This graduation project explores how to stimulate creative confidence among Dutch high school students aged 12 to 18. While creativity is widely recognized as an essential 21st-century skill, secondary education often lacks the time, structure, and safe environments necessary to foster it.

Through literature research and generative and co-creation sessions with students, the project identified that creative confidence is not a fixed talent but develops through active “mastery experiences”.

However, a dual barrier exists in education. Students face a high structural and psychological “Activation Threshold” driven by performance pressure, fear of failure, and a lack of autonomy, which prevents them from engaging in creative tasks.
Simultaneously, teachers face a “Creativity Gap” they recognize the value of creativity but lack the preparation time and practical tools to confidently facilitate it.

To address this, the design goal shifted from teaching creativity as a theoretical skill to creating low-threshold experiences where ‘doing’ precedes ‘believing’, allowing students to safely enter a self-reinforcing “Creative Confidence Loop”.

The resulting design is the Ignite framework, a strategic, dual-layer ecosystem. The Student Experience Layer provides a continuous learning line: it starts with a Kickstart workshop to redefine creativity, is sustained by Creative Sparks (15-to-20-minute cross-curricular micro-interventions embedded in regular subjects), and is deepened through periodic Project Weeks.

Because these materials are curated and “plug-and-play,” the framework effectively removes the preparation burden for teachers. To ensure long-term cultural change, this is supported by The Fire Pit, a systemic layer providing strategic tools for school leadership and teaching teams to embed creative habits permanently.

Validation of the Creative Sparks in real-school contexts demonstrated a statistically significant increase in students’ creative resilience and proved highly feasible for teachers to implement.

Ultimately, this project illustrates that creative confidence is a dormant spark waiting for the right fuel. By simultaneously solving the teacher’s workload constraints and the student’s fear of failure, Ignite provides the necessary conditions to let that fire of creativity grow.
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In a large survey in the netherlands, 50% of young people reported having experienced street harassment in 2020/’21. And while interventions in the Netherlands aim to address the problem, they fail to effectively involve youth. This graduation project has contributed to a better understanding of how youth (12-17 year old) perceive street harassment and created a design intervention in the context of Rotterdam.

The project used a Research through Design approach, with participatory design moments and feminist theory, including the matrix of domination to analyse and evaluate power dynamics in street harassment and interventions.

Initial research and literature revealed that street harassment is influenced by a complex interplay of numerous contextual factors. Street harassment cannot be solved through a "single solution" but requires systemic change across all domains of society. The criminalization of street harassment in July 2024 opens up new opportunities for interventions and norm change, but will in itself not change the problem.

Collaborations with a youth hub in Rotterdam and a school in Delft facilitated engagement with potential harassers. The focus was on group dynamics rather than individual experiences, due to the fluidity of roles in different contexts. From these creative sessions, the research shows how street harassment among youth is intertwined with their search for identity and belonging. Between ages 12 and 17, youth take up different roles, testing boundaries and identities in public spaces. The street serves as an important space for independent identity formation, both free from expectations but also with potential dangers.

The final design of this project is an interactive installation: Street Exploration. This public intervention invites youth to explore the impact of their voice through mirrors and a projection on a wall. The installation captures your comments and the projection changes in size and colour accordingly: positive statements make your shape grow, while negative remarks make the projection shrink. This dynamic experience makes youths' input visible, encourages reflection on your projection bias, and promotes positive public interactions. The installation also incorporates mirrors designed by youth, showcasing examples of street harassment, thus fostering a public dialogue between youth and society. This intervention can be used on events and leaves a lasting mark on the neighbourhood.

Furthermore, this research highlights the challenges of youth participation in design research. Their perspectives do not always align with what researchers want to know, and barriers exist in collaborating with youth hubs and schools. Researchers must adopt mindful, adaptable approaches to effectively engage young participants.

Ultimately, Street Exploration contributes to street harassment prevention by visualizing the impacts of your words, it empowers youth to explore social identity, without harming others, bridging the gap between youth and society.
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Aim and relevance
The aim of this project is to design for understanding and reducing street harassment behavior among young people in Rotterdam. In 2020, nearly half (47%) of the women surveyed in Rotterdam, reported being targets of street harassment (Fischer et al., 2021). Street harassment is a persistent and normalized form of gender-based violence in public spaces that can have severe effects on the target. In Rotterdam, young people aged 15–25 are not only disproportionately targeted but are also often the perpetrators. Current interventions have focused primarily on supporting targets and bystanders or on raising awareness but often fail to address the social structures that sustain the behavior. This project addresses a critical gap: the lack of understanding about why young people engage in street harassment.

Method
To address the complexity of the topic, I used a combination of multiple design methods and practices. To better understand the social structures surrounding street harassment, I adopted a systemic design approach. To better understand the context of young people in Rotterdam, I adopted a participatory approach. Activities included, but were not limited to, stakeholder interviews (n=5), guerilla street interviews (n=27), two generative sessions with young people in youth hubs (n=7, n=12), testing the design proposal three times (n=3, n=5, n=5) and interviews with relevant stakeholders to evaluate the design proposal (n=5).

Results
The research showed that street harassment is difficult to tackle because it is deeply normalized and sustained by intersecting structures of inequality, like gender inequality, racism, and classism. It is not an isolated behavior, but is entangled with broader systems of inequality and identity formation that unfold in public space. When in public space, young people experience and reinforce these inequalities, but are unable to challenge them. Resulting from a lack of accessibility, agency and ownership in regard to their environment, young people conform to the status quo: a culture of inequality, in which street harassment is normal.

Therefore, the design proposal, a workshop, aims to increase young people’s sense of agency over the public space by enabling them to contribute to shaping public spaces in a way that is both fitting and valuable for them. Through engaging in speculative design practices, I created alternative futures of public space, made tangible in the form of scenarios and objects. In the workshop, young people engage with these scenarios and objects. Through discussions about the meaning and the consequences of these futures, they share their dreams and concerns about their own neighborhood.
Conclusion
Iteratively testing the workshop showed that the process is highly engaging and encouraged participants to think critically, listen to others and reconsider their own views. The design proposal enables urban developers and planners to gain insights into the preferences and priorities of various groups of youth, opening the door for more diverse and representative youth participation overall.

By shifting focus from punitive measures to cultivating agency, this project reframed young people not as part of the problem, but as a part of the solution. The project demonstrated two main things: the potential of speculative design as a tool for meaningful youth participation on public space, and that young people are willing and more than capable to contribute to societal issues it is framed accessibly and when they are taken seriously. With the right follow-up, the workshop has the potential to not just inform, but to activate as well. It can make young people feel seen, heard, and more aware of their role in shaping the future. More than anything, the workshop is a way to take young people seriously and to position them as valuable contributors to society.
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This thesis addresses the “orgasm gap” for young women (18–30) in heterosexual relationships by shifting the design focus from orgasm as an outcome to the conditions that make pleasure possible. Early exploration showed that many women’s difficulties were less about technique and more about overthinking, shame, body image concerns, and misattuned partner dynamics. In response, the project reframes the goal: not to guarantee orgasm, but to widen the mental and relational space in which pleasure – and, when it happens, orgasm – can emerge without pressure.

Using a design-led qualitative approach, the project combines a diary study (n=7), post-diary interviews (n=3), a brief co-ideation session (n=2), and expert consultation with four sexologists. Data were analyzed thematically, leading to three “enabling levers”: psychological bandwidth (reducing overthinking and performance monitoring), relational attunement (emotional safety and clearer erotic communication), and a pleasure-first reframing (bringing solo know-how and fantasy into partnered contexts without treating orgasm as the finish line). These levers informed a substantial redesign of an A5 Intimacy Diary, including revised pacing, tone, grounding cues, and communication scaffolds, and the development of a grassroots distribution strategy (QR codes, targeted placement, Instagram) to support real-world uptake.

Participants described the diary’s short, pause-able prompts and non-judgmental tone as helping them name barriers, feel less “in their head,” and initiate clearer, kinder conversations with partners. Experts judged the approach as realistic and ethically sound for mild-to-moderate difficulties, and aligned with clinical emphasis on pacing and attunement rather than performance. The thesis contributes: (1) a reframed design goal – from “achieve orgasm” to “build enabling conditions for pleasure”; (2) a tangible, self-guided tool that operationalizes this reframing in everyday life; and (3) a grassroots pathway that situates the diary as a living artifact rather than a closed, one-off intervention. Limitations include a small, Delft-based sample and the need to test long-term impact and referral pathways in more diverse contexts. ... Read more

Dutch municipalities are striving for a better connection with their residents and increased mutual trust. Nevertheless, the voice of youth is often overlooked in this process, despite their right to be heard in policies and decisions that affect their lives. This is reinforced by bureaucratic institutions primarily focusing on executing tasks, processes, and protocols, sidelining youth and their needs and causing them to disengage from governments and other institutions. Therefore, a growing need for municipalities to involve youth in their policy making emerges. However, in practice, many policy advisors struggle to do so, despite the availability of various tools and strategies. This project aims to understand barriers to youth participation and develop an approach to enable policy advisors from the municipality of Rotterdam to meaningfully involve youth in policies that affect them.

Through design research, a deep understanding is developed of the challenges and needs of policy advisors regarding youth participation. This included observation and participation within the municipal context, in-depth interviews (n=19), guerrilla interviews (n=50), iterative testing (n=7), and Service Ecosystem Design theory.

The research revealed that various social structures underlie the normalized thinking and behavior of policy advisors: (1) ambiguous beliefs about the value of youth participation, (2) constraints imposed by the (partly unwritten) rules of the municipal system, and (3) entrenched norms and roles. These structures lead to assumptions about the needs of youth and barriers to their involvement in policy.

A learning approach is iteratively designed and tested. With this approach, policy advisors can experience the value of thinking and acting in response to the needs of youth, in an accessible way. These experiences contribute to increasing their motivation and knowledge about involving youth in policy. The approach includes multiple conversations and conducting small experiments that reflect on the current way of working. For example, by shadowing a youth worker for a day or engaging in a conversation with a young person from their own network about a policy question.

Challenging assumptions about youth and their needs through active and attentive experiences proves to be essential to enable policy advisors to reconsider and possibly reshape municipal structures and processes. A personally guided learning process can create space for this, allowing current attitudes and practices to change. These can promote the structural and meaningful use of participatory approaches and result in policies that meet the needs of youth. The project thus offers a new perspective and a small yet fundamental step by the municipality towards a better and mutual relationship with its (younger) residents. ... Read more

Youth participation is becoming increasingly important in municipal governance. However, despite the introduction of new tools, podcasts, and events designed to foster participation, engaging young voices in policy-making remains a challenge. This project explores whether a different perspective on this challenge can lead to more meaningful engagement.

This project is part of Healthy Start, a collaborative initiative between the Delft University of Technology, Erasmus Medisch Centrum and the Erasmus University Rotterdam, which seeks to enhance the well-being of young individuals. Among its ambitions is the enhancement of youth participation. The project will emphasize youth participation in municipal policy in Rotterdam.

Using the Frame Innovation method, a design approach focused on redefining problems to uncover innovative solutions, this study aims to discover unique insights by ‘reframing’ the issue of youth participation. Achieving an understanding of the stakeholders and their values was accomplished through a Research through Design approach. A variety of design activities were undertaken, including engaging policy advisors in creative sessions at Het Timmerhuis, and deploying cultural probes during dialogues with young individuals in a sounding board group and at the Rotterdam Blaak library.

The findings reveal that stakeholders have diverse needs. Not all officials view participation the same way, and differences among young people are significant. Four main themes emerged, reflecting the values of these diverse groups:

Open Hearts, Open Minds: This theme underscores the importance of genuine interactions and empathy, highlighting how prejudices can complicate matters. For example, officials may fear being perceived negatively by the public, while young people worry about being seen as inexperienced.

Navigating the Unknown: Participatory processes involve uncertainties, requiring both youths and officials to venture into unfamiliar territory. This theme explores how they can feel in control despite these uncertainties.

Driven by Responsibility: This focuses on the sense of duty and how it affects engagement. It questions when stakeholders consider something important enough to warrant their involvement.

What You Do Matters: This theme emphasizes the significance of feeling that one’s contributions are impactful and explores the dynamics of power within participation. Both youths and officials can feel powerless, doubting the impact of their efforts and not seeing the success of their actions.

Reframing the problem based on these themes offers new perspectives on addressing the challenges of youth participation. Navigating the Unknown might suggest a future with a municipal “travel agency” for participation, providing guidance, resources, and connections to make the participatory process less daunting and more accessible. Or adopting an “open hearts, open minds” approach one could imagine facilitating transparent discussions about roles and aspirations, enhancing engagement and ensuring participation leads to meaningful outcomes.

This report proposes new strategic approaches to youth participation in Rotterdam’s policymaking. By gaining a deeper understanding of the problem space and reframing it, these new perspectives offer avenues for further exploration. Insights into the frame innovation methodology are also shared to inform future studies.
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This study investigates the impact of ChatGPT on design students' creativity and their approach to the ideation process. Based on Glăveanu’s 5A's creativity framework, the research focuses on how the use of ChatGPT influences creative actors, actions and artifacts, as well as it’s affordance regarding critical appraisal. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining quantitative analysis of design concepts and survey data with thematic analysis to gather qualitative insights from interviews and open-ended questions. Thirty-five design students participated in a within-group experiment, generating ideas under two conditions: with and without ChatGPT assistance. The findings reveal that while ChatGPT fosters quick generation of ideas, it can also reduce creative confidence and engagement, potentially narrowing exploration of the creative space. The study highlights a need for balanced integration of AI in creative workflows, offering recommendations for educators, practitioners, and tool developers to enhance the use of ChatGPT within ideation without undermining human creativity. Limitations and future directions for research are also discussed. ... Read more

Purpose - In my Master Thesis titled "Shaping an innovative play space," I was inspired by the realm of playground design, particularly the concept of 'adventure playgrounds' and their profound influence on creativity. I embarked on this journey to harness the power of play and apply it to the office context of VONK, the innovation center of the city of Rotterdam.

Design/methodology/approach - I adopted a comprehensive approach that delved deep into the intertwined concepts of play and innovation. Through literature reviews, hands-on observations, and user interviews, I aimed to uncover the nuances of these concepts, especially focusing on the overlapping themes of making and creativity.

Findings - My research illuminated the indispensable role of play in fostering attributes like confidence, creativity, problem-solving skills, a sense of belonging, cultural growth, and overall well-being. These findings underscored the potential of integrating play into professional settings to spur innovation. The research resulted in a theoretical framework of the interaction between the creative process and the environment. On this framework the insights from user and expert interviews where plotted, which lead to multifaceted opportunity and threat zones for VONK within this context. Based on these zones a possible roadmap was developed for the coming 10 years, including 5 horizons and playful idea suggestions tailored to the team of VONK to act according to these horizons.

Research limitations/implications - While the research provides valuable insights into the role of play in fostering innovation in office contexts, it is primarily based on the specific context of VONK. The findings might need adaptation when applied to different organizational settings. Also I have struggled with my personal process, as described in the personal reflection, which led to a suboptimal documentation of my findings.

Practical Implications - My insights suggest significant implications for VONK, the innovation hub of Rotterdam. By integrating the principles unearthed in my research, VONK has the potential to transform its space into a vibrant ecosystem that champions learning, experimentation, and innovation. For VONK, the research suggests a focus on co-creation, connecting actors, and project management. Organizing events, such as festivals or business fairs, can also serve as an effective strategy for showcasing achievements and expanding the network.

Value - This research offers a unique perspective on enhancing innovation in office contexts by leveraging the concept of play. It provides actionable insights for organizations like VONK, aiming to foster a more interconnected, innovative, and vibrant environment. The crux of my research lies in its potential to revolutionize the innovation landscape of VONK. By weaving in the principles of play, I believe we can usher in a new era of creativity and innovation, making VONK a beacon for innovators and pioneers.
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This project is an inquiry into design for mind-wandering experiences. The project has applied a blend of Introspective Design, Research through Design and Co-creation methods to gather a nuanced understanding of mind-wandering experiments. The scope of the project is situated on the overlap of six dimensions that allowed us to form a fruitful stance. The project focused on individual creativity of novice designers, who are working from home. The proposed design solution is a product that will support a deliberate mind-wandering break of novice designers with homogenisation of perceptual information. The proposed design concept focuses on providing low variability organic change of visual information to create homogenisation of visual sensory information. The project provides arguments for conceptual understanding of the effect of homogenisation breaks to support deliberate mind-wandering.

The proposed design was a result of the insights gathered throughout four phases of the project: theory research, context research, co-creation, and research through Design. The effect of the product on creativity was measured with a predictor of creative performance—self-efficacy. ... Read more

This design report focuses on exploring the opportunities for technology-driven interventions to address health inequalities in children during their first 1000 days of life in Lamu, Kenya. Children’s health during the first 1000 days of life is crucial for their future development and overall health. Interventions that focus on improving health inequalities in the first 1000 days are cost-effective and help to reduce inequalities. In Lamu, Kenya, there is a young demographic and children’s health is worse than the national average, due to financial, geographical, and cultural constraints which make it difficult for communities to access quality healthcare. Technologies and innovation could help bridge the gap between communities and healthcare facilities to improve children’s health. The main research question that this report aims to answer is “How can we improve the healthy start to life in Lamu using available technologies within the local current context?”.

First, a focus for a health challenge for this project is found, which had to be a relevant burden in Lamu in the first 1000 days, be culturally relevant, and present opportunities for technology. After mapping and eliminating health risks and problems in the first 1000 days based on these criteria, two health challenges stood out as relevant and offering opportunities: stunted growth and pneumonia. Experts from the KRCS recommended reframing stunted growth and focusing on (un)healthy nutrition, as it had not been focused on much in the region, was culturally relevant, and had the potential to make a significant impact.
Next, fieldwork interviews, observations and generative sessions were used to understand the context of (un)healthy nutrition in Lamu, as well as the local opportunities for technologies. Lamu is a diverse region with strong informal networks and social cohesion, but food insecurity, lack of awareness on the importance of healthy diets, and healthcare accessibility concerns are challenges. Community Health Volunteers are central in a wider approach to improve community health. Opportunities for technological enablers were found in the widespread adoption of phones, as well as the potential for anthropometric measurement tools as they are available and affordable.

The opportunities that were found from the context research were used to ideate and describe six different intervention scenarios, in which Community Health Volunteers use anthropometric measurement tools to enable various basic nutrition-based health services for children in the first stages of life at the community level. The basics of these scenarios were evaluated and co-created with Community Health Volunteers during the fieldwork. The scenarios vary mainly on the purpose of doing the measurements, how the technological enablers are used, and the impact that is generated. Two scenarios, the community-based growth monitoring scenario and the remote follow-ups scenario, were selected as the most promising after evaluation with local experts from KRCS. Further evaluation on the desirability, feasibility, and viability of these two scenarios resulted in the community-based growth monitoring scenario being identified as the most promising. One of the main barriers to implementing these interventions is the compensation of CHVs, and ways to overcome this issue are suggested. Finally, recommendations are given for further design and implementation ... Read more

Flatland, a visual thinking agency, helps companies and institutions turn complexity into clarity by using visual thinking, co-creation and design thinking. They work together with their clients in a (physical) setting where they co-create together and use visualization as a means of problem solving and communication. During these sessions their clients are expected to fully engage and participate, while they usually do not have extensive experience with this way of working. This leads to some participants closing off during sessions, which leads to less (valuable) input from them.

Research suggests that one’s involvement and participation in creative activities is influenced by one’s creative self-beliefs (Karwowski, Lebuda & Beghetto, 2019). In the context of Flatland the specific creative self-belief of creative confidence has the biggest impact, which is the belief in one’s ability to think or act creatively in and across particular performance domains’’ (Karwowski & Beghetto, 2018). This influences what creative tasks one will engage with and in what way they will perform (Karwowski & Beghetto, 2018). The latter is especially important for Flatland, since they would like their participants to perform to their full potential, because this results in more (valuable) input and a more qualitative end result.

Several observations, interviews and surveys were conducted which resulted in the following insights. 1) Several participants feel overwhelmed when entering the first co-creation session with Flatland as they have to adjust to a new way of working, new team, new context, etc. 2) Flatland did not structurally prepare their participants for their co-creation sessions. 3) The participants with the lowest creative confidence scores usually talk less, initiate less, mostly react and feel doubtful when they speak which sometimes results in them disappearing into the background. This is not beneficial to Flatland nor the client, since this leads to less (valuable) input and a less qualitative end result.

This resulted in the design of a digital preparation booklet that aimed to improve the creative confidence of participants that usually score the lowest within a group, by preparing them before their first co-creation session starts, so they are able to express their opinion more easily and fully engage during the process. This was done through the use of the four sources of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1996) and through decreasing the impact of the four fears that influence creative confidence (Kelley & Kelley, 2012).

The final booklet was validated through several observations, interviews and a survey. Client input showed that they valued the thorough preparation and that the booklet felt as a warm welcome and made them excited for the upcoming sessions. Observations and interviews with Flatland showed that participants seemed to work better together, persevered longer when things got complex, actively participated throughout the whole session and felt ready and excited at the beginning of the first session. Survey data shows that even though there was not a significant increase in participant’s creative confidence, there were less lower scoring participants after using the booklet. And so the intended effect was achieved.
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This thesis focuses on fostering creative confidence within the context of entrepreneurial education for the VMBO/HAVO/MBO levels. Recognising the creative potential in everyone, the challenge is to bridge the gap between being creative and having the confidence to use it.

The literature review identified the importance of giving students the freedom to experiment and immerse themselves in experiences, emphasising the overlap between entrepreneurial and creative attitudes such as risk-taking, critical thinking and openness to ambiguity. It became clear that in a creative learning process it is not the end result that is important, but the process itself, encouraging reflection and learning from mistakes. However, the fieldwork revealed that the existing tasks within GoFuture were seen as too framed, limiting students’ exploration of questions. Teachers expressed an openness to more active and creative teaching, but faced challenges in preparation due to time constraints and a lack of tools from the platform.

Students and teachers agreed on the importance of creativity in education and entrepreneurship and expressed a desire for more opportunities to integrate creativity into learning. Hands-on, group-oriented tasks were seen as more motivating and challenged the prevailing focus on rational thinking.

Moving to the design phase, three critical design directions were identified, emphasising the need for an experiential, step-by-step approach to learning. The potential of GoFuture to foster creative confidence by encouraging risk-taking behaviour was recognised, leading to the formulation of a new design goal that prioritised creating awareness and courage to take risks and fail.
A secondary literature review was performed within the context of risk-taking. A set of guidelines was created that support within the development of designing a solution.

The subsequent stages of ideation, prototyping and testing led to the development of a creative teaching module for teachers. Build upon the proposed design guidelines, this module includes several themes, assignments and a sharing platform. The module supports teachers in fostering a creative mindset in the classroom and provides a pathway for innovation within the education system.

Alongside the module, a roadmap has been developed, consisting of four horizons. The initial focus is on raising awareness through the creative teaching module, and the end vision focusses on fostering a culture of creativity, innovation and confidence in both students and educators, preparing students for a dynamic and innovative future. ... Read more

The experience of using a car can be defined as a lot of things. How comfortable it is to drive in? Or just sit in? What entertainment features does the car have that can keep all passengers entertained for a car journey? Or even for the more extreme motor heads, how does the engine sound when going through a tunnel? All of these factors shape how a driver and the passengers would experience a car. However, when you take a step back, there is so much more to it. This project will be looking into the experience away from driving; the non-driving experience.

As part of a University Research Project set up between the Industrial Design Faculty at Technology University of Delft, and Ford Research and Innovation Center, this project will be going into detail about how data can be collected from wearables in order to enhance and improve the user’s non-driving experience of cars. More specifically, how can the approach and leave scenarios of using a car be improved through this use of data.

The initial stages of the project were focussed on understanding where the problem lies. What context is best suited and has clear pain points, or potential moments of surprise and delight, to the problem? This was done through a number of research tasks including literature research, interviews, and workshops with a large variety of potential users.

The context of using your wearables to improve the routine of family cars was chosen to go into further detail and exploration. Families often have different routines that happen simultaneously at times, and it was interesting how a family car can be so flexible in adjusting to each members routine. Data was looked at throughout this project in order to get an understanding as to how it can be used in a way to create a relationship between car and driver.

Throughout the development phase of the project, ‘Ford Experience’ came to fruition, which did exactly that. It used data from the wearables of both the main driver, as well as family members and other passengers, in order to adapt and respond to a number of different inputs from individuals. Throughout this day-to-day use, the vehicle works with the user in order to provide the best possible, and most efficient experience possible. ... Read more

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. ... Read more

The project is done in the context of the visual thinking Agency Flatland. The aim of this project was to explore reverging in the context of visual thinking.

Reverging is the phase that bridges the diverging and converging phases in creative facilitation. The goal of reverging is to revisit and rearrange the options generated in the divergent phase to create a better understanding of all the options to select the best ones in the converging phase.

The initial design statement was to make reverging more deliberate at Flatland instead of implicit at Flatland. As reverging is a deliberate activity (Kalina, 2018: Heijne & van der Meer, 2019).

DISCOVER
To better understand the project's topic, a literature review, interviews with Flatland, and case studies have been conducted.

The literature review concluded that reverging is essential for creating a shared understanding of the options generated in the divergent phase. Moreover, it was found that sketching and visualizing help externalize (tacit) knowledge. This enables the sharing, grounding, manipulation, and generation of ideas. Finally, transdisciplinary learning and knowledge creation can be supported by boundary objects, allowing the translation, transfer, and transformation of knowledge.

The interviews with Flatland reveal the different skills and characteristics needed as a facilitator or illustrator at Flatland, why visual thinking works according to Flatland, and how they would identify reverging in the Flatland process.

The case studies disclosed that the Flatland methodology is more a process flow to hold on to instead of a strict step-by-step plan that needs to be followed. Additionally, it revealed the success factors, risk factors, and requirements for fruitful reverging in visual thinking.

DEFINE
Based on the findings from the discovery phase of the project a general model was constructed to bring all the findings together. The general model served as the starting point for the design requirements and opportunities.

In addition, reverging at Flatland has been described and analyzed more in-depth. The analysis revealed that there was no common knowledge about the concept of reverging. However, it was found that reverging was done at Flatland, but more unconsciously rather than deliberate. Two types of reverging moments at Flatland have been identified: (1) reverging exercises done with the client during a session and (2) the activity called whiteboarding, which is a separate session without the client to make thinking steps based on the output from the previous session.

This project focused on the second type of reverging moment because it is a formatted and formulated phase at Flatland, setting a clear boundary for highlighting the problems and developing a design. The main difference between reverging at Flatland compared to the rules described in theory is that it is done without the client. This may lead to the not-invented-here syndrome, which often results in the client's difficult acceptance and implementation of the outcome, according to Buijs & van der Meer (2013).

DESIGN BRIEF
Based on the output from the general model, design opportunities have been identified. The chosen opportunity for this project was to guarantee client ownership by involving the client more in the whiteboarding reverging process. A design statement and requirements have been formulated to guide the final design’s creation.

Additionally, the metaphor of a magic map maker has been formulated to describe the selected opportunity. This narrative was used to make the findings from the research more concrete and get the conversation started.

DESIGN
Different creative sessions have been held to come up with the starting point for a solution to guarantee client ownership. Based on the input from the co-creation sessions different minimum viable products were created iteratively. These have been discussed with Flatlanders and adapted according to the feedback obtained during the iteration rounds.

DELIVER
The final design, the whiteboarding tool, consists of three sub-parts:

The Flatland workstyles, based on the narrative of the metaphor of the magic mapmaker, balancing the map maker and wizard workstyle throughout the entire process
The Flatland journey is adapted from their current setup of the general project flow. The whiteboard phase was not included yet. The Flatland journey aims at making that explicit. Revealing the problem in the focus area (whiteboarding phase) of reverging steps happening without the involvement of the client and therefore the client potentially lacks ownership of the final outcome
In order to solve this problem finally the Whiteboard canvas has been developed to help Flatland involve the client in the whiteboarding phase and make their reverging steps explicit so they can be shared and discussed with the client.

CONCLUSION
The impact of this project was created through (1) the research, (2) the metaphor, and (3) the tool.

The research highlighted the discrepancy between the literature and Flatland’s way of working. The gap served as the initial starting point for giving recommendations to Flatland and coming up with the final design.
The metaphor served as a narrative for Flatland to talk about the highlighted problem and reflect on their workstyle.
The whiteboard tool served as an intervention to do the whiteboarding in a more structured manner with the client's involvement. The canvas has been tested with members of the Flatland team and is ready to be used in Mural, Photoshop, or real life!

To conclude the project, the limitations have been highlighted, and future research directions have been proposed. ... Read more

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. ... Read more

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. ... Read more

Vehicles are becoming more and more connected, and in combination with various services, they generate large amounts of data, which is mainly used in development processes for testing purposes in Ford. However, sensor data has more potentials for product development, and one valuable potential is to contribute to product innovation in the early design stage, which can be seen from existing studies on data-enabled design. However, the large amount and complexity of data make it hard for the Ford Research and innovation (R&A) team to approach data, nevertheless apply data in the design process. In addition, there are no available methods and tools that fit in with Ford’s data availability and workflow to guide them to apply data for product development, which can make the R&A team feel clueless in their practice. 
Based on the challenge, I framed the initial research question of this project as: How to facilitate the Ford R&A team to apply user data to enhance creativity in their ideation process? Then, I conducted research, product development, and evaluation to deliver the final design intervention. Afterwards, the concept "A toolbox for creative problem solving with data "was developed and tested. Based on the evaluation of the toolbox, I designed a guidebook containing a three-step method as a guide to applying the toolbox. The second-round evaluation shows that the final design intervention is believed to provide innovative methods and tools for the R&A team to generate insights from data combinations for the problem framing process and cultivate creative thinking during the session. Moreover, the three-step method for combining data fills the method gap for the implementation of data-enabled design in organizational practice. In conclusion, the final design intervention sufficiently fulfils the design goal and contributes to the method study on data-enabled design. ... Read more

This report describes the development of an implementation strategy for using data in the design process of a design team at the RIC of Ford in Aachen. The implementation strategy consists of a card set and a poster to show contemporary developments in using data in the design process, a service concept, a practical tool kit to start using the data and an organizational implementation roadmap. Throughout the project, a co-creation approach was used by working on one of the commercial vehicle concept projects. This resulted in barriers, enablers and drivers of different approaches for the team. First, I consulted literature on design and data to create an overview of the approaches in this field. I concluded that contemporary approaches use open data such as social platforms to find users expressed thoughts and feelings, or (owned) sensor data to find users functional needs in measurable behaviour. In a case study the insights from literature are visualized in the form of cards to create a tangible artefact for evaluating the different approaches and also act as later reference. This was the first deliverable of this project. The case study resulted in a set of preliminary set of drivers, enablers and barriers for using data. Next, a design intervention was done in the team’s service design project. Together the qualitative insights gathered and analysed. Then I chose parameters for “a behavioural data profile” and designed a service concept based on these parameters. In this service concept behavioural data of the user is used as input for personalized service functionalities. This allows the team to research behaviour and create the foundation for more advanced research. From this step I translated the learned lessons into a final set of barriers, enablers and drivers. This set allows the team to use this specific approach in future projects as well. The main barriers are now defined as: (1) Designers and researchers having different perspectives when setting up research projects resulting in an inability to create the described design concept. (2) There is no clear indication for the design team where and how to use data in the design process. To overcome these barriers a practical tool-kit was designed to allow the team to bridge the gap between the qualitatively gathered data and defining a product-service concept based on a data profile. The value of this practical tool-kit is supported by literature showing the trend towards in-situ research approaches and an evaluation process. The roadmap, the final deliverable of this project, presents directions for applying this approach and presents steps for further organizational implementation. For future research I recommend developing an accessible persona dashboard of the implemented services for Ford to perform easier and more focussed research in the relations between the different sub-functionalities of the vehicle. The practical tool-kit, set of cards and the roadmap help the team in answering their question: “how to use data to better understand our users and their behaviour” by indicating an appropriate approach, an example project and a practical tool-kit. ... Read more

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. ... Read more