Participatory policymaking is a way of creating policy together with the people who are affected by it. In this research, participatory policymaking aims to include citizens who are affected by a specific policy, in the process of policymaking. Especially after the so called ‘Childcare Allowance Affair’, participatory policymaking within the Central Government has gained momentum due to its potential to create more fair and improved policy as well as improved trust in the government. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment (the MSAE) acknowledges its value and importance; efforts to integrate participatory policymaking into the policy processes have increased over the past two years. The Ministry has set the following ambitious goal for its employees (the SAE’ers) which started in 2022: “Within three years (2025), every SAE’er places the end-user at the center of every stage of the policy-making process”.

Expressions of dissatisfaction with participatory practices (not specific to the Ministry but all participatory policy-making processes) in the media has inspired this research project; participants do not feel heard or taken seriously as they rarely see their input reflected in policy outcomes.

Through design sprints, resulting in multiple small design interventions, I explored the system of the MSAE. The Ministry is seen as a complex social system, where different stakeholders and actors have a considerable influence on the creation and adjustments of policies. The likelihood of finding a single problem with a single solution is therefore small. Therefore, a Co-Evolutionary Approach (Van der Bijl-Brouwer et al., 2021) has been adopted to steer the system towards the desired situation over time using safe-to-fail design experiments.

Four ‘obstruction areas’ have been defined based on discovered challenges and corresponding design interventions have been created. These are combined in one portfolio. These obstruction areas might discourage policymakers from engaging in impactful participatory work. The obstruction areas are defined as follows:

1. Unevaluated Assumptions: The assumptions policymakers may have about the people affected by the policy withhold policymakers from starting the conversation or being open enough during the conversation.
2. Faulty Frameworks: The frameworks have not always changed according to the changing way of working that is required for participatory policymaking.
3. Task Overload: Too many tasks and contradicting expectations may discourage policymakers from creating flexibility to engage in participatory policymaking.
4. Lack of a Relationship: A relationship with the people affected by policy is not always there, which leads to participants not feeling taken seriously.

Based on the areas of obstruction, four interventions are designed. One of them is created and evaluated in collaboration with policymakers. For the “Unevaluated Assumptions” obstruction area, an intervention called ‘Het Veronderstel Spel’ is developed. ‘Het Veronderstel Spel’ initiates awareness about the assumptions policymakers might have on the collaboration with people affected by the policy and how they influence the trajectory of policy development, if unaccounted for.

Finally, it is proposed that uncovering and dealing with obstruction areas through safe-to-fail design interventions is a useful method to deal with the variety of participatory policy-making challenges the MSAE is facing.

We live in an increasingly complex world in which policy regulations and system development must balance technology, existing regulations and all the people participating in the system. Currently, digital identities facilitate multiple verification processes in multiple contexts. For example, to give the ability to prove their own identity to buy alcohol or verify within the work environment, for as a healthcare practitioner. Experts and the EU Commission see unmet needs and problems within the digital identity field, which led to the revision process of eIDAS 2.0 to include the missed objectives of the present regulation on electronic identification and trust services, creating the rules for electronic transactions in the internal market. For example, identity theft rises, privacy concerns towards big tech grow, and there is little to no interoperability between sectors and borders (European Commission, 2021).

This thesis explored the ongoing development process through a systemic approach and the lens of Value Sensitive Design (VSD) (Van Den Hoven et.al., 2015). A research-by-design approach uncovers the values and uniqueness of multiple stakeholders and provides new perspectives on the emergent system dynamics of digital identity. The EU Commission Vision on the EUDI Wallet was used as starting point to explore stakeholder values (Users¹, Relying Parties², Experts / Oversight Perspective³) and engage them in the future by still acting as the experts of their own experiences.
Value tensions and risks are mapped to showcase the future implications of wrongly managed decisions in the process from a system perspective. Based on the systemic approach, a vision for all coming verification processes is created as the development is just a starting process for what is coming next within the wallet development field.
The vision aims to help facilitate a way to include the values and mental models of different parties in the creation process of digital identity verification experiences.

“Creating respectful transaction mechanisms that include the values of all participants by integrating a trusted relationship in the layers behind the app”

The design provides a new value-finding method created in the interview process, and a structure for strategic dialogues (Talking Across The Divide, n.d.). The strategic dialogue set up with the name “Welcome to the Common Ground” can be seen as a transition design towards ‘Design for Behaviour Change’ (Irwin, 2018), as part of an intervention to solve wicket problems (Dorst, 2015). I saw that multiple stakeholders with opposing opinions have to come together to formulate goals towards future practices in which stakeholders’ values need to be balanced by having moral values as the foundation and creating an understanding of each other’s needs for different verification experiences. Therefore the final designs can empower INNOPAY to establish ethical technology design in consultancy practices.

Because: “If values can be imparted to technology and shape the space of actions of human beings, then we need to learn to incorporate and express shared values in the things we design and make.”
(Van Den Hoven et al., 2015).

Organisations have a lot of trouble with managing their portfolio.
The portfolio is the set of projects the company is currently running. The consultancy Jigseye provides tools for that purpose called Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM). They created tools to support organisations in creating that overview and the next step to manage it as a process. Currently, the SPM tools implemented by Jigseye work in practice. They notice that orgnizations still face challenges reaching successful SPM execution. Jigseye wants to improve and extend this set of tools. The goal of my project is to gain an understanding of the SPM tools and design for the new tools with orientation on useability and ease of use. In the research phase, I did extensive user research analysing the SPM tool resulting in user needs for functionality accessibility and the new purpose of creating strategic awareness. Leading to the following vision; the vision is laid out in the form of a journey, leading to new opportunities. This will increase both the effectiveness and efficiency of the SPM tools. Resulting in the New SPM Identity model and New SPM App design with Mobile version; with these tools, designing for a new way of working in the SPM journey leading to new service opportunities for Jigseye.

The objective of this project was to explore the context of gun violence in America using the Vision in Product (ViP) design process to identify and design an intervention that would help reduce gun violence in the United States. I began by investigating the vast nature of this domain to gain a bird’s-eye view and deeper understanding of this complex problem. Through my secondary research, I collected many relevant political, economic, socio-cultural, and technological factors that make up and influence my domain. Through the formation of my worldview, I identified that the root cause of government inaction on gun control is the financial influence of corporations and special interests groups, primarily the NRA, on politicians. I then identified the Progressive Movement, as a vehicle to counteract government inaction on gun reform, both directly and indirectly, and an opportunity for my design intervention to mobilize citizen participation supporting this cause. The Progressive Movement is a segment of the Democratic political party that aims to make the US government more responsive to the needs of the American people through widespread political reform. I formulated my vision statement for my design intervention and brainstormed possible solutions. My final concept is a web-based platform that connects Americans to Progressive volunteer opportunities, as a way to support the Progressive Movement’s efforts in reducing gun violence. I based my concept on five interviews with potential users, where I learned about personal barriers that prevent people from volunteering for political and societal causes. My concept was then validated with five additional users through prototype testing and a simulated volunteer activity to see how people would react to my platform and if they would use it. Through this validation research, my solution was able to successfully activate citizen participation. Too many innocent lives have been lost to gun violence, but US history shows that sometimes change must come from outside the government, from the people. That is why I feel that supporting the Progressive Movement’s efforts of reducing gun violence through grassroots participation is crucial. Through the Good Trouble platform, we have the opportunity to mobilize millions of Americans across the country to become active participants in the fight against gun violence in America.

Youth care in the Netherlands has faced quite some problems in the past years. It is organised only by adults who mostly have nothing to do with it, and it shows — both youth care workers and youth themselves have had enough. Every solution to the youth care problem in the Netherlands leads to new problems, making it a wicked problem which does not have one apparent solution which works. Therefore, the best solution to tackle it is to work with bottom-up organisations. De Garage2020 is such a bottom-up organisation, working in multidisciplinary teams all around the country to design innovations which focus on youth care prevention. They work together with youth to get to the best solutions, but unfortunately that still leaves a gap between them and youth they are designing for, especially because they themselves are adults and they still make the decisions. Therefore, de Garage2020 Rotterdam wants to start a new youth initiative, completely led and executed by youth: the JongerenGarage (translated to English as ‘Youth Garage’). The goal of the JongerenGarage would be to design for the utopian youth care in the Netherlands. This thesis is aimed on providing insight into how and if design can facilitate the empowerment of youth in youth initiatives. In this thesis, I am presenting a framework which shows the complex mechanisms that take place. Through this framework, concepts are presented, from which a prototype is developed and used as a case study of a trial youth initiative. This trial went differently than expected, which shows that the perception of what is good and what is bad differs between youth and adults, but also between a non-designer and a designer. Therefore, two things can be concluded: The first is that when designing for the empowerment of youth, an adult cannot expect youth to behave like adults. Youth go through several developmental phases and therefore may have a complete different view on what is right or wrong in terms of working and communication. Second, when conducting a diffuse design process, in which a designer enables others to co-design together, a designer cannot expect non-designers to go through the design process as the designer intended, as they have far less experience. All in all, both of these conclusions imply the same: Expectations have to be let go when designing for others’ processes. This can be done through constant reflection and self-awareness.