This thesis explores how youth food literacy in Curaçao is shaped by systemic conditions and how design can contribute to healthier food practices. Rather than approaching childhood obesity as an issue of individual behaviour, this research frames it as an emergent outcome of interconnected social, cultural, and environmental dynamics. Using a research-through-design approach, the project investigates how these dynamics manifest in everyday food environments and how they might be reconfigured to support healthier practices.
The study combines contextual research, system mapping, cultural probes with youth, and design exploration. A decolonial perspective informed the research, emphasising local knowledge, lived experiences, and the historical context of Curaçao’s food system. Building on an adapted food literacy framework, the research examines cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions of food literacy in relation to everyday environments.
Findings reveal that youth food practices are shaped by three reinforcing systemic loops: institutional neglect shaping public food literacy, convenience-driven obesogenic environments, and school environments reinforcing unhealthy food narratives. These loops are mutually reinforcing and rooted in fragmented governance and historical dependencies, creating a system in which unhealthy food practices are normalised and sustained.
The research demonstrates that food literacy cannot be understood as an individual competency alone. Instead, it emerges through repeated interactions with everyday environments such as schools and supermarkets. In these contexts, convenience plays a central role in shaping food choices, often reinforcing unhealthy practices due to limited availability, affordability, and time constraints.
Schools are identified as a critical leverage point within this system. As structured environments where food practices are enacted daily, they offer opportunities to shift conditions and enable new food narratives. However, current school food environments often reproduce unhealthy norms due to a lack of regulation and alignment with broader systemic drivers.
In response, the project proposes an envisioned system in which healthy food practices are supported through environmental conditions that make them more convenient. A roadmap is developed to guide systemic change across governance, school environments, and everyday food contexts. Rather than prescribing a single solution, the design work functions as a research activity that explores how enabling conditions, such as convenience, can initiate shifts in practice and perception.
This thesis contributes to design research by framing food literacy as a systemic and situated phenomenon, and by demonstrating how participatory and context-sensitive methods can be integrated into systemic design approaches. For stakeholders in Curaçao, it offers a structured understanding of the food system, identifies leverage points for intervention, and provides a foundation for collaborative efforts toward healthier food environments. ... Read more

This thesis investigates the challenge of leveraging design expertise in the development processes of a large-scale open-source 3D software organization, using Blender as a case study. While open-source projects like Blender thrive on community-driven and very technical contributions, they often lack approaches to integrate or leverage design expertise, leading to a "chronic scarcity of design expertise" at Blender. This research identifies the root of this challenge in a historically technology-first culture, which creates friction in designer-developer collaboration, results in inaccessible design knowledge, and hinders the leveraging of external design contributions.

To provide a more fitting analytical lens for this unique open-source environment, the thesis introduces the concept of Design Capacity: a measure of an ecosystem's systemic infrastructure and ability to effectively integrate and leverage design potential. Through stakeholder interviews, literature reviews, and participation, the thesis identifies a deficit in Blender's organizational design capacity, creating challenges. The central research question explores how practical interventions can improve the design workflow of the core Blender team to increase the ability to leverage their design expertise.

The findings suggest implementing a design system. This system is presented as a tactical intervention designed to bridge the gap between designers and developers. By creating a shared language and a single source of truth for design, the proposed design system aims to resolve the identified challenges, improve collaboration, and ultimately build Blender's long-term Design Capacity to create more value for its entire ecosystem. ... Read more

Background and Problem Statement
Sickle cell disease is a chronic hereditary blood disorder that significantly impacts the daily lives of children and their families. Approximately 2000 people in the Netherlands live with sickle cell disease, about half of whom are children. Care is provided in specialized sickle cell centers, where parents and children receive complex medical information that they must apply in daily life. The patient population often consists of families with a migrant background, where language barriers, cultural differences, and low health literacy hinder the understanding of information. This study shows that the current information provision is highly fragmented, varies by healthcare provider and care center, and insufficiently meets the needs of families. The lack of a national standard for which information is provided and when, combined with overly complex and insufficiently accessible materials, leads to misunderstanding, uncertainty, and additional pressure on both families and healthcare providers.

Research Approach
This project followed a human-centered design approach based on the Double Diamond model, focusing on the perspective of healthcare providers. Through literature research, observations at the Sophia Kinderziekenhuis, interviews with healthcare providers from various sickle cell centers, and a context analysis (actor map, work models, and journey map), the current situation was mapped and structural bottlenecks identified. Based on these insights, a clear design direction was chosen, which was then translated into a concrete strategy through co-creation with healthcare providers.
The Solution: A Uniform and Phased Information Strategy
The core of the solution is a newly developed infographic that serves as a blueprint for information provision. This tool is designed to be incorporated into the national guideline for sickle cell disease.

The strategy is characterized by:
Phased information provision: Information is not provided all at once, but at meaningful moments that correspond to the child's life stage.
National uniformity: Integration into the national guideline ensures that all patients, regardless of care center, receive the same consistent information.
Clear division of roles: The infographic supports the care team by assigning education to the nurse practitioner.

Implementation strategy
An implementation strategy, including both a strategic and a tactical roadmap, was developed to support realization. This strategy consists of collective alignment, national development of a standardized information set through co-creation with parents, patients, and healthcare providers, and sustainable anchoring through inclusion in clinical guidelines and integration into existing workflows.

Conclusion
This project offers a concrete answer to the fragmentation in the information provision within sickle cell disease. By introducing a uniform and phased information structure, healthcare providers are supported and parents and children receive the right information at the right time, in an accessible, consistent and understandable manner. ... Read more

Amsterdam has committed to ambitious climate targets and is looking for ways to innovate its energy infrastructure. To support these ambitions, the municipality of Amsterdam participates in European pilot projects that test new technologies and new forms of collaboration. These pilots create opportunities for innovation, yet they also expose governance challenges and raise questions about how lessons from these project can be integrated in the municipality.
Municipalities are expected to take an important role in pilot projects, connecting experimental initiatives to long-term strategies and public responsibilities. This role is demanding, as municipalities are large organisations with many tasks and internal layers. Coordinating across departments while working with external partners makes pilots an important but also challenging instrument. Research often describes how collaboration between public, private, civic and academic actors takes shape. Less is known about how the public actor navigates these collaborations and how their position influences the way pilots function.
This thesis explores that through the Horizon 2020 project ATELIER in Amsterdam, which develops Positive Energy Districts in collaboration between public, private, academic and civic actors. The study investigates how coordination was organised and how the municipality engaged with and recognised the knowledge produced during the project.
The research is based on a qualitative single-case study design. It combines three sources of data: project documents, semi-structured interviews with municipal officials and consortium partners, and observations during an internship at the Municipality of Amsterdam. This combination made it possible to do a qualitative analysis of how coordination and learning were experienced in practice. The analysis draws on 2 main theories. The first is the collaboration dynamics from the Collaborative Governance Regime framework from Emerson et al. (2012), which looks at how collaboration is sustained through engagement, trust and joint capacity, and the second is absorptive capacity’s first step on how organisations recognise and take up external knowledge. Together, these concepts were used to examine both the organisation of coordination and the conditions for municipal learning.
The results show that Amsterdam’s role in ATELIER lacked clear institutional anchoring. Responsibilities were unclear, leadership improvised, and coordination often relied on informal arrangements and motivated individuals. Engagement was inconsistent, staff turnover disrupted continuity, and mechanisms for transferring knowledge across departments were absent. As a result, lessons on collaboration and governance risk staying within the consortium and can’t easily reach the performances of municipality of Amsterdam.
The thesis concludes that municipal readiness is a decisive condition for effective participation in pilots. Clear purpose, defined responsibilities, and internal structures are necessary for municipalities to translate pilot lessons into practice. The study exposes the fragility of pilot scalability and provides a checklist of organisational conditions that can strengthen the role of public actors in future collaborative projects. The theoretical contribution is that, while current frameworks mainly emphasise relational factors of collaboration, this research shows the need to also account for the readiness of public actors. ... Read more

Accessibility extends beyond physical infrastructure to include social, cultural, and institutional dimensions. This project investigates how accessibility-related communication is managed at TU Delft and how it can be improved to foster inclusion. Using exploratory meetings, interviews and a qualitative survey, the study identified fragmented responsibilities, lengthy procedures, and limited recognition of lived experiences, but also positive practices such as informal communication and stakeholder willingness to listen, improve, and act.
The project proposes an interaction method that classifies stakeholders by functional roles, as user, support, and decision, highlighting role flexibility and lower threshold for communication. Validation suggests the method is well received and valued in each stakeholder group. Implication will be dependent on a sharing inclusive mindset of TU Delft . Accessibility is thus reframed as an ongoing cultural practice achieved through communication.
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The Dutch central government is highly dependent on ICT devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets. SSC-ICT—the largest service provider—manages approximately 100,000 devices, a scale that pressures public finances, contributes to environmental degradation, and increases reliance on global supply chains involving critical raw materials and, at times, questionable labour conditions. Yet few mechanisms exist to transition toward a more sustainable device chain.

Over 20 ICT service providers support more than 160 government organisations, creating a fragmented landscape driven by compartmentalised ministries. While this diversity and specialisation can be a strength, the core issue is the lack of joint value creation. Stakeholders in procurement, usage, and disposal— policymakers, service providers, and users—often operate in isolation, with limited feedback loops or shared decision-making. Their distinct value orientations—firmness (policy clarity), feasibility (practical efficiency), and flexibility (adaptability)— form a linear chain where values are handed down rather than co developed, limiting mutual understanding and systemic improvement.

The goal is not to reduce fragmentation but to govern it more effectively by fostering structured collaboration based on clear roles, shared language, and active value negotiation. A dedicated platform enables this by combining technical features— such as BYOD and eSIM requests, clear task overviews, and CO₂ tracking—with integrated feedback mechanisms. Users can review policy documents, explore the chain, and select or decline assets and accessories, fostering both functional choice and emotional connection. Service providers gain real-time insights into preferences, lifespans, and behaviours, enabling profile-based asset allocation that matches device lifespans to employment terms. Policymakers receive a direct channel to share reports and supply chain updates, with user feedback informing more responsive policies.

This ongoing interaction transforms the system into a circular, collaborative model that prioritises transparency and shared responsibility, inspired by Montesquieu’s Trias Politica: policymakers as Legislative, service providers as Executive, and users as Judicial. In this model, firmness, feasibility, and flexibility coexist and are continuously renegotiated.
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This master’s thesis sits at the intersection of conversation as data and Natural Language Processing (NLP) as a method — asking what hidden insights might emerge when we treat everyday dialogue not just as noise or narrative, but as a space where values are shaped, shared, and sometimes lost. In collaborative, high-stakes settings, decisions are rarely made on logic alone; they are entangled with the values of those at the table — often unspoken, often misaligned.

The research introduces the Value Expression Gap — the disconnect between what people claim to value and what actually surfaces in how they speak. This gap became both a conceptual lens and a design target, shaping the development of a low-fidelity NLP prototype that detects value cues in conversation using sentence embeddings and semantic similarity scoring.

Through a Research through Design (RtD) process — spanning prototyping, real-world deployment, workshop observation, and iterative refinement — the project explored how values appear implicitly in tone, metaphor, emotional framing, or silence. Each stage contributed to improving how values could be surfaced computationally without flattening human nuance.

As the method was tested with organizational leaders and decision-makers, new forms of relevance emerged. Making values visible not only helped reflect on alignment and culture — it opened space for more strategic dialogue, tension awareness, and ethical negotiation. The tool was seen not as a truth-teller, but a reflective companion — prompting deeper questions and exposing patterns otherwise missed.

Rather than offering final answers, this thesis proposes a shift: toward tools that reveal, not resolve; that prompt reflection, not prediction. In doing so, it opens up a new role for AI in design and decision-making — one grounded in transparency, human judgment, and the evolving language of values. ... Read more

When stakeholders from diverse backgrounds collaborate, value conflicts often remain hidden beneath polite agreement. These tensions, shaped by cultural, institutional, or ideological differences, can hinder joint understanding and meaningful dialogue. This research explores how facilitation design can intentionally embody the concept of Brave Space, which reframes discomfort and constructive conflict as necessary conditions for transformation.

To investigate this, I adopted a design-oriented, iterative methodology combining Research through Design and Action Research, structured through a spiral process. The process began with a literature review, followed by observations of multi-stakeholder workshops to frame the problem and opportunity space, and the development of a liminality-based Brave Space framework. This informed three micro-experiments, serving as Minimum Viable Prototypes (MVPs) that tested facilitation strategies for helping participants surface value tensions and navigate them constructively. 

Building on these insights, the micro-experiment was then embedded into a longer Climate Fresk workshop as a viability test for contextual adaptation. The findings showed that embodying Brave Space is not about imposing a dramatic leap on participants; engaging in Brave Space is a gradual process, cultivated through deliberate, well-designed moments of gentle provocations, emotional invitations, and the gradual building of familiarity and trust. 

Rather than proposing Brave Space as a fixed method, this study presents it as a tangible, designable lens for facilitating value-centered discussion. It clarifies the conceptual relationship between Safe Space and Brave Space, consistent with the psychological safety theory. This research offers both theoretical grounding and practical strategies for designers, facilitators, and researchers aiming to create deeper, more courageous group dialogue.
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Physical therapy has been around for a long time. Not only does it tackle the physical health of a human, it also takes into account the psychological and social factors that can influence our health. There is evidence that physical therapy can make a change in the healthcare system regarding preventative care. This preventative care however is a new concept for which the healthcare domain is not fully ready. This is however the approach ELEVEN has currently, redefining what health is and should be in the future. This way of thinking has led to the birth of ELEVEN, a company that houses physical therapists that are there to guide you in any way you want to improve, and this is possible because of the organisational culture that is present.

This project aims to identify, enhance and transfer the organisational culture that is present at ELEVEN, including the different components that influence and shape it. This is first done by diving into the context of physical therapy, its advantages and its approaches through literature research. This is followed by literature research on culture and organisational culture. With observations and interviews a current analysis is made of the organisational culture that is present at ELEVEN. Co-creation sessions were later held to shape a future vision, relevant for strategic decision making. These results come together in a guide book and a poster, which explains the complexity of the organisational culture and it’s components through a metaphor.

The metaphor is aimed at explaining the culture through the notion of building a house, where the different components of a house have different functions in a bigger complex structure. The metaphor consists of 9 layers:

1. The foundation – The 11 core values of ELEVEN
2. The framework – The employees
3. The isolation – The house rules
4. The bricks – The products and services
5. The cement – The community of ELEVEN
6. The doors – The mission
7. The windows – The (future) vision
8. The roof – The clan culture
9. The interior – The physical appearance

This metaphor combines different cultural aspects and explains them as an interconnected whole that needs to be nurtured and protected. The practical guidelines included in the book provide a way to strategically grow in a way that protects the culture and her people.

To make sure the solution is applicable and relevant, it was tested with the relevant stakeholders. The results of this validation resulted in a final design complete with implementation recommendations. The thesis concludes with a conlusion and a discussion on relevance and future research.
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Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) are essential for every economy due to their impact on economic development, especially for emerging countries. It is crucial to provide them with support in developing and implementing strategies that promote their growth, thereby enhancing the broader economy. This thesis project utilized a medium-sized enterprise as a case study to investigate MSMEs in the Philippines. The primary objective was to align its operations with its strategy of offering a wide range of low-priced products while providing personalized customer service. The project used the Double Diamond by the British Design Council as a framework to approach the project, employing different design methods and tools. The findings revealed the pressing issues are low stock availability, lack of customer-centric experience, and efficient operational processes. From this, the design challenge was centered on redesigning the order fulfillment process service blueprint of the messaging application channel for retail transactions. The design strategies implemented include enabling technologies, addressing stock outs early in the process, and optimizing roles. Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) was utilized as a guide to formulate these strategies for the intervention. The proposed service blueprint received positive and desirable feedback when validated with the employees. As a conclusion, the project's relevance, limitations, and recommendations were described.
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This project responds to the increasing challenges in Dutch elderly care amid an undeniable ageing demographic. Between now and 2040, the number of individuals aged 80 and over will nearly double, and one in four people will need to work in the healthcare sector to satisfy the increasing demands.

The current system of elderly care is very much solution-focused, where professional caregivers often provide the answers and lead the discussions. Organisations like Surplus, a care and welfare organisation in West Brabant, struggle to continue to meet the expectations of (new) clients and their relatives, placing an additional burden on professional caregivers.

The increasing pressure highlights a need for greater autonomy and shared responsibility in elderly care. The urgent and multifaceted nature of the current challenges calls for a ‘new way’ of caring, with a greater reliance on answers from society. This project envisions a shift towards a caring society that focuses on what is still possible rather than on limitations, aiming for a meaningful life. Where self-reliance is a collective effort, and each individual is truly recognised.

Through a systemic design approach, this project seeks to navigate these challenges by uncovering key personal values in receiving and providing care and mapping out the elderly care system to identify opportunities to intervene. An intervention that incorporates these values is designed to initiate a shift towards the desired direction.

To facilitate this change, I have developed a new approach for Surplus to have value-oriented conversations, to match what we find important in life. Inviting people to think beyond the care question and to look together at what is possible instead of what is no longer possible. Transitioning from a traditional “intake” in home care to “acquaintance”, it introduces the T-Doos (Tijd voor gesprek, Thee voor twee, Langer Thuis: Time for Conversation, Tea for Two, Staying Home Longer) personal preparation package with a conversation box and a conversation framework. This invites the elderly in need of support to think together with their informal carers about what is important to them in daily life, who they are in contact with, what makes them happy and how they look ahead. It sets the stage for meaningful discussions with district nurses to collaboratively explore possibilities. The professional caregiver adopts a coaching role, and a transition is started in mindset and practice within care organisations and among healthcare professionals. ... Read more

This graduation report presents a comprehensive approach to the identification of an opportunity in the rising technology and interests in generative AI. The report delivers a concept for a tool that is designed for managers. The tool is aimed at aiding in the integration of generative AI within teams. The project is grounded in a literature review, stakeholder interviews, a co-design session with students, a survey with stakeholders and validating. The literature review shows there is an expected rise in interests and demand for using the new technology of generative AI. The interviews with stakeholders shine light on the necessary means that are needed to integrate generative AI in the workplace. Some of these means are: more knowledge, more experience and a starting point. The co-design session brought new perspectives on solutions and opportunities that the tool could incorporate to be successful. The major breakthrough of the co-design session is the implementation of employee interaction. In the value survey it is shown that the managers do not want too much insights in their employee behavior and would prefer a personalized document of advice for implementation. At the end of the development stage the concept is shown to the target audience who give their option on how well it manages to fulfill its purpose. The responses are positive enough that only minor suggestions are given to improve the concept. The final concept tool offers multiple options to achieve the desired solution. Using the profile of the manager and of their employees, the tool provides personalized advice to enhance decision making and awareness of actions. In addition, the tool incorporates employee interaction, enabling team members to unknowingly contribute to the insights that further refine the advice that the manager gets. The tool does not only offer advice, it also offers training and educational components to further provide managers with the skills needed to navigate the fast changing landscape of generative AI integration. The report contributes by collecting and transforming valuable insights and translating that into written output which can be used in the future for development in the generative AI area. The paper also offers a concept for a practical tool designed to prepare, deal and thrive within the generative AI powered workplace. This concept can be used as a reference point for projects that aim to design a similar tool. ... Read more

This thesis explores the impact of the European Union’s Right to Repair (R2R) legislation on businesses in the Electric and Electronic Devices (EED) sector in the Netherlands. The research assesses how Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO) can support businesses in adopting repairability practices aligned with the new legislation. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study combines a literature review with qualitative insights from interviews with key stakeholders, including RVO representatives, businesses and NGOs. The findings reveal that while the short-term impact of the R2R directive on business operations is limited, businesses who want to transition towards repairability deal with various challenges. However, a lack in RVO’s currents instruments for repair support was identified. The study provides recommendations for RVO to enhance its support mechanisms to further support businesses in the transition towards repairability.
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The urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels due to their contribution to climate change and environmental degradation has become increasingly evident. The global emissions must be reduced to zero within the next few decades to avoid severe consequences. The recent invasion of Ukraine has further highlighted the importance of clean and affordable energy technologies to address economic, climate, social, and security priorities.
While the energy transition is often approached from a technical standpoint, this thesis recognizes the significance of social dimensions in shaping behaviors, attitudes, and governance structures. By adopting a cultural perspective of energy consumption behavior, the study aims to provide a holistic understanding of the transition process.
This thesis investigates the shift from a passive to a proactive energy relationship, taking into account the influence of changing context factors. It begins by framing energy relations through extensive literature research and research methods, resulting in the development of an energy relation framework. This framework emphasizes the role of individual autonomy and integration in shaping energy relationships. Historical research and trend analysis are conducted to examine the evolution of energy relations and identify potential future scenarios.
Building upon the understanding of energy relations, the thesis proposes the design of an intervention that enables individuals to experience a proactive energy relationship. The Forekast is based on a redesign of a transformer box into an interactive intervention that increases energy awareness and highlights the interconnectedness of energy, weather conditions, and consumption patterns.
The effectiveness and desirability of the intervention are evaluated through tests conducted at Energie Lab Zuid-Oost and a street test in ArenApoort. The evaluation assesses the impact of the intervention on residents’ engagement, knowledge-sharing, and adoption of sustainable energy practices. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications and value of fostering a proactive energy relationship, contributing to the acceleration of the overall energy transition.
In conclusion, this thesis sheds light on the relational aspects of energy in the context of the energy transition. By examining the shift from a passive to a proactive energy relationship and proposing an intervention that serves as a catalyst for dialogue, knowledge-sharing, and empowering residents to actively engage in sustainable energy practices.
Keywords: energy relationship, context factors, intervention design, proactive approach, energy transition.
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The Protestantse Kerk in Nederland (PKN) is facing a challenge due to a decline in membership, with more people in the Netherlands not believing in God than those who do. This decrease affects the PKN, losing 3% of its 1.6 million members annually, especially among the younger generation. My research aims to explore how the PKN can adapt to the needs of young religious wanderers and its existing members. This perspective comes from a designer's viewpoint, which is relatively unexplored in church reorganization compared to theological approaches.

To reimagine church organization, I adopted a methodological approach combining Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) and Research through Design (RtD). VSD focuses on incorporating human values into design, while RtD uses design as a research tool. The research comprised three cycles. In the first cycle, I assessed the current state of the church and tested research methods, finding that sketches by interviewees were effective in exploring values and ideas. The second cycle involved collaboration with experts working with youth and church innovations. We prototyped through sketches, revealing a value tension between individual needs and the desire for community among young people. This led to the design of an infrastructure that facilitates the exploration of various religious communities, symbolized as a "community garden." The final cycle centered on engaging with religious wanderers at the Graceland Festival. Discussions using a toolkit revealed that each wanderer seeks something unique in a community. They appreciated the idea of exploring different "gardens."

The result of this research is a roadmap for building an exploration infrastructure, emphasizing the importance of relationships between organizations, trust-building, and value exploration for religious wanderers. This roadmap serves as a guide for city-based religious communities, encouraging them to establish similar infrastructures. This research contributes in two ways: first, by offering a design-based solution to reorganize the church to meet the values of its members and religious wanderers. It highlights the need for networked relationships between various organizations, though the practical implications may vary by location. Secondly, it demonstrates how design principles aid in the redesign of church organizations. The use of sketches, design materials, and toolkits facilitated the exploration of complex ideas, making participants consider their values more explicitly. Visual design allowed for better feedback on concepts.

In conclusion, this research project underscores the potential for designers to play a pivotal role in church innovation. Collaboration between designers and theologians can further the cause of church renewal on a systemic level, utilizing expertise from diverse scientific fields.
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As architects encounter challenges when comprehending and fulfilling the requirements of users and other stakeholders involved in the
architectural design project, participatory design, which involves non-architects in the design process, is perceived as one of the solutions. It is a developing practice that can lead to greater engagement of non-architects in the architectural design process and create designs that meet the needs and values of all participants.

Through field research, design, and iterations in workshops, a participatory design toolkit was proposed. It was designed for architects and users to communicate and accommodate personal, organizational, and spatial needs in the early phase of architectural design. The toolkit consists of three sessions supported by visual aids: the creation of common goals, unfolding spatial needs, and accommodating spatial needs. Communication starts with sharing personal and organizational values to formulate common goals, followed by exploration and identification on spatial needs of building users in relation to the common goals, and ends with collective visualization to accommodate needs with the architectural design.

Overall, this project highlighted the importance of participatory design in the architectural design process and the challenges and successes that can be experienced when incorporating it into practice. It suggested that by involving non-architects in the design process, architects and users can communicate their knowledge, need, and value, leading to appropriate architectural designs that are functional, aesthetically pleasing, and meet the needs of all stakeholders.

This project was organized with Kraaijvanger Architects, an architectural firm located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. ... Read more

With the rapid development of society, complex problems are becoming increasingly visible such as climate change, energy shortage, poverty, and migration. Many organizations are cooperating together to solve these problems because it is impossible for one organization to handle all the different expertise and skills. The projects that consist of lots of organizations working together to solve problems can be called multi-stakeholder projects. It appears aiming to solve complex social challenges of sustainable development. With multiple stakeholders, the stakeholder management becomes more difficult. It is essential to know what does each stakeholder desires for enhancing collaboration and satisfying stakeholders. Among these desires, stakeholders desired values are crucial to identify because values are the reason behind stakeholders’ actions and decisions.
The LIFE project is a typical multi-stakeholder project initiate by the City of Amsterdam and AMS Institute as the leader of Stakeholder Engagement and Inclusion. As an important part of stakeholder engagement in multi-stakeholder projects, this project aims to make contributions in identifying stakeholders’ desired values in the multi-stakeholder project.
The Barrett Model about organizational values is the key academic support of this project. It’s used as materials to build the concept structure and as the basic for developing details of concepts. Literature from some other fields has been studied in this project to generate insights for eliciting desired values from stakeholders.
This project ends with a final strategy concept, the Stakeholder Value Identification (SVI) Process, which applies various intervention to increase stakeholders’ willingness and ability to express their desired values and uses a closed-ended task as the core of the concept. The concept could be used not only in this stage of the LIFE project but also other stages, as well as other multi-stakeholder projects. ... Read more

Numansgors is a village seeking to improve sustainability by housing renovation. In this process, the effective participation of homeowners faces multiple challenges. The Pattern Language Theory (PLT), a design methodology first proposed by Alexander Christopher in 1970s, shows its potential in tackling these challenges. However, as PLT has been applied in broadening domains, various approaches to using PLT are different from the original one taken by Alexander. As these differences and their basis generally go unarticulated, practitioners referring to such cases may fail to choose an appropriate approach and hence use PLT less effectively. Therefore, to support the effective ue of PLT, either in Numansgors or in other domains, this graduation project aims to support differentiating between diverse PLT approaches, and deciding on a PLT approach.
In the beginning, to better understand the topic, a literature review of PLT was conducted. The benefits of PLT were identified, which later confirmed its suitability in Numansgors. Besides, eight purposes of using PLT were summarised and were later found essential in deciding on PLT approaches.
Next, to understand the different approaches, an integrative review — which I called deconstruction, identifying and reconstruction — of multiple cases was performed. The external manifestations and internal reasons for different approaches were identified. On the outward, the different approaches are manifested in four components. On the inward, the approaches root in
practitioners’ diverging values and needs. These insights were concretised into three tools, which were later incorporated into the final research output.
Afterwards, to find out how the three tools could be used in practice, workshops were organised for inspiration. In these workshops, some other issues in deciding on PLT approaches were found. These issues were tackled by formulating a procedure to use PLT and refining the classification of activities around PLT. All these insights were synthesised into the final research output, the Activity Kit, to support practitioners in deciding on their PLT approaches. With this Activity Kit, practitioners can first consider their project purposes, then find the activities recommended for the purposes, and finally execute the activities with the support of relevant tools.
To validate the use of Activity Kit, the Numansgors project was taken as an example. A three-stage plan for Numansgors was generated by using the Activity Kit. It is recommended to evaluate the Activity Kit with more cases and keep up with the influence of the pattern language in Numansgors. ... Read more

Our world is changing rapidly in various ways, forcing organizations to engage in continuous change to stay relevant. Therefore, it has become an essential capability of organizations to engage in and attempt to manage change to remain successful and sustain their existence (Stouten, Rousseau & de Cremer, 2018; Coughlan, Suri & Canales, 2007). Due to the increasingly fast-changing market demands, organizations recognize the need for a more outside-in approach in order to increase their resilience. This is why the customer-centric approach gained popularity (Ambaram, 2013). In order to become customer-centric, organizations need to enhance their customers’ experiences. As service design offers the means to improve customer experience, service design has become a capability that many organizations attempt to acquire (Ostrom et al., 2015).Initial assignmentA few years ago, Koos developed their service design maturity model: a model that describes different growth phases an organization can go through while trying to embed service design within their organizations, and the elements that affect this process. In order to realize the ambition of becoming a more strategic partner that guides organizations through customer-centric transformations, Koos feels having a solid maturity model could serve as a backbone. The expectation was that the model could both serve in order to predict in what way an organization should change, but also to “sell“ the transformation proposition. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis assignment was to validate and improve Koos’ maturity model, and identify how the model could be servitized by Koos. Reframed assignmentHowever, initial exploration through interviews with experts and Koos’ designers, combined with findings from literature, pointed out that the key stakeholders may have made the assumption that a maturity scan is what they need in order to concretize their transformation offer. However, Koos’ service designers and interviewed experts pointed out a more fundamental problem: the feeling that Koos might be missing skills that are essential in order to be able to help organizations transform. On top of that, literature research made clear that creating maturity models that accurately indicate how an organization might need to transform, or indicating how “mature“ an organization is, is impossible since every organization is different and requires a unique approach. Therefore, the new problem statement, formulated as a question, became:What does Koos need to do differently in order to enable organizations to become more customer-centric through service design, in order to form a more strategic, long-term collaboration with clients?Opportunity gapto focus more on exploring the organizational context elements to understand clients’ as-is situation, instead of trying to assess the context elements to indicate a maturity level. In that way, they can secure better implementation and thus enable clients to become slightly more customer-centric project by project. This will help Koos to concretize their transformation proposition in three ways:First, exploring the as-is state of the organizational context will enable Koos to improve chances of implementation, and thus make a more transformative impact. Secondly, having the as-is state made explicit will also enable Koos to express the transformative impact of service design to clients after a project has been implemented. Thirdly, more experience with implementation and organizational change on project scale will give Koos the expertise, the organizational sensitivity and credibility needed to serve as transformation consultants in the future.Organizational context framework and MiroBased on findings from 4 case studies compared with findings from literature and a co-reflection session with 24 of Koos’ employees, it was decided to design a framework that would explain which organizational context elements service designers should take into account in order to secure better implementation, and when and how they should embed exploration of these context elements into their double diamond design approach. This resulted in the Organizational Context Framework as shown in figure 1. The framework shows how designers should adress implementation from day one, by performing 3 different actions regarding the organizational context: exploring, aligning and anchoring. In order to enact the framework, the Organizational Context Reflection Miro has been designer. This Miroboard serves as a living document, in which the design team goes through a weekly reflection of all three organizational context actions. In that way, continuous alignment between the organizational context and the project approach is being stimulated, so that the project outcomes and required changes can be anchored and implemented within the organization succesfully. Change process KoosThe most important outcome of this project is not the organizational context framework or the reflection Miro, but rather the fact that this project set a change process in motion at Koos internally. Through the findings of this project, it has become apparent that Koos’ service designers need to extern their skill set and start approaching their projects in a more impact-minded, flexible manner. The framework and the Miroboard serve as artefacts that stimulate this change, but pointing out the blindspot Koos had, and starting the change process required to solve it is bigger and more important, and should make lasting impact long after this project ended. ... Read more

We live in a world in which chronic diseases are on the rise. Yet, improving personal health behaviours is a long-term goal, that is often undermined by alluring offers that provide instant gratification and other more pressing day-to-day matters. Often it is not the intention that is missing to change personal health behaviours, but there is much evidence that highlights a gap between what individuals intend to do vs. what they actually do (Sheeran, 2002). There are many existing behaviour change tools that provide the “solution” to a problem, yet no one solution will be effective for everyone (Hekler, Burleson, & Lee, 2013). Especially when considering health behaviours, that need to be sustained over time to have significant impact, it is prudent that interventions fit our goal, our ever changing lifestyle and are enjoyable (Phatak, 2019a). An alternative approach is to give individuals the tools to self-experiment with interventions, and through this, find interventions that work for them to establish a lasting effective behaviour change. This project explores self-experimentation (SE) as a method for helping individuals change their personal health behaviours. A research through design approach was used to answer the questions: (1) What is self-experimentation and why is it needed? (2) What does self-experimentation result in and how can it contribute to individuals achieving sustainable health behaviour change? And (3) how can design facilitate individuals to self-experiment? In alignment with these questions, this project yields three significant outcomes: First, a new take on self-experimentation was discovered; one that addresses the limitation of existing approaches and caters to the needs of people trying to change their health behaviours. User research into how people go about navigating their health behaviour, and the kind of evidence they need to make decisions revealed that: (1) People generally navigate their health behaviour through intuition. (2) People who practice self-experimentation, are not seeking to answer a hypothesis, but simply want to find an intervention that works for them, explore different options and learn about themselves in the process. (3) People can determine whether or not an intervention works for them simply by trying it out. This reveals if the intervention helps them achieve their goal (i.e. is effective), whether it fits into their lives and with their personality (compatibility) and whether they enjoy it. These insights created a premise for a new approach which was labelled “Explorative Self-experimentation”. It differs fundamentally from the existing “quantitative” method in that it omits the key ingredient of a data-driven scientifically rigorous objective evaluation of the effectiveness of interventions, and instead harnesses the intuitive evaluation formed by a user’s lived experience. By observing 14 participants undergo four weeks of self-experimentation, a set of 13 phenomena were uncovered that engaging with Explorative Self-experimentation results in. These can be summarised in five statements: Explorative Self-experimentation helps people (1) take incremental steps towards a long term goal, through (2) trial and error to success. It (3) leads people to get to the heart of the issue, (4) discover new perspectives and attitudes towards their own health behaviours and (5) find support along the way. These phenomena were linked to prominent behaviour change theories in the context of health in order to establish how explorative self-experimentation can contribute to individuals changing and maintaining their health behaviours. Finally, the research through design process involved creating three sets of prototypes that explore how to facilitate individuals to self-experiment with health interventions. The design process and the testing of these prototypes revealed three lenses from which to tackle facilitating self-experimentation: (1) designing for the process, (2) designing for different scenarios or stages of change and (3) designing for the underlying needs and values of people trying to change their health behaviours. As part of this third lens, I presented seven concrete starting points for designers to facilitate self-experimentation, linking the underlying values and needs to key ingredients design can provide. The compilation of these outcomes aspire to answer the research question of how design can facilitate SE: Designers can provide guidance through the process, designers can help initiate SE, help people maintain their efforts over time to find something that fits, or help turn fitting solutions into habits. Designers can cater to needs and values by providing guidance, incentives and inspiration over time, by making room for personal growth and flexibility, fostering personal attachment and by forming a resilient mindset. In conclusion, this thesis uncovers the potential of Explorative Self-experimentation and how to facilitate it. It presents a meta-strategy for helping individuals change and maintain personal health behaviours, and through this hopes to contribute to improving health both at an individual and societal level. ... Read more