Reflective writing plays a vital role in the development of designers, enabling them to evaluate their experiences, enhance their learning, and foster professional growth. However, traditional methods of assessing reflective writing have limitations in terms of reliability and objectivity. To address this gap, this research project aims to analyze the reflections of design students in the Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) course using linguistic analysis. By exploring the linguistic elements and patterns within these reflections, the study seeks to facilitate a comprehensive analysis to understand and assess students’ reflective practices (Ullmann, 2019; Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2009).

The research project utilizes the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) tool for linguistic analysis. This tool allows for the examination of linguistic patterns, word categories, and cognitive processes present in the reflective writings of design students (Tausczik & Pennebaker, 2009). Building upon Ullmann’s model of reflection detection, which encompasses eight categories (components) including experience, belief, difficulty, perspective, feeling, learning, intention, and descriptive (Ullmann, 2019), the study provides a comprehensive framework for evaluating reflective writing and serves as a basis for the analysis.

The key insights of this explorative research project are twofold. Firstly, the analysis of LIWC categories reveals that specific linguistic features are associated with different components of reflection. The study identifies two types of high-quality reflections: “Holistic narrators” that emphasize personal experiences, learning, intention, and positive outcomes, and “In-depth explorers” that focus on critical assessment, multiple perspectives, and descriptive text. These findings shed light on the diverse ways in which individuals engage in reflective writing and highlight the multidimensional nature of high-quality reflections.

Secondly, the research project explores the feasibility of using LIWC analysis as a tool for identifying high-quality reflections. While LIWC analysis provides valuable insights into certain linguistic features associated with reflection components, it has limitations in capturing the complexity and nuances required for accurate grading. Therefore, a comprehensive and multi-dimensional approach that integrates quantitative measures with qualitative assessments, expert judgment, and a well-defined rubric is crucial for a robust evaluation of reflection quality.

The implications of this research project are significant for design researchers and education. The identification of specific linguistic features associated with high-quality reflections can guide the development of interventions and instructional strategies aimed at fostering critical thinking skills, self-reflection, and diverse perspectives among design students. Additionally, the insights gained from this research can inform the development of automated tools or natural language processing techniques to assist educators in assessing and providing feedback on reflections, thereby enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of reflective practice in educational settings.

In conclusion, this research project contributes to our understanding of reflective writing in the context of design. By analyzing the linguistic elements and patterns within the reflections of design students, the study provides insights into their reflective practices. The findings highlight the diverse nature of reflective writing and emphasize the need for a comprehensive assessment approach that considers contextual factors, qualitative aspects, and individual variations in reflection quality. The implications of this research extend to the development of instructional strategies and automated assessment tools, promoting the growth and development of design students’ reflective skills.

In this graduation project, the aim is to develop a decision guide that will assist Strategiemakers, a strategy consultancy and organisational transformation firm, in addressing the challenge of creating sustainable business strategies for organisations. The current tools and models used in the industry are inadequate and do. not provide the necessary insights into an organisation’s strategic direction. To address this issue, the research project focuses on creating a holistic model that provides a comprehensive approach to the creation of flourishing organisation strategies.

The research project employs a research-by-design approach to develop the concept. This involved exploratory interviews with Strategiemakers employees, interviews with other strategy consultants, strategists within companies, and educational experts. The aim was to define the components necessary for a flourishing organisation, the requirements for a successful flourishing strategy and to examine the tools that can help to create a flourishing strategy.

As a result of the research and ideation, the concept produced four interrelated components: the Bee Flourishing Model, the Tool Inspiration Guide, the Sustainable Tool Storage, and the Back-end Spreadsheet.

The Bee flourishing model is an organisational model starting in the organisation’s core with its purpose and offers a holistic view of the interconnectedness between the impact of an organisation’s business on sustainability and its internal impact within the organisation. The Tool inspiration guide provides Strategiemakers with advice on the selection of tools that are best suited to support their clients’ journey towards a flourishing organisation. This guide adds value to Strategiemakers by better suiting the client’s needs and not forcibly converting the tools they always use. A structured approach to selecting tools for building sessions can help ensure that the strategy for achieving a flourishing organisation is well-thought-out and effective.

The reorderable matrix approach, when applied in a novel way for the back-end spreadsheet, provides a fresh perspective for strategic designers. It enables the visualisation and analysis of interactions between elements, i.e. tools for developing a flourishing strategy and facilitates how tools can be combined to complement each other to fulfil the specific needs or requirements of an organisation.

In conclusion, Strategiemakers can position themselves with this concept as thought leaders in the field of sustainable transformation by conducting research and making their findings open source. The Bee flourishing model can be used by organisations seeking to transform into sustainable entities, and the Tool inspiration guide should be expanded to better align with the requirements for a successful flourishing strategy. To improve usability, it is recommended to establish a hierarchy among the tools and to bring the style of the guide even more in line with Strategiemakers’ style. To stay relevant and up-to-date, Strategiemakers should keep actively researching new tools and expanding the guide, making it a comprehensive resource for the company.

Designing with data helps the service providers to monitor and gain deeper insights from users. However, there are not many design methods of data-enabled design for most design teams to rely on. This research focuses on the early exploratory phase of the design process. The goal was to find a solution that could assist in contextualizing the big-thin data by using experiencing prototyping approach for exploratory purposes. A design tool, data-contextualizing canvas, was designed and iterated by three studies (including seven sessions with eight participants in total) in this project. It assisted designers to prototyping the simulated user scenario in a structured way. And designers could extract insights and relevant data points by using it. The tool was a representation of the new data-exploration process proposed in the end of this research. The design process of data-value-data described a sequence of creative data exploration for establishing the design hypothesis in early design phase. The data-contextualizing canvas was considered to have benefit in 1.offering a constructive way to explore the data and help in inner communication, 2.proposing a different perspectinve in using the big-thin data as design materials, and 3.raising the awareness of user value.

Intending to implement a data-enabled design approach to use this data in their creative design process, Ford established a research collaboration with the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. As part of the collaboration, several lines of research were carried out, like data strategy, data visualisation, and early prototyping in the form of graduation projects. In one such work, Mellado Cruz (2021) identified that exploratory inquiring as a means to derive insights from data visualisations has great potential in supporting the creative design process. With her empirical studies, she could generate theoretical knowledge about this process; however, bridging work was needed to convert this knowledge into a practical and actionable outcome.
In this project, I address the research question, "How can exploratory inquiring on data visualisation be operationalised in the Ford design team to support their creative design process? ". I begin the process with a phase of immersion into theory and context- using published literature about exploratory data analysis,
data visualisation, creativity, and design theory to obtain theoretical understanding and the thesis reports of past graduation projects. At the end of this phase, I identify three potential opportunities that can aid in implementing exploratory inquiring in Ford design teams. One of the opportunities- to conceptualise exploratory inquiring as a collaborative design method- was identified as the most feasible in terms of the scope of the project, practical and desirable for the Ford design teams. A preliminary concept method was developed based on the learnings from the literature in line with this direction. This was iteratively prototyped, tested and refined for three cycles in the design iterations phase. The version at the end of the third cycle was used to create the final deliverable- a toolkit consisting of an information booklet that helps in circulating the procedural knowledge of the method within the team to create awareness and canvasses that support the execution of the method. In the last parts of this report, I provide recommendations for future studies to tackle the limitations I faced in this project and possibly inspire new works in the area of data-enabled design.

This report describes the development of the Ford Concreate, a data immersion toolkit designed for the Innovation Management for Smart Vehicle Concepts team (design team) of Ford’s Research and Innovation Centre Aachen. The collaborative data physicalisation toolkit consists of three elements: an instruction process, the physicalisation tool and a set of reflection cards. Together, these elements lead the target group to collect inspiring insights from quantitative data by stimulating reflection and creative thinking through physical interaction with data. By consciously engaging with data while creating a physical representation of a dataset, users better understand the data and reveal patterns that lead to new insights. The toolkit is designed for use during creative sessions, led by a session facilitator. With recent advances in data-based technologies like AI, machine learning and IoT, designing with data is becoming impossible to avoid. Within Ford, the amount of collected data is growing, forcing the design team to look for new ways to integrate its data to improve continuous product and service innovation. This led to the initial goal of ‘using data as creative material’, as quantitative data is currently solely being used for testing and validation rather than to inspire the entire design process. To specify and achieve this goal, the fields of creativity and data representation were identified and studied, focusing on answering the following research question: How can data be represented in a way that stimulated creativity during the design process at Ford? It was concluded that data physicalisation could stimulate creativity and lead to better insights as it encourages reflection and creates deepened understanding through active interaction with the data, which led to the development of the toolkit: the Ford Concreate.

Ford aims to implement a data-enabled design approach, using data to inspire and inform the whole creative process. In this context, in 2020, they took a step to reach this goal by setting up a University Research Project with the Industrial Design Faculty at Technology University of Delft, proposing data visualisation as one of the research lines. In this master thesis project, the role of Data Visualization in Data-Enabled Design projects is investigated, specifically how to use Data Visualization more efficiently to generate insights and inform the creative process of Ford design.
The initial stages of the project were focused on understanding how Ford is using data in the design process and reviewing the published literature about creativity, data, data-enabled design, data visualisation, and exploratory data analysis. Then, through a critical reflection about the intersections of the theoretical research, eight possible design directions were identified in which data visualisation can support the creative process, termed “crossing bridges”.
Afterwards, in collaboration with the company, the one with higher potential, “Exploratory inquiring”, was selected to investigate further. Hence, three empirical studies were developed: personal explorations, a design students workshop and one workshop with Ford employees.
The last steps included the analysis and discussion of these sessions individually and comparatively, considering the limits of this research and the proposal of different aspects to consider in future research. Finally, I present a guide to support Ford in performing Exploratory Inquiring.

The thesis addresses the organizational challenges of lacking the big pictures in an early-stage startup. First, the author joined a newborn software venture as a founding product manager and observed the dynamics in his daily practice. Then, through numerous interviews with team leaders and employees, the author analyzed the data and discovered several issues happening in this newborn company. Among the findings, the most significant one is that the leaders didn’t reach a consensus on the company’s long-term goal; and the employees didn’t have an aligned sense of the company’s mission and product vision. This phenomenon led to employees’ low productivity in new product development, constantly making incorrect trade-offs, and misaligning collaboration across different teams.

The project presented a design toolkit consisting of a canvas and an instruction brochure to overcome the challenge. This design toolkit helped the leaders collaboratively develop a big shared picture by outlining the company’s mission and product vision. The author held a design workshop to implement the solution with three company co-founders and successfully generate the organization’s long-term goal. As a result, the author evaluated the outcome by comparing employees’ behavioral changes.

Internally, an enormous leap in the team’s productivity has been identified. Employees were able to accelerate the progress of the product development by eliminating irrelevant tasks. Additionally, the collective big pictures improved the collaborations between the product team and the business development team. Finally, they could make the right trade-offs according to the company’s big pictures. Externally, the CEO utilized the well-developed company mission and product vision to stand out from other candidates while applying startup accelerators. As a result, the company impressed the recruiter and successfully entered into a startup accelerator. Moreover, two corporations also invited the company to collaborate on building the product.

In terms of customer acquisition, enhanced employee productivity helped the company get its first paid customer eight months after it was founded. These company achievements complement the outcome of the thesis by proving the importance of the company’s mission and product vision in an early-stage startup.