Unaccompanied minor asylum seekers housed in minor shelters face a major change when they turn 18. In the minor shelter, they receive personal supervision, live amongst peers and create a home. At 18 this drastically changes when they have to leave the minor shelter and need to go to a regular shelter, focussed on mass housing. This change is especially difficult for this vulnerable group, since it not only ends a relatively stable period, it also triggers an earlier trauma of being forced to leave their home behind.

Using a Positive Design approach, this design project aims to Design a product that supports young male asylum seekers in building confidence and adapting well to life in a new shelter environment when moving from minor to regular shelter.

Two shelters in the Netherlands collaborated with the designer of this project. A literature review and qualitative research were conducted to gain rich insights into the experiences of young asylum seekers and other stakeholders. Contextmapping is a key method used during this project. This structured process helps designers explore users’ experiences, needs, and dreams by involving them actively in the design process. The research findings substantiated seven design opportunities and a design vision: Fly out, Land well.

An elaborate ideation phase resulted in the Fly out, Land well Kit. By effectively addressing the found design opportunities, the kit helps minors leave with confidence and stability, and settle in safely and positively at their next destination.

By supporting this transition, the Fly out, Land well Kit helps minors to prepare for this step, gain confidence and feel ready to live at the new location. The kit consists of two main parts: the Bridge, a tangible and creative tool that a mentor uses to prepare and communicate the transition to a minor, and the Booklet, used to reflect, personalize their goodbye period and create a memento. Together, they guide the mentor and minor through the transition process.

This design project, “Let’s Bond! Fostering social connection for older adults in Twente”, set out to enhance the well-being of older adults by fostering a greater sense of connectedness. Rather than tackling loneliness directly, an approach often associated with stigma, the project reframed the challenge through the lens of the Positive Health framework, focusing instead on older adults’ strengths, and sources of meaning in life. This shift allowed for a more inviting, empowering design process, rooted in the values and lived experiences of the people it aimed to serve.
To understand these experiences, a combination of interviews, contextmapping techniques, and literature studies was used. Contextmapping revealed implicit knowledge, social values and prompted personal reflection, shaping both process and outcome. Theoretical guidance from the Positive Health framework supported the focus on intrinsic motivation and well-being, anchoring the project in an ethical and person-centered approach.
Initial research showed that older adults value a meaningful life, as well as casual, and personal interactions. Cultural characteristics specific to the Twente region, such as straightforward communication and the importance of trust, also emerged as key considerations.
These insights led to a collaboration with three local village supporters, whose role is to enhance village life by informally supporting both residents and the community. Through this key actor, a more specific design focus emerged: supporting homebound older adults, those who feel disconnected, yet remain in their small circles and are difficult to reach through existing initiatives.
The final design outcome is a conversation-based card game titled “Wat maakt je blij?” (“What makes you happy?”), created for use between homebound older adults and their trusted contacts. It invites players to reflect on their strengths, interests, and meaningful life experiences, encouraging emotional connection and potential actions without imposing a “helping” dynamic. Informed by multiple design iterations and playtests, the game avoids feelings of being childish or therapeutic, offering a casual, low-pressure, warm space for personal discovery and reflection.
Evaluation results showed that:
Participants felt more emotionally connected during gameplay, suggesting the game can deepen existing relationships and open paths to social engagement with the help of co-player encouragements.
While it did not directly lead to new social activities, it prompted small, self-driven actions that supported well-being, such as calling a friend or revisiting a hobby.
The village supporters also saw the game as a valuable tool for healthcare, appreciating how it gently encourages players to reflect positively on their lives.
Thus, the game promotes emotional connection and positive personal reflection. Despite its promise, the game’s long-term impact on sustained social connectedness remains uncertain. Further testing may provide more clarity. Its success also depends heavily on how it is introduced, framing must avoid implying the older adult “needs help.” Future implementation should equip facilitators with language and strategies to invite participation in an empowering way.
The project highlights the power of design to create tools that do not fix people, but instead open up space for self-driven exploration, joy, and human connection.

Psoriatic arthritis is a chronic inflammation disease that affects the joints and the skin, which can manifest in many ways and various severities. Psoriatic arthritis impacts the lives of patients in both physical and mental ways. This project focussed on how the patient experience can be improved of newly diagnosed psoriatic arthritis patients. The patient experience involves multiple things, including the hospital visits and life at home. For this project it was decided to focus on the context of home. To get the necessary insights into the disease and the experience of patients with psoriatic arthritis, the co-creation method was used. In this method, a small group of stakeholders are actively part of the complete project as experts. In this project, five PsA patients were included as experts of their own experiences. The literature study and explorative research done in this project showed the following thing about the patient experience of PsA patients:

- Most of the information and help that is available focusses on the physical difficulties that psoriatic arthritis causes, even though there are a lot of mental difficulties that currently get too little attention.

- There is a lot of information available that the patients only get when they look for it themselves. But especially right after their diagnosis, they have little to no idea of what is relevant and what they have to look for.



With this knowledge, it was decided to focus on these mental difficulties that patients have. To do this, several group sessions together with the five participating patients were done. These sessions revealed that the diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis influences the perception of their identity as well as how they think others perceive them. The patients want to stay valuable and independent, where the psoriatic arthritis causes them to make changes in their daily life and become more dependable. This gives patients the idea that the psoriatic arthritis sometimes takes control over their life. This insight led to the design goal of the project, where the focus laid on empowering the patients to be in control of their own life again.



Together with the participant group, various design directions were explored and evaluated with help of various prototypes. This eventually resulted in the final design: The PEPSA journal.



The PEPSA journal is a service that provides the user with journal pages that focus on several aspects of life and psoriatic arthritis. The journal makes a distinction between standard material, which is relevant for everyone and focus topics, which allow the user to personalize their journal and make it more fitting to their life and what they think is relevant. Through positively formulated questions about each topic the users are encouraged to think about the various aspects of their life and psoriatic arthritis and how they relate to and influence each other. In this way the PEPSA journal allows the user to get more insights into their situation and get a clearer view of their life with psoriatic arthritis, putting them back in control.