This thesis set out to research the problem of loneliness among adolescents in the high school context. For a long time, loneliness had mainly been recognized as a problem among elderly. Only in the last few years, people have been starting to realize that this is a concerning problem among adolescents too. In order to get a better grip on what loneliness is, and what the role is of the high school context, extensive research was done to answer the main research question: Following the current situation in Delft, which steps should be taken next in the high school context to better deal with loneliness among adolescents?
Four sub questions were formulated in order to define the challenges and opportunities for the design phase. Answers to the sub questions were found through various research activities, like literature research, expert interviews and contextmapping sessions. Analysis of the data led to seven main insights. Following these insights, it was explored what a better way was to look at the problem.
Currently, loneliness among adolescents is framed as problematic, because it can progress into chronic loneliness with severe consequences. Existing initiatives that aim to solve this problem often help adolescents to step out of social isolation or help them improve their social skills. Besides that, loneliness is also framed as something that does not happen to young people, which makes adolescents struggle with identifying with the word, or they feel ashamed to admit when they do feel lonely.
In order to take steps towards a more preventative and holistic approach, the problem was reframed: a problem of ignorance, by not treating the feeling as something we all experience and that teaches us about our underlying human needs.
Following this new frame and additional exploration, the design statement was formulated: we want to show high school students how feelings like loneliness are indicators of underlying, fundamental human needs by letting them collectively reflect on these needs and thei relation to emotions, while also making them aware of the universality of those needs.
A creative design process followed. Potential design directions were explored through brainstorming and organizing a focus group.
Validation of the concept was done through a user test and by interviewing stakeholders. The concept was detailed further and the Under-Needs toolkit was introduced. The Under-Needs toolkit provides the tools for the high school context to educate students on their emotions and underlying needs. While it does not directly tackle loneliness, it aims to teach students how to reflect on feelings like loneliness and trace them back to underlying needs. This will help them to make better sense of feelings like loneliness because they get taught how to see them in the bigger picture.

Social well-being in the workplace is linked to the quality of relationships between co-workers. This project began by examining the affects of the flexible office (flex-office) at Delft municipality focusing on the relationships between co-workers and their feeling of relatedness, and continued with designing to enhance this feeling of relatedness. Appreciation is a key factor in the need for relatedness. Recognition from peers can build a sense of teamwork and of being part of a bigger purpose, especially for employees who work remotely or are not physically in the office regularly (Vacqua, 2019). Knowing and then using someone’s name can be considered a subtle and very effective compliment (Carnegie, 1936) and can be a form of recognition. This is because our brains need us to be liked by others. People with a ‘best friend’ at work are seven times more likely to be fully engaged in their work. However, these close and intimate relationships are challenged by flex-offices, which are being introduced more and more. People form less friendships in flex-office settings, because they feel like everyone is listening in; flex offices seem ‘too open for transparency’. Trying to counteract this by creating acoustic privacy is a big operation and does not immediately create enhanced relatedness. My design goal was to enhance the social well-being of employees in flex-offices by satisfying and supporting their need for relatedness. The first step towards relatedness is knowing each others’ names. This is a form of recognition, a subtle compliment and thus enhances the feeling of relatedness. Knowing your colleagues’ names can cause a sense of control over your environment and can give you enhanced freedom. Think about if you forgot a colleague’s name, this can cause very awkward situations and even make you avoid that colleague. But knowing your colleagues’ names is only the first step. The main reason for people to connect is proximity and if there is a functional need to connect. This proximity is thwarted by flex working and the Corona measures so people will only connect if there is a functional need to do so. Providing people with information on what they can use other people for might cause people to connect. People do not want to spend a lot of time on learning their colleagues’ names so timing is important. Through an iterative approach several design interventions led to a design where people receive a link once the meeting is made and 15 minutes prior to a meeting, with a name-learning tool and information on what you can approach these people for. After a meeting, all participants are encouraged to express appreciation to each other. Testing shows that it indeed leads to enhanced social well-being.

The project is undertaken for the organization of British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums(BIAZA). BIAZA is an association with 121 member zoos and aquariums in the UK and Ireland. It’s member zoos and aquariums receive a whopping audience of about 35 million visitors every year, which is more than half of the total populations of the UK and Ireland combined. The initial brief from BIAZA was ‘How can their member zoos and aquariums leverage the huge audience to drive a positive societal change?” To answer the question, the project begins to explore four main domains of research: Biodiversity, Behavioral change, The UK as a society, and Zoos and Aquariums. for its aesthetic value and has limited knowledge about his/her relationships with the animal world. This lack of recognition and acknowledgment of one’s relationships with the animal world weakens one’s environmental identity. Hence, ‘development of an identity that recognizes and acknowledges one’s relationships with the natural world’ is defined as the ‘change to aim for’. lives as they leave the zoo. Hence the app takes the visitors Beyond the zoo and also remains with the visitor beyond the zoo. Following the design, the concept is prototyped and tested with the users and validates by a zoo educator. The concept received extremely positive feedback from both of them establishing its desirability, feasibility, and viability. From the research about Biodiversity, it is derived that Biodiversity is crucial for the maintenance of Ecosystems. Human life in many ways depend on the ecosystem services. However, biodiversity is declining globally at an alarmingly fast pace due to human activities such as intensified agricultural, overexploitation, and pollution. At the core of such systemic activities, lies an individual’s everyday behaviors. This project aims to influence these individual behaviors. The insights from the behavioral change literature suggest that many factors influence one’s behaviors including environmental identity, which is the best predictor of one’s pro-environmental behaviors. Through this lens of behavioral change, the UK society’s engagement with the problem of loss of biodiversity is explored via interviews and literature research. It is concluded that overall a typical UK citizen loves nature and wildlife Based on the change to aim for, the context of Zoos is explored to recognize the efforts of zoos to educate people about conservation and the effects these efforts have on the visitors. It is concluded that zoos show great potential for the development of identity because of the presence of a live animal’s ability to generate an emotional connection with the animal. Based on the capacity of zoos to connect people with the animals, the role of zoos in moving forward towards the systemic direction is “To strengthen people’s relationships with biodiversity”. With the goal for the zoos defined, a three phased approach of Show, Sensitize and Inspire is proposed to the zoos to move forward towards achieving this goal.. Based on the proposed approach, the concept of “Beyond the Zoo” is designed. The major part of the concept is an app supported by minor physical infrastructures at the zoo. The app can be downloaded by the visitors and is designed to work in tandem with a zoo visit. The concept is designed to motivate visitors to learn more about the interspecific relationships between animals in an engaging and exciting ‘treasure hunt’s fashion. The app is also designed to engage people in recognizing the contributions of biodiversity to their everyday life and subsequently inspire and support them to take positive actions in their own The project ends with providing implementation guidelines and other recommendations to BIAZA for moving forward with this particular concept and towards the systemic direction defined for zoos.

The presence of a gap in the relationship between citizens and the political system is a phenomenon that knows no boundaries, which affects governments and political institutions at different scales.Citizens are dissatisfied about the current one-way political interaction held by an elite which is perceived as corrupt and distant. They would like to see a change, but they do not know how to obtain it. On the other hand, politicians promise changes that are hardly or too slow implemented, reinforcing the perception that the political system is an immutable static entity despite democracy is a dynamic process. Despite numerous initiatives undertaken by organisations and private citizens, aim to turn the tide, they fail to trigger significant changes.In this scenario, where citizens are questioning the current quality of democracy, while some are discouraged in manifesting their concerns, others are pushed to ask for participation extension and shared governance firmly. However, they perceive how they currently lack adequate instruments capable of bridging the noisy flows of information and enabling their request to shared governance come across.From here the relevance of this thesis which aims to apply a conjoint combination of strategic mid-set, interaction practices and design for democracy purposes to investigate how to bridge the current gap in the relationship between citizens and the political system and design a solution (desirable, feasible and viable) to enable society in achieving the democratic future they aim for. Thanks to the insights obtained from the extensive multidisciplinary research have been possible to harvest evidence concerning how the current gap is nurtured by the lack of reciprocal information, communication and education which affects citizens and politicians alike. Therefore the importance of realising an intervention at the interaction level capable of providing citizens and governmental institutions with the adequate instruments to establish anongoing bi-directional interaction which will enable to bridge public opinion and share governance representing an extension in participation beyond the moment of voting.Upon this goal, ideation and further data collection led to the realization of DEMO as final design articulated on three concepts: DEMO App for citizens, DEMOs Software for institutions and DEMOc Community, a “sub-partes” guarantor for adequate technical functioning and ethical usage of all the parts.Validation shade light about the authentic potential that an instrument like DEMO would have in improving the dynamics (in terms of information, communication and collaboration) and so the overall relationship between citizens and the political system across societal segments and institutional levels. Although several limitations have been identified regarding the ethical sustainability of the concept (which have been addressed in the dedicate reflection section) results remarked the capability of DEMO in activating the participatory spirit in respondents which declared to have lost it.In light of the positive reactions harvested along with its development, DEMO, as an overall concept, aspires to bring further the discussion about how to enable society to achieve a democratic future in which public opinion is bridged, and governance is incrementally shared between institutions and citizens at local, regional, national & international level.In the end, everything starts with an attempt; everything starts with a DEMO.

Algorithms are all around us. Based on large amounts of data and through automated decision-making processes, they increasingly exercise power over us. As a way of governing this power, we should be able to hold these algorithms and those responsible for implementing them accountable. This research posed the following research question: How can algorithmic accountability be implemented by design?

A literature review of the theory related to algorithmic accountability was executed, which led to a framework of five aspects that are required for achieving it: responsibility, explainability, debatability, auditability and sanctionability. Within a design case study, the implementation of these five aspects was investigated.

Based on the insights from research and design activities in this research, I conclude that the following guidelines will structure the process of designing accountability mechanisms:

(1) Understand the context in which the algorithm is created and employed;
(2) anticipate unwanted developments or effects of the system;
(3) design context-specific accountability mechanisms based on these findings.