexidade representa uma mudança significativa de uma abordagem tradicional do design para uma abordagem do design sistêmico em di-reção ao desenvolvimento sustentável. Esta tese se concentra em teorias e práticas que são centrais e relevantes para o debate sobre sustentabilidade e pensamento sistêmico no design. O objetivo é avançar o entendimento dos designers sobre questões de sustenta-bilidade em mercados de baixa renda, como por exemplo desafios de energia sustentável em economias emergentes, para contribuir, por meio do design, para resolver proble-mas sociais complexos. Por esse motivo, esta investigação se concentra no setor elétrico de mercados de baixa renda, que são particularmente notáveis em economias emergentes da América Latina e África. De um modo geral, consumidores no setor elétrico de mercados de baixa renda não têm acesso a fontes de energia economicamente acessíveis, confiáveis, limpas e modernas, o que resulta, entre outras questões, em poluição, problemas de saúde e altos custos de eletricidade. ...
Journal article (2020) - Alan Felismino da Silva, André Ribeiro de Oliveira, Fernando Secomandi
O setor de serviços vem apresentando impactos econômicos significativos nos últimos anos. O contexto é favorável para o crescimento da área de design de serviços, a fim de melhorar a tomada de decisões do provedor de um serviço pelo ponto de vista de seus clientes. Esta pesquisa apresenta um estudo aplicado em uma academia de musculação sobre fluxogramas de processos e inovação em serviços orientado à melhoria das suas atividades. Explorando uma lacuna sobre recursos no diagrama Process Chain Network (PCN), esta pesquisa conclui que a combinação do diagrama PCN de Sampson (2015) com o quadro conceitual de características de serviços de Gallouj & Weinstein (1997) simplifica a complexidade cognitiva do processo pela visualização de toda cadeia de serviço e alinha as expectativas dos provedores e usuários, pela análise dos recursos tangíveis, intangíveis e conhecimentos tácitos necessários para estrutura e representação visual de um serviço.
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A multilevel analysis of a low-income energy efficiency program in Brazil

Journal article (2019) - Jairo da Costa Junior, Jan Carel Diehl, Fernando Secomandi
There is a consensus among scholars and practitioners that energy solutions, such as electricity services and related products and systems, are paramount to the ability of nations to overcome environmental and social issues. As a result, policymakers and problem solvers in emerging economies have shown a keen interest in the transition to sustainable energy systems. Nevertheless, the design of sustainable energy solutions in low-income markets presents many challenges, such as those related to limited financial resources and poor infrastructure. In lowincome markets, the adoption of a systems-oriented approach to product-service combinations may represent a promising alternative to traditional design approaches and result in a more socially and environmentally sound path to economic development. Building on design theory grounded in systems theory, this paper analyzes multiple aggregation levels of the sociotechnical system of a low-income energy efficiency program in Brazil. In this study, the authors examined findings from the literature, carried out field observations, and had discussions with practitioners and experts. The study identifies constraints that hinder energy solutions that could achieve higher levels of socioeconomic and environmental benefits in low-income energy markets. Based on the findings, the paper provides insights into sustainable energy transitions and concludes that low-income energy efficiency programs can be improved through design-led policy and stakeholder collaboration. ...
Journal article (2018) - Jairo da Costa Junior, Jan-Carel Diehl, Fernando Secomandi
Design education has devoted little attention to the topic of societal systems transformation in the context of sustainable development. This paper reports on a master‘s-level course that aims to build the capacity for design engineering students to adopt a Systems Design Approach comprised of the integration of Product-Service System (PSS) and Systems Thinking, in order to develop sustainable energy systems concepts. We identify key factors for skilful performance when designing solutions for complex societal problems. The findings suggest that design approaches grounded in systems thinking are promising for dealing with the increasing complexity of the societal problems which future generations of design professionals are expected to solve. An Open Learning E-Package (OLEP) was offered to support Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to introduce Product-Services Systems and Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) models into their design curricula. We argue that capacity building for a systems design approach to complex societal problems, such as those faced in low-income energy markets, can support future generations of design engineers to take an active role in the development and widespread implementation of sustainable energy systems. ...
Journal article (2018) - F. Del Caro Secomandi, Dirk Snelders