Our food system has a huge impact on the environment and is one of the largest contributors to a global threat: climate change. The meat industry alone accounts for 15% of the greenhouse gas emissions. So, the solution would be eating less meat and dairy. But although the Dutch eat most meat replacers in Europe, the annual meat consumption hasn’t declined between 2005 and 2019. The growing number of vegans and vegetarians in The Netherlands show that it isn’t always willingness to eat less meat, but often it is habitual behaviour that is hard to disrupt. Teaching and preaching sustainability is proven to be ineffective, since consumers often filter out information that doesn’t result in short-term benefits and personal gain. Filtering out information is to reduce the mental load that consists of several struggles that consumers experience in the cooking process: finding inspiration, sticking to their budget and eating healthy and varied food. And even if consumers consider sustainability, it almost never has top priority. Therefore, a product or service that wants to help consumers choose to consume more sustainably should, primarily, focus on offering personal value and short-term benefits. In addition, sustainability has to be subtly incorporated, but never be the main attribute of the product. Consumers are already looking for help with their struggles in the cooking process, like finding inspiration Consumers are already looking for help with their struggles in the cooking process, like finding inspiration and help online and buying products that make cooking simpler and more convenient, like food boxes. But, research shows that consumers quit their food box subscription, because it is too expensive and they have no control over the size, quality and price of the vegetables. Furthermore, the recipe and herbs/sauce of the food box are considered more valuable than the vegetables. Therefore, the product that is developed in this project is a food box without vegetables. Instead, consumers receive a recipe, for inspiration and including a shopping list, and a ready-to-use sauce made of natural herbs and ingredients, which helps them with the most expensive and complicated part of a meal. All recipes are vegetarian, which nudges sustainable consumption, without compromising on price and convenience. Vegetables can be purchased in the local supermarket or local market. This increases the physical barrier compared to regular food boxes, but gives the consumer a lot of flexibility in return. The focus of the solution is to reduce the mental load for the consumer by making eating less meat easier, not more complicated. The target group are generation Y and Z, because these generations are already most sustainable, like cooking and they live online, which make it easier to target them.

The aerospace industry's global market rise considerably in recent years. StarDetect, founded in Beijing in 2020, is a startup focusing on small satellite technology, developing functional payloads and providing customised services within the needs of space astronomy or earth geography observation. However, due to the relatively short and immature development of China's small satellite commercial industry, the current satellite service targets is limited, and most of the end-users are government and research institutes. StarDetect's has to reach out to more potential customers and develop new satellite application scenarios. Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to investigate a new commercial market for StarDetect and formulate a strategy for its entry. The thesis employed the double diamond design process to provide structure for the creation process and obtain solutions by using iterative analysis. As the result, a roadmap is designed for StarDetect to enter the Smart Tourism market. In the first horizon, Destination Discovery Service based on mature technology is launched to open new businesses in the market with price penetration, to meet the needs of tourism project developers for quick access to destination information. And a 3D visualization service is available as an add-on value. In the second horizon, the Destination Environmental Monitoring service is introduced for increasing sales, which meet the demands of management organizations for monitoring the sustainability of natural destinations. At the same time, a website providing sustainable travel information to responsible travellers is offered, to develop StarDetect's brand recognition and build connections with potential consumers in preparation for the next horizon's B2C business. Finally, Horizon 3 continue to grow market segments by launching Disaster warning and Safety monitoring services. Meanwhile, StarDetect started to serve consumers directly by providing a one-stop service platform for outdoor adventure to capture new business opportunities.

As society, we have lost connection to our food and how it is produced. The international market in which Dutch farmers operate has elongated the path from farm to fork and created an anonymous food chain. Food production has been intensified over the years with agriculture practices evolving with a focus on efficiency and high yields. This has resulted in a highly polluting sector that is responsible for 34% of human caused greenhouse gas emissions (Crippa et al., 2021). The current agri-food system is therefore environmentally and socially unsustainable. Alternative food systems are being explored which might offer a solution to these challenges. The implementation of nature inclusive farming focuses on realizing an agriculture sector that integrates food production and nature preservation. Project client Caring Farmers aims to stimulate nature inclusive farming in order to tackle the environmental and societal challenges of the agri-food system. The design challenge of this project was: How can the transition towards a nature inclusive agri-food sector in the Netherlands be accelerated through the enhancement of the relation between farmer and consumer? With a systemic design approach and qualitative research, it was concluded that the role of the agri-food sector is changing. An opportunity exists to reintegrate farming in society and create a system that expands its focus for farming beyond economic production towards its societal relevance. The environmental and societal services that farmers deliver to society should be valued to ensure a fair income for them and for the sector to become more sustainable. The thesis proposes a three-horizon strategy on how to create value for the ecosystem services that farms can deliver to society. By implementing a system that monitors ecosystem services like biodiversity, soil quality, and carbon sequestration, these values can be quantified. In the first horizon, a product-service system is designed to make farms more accessible for citizens. With an application, citizens can visit farms and learn about sustainable agriculture. The second horizon embeds this application in a platform that enables farmers and citizens to monitor the ecosystem services on farms. Through citizen science projects, visitors help farmers to collect data about these services. This facilitates research about the impact of sustainable farming on the environment so that the vision of the third horizon can be realized. This vision shows a societal system in which farmers and citizens collaboratively work towards a sustainable agri-food sector where ecosystem services are valued and appreciated. The strategic roadmap is supported by visualisations of the application and platform. Furthermore, an implementation roadmap was created to support the organisation in the implementation of the strategic advice and design products. This project provides a different view on the role of agriculture in the Netherlands by looking beyond the need for fair food prices. It provides a vision where the appreciation for the work of farmers is divided into multiple services instead of embedded in the price of a carton of milk.

The initial goal of this graduation project was to find a way to establish a reliable digital relationship with PostNL’s consumer. This is considered an important part of a digital transformation strategy that is necessary for traditional postal companies to stay relevant in a digital era. One of the main challenges of this digital era, relevant for PostNL, is the increasing uncertainty of knowing who one is dealing with online. This assignment focuses on the idea of implementing a digital identity (eID) that can be used during digital and physical encounters with PostNL and is able to provide the desired certainty to ensure a more safe and seamless service. Thereby the focus during this project is especially on how this digital identity can be established, with whom and which certainties are absolutely necessary for doing so. Digital identities that enable a consumer to prove who he or she is online, can exist out of multiple attributes that define this (online) user. Worldwide these digital identities are increasingly being adopted by companies active in multiple service industries, including LSPs. However, this does not mean that companies can simply request all kinds of data from their consumers to confirm the needed attributes. With regard to regulations including those concerned with privacy (GDPR), they are required to keep data processing to a minimum and are therefore only allowed to request data that is absolutely necessary. For PostNL, it was found that sufficient desired certainty would be possible to be established by personal validation or address validation. Although consumers do see PostNL as a reliable party (the most reliable within the Netherlands), they do not seem to be willing to (digitally) share sensitive personal information such as a picture of their ID with PostNL. Address validation on the other hand does not require too much personal information about an individual but does provide the assurance that that individual has a high probability of righteous access to the address he/she uses online. For PostNL this is most important since they provide logistics services at these addresses. As a privatized company that is not allowed to simply make use of governmental databases, PostNL is currently mainly dependent on other (commercial) parties. However, it is highly desired to establish certainty themselves, create and keep data internal. This resulted in the suggestion of a multilayered address validation system enable to establish different types of address certainty. In the ideal situation, a consumer should be processed through as many layers as possible to realize maximum certainty. Thereby the starting point is to make it as convenient as possible for consumers while raising a threshold as high as possible for fraudsters. Not only does this strengthen security, but it also increases the reach as each type is being preferred by a different group of consumers. It also enables PostNL to create, use and keep internal data while offering significant added value for the consumers in return. One element of this system has shown high potential and was selected for further elaboration, namely Stikky: a smart solution that combines the physical with the digital. It enables consumers to prove that they have righteous access to an address, while simultaneously adding significant value to them. As a result, this enables PostNL to achieve a higher first-time-right while simultaneously making it more difficult for malicious people to commit package fraud. Interesting target groups for Stikky are considered: frequent orderers, digital-savvy millennials living in urbanized areas, and worried receiving consumers. Finally, a design roadmap has been discussed that shows the long term strategy towards a multi-purpose eCommerce-ID. To have a starting point for this, also a short-term implementation plan has been provided that guides Stikky the way to a successful market introduction within six months.

Many non-profit organizations (NPO’s) in the Netherlands have lost a large amount of donors over the last years. This thesis explores the use of behavioural influence design, applied in an online solution, in order to improve donor engagement for the well-known NPO WWF. The thesis focuses at creating long-term engagement with donors in the age class between 18 and 35. People in this target group want to be flexible when it comes to making donations, want their own impact to be specific and tangible and rather take action themselves, in a personal and individual manner, when it comes to environmental goals. Furthermore, this is an age group that is very active online, especially on social media, which is interesting for the online solution space. As WWF-NL wants to create a society-wide movement, showing people that there are more ways to contribute to their mission for a sustainable society, beyond donating (like adjusting sustainable behaviour or investing time), it seemed an interesting opportunity to improve engagement with this group and connect with them on the common interest of contributing beyond donations. With the help of literature and successful exemplar cases on engagement, guidelines haven been created for improving the different levels of engagement (cognitive, emotional and behavioural) in relation to the target group. Also, the field of behavioural economics, which assumes the irrational thinking and decision making processes of human beings, has been explored to see how behavioural influence design could be applied to improve the (different levels of) engagement. The conclusion of this exploration is that behavioural influence design should not (just) be implemented in the smaller details of online expressions; it should be part of the broader strategy, where it is used to improve individual (in this case sustainable) behaviour of the target group. Again, with exemplar cases and literature, guidelines for improving engagement with the help of behavioural influence have been created. The guidelines and insights for improving engagement with the help of design for behavioural influence are combined in a strategy. Its details, that make it a WWF-specific approach, are shown in a roadmap, with supporting directional concepts. To successfully reach the vision of this roadmap, all parts of the horizon must be followed carefully. The remainder of the project focused on horizon 2 of the roadmap, to provide WWF with a specific and tangible project to pick up and carry on after my graduation; the development of the WWFxYOU app. The goal of this app was to create a personalized relationship between the target group and WWF, based on the motivation to create impact (on an individual level). A first test, with 10 in-depth interviews with participants from the target group, had promising results; the app was described as a personal, approachable, (inter)active and involving way of contributing to WWF and seemed more attractive than current (WWF) donorships. A redesign is made based on the interviews. For further validation, I recommended to improve and test this design with a larger participant sample, before actual implementation.

Sea ports are undergoing a digital transformation, which can offer benefits for many involved stakeholders in the logistic chain. In order to stay relevant, Port of Rotterdam (PoR) should invest in developing new port infrastructure; digital connections that facilitate data exchange between logistic chain stakeholders. A strategic digital opportunity was found for PoR, design a platform that is focused on container data, which contributes to the competitive position of the port of Rotterdam and the business model of PoR. The thesis explores the design of the platform Cadex, a data platform that facilitates cargo data exchange between data suppliers, e.g. terminals and data demanders, shippers. Cadex offers shippers real-time data about their containers that enables shippers to act upon containers that deviate from the planned schedule. By making cargo data easy accessible it could save shippers significant costs that come with transport, the deprecation of their goods, the management of their logistics and their inventory. Especially in time sensitive trade, like fresh goods or factory parts this data is valuable. In addition, it could also contribute to a lower carbon footprint of shipments. The platform enables users to get data directly from the data owners (data supplies) like sea-port terminals and hinterland terminals and can therefore be labeled as reliable data. The data suppliers benefit from the revenue model the platform offers for their data and they are allowed to set their own asking price for this data, furthermore they benefit from the data they receive about their clients. PoR would directly benefit from the data exchange by charging a percentage of the price. In addition, PoR receives historical data about its clients, which improves their knowledge about the clients they serve and could be input for improvements in the port of Rotterdam. Moreover, a better customer service is offered to shippers that make use of the port of Rotterdam. The new port infrastructure Cadex offers, could improve the score of the port Rotterdam on the selection criteria and therefore, contribute to a higher competitive position. Developing this new port infrastructure is a long-term investment since the connections hold value. Once built, the infrastructure can be reused by other parties or other digital purposes with some adjustments. This makes PoR a relevant party in the digital transition. Without this new port infrastructure, PoR is more likely to be bypassed by other competing players who will reap the benefits of the digital transformation in sea-ports.

With the influence of COVID-19, people all over the world are facing significant challenges. Families with school-aged children face difficulties in helping the children transition from traditional school to online education while bearing various stress due to the epidemic quarantine measures. The situation leads to an intense parent-child relationship during the quarantine period because of the increased conflicts about the children’s learning status, especially for Chinese families, which attach great importance to studying. Through a literature review on parents’ involvement in children’s study, the cultural influence on parenting style, and how the epidemic context could impact the children, I have a basic understanding of the context. The design goal was defined by combining the insights obtained from the in-depth interviews with nine families and relevant design theories on designing for children and parent-child communication. The project aims to improve parent-child communication by creating a relaxed conversation atmosphere during the COVID-19 quarantine period for Chinese families with children aged from 9-12 who are about entering their puberty and could have more communication problems with their parents. With the inspirations of ideas from brainstorming sessions and the Doraemon character, the time travel concept was created and developed to create a relaxed communication atmosphere and provide more communication topics for parents and children at home. A prototype was developed and tested with four families to evaluate the extent to which it can improve parent-child communication at home. The test results showed that parents believe the design makes sense in helping create a positive communication atmosphere at home and, therefore, could facilitate a better parent-child relationship. From the children’s feedback, the long-term attraction to the children in using the product can be a direction for further development and improvement.

This master graduation project was started from the current issue - COVID 19 crisis, explored a special context - the first quarantined city, Wuhan. The main purpose of this project is to get deeper understanding of the people who were quarantined at home for long time, and try to use interactive design to help them improve their mental states during quarantine life. The outcome of this project -chachat (茶寮)was a sub-application in Wechat mini program platform. It was designed for the young people who were quarantined at home for a long time in 2020 COVID- 19 pandemic. It aimed to help these people to reduce some negative emotions and brought more energy while working/studying from home. 


Globally one-third of all food that is producedfor human consumption is wasted (FAO, 2013). Although it happens across theentire Food Supply Chain, 53% of all food waste in Europe takes place withinconsumers’ households (Stenmarck et al., 2016). All this waste has seriousconsequences for the environment and if we want to achieve our ‘food waste reductionof 30% by 2025 and 50% by 2030’ (UN, 2020) more needs to be done. An assignmentwas formulated together, with the Delft based organization I Change, to developa product/service that facilitates consumer food waste prevention by addressingthe household routines. By reviewing consumers’ existing household routines andthe motives of their food-wasting behavior, it has been discovered thatconflicting goals are the main reason consumers are wasting food. On the onehand consumers are willing to reduce their food waste because it is a purewaste of money, ethically wrong and because they feel ashamed or guilty whendoing it (van Dooren & Mensink, 2018). On the other hand, consumers wastefood because they strive for convenience, want to be good providers by makingsure there is enough to eat and want to be prepared for uncertainties (e.g.:working overtime, unexpected guests) (Graham-Rowe, Jessop & Sparks, 2014).  These food wasting motives have led to manyconsumers lacking the ‘good food habits’ needed to make both convenient andgood choices.  These good food habitsinclude making shopping lists, setting up meals plans and checking stock beforegoing shopping. According to Ooijendijk et al. (2019) having and sticking to theseroutines can prevent up to 50% of the total amount of food consumers waste.  Through an iterative design and test processEetkaartjes was developed. Essentially this product is a set of product categorylabels that consumers use in their fridge, freezer and/ or cupboards whichenables them to become better organized. Based on results from the testingphase it was concluded that through better organization, several of the previouslydiscussed lacking ‘good food habits’ improved. This ultimately resulted in lessfood being wasted.  I Change has beenprovided with several implementation options for the product. A productionproposal was made which enables them to continue with a detailed physical versionof the product. The affordable cost estimation and interest from theNetherlands Nutrition Centre, makes this an interesting direction to furtherlook into.  A second proposal was madefor a simplified flyer version of the product. This version is cheap to produceand easy to distribute but requires additional effort from the consumer toimplement it.  A third proposal was madein the direction of education. Samen Tegen Voedselverspilling expressedinterest into this direction and collaborative next steps are being discussed.  I Change is advised to continue theconversation with external parties and look into the different implementation possibilitiesof the product, conducting additional small scale tests to validate remaininguncertainties and determine which strategy has the most potential.

The banking industry has been experiencing radical change for the last years (Wingard, n.d.). Due to digitalisation a new type of user has arisen. This user is characterised by always being connected while operating on multiple devices. This segment likes to be informed and expects answers, immediacy and transparency. They compare options before making important decisions and they are demanding with the companies they interact with (Rowe, 2019). To operate in this environment, where customers demand proximity, quality and transparency, Banc Sabadell has summarised its strengths in the following strategy “Estar donde estés” (To be where you are). This strategy aims to create a user-centered mindset, creating excellent services that show social responsibility and transparency. All of that will result in a long-term relationship with its customers (Quienes Somos, 2015). Banc Sabadell, with 135 years of history, is one of the largest banking groups in Spain, with international presence (Quienes Somos, 2015). For Banc Sabadell, mortgage loans are one of the products that generate the greatest customer loyalty and commercial margin. And for its customers, buying a house is one of the biggest milestones in their lives. This project is born from the gap identified in which the strategy of Banc Sabadell is not sufficiently perceived in the home buying process. In general, the process of buying a house or getting information about the different steps is most of the time a hassle for the users (Parrin, 2019). This project aims to provide a tangible strategy for Banc Sabadell to increase customer engagement while offering a smooth and remarkable home buying process. Through user research, this project explores the user needs, behaviours and expectations throughout the home buying process. A need is identified to offer a smooth and socially engaging home buying process to young adults which allows them and their relatives to feel reassured and experience the process together. As a result, Doyle is borned. Doyle is a mobile service application that offers adults independence in the purchasing process through providing the tools and information that users need. As part of this strategy, other three elements that play an important role are also proposed.

Money is a key element in people’s overall well-being (Abey & Ford, 2008). Young adults are behaving very differently towards finances compared to previous generations (Williams et al, 2010). In addition, young adults have little trust on financial institutions and no one to turn to for actionable advice (Deloitte Millennial Survey, 2019). Adults in their twenties and thirties are struggling with money, feeling overwhelmed and lost (Foundation for Economic Education, 2018). A gap in the market was found, where no current solutions fostered long-term behaviors for young adults towards a secure financial future. I wanted to use my skills as a designer to solve this paradigm involving young adults and finances. The goal of this graduation project is to provide guidance and support for young adults in changing their current money habits so they can ensure their future well-being. This societal issue regarding young adults and money is a shared problem in countries all over the world. For a better understanding of the relationship young people have, the context was scoped down: the project was based in Madrid, Spain and it was targeted for young adults belonging to this country. Under this context, the research of the project provided valuable findings which led to the final design. Those findings can be extrapolated to non-spanish young adults. Young adult’s current money habits and the desired financial behavior for a sustainable well-being were identified and mapped in two frameworks. The transition between both was possible through the creation of a new product- service-system. As a result, a product-service-system, named Volt, was designed. Volt crafts a new meaningful relationship between young adults and money and consists of a smart phone case, a related digital application and the system that sustains both. Through the phone case, young adults will progressively save by clicking a button and check their financial health thanks to a coloured light. The digital application will first help young adults to budget on their personal financial goals into vaults or buckets and keep track of their financial health and progress. After some digital application use, the digital application will provide young adults with actionable financial advice and the entrance to a community of young people with similar financial situation, so they can feel supported and have the peace of mind they crave.

Over the last decade, the circular economy has gained traction as a concept to transform the society and economy into more sustainable systems. In this context, research into circular business models arose to implement circular economy strategies at the company level. In this thesis, a consumer perspective on circular business models is taken. The research explored how business models can help achieve a circular economy and lead to sustainable consumption.

This dissertation was prompted by its author’s amazement that only a handful of financial experts had read the arrival of the 2009 recession in the subprime mortgage problems in the American housing market. Despite hefty confrontations in the media between investment experts during the years leading up to the recession, it took the fall of Lehmann Brothers for the world to become aware of the effects of the subprime crisis. Such myopia is exemplary for weak signals: the strategic phenomena detected in the environment or created during interpretation, that are distant to the perceiving top-manager’s frame of reference. If top-managers perceive weak signals early enough and interpret them accurately, they can increase the resilience of their company. If they don’t, their companies run high risks. In the case of the great recession, the correct perceiving top-managers betted against mortgage-backed securities, and the rest had to take drastic measures to survive a double-dip recession. Whether or not having insights into the effective perception of weak signals can make or break companies...

The relevance of persuasion for product care. Aiming at increasing users’ interest in sustainable consumption, different lines of research and initiatives ranging from frameworks for design to community-based approaches, have presented routes to support a transition from a linear economy to a circular economy. These models intend to extend the performance of products through its lifetime as a means to reduce the environmental drawbacks of excessive consumption. Product care focuses on the immediate actions consumers can conduct to maintain products in sound condition. Persuasive strategies and techniques can provide product care with an additional source of motivation drivers while engaging consumers with care activities. The project. Current research in design for product care has addressed different strategies and possibilities while promoting care behaviour, which requires consumers to be active and willing to perform maintenance and repair regularly.  These strategies and methods have been useful to explore the inner drivers of consumers and undercover influential factors that make people act in a certain way. Aiming at further exploring these relations between users and products, this project addresses the influence of cultural background on care, by focusing on human behaviour to design a persuasive system to make people care more. The research. A cross-cultural study was conducted including three different countries, Austria, The Netherlands, and Colombia, aiming at exploring the influential drivers of care. The sample consisted of 160 participants from different backgrounds who took part in a set of questionnaires and interviews to identify the specific context of product care. The findings from the research study were used to design a persuasive strategy which includes a phased-implementation. Former research has addressed cultural differences in fields such as marketing and design, but since the studies are mainly focused on marketing strategies, this research extended the scope towards persuasive strategies to influence people to act upon care. Psychology behavioural economics and design strategies. Different lines of research have studied human behaviour as a means to tailor propositions that are relevant to the target audience, and use the factors that influence the decision-making process, to present framed content which is aligned to the individuals’ interest and mindset orientation models, while convincing patients to carry on scanning procedures, or consumers to buy offers that include products which were not needed at the beginning of the consideration phase. This relates to the cognitive interest that people have concerning certain activity, product, or topic, which if high can lead them to make conscious decisions and reduce the external influence while making a choice. Behavioural economics aims at understanding the reasoning behind consumers acts, which can be shaped by the context and former experiences. The intention an individual has when setting and attaining a particular goal has been a focus of research through the time, since people say they want to commit to a certain activity such as exercising, but their actual performance falls short to reach that goal. Persuasion in design. Regarding research in design, the interaction between people and products has been addressed identifying factors that influence users’ behaviour, such as product attachment and the actual interaction with products which can lead consumers’ actions in multiple manners. Understanding the intention of our propositions can be of help while designing products, services, and spaces that can make people act accordingly.  A guideline for tailoring a persuasive system to convince people to care more was designed in this project. The persuasive strategy. This project resulted in a persuasive system composed of two elements which are as follows and APP and a website are presented, together with initial lines of a service proposition which can be the result of the phased-implementation strategy. The app and the website were designed following a set of guidelines resulting from the cross-cultural study, and the current literature in the overarching fields that set the foundation of this project. The persuasive system was tested in two different iterations with designers and experts from other areas. To devise the impact of this system, it is necessary to extend the intervention in the future by introducing the means presented in a formal setting to validate the long-term impact and how the intervention can be relevant to the users.

The extended use of internet has digitalized many daily life practices in human life, including shopping, in the 21st century. While consumers used to experience the products mainly in store, now they must base their purchases whatever they see on the screen. Thus, the visual product design directly influences the digital buyers in their product purchases, but how? The earlier studies show that a product’s appearance can have aesthetic and symbolic value for consumers, can communicate functional characteristics and give a quality impression (practical value), and can communicate the ease of use (ergonomic value) (Creusen & Schoormans, 2005). Although these studies explore the role of product appearance or visual product design in consumer purchases, none of them particularly targets online purchases. This study aims to fill this knowledge gap in the literature through qualitative research. The qualitative research, conducted as a part of master graduation assignment (see Appendix A to read the whole assignment), explored whether the different roles of product appearance exist in consumers’ process of product evaluation in online environments and to what extent these roles influence the consumers. Also, product related or contextual factors which may potentially have an impact on consumer responses to the product form in the digital environment were researched in the scope of this project. The complete online shopping experience was designed for the participants, and they were asked to perform two simple tasks, purchasing a pair of headphones and a laptop stand through the test website. Later, they were interviewed on their choice reasons for the products. The interviews done with the participation of forty-three subjects was transcribed and coded first, then content analysis was done to learn the frequencies of each concept existing in online shopping practice. The research findings showed that different roles of product appearance exist in the consumer product evaluation process in digital environments, although the consumer responses to these roles vary for different product categories. For instance, in the experiment, some participants based their purchase on attention drawing value of the product form for a socially significant product category, headphones, whereas this value was not mentioned at all by any of the participants for the other category. Additionally, the influence of some contextual and product factors on the consumer responses to the product form was detected based on the research results. For example, an impact created by in-context images on consumer perception of symbolic value was noticed in the experiment. As a result, this study filled the knowledge gap in the topic “the role of product form in online purchase” as much as the study limitations allow.

Consumers’ awareness of environmental issues has increased over the years, resulting in a higher demand of pro-environmental product alternatives. The abundance of ocean plastic waste and the societal pressure for Europe to manage its plastic recycling system creates an opportunity for designing recycled ocean plastic products. Therefore, using ocean plastic for new product development should be encouraged. In general people have a strong positive attitude towards recycling and ocean plastic products. Cleaning up the oceans is considered a must and giving retrieved ocean plastic new purpose is beneficial. However, people currently still feel somewhat confused in how to behave more pro-environmental due to a lack of ease and lack of knowledge. Also they are not quite able to distinguish recycled products from other (non-recycled) products. In addition, they have reservations towards ocean plastic products which make to direct personal contact and therefore prefer to be made aware of the fact that a product is made from ocean plastic during purchase. Nevertheless people have faith in the future potential of ocean plastics. People especially like products made from ocean plastic that are easy accessible, produced in large scale, approachable and long lasting. The most suitable product categories to fulfil all these wishes are packaging and furniture. Through examination of the two different product categories it is possible to make more generalised design assumptions for ocean plastic products in order to be adopted by consumers more easily. This is valuable for promoting large scale implementations of ocean plastic products. The products representing these two product categories as used in this research are a bottle of dishwashing liquid and a chair. In order to find out how to design these types of products, information has been gathered regarding the importance of different design elements of ocean plastic products. Highly ranked design elements for ocean plastic products are the shape typicality and the recognisability of an oceanic pattern/texture. Four design alternatives have been created per product in order to test the effects of these design elements. The bottles and chairs were either typically shaped or atypically shaped, and either had an oceanic pattern or did not have an oceanic pattern. The visual appearance of products can evoke different responses. These responses have been analysed for ocean plastic products. It can generally be concluded that triggering a stronger ocean plastic perception through appearance elements proves to be successful. It is possible to communicate the presence of ocean plastic through design elements effectively. Products with an ocean plastic pattern/texture evoke more oceanic feelings and are found attractive. Since attractiveness is correlated with purchase intention, ocean plastic products with (specific) patterns/textures are likely to be bought more frequent. In addition, typical products evoke a higher purchase intention than atypical products. People currently feel more positive about buying less durable products from ocean plastic which increases the purchase intention for these less durable products. The perceived lifespan of durable products can be positively affected by adding oceanic patterns/textures. Since attractiveness is considered less important for durable products, this increased durability perception could have a positive effect on the purchase intention of such products.

The global environmental issues are becoming more and more pressing. These issues ask for not only changes on a product-level but also on a system-level (Ceshin, 2013). One of the potential solutions can be to facilitate more sustainable consumption. Sustainable consumption patterns can potentially be created by product-service systems (PSSs). PSSs enable “sale-of-use” instead of “sale-of-product” so these systems satisfy consumers through the delivery of functions instead of products. Unfortunately, the adoption of PSSs is still limited. Because PSSs are often radical innovations, they challenge existing consumers’ habits (cultural barriers), companies’ organizations (corporate barriers) and regulative frameworks (regulative barriers) (UNEP, 2002; Mont, 2002; Tukker and Tischner, 2006). In combination with that in literature little attention is committed to understand how the process of diffusion takes place (Tukker and Tischner, 2006; Baines et al., 2007). Additionally, there is a shortage of empirical studies focusing on the consumers’ perspective (Mont and Plepys, 2003). Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to find consumer’s motivational factors, by studying three PSS cases. The PSS cases are bike-sharing systems (BSSs): OV-fiets, Swapfiets and Mobike. The findings support a deeper understanding and stimulation of PSS adoption.
The research is carried out in a qualitative manner, eight semi-structured interviews with experts (who work at the analysed BSSs) and consumers (who uses two or more of the analysed BSSs) are conducted. The gathered data is analysed with the grounded theory (Charmaz, 2007) and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory (Rogers, 2003). This resulted in twenty-four motivational factors categorized by Rogers (2003) five innovation attributes: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. An overview can be found in Table 7 on page 51. The research results indicate motivational drivers for consumers which can potentially increase the rate of adoption of BSSs. A new concept is created to illustrate possible design solutions to strengthen a selection of the consumer’s motivational factors. Additionally, the new concept demonstrates a promising future-oriented scenario for electrical BSSs. The new concept: Breeze aims to postpone or replace car ownership. To conclude, the findings raised in this thesis provide a deeper understanding of the consumers’ perspective on BSSs. The findings suggest what factors are more important to stimulate the rate of adoption. For future research, it is a useful base for a quantitative study to validate consumer’s motivational drivers to use a BSS in the Netherlands. The research findings are also a useful source for a more in-depth research about mobility PSSs in general.

This report looks into the subject of sustainable teenage behavior. With the current strikes for the environment, it’s interesting to see how the younger generation wants a sustainable world, but does not act out this way. The research conducted from this problem focused on the textile industry and the shopping behavior of teenage girls, in order to answer the research question: How to lower the threshold for teenagers to repair their own clothes?

After investigated the topic of clothing repair and teenage shopping behavior, it appeared that most teenagers buy new clothes because their changes in fashion style and their need to express themselves though clothes. From there on the project focus shifted to creating a pleasant first time experience to make teenagers familiar with clothing repair, and making it possible to upgrade clothes. By doing so, the user is possible to change clothes according to their own new wishes.

A target group research consisting of several interviews and a literature review gave a framework for the design project: in order to stimulate teenagers to start a project, they needed information on the subject, help with developing their crafting skills and motivation. The mentioned motivation needs to involve them personally. While they all want to work towards a green world without child labor, they did not feel the responsibility to change their own behavior to reach these goals.

By designing a concept and iterating it with multiple concept tests, a final concept was created. In this product teenagers are motivated by having the possibility to design with their own clothes and making it personal. They can look up information or inspiration in an online blog, buy do-it-yourself kits to practice and design at home, and have the possibility to go to a weekly crafting table to ask for help. The kits include guidelines on how to tackle a project and include tools to practice sewing.

At last, the design project included the creation of a brand and marketing strategy. The product is branded as a way of practicing your fashion design skills and being able to stay up-to-date with the latest fashion trends. It is thought that the product should be positioned as an alternative of buying new clothes, instead of a new sewing kit. The marketing strategy focusses on creating brand awareness, considering the product and brand are new to the market. This is done by a social media campaign focusing on teenagers and parents as well, flyers in art classes and crafting clubs, and search word optimization for the blog.

In the Netherlands more and more groups of volunteers are formed who collectively establish sustainable energy producing initiatives. The customer needs of these so-called sustainable energy collectives are unlike any other customer groups of distribution network operator Stedin. Their applications for grid connections often require case-specific service. There is no uniform way in dealing with this customer group and this leads to dissatisfaction, rework in the process and long process times. Furthermore, no ownership among Stedin employees has been found to take responsibility for servicing this customer group. The design brief has therefore been formulated as follows: Design a single point of contact for SECs that recognizes and communicates the customer journey that SECs live through when applying for a grid connection and logs all contact between Stedin and the SEC. First, ownership of where to embed this service in the organization was found during a co-creation session with different employees of Stedin and SEC members. Secondly, together with these employees, the service journey of these SECs was co-created using six different story boards. The story boards functioned as a boundary object to be able to talk and make decisions about the service with Stedin employees from different disciplines and to be able to communicate this service to the outside. Thirdly, a digital prototype was designed to show how to embed the story boards in the Stedin website and communicate the service to SECs. When validating the service with SECs, the story boards were found to be a successful way to communicate about the service. The service was found to be sufficing the need of a single point of contact for SECs. For implementation, the service has to be validated with SECs, new to the service, and agreed upon by higher management. To keep the service up-to-date, the newly appointed service desk should organize (bi)annual co-creation workshops together with SECs to check whether the service desk can be adapted to the changing needs of sustainable energy collectives.

Mind-sets play an important role in orienting the decisions and activities that an individual engages in when he or she is designing, and designing involves interaction with complex, open-ended and ambiguous situations. This means that the individual disposition of a person influences the way that he or she reacts, and in designing, the complexity of the conditions that the individual interacts with, can increase due to the nature of the design problems. The processes that an individual engages in while designing is in turn, expected to influence the quality of design solutions that he or she produces.

This thesis focusses on investigating the phenomena of mind-sets in the context of design and design learning, and its effects on the process of designing and quality of design solutions. Prevalent mind-sets that design students have toward design learning are identified and examined. Two categories of mind-sets are proposed, validated and tested across three different empirical studies. The two categories of mind-sets include the discerning and opportunistic mind-sets. Distinct differences between the two mind-sets provide significant insights toward the effects of mind-sets on the process and quality of outcomes in designing. Findings from these studies carry implications and recommendations for design education.