There is a more than ever need to be critical of the present and imagine future possibilities. Several critical approaches to design place its efforts in creating artefacts for critical reflection. As part of the spectrum, speculative design is an approach that, through speculation into the possible, aims to challenge the status quo, explore the implications of emerging issues, and frame debate around matters of concern. While the goal of speculative design is in engaging publics in debate and exploring alternatives to the dominant narrative, the practise has been facing several critiques. More specifically, speculation as remained exclusive to the designer as an author and most of the work is disseminated in gallery spaces, limiting the reach and depth of the debate generated. New projects and practitioners have emerged that push speculative design work into new contexts and within a participatory mindset. This thesis is placed at this intersection between participation and speculative design. While this intersection seems promising and valuable, there might be some challenges in the transition from authorial practise to a participatory process. Additionally, bringing speculative design in new contexts might bring several risks, specially when practised within the domains it aims to critique. The main research question addressed by this thesis is the following: When we open up the speculative design process, is the practise able to retain the critical aspects related to it? Eight semi-structured interviews with leading practitioners working on this space were done. From the interviews, three main challenges were identified: “Stuck in a Singular View” refers to the challenge of engaging a plurality of voices and on maintaining a nuanced perspective when critically discussing the future; “Stuck in the Context” is related with the difficulty in engaging in self-reflexive behaviour when working with speculative design inside contexts that might be reluctant to critique; “Stuck in the Now” refers to the difficulty in working in the future and how short-sightness might create an obstacle to speculative thinking. Additionally, several issues were mapped from the interviews and brought in a provisional framework for participation in speculative design. This framework consists of four levels that represent different aspects of the process: Context of Operation, Participants, Moments of Engagement, and Outcomes. Finally, the four levels and the three main challenges were used to problematise the design space and create a critical toolkit for integrating participation in speculative design. The goal of the toolkit is not to provide a solution on how to this, but it proposes several different questions and issues for reflection. The toolkit consists of 37 issues, spread throughout the four levels and in relation to the three challenges. The issues took shape as hexagonal playing cards, making it possible to connect the different cards and explore the design space.

This design project investigates how commoning can support the practice of urban foraging, resulting in a framework that describes the social characteristics of commoning and the abilities and opportunities for urban foraging. The framework led to a design showcase, called Get To Gather, which is an interactive board in public space to let citizens experience the practice of urban foraging, as an entrance to the foraging community.

Commoning is a verb of “commons” that describes the social process to manage the commons. The goal of the commons movement is to reclaim commonwealth, and transform the focus on privatization into collective use of resources while preventing them from being commercialized. Commoning is a social process that relies on active collaboration and cooperation.

The practice of urban foraging describes going from place to place searching for things to eat or use, in an urban context. Foraged food is also described as “zero-footprint food” since it is entirely outside the profit-making food production system we know today, which provides people to live self-sufficient and supports a resilient food production system in the city. Foraging goes beyond the consumption of wild edible plants because it is a social activity, in which people pass on knowledge, culture, and traditions from generation to generation. This project focuses on foraging as a leisure activity in the Netherlands.

Foraging is getting more popular, which resulted in the concern of external authorities about the safety of people and the environment. Also, beginner foragers experience fear of eating poisonous or dirty plants in the city. In combination with the social motivations of urban foraging, this resulted in an inspiring and robust network, a community that wants to make sure that everyone forages safely and with care for the environment. Therefore, the community expresses a need to involve beginner foragers into their network.
Urban foraging is an act that transforms unused urban nature into a place with social interactions. In the city, there are fragmented municipal plots that do not fulfill a specific function. In this report, these areas are man’s lands. The final design is an entrance to the foraging community at these locations, to create awareness about the community, and involve beginner foragers to teach them how to treat the environment correctly and perform the practice safely. The design is ‘do it yourself,’ so people can make the design by themselves without waiting for external authorities. Get To Gather transforms unused urban green spaces into places for social access.

The design shows how commoning can support the practice of urban foraging, by making the foraging community, and nature in the city equitable accessible for people outside the community. It frames urban foraging as a practice with social benefits, by showing the community, in which foragers have strong social ties with fellow foragers.

The research in this thesis is done to discover what elements play a role in evoking imagination.
A framework is constituted with the elements familiarity and instructions that are believed to play a role in evoking imagination. The elements are discussed through a literature research and the exploration of objects fitting in the framework. Eventually via a design experiment the influence of familiarity and instructions on imagination is tested.
The outcome of the design experiment exposed that familiarity of objects is evoking imagination in their understanding of their purpose. And the ‘script’, instructions 'inscribed' in objects is providing or limiting space for multiple interpretations. Creating a space for possibilities.
The understanding in how to evoke imagination is helpful to interaction design, because it can challenge our conceptions of how to challenge the user in their interaction with object and the constitution of meaning.

Escape the Smart City is a critical pervasive game for creating awareness about the implications of AI-surveillance technology in the smart city. It responds to growing concerns over the mass deployment of surveillance cameras that are enhanced with artificial intelligence (AI) which are turning the cities into digital panopticons (Sadowski & Pasquale, 2015). Such concerns are amplified by the central role played by multinational corporations in developing the technologies that are said to render the city “smart”.
The technologies behind AI-surveillance are proprietary and the nature of it is inherently a “black-box” which inhibits public from understanding it and having a say in its deployment. Due to this reason, the citizens that live in the cities with smart surveillance are often left behind not informed enough about the consequences of the pervasive technology in their environment.
This research addresses this lack of awareness by creating an escape room like experience around the city where players locate hidden surveillance cameras, discover algorithmic biases, and try to fool facial detection algorithm in order to go against a fictional all-seeing AI-surveillance system. Consistent with Flanagan’s (2009) critical play model, the 8 problems of AI-surveillance defined in the research are communicated by the game’s procedural rhetoric (Bogost, 2007).
It also questions whether critical pervasive games — which are the combination of critical design (Dunne & Raby, 2013) and pervasive games (Montola et al., 2009) — is possible of merging the ordinary world with the fictional game world to create a safe space to explore complex socio-technical problems in compelling, relatable ways. 
Through the play-test, it was made clear that by providing the players with interactive feedback on how AI-surveillance would perceive the world, the players were able to get a sense of the black boxed nature of AI and ask critical questions about their necessity and consequences. Also, the in-situ experience outside created a heightened awareness of existing surveillance infrastructures.

After it’s invention in 1886, the car has left us with amazing opportunities and progress. But it has become very clear that today’s degree of car use is not sustainable in terms of land and energy use and emissions. Big developments are about to shake up the automotive world, but they do not bring the change that is needed. A traffic jam of electric vehicles is still a traffic jam. Autonomous cars are about to increase the attractiveness of cars and mobility services are mainly competitive with public transport. Many regulations and projects aim to decrease car use and car ownership. But most of them try to address people’s reason by focussing on instrumental motives only. Instead, triggering people’s emotion by means of symbolic affective motives is much more efficient. In this project it is decided to focus on cultural values. Values are strongly tied to emotion and are the most important drivers for people’s behaviour. This design project works with the ViP (Vision in Product Design) design method as guidance, and uses other design and design research methods as input. First, the values of the future user (Mercedes-Benz drivers) are being researched using a qualitative method (Context Mapping) complemented by a quantitative method (Short Schwartz Values Survey). Values most important to Mercedes-Benz drivers are Self-Direction, Security and Benevolence. With the future user in mind and after constructing a future context, a mission statement is formulated: “In a world where AI is valued over human instinct/feelings and urban areas are confronted with severe consequences of climate change, we want MB drivers to embrace travelling with their peers, using sustainable mobility alternatives. In order for them to do so, we need to make sure MB drivers feel their sovereignty is respected, and they feel secure in the changes they are making.” The concept presented in this report is a platform where members form clubs through which they have unlimited access to premium mobility. The most important value propositions of the service are: ‘Unlimited access to premium mobility’, ‘Travel with people you’ve always wanted to meet’, ‘Choosing your own club, feeling at home in your club’, ‘Perform your desired activity’, ‘Growing as a member’, ‘Join in adventure’. The concept was validated by means of presenting the concept as it was ‘already there’, in a folder to do face to face interviews and on a website for an online survey. The in total 65 participants rated the service a 4,3 out of 7. Mercedes-Benz drivers rated the service on average a 3,8 out of 7. Participants were also asked to rate the value propositions of the service. The value propositions that were rated highest all found their roots in the values Self-direction and Security.

This graduation thesis critically reflects on the Smart City. It critiques certain values embedded in the technology used to source and analyse data, and manage the city, when it comes to the world of human experience. The theoretical critique is eventually expressed in a critical design. Applying the values of the Smart City to the feral pigeon.

Fastest growing wine market “Chinese wine market has been growing steadily between 2008-2012, by a constant growth rate of 137%” (Wang, 2018). The importation of wine is expected to grow from 2 million cases in 2007 to 50 million cases in 2017. The potential market is estimated at between 50 million and 250 million Chinese drinkers (Hays, 2015). This headline figure points out that there is a shift in wine consumption from the traditional producer countries, namely western countries to new wine lovers in the US and China. This makes the east Asian wine market particularly interesting for wine retailers across the globe to explore. However, the assumption that a majority of wine consumers in developing wine drinking countries are novice wine drinkers. This suggests there is a lot of room for cross-cultural design (van Boeijen, 2015) and design for food adaption, with novice wine drinkers. Cultural relevance Food and beverages carry history when they are consumed. The act of drinking wine has much resemblance to the culture that one belongs to. “To a Frenchmen, knowing how to drink is a national technique which serves to qualify him, to demonstrate at once his performance, his control and his sociability” (Barthes, Lavers & Cape, 1993). There is convincing historical and contemporary evidence to show that the adoption of ‘foreign’ drinks often involves the adoption of the culturally established drinking patterns (SIRC, 1998). However, there is a debate about: should wine drinking developing countries adopt the same drinking practice from the developed countries, or is it more interesting to encourage them to develop their own drinking rituals relevant to specific drinking context? Who is the target? Culturally Based Wine Illiterates, (abbreviated as CBWI), are defined as the wine drinkers who lack the knowledge, skills and behaviour related to wine. This theory was deducted from the food literacy theory by Vidgen, & Gallegos (2014). Due to the absence of drinking context, and the high barrier to entry in getting to know wine, their confidence in various wine-related practices is affected negatively, hence it becomes more difficult when choosing a wine to consume. This preliminary research question helped to kick start the project: “How to help designers to design a shopping experience for Culturally-Based Wine Illiterates?” However, in the journey of investigating how to design a wine shopping experience. This topic can be broken down into two sub-steps to investigate. First is the human interaction with wine, and the second level is about the customer’s shopping experience with a given wine retail environment. Thereafter, the following sub-questions emerged: Human-wine interaction: Is knowledge of wine required for the consumer to enjoy the wine? What role does culture play in adopting foreign wine consumption practices? What we usually learn from the culture is a develop taste pallet for a particular type of food and habit of eating, how could a wine illiterate find their way in wine drinking? Shopping experience: How does culture shape one’s expectation from a shopping experience? Given the condition that for CBWI, the reference system in the realm of wine is missing, what kind of difficulties do they experience in the shopping experience?

This country will be hugely polarized by 2050, if we do not act. The focus of the public debate is shifting towards differences between groups and people. Politicians exploit popular sentiment for their own success, they polarize in an attempt to give every group a voice. If we keep repeating and emphasizing our differences, it becomes a self-fullling prophecy. This project aims to counteract these developments by showing people commonalities beyond what they can see so they will recognize unity in diversity. It is only a social cohesion warm up a next design should focus on appreciating diversity.

This project is originated from a starting business relationship between &ranj and NIPED, under the management of &Samhoud. In this project &ranj is in the task of gamifying the Persoonlijke Gezondheidscheck (PGC), an online health check platform designed by NIPED, to better persuade their users to change their behaviour and improve their lifestyles. With the help of this platform, users will be more aware of their own health status, they will assess the impact their behaviour makes in their own health and lifestyle, and they will learn how to prevent illnesses and unhealthy habits.