Creativity is becoming increasingly essential in today’s workplaces and organisations. However, though everyone is believed to be creative, not everyone feels confident enough to express their creative ideas. The organisational culture plays a remarkable role in shaping the creative climate. If its core cultural value does not support and encourage creativity, employees may experience a lack of creative confidence. Therefore, to address creative confidence in organisations, it is crucial to study the organisation’s creative culture and implement interventions that are culturally sensitive. For this project, Rabobank and PostNL were selected as the organisation cases, specifically their innovation project teams within the innovation departments as the project focus.

The project was carried out qualitatively to study the innovation contexts of Rabobank and PostNL, in which the main participants consisted of the innovation coaches and coachees from the innovation project teams. By analysing and mapping out the creative cultures of these two companies, several key cultural values were identified. These include: high power division, reverence for company history and traditional way of working, adherence to clear rules and aversion to uncertainty, emphasis on group connections and collaborations, and a drive for success and achievement.

To help the innovation coaches in fostering greater creative confidence in the coachees, an intervention called “CreatOrg workshop” was designed. It is a templated journey (a workshop with 4 activities) that encourages coaches and coachees to reflect on their previous coaching and workshop experiences together. The workshop aimed to increase sensitivity and awareness towards the creative cultural values of ‘care’ and ‘fun’, while inspiring participants to generate potential ideas for fostering creative confidence in future coaching and workshop settings.

Later the concept was evaluated with respondents from Rabobank and PostNL, as well as other relevant stakeholders from different organisations. The results indicated that CreatOrg workshop effectively increased participants’ creative confidence and enhanced their sensitivity and awareness towards both ‘care’ and ‘fun’ creative cultural values. Participants also found it inspiring and acknowledged its potential for long-term use.

Rabobank and PostNL could directly benefit from CreatOrg workshop and the insights from their creative cultures. Other organisations might also find it helpful to reflect on their own creative cultures by studying the demonstrated creative cultural values of Rabobank and PostNL. However, further communication and follow-up validation within Rabobank and PostNL is needed. Future research could utilise the combined cultural model proposed in this project to explore organisation/culture-related subjects. Additionally, the intervention itself could be experimented with more types of organisations in the future.

The average working adult in the Netherlands spends about 42,5 years of their lifetime at work. To make this experience as pleasant as possible, employees spend time finding an organization that can provide a good fit and support their needs. Many organization play into that by providing an Employee Experience (EX) that appeals to potential employees and helps retain them once they join the firm. However, creating a good Employee Experience can be quite challenging due to the necessity to take into account numerous factors such as reward structures, team composition, skill development, and more.
Creating successful EX can provide organizations with happy workers that are more engaged, more creative, do superior work, and that are more likely to continue working at the firm (Ragan & Carder, 2019). With creativity being an important driver of an organization’s innovation capacity, building a strong EX strategy may provide interesting new opportunities for influencing the organization’s performance.
In this thesis, the relationship between two aspects of Employee Experience –well-being and creativity –is explored. Starting by examining well-being and creativity theory I developed a conceptual model. This laid the groundwork for the investigation of the context of the client company Thinkwiseand paved the way for identifying various design opportunities for positive change. The design opportunities laid the foundations for a design intervention shaped to embody, enable, and implement an EX-strategy that can boost the innovation capacity of Thinkwise.
The design opportunities that could boost creativity and wellbeing at Thinkwise constitute various new behaviours that need to be enabled for individual contributors, middle management, and top management.
-Individual contributors need to be supported in maintaining high levels of motivation;
-Middle managers can support this by improving the ways in which ideas are conceived, managed and implemented, and;
-Top management needs to actively manage the creative climate in the organization to support the creative and innovative efforts throughout all layers of Thinkwise.
The proposed intervention supports these objectives by providing tools and strategies for supporting idea creation, idea sharing, building an understanding of creative processes and clarifying the roles and activities that contribute to an innovative workplace. It consists of a poster describing the stages of the creative process, a tool for evaluating ideas, and a document that captures the tools and specific context and theory insights.

The current form of our democracy is not inclusive. Therefore, local governments try to enable political participation (Slingerland et al., 2020). Political participatory forms do not seem to have a great impact on policy, despite positive intentions (Edens & Klabbers, 2019). Youth is often not involved in political participation and policy-making, 6 out of 10 youngsters between 18 and 25 feel politically powerless. These numbers are even higher for MBO students (Binnema et al., 2007). Citizenship education shows promises to increase the political participation of youth over time (Slijkhuis, 2021). Citizenship education in the Netherlands is currently in need of improvement as well as Dutch students’ citizenship skills (Onderwijsinspectie, 2022).
This graduation project has researched citizenship education and the political participation of students. The project aims to increase political participation by youngsters through the means of citizenship education.
Extended qualitative research, using the Design Thinking Method (Chasanidou et al., 2015) and Self Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000). helped to create an in-depth understanding of the context. The empathic approach of the project highlighted the complexity of the problem. The main insights showed that the development of youths’ citizenship skills happens in a complex system. Learning these skills happens all around, in multiple contexts, in direct and indirect ways. Developing citizenship skills does not simply happen in citizenship classes.
The in-depth data was translated into a system map. The map visualizes and clarifies the complexity of the context researched. An online version of the map allows for easy communication of the insights in a structured and visual way. The system map communicates several aspects. First of all, the map consists of two main aspects: situational contexts, that students encounter and two feelings that shape a political attitude. The feeling of understanding and the feeling of belonging influence the extent to which students feel intrinsically motivated to participate politically. The situational contexts and their corresponding factors influence the fulfillment of these two feelings.
The design phase is supported by the map for thorough understanding. The map facilitates understanding during the design phase. The design goal is to strengthen the understanding of the relation between MBO students’ daily lives and the municipality, by facilitating a moment to see this relation, while performing an activity in class. With a desired effect in mind, to make sure students feel competent to be part of politics and be of influence.
Various ideas are generated in ideation activities involving multiple stakeholders. Three design directions are considered and narrowed down to the final design direction: a citizenship program in class. This design direction was tested iteratively in six user tests. Resulting in the final design: ‘de Meester Burger’, a citizenship program that strengthens the understanding of MBO students’ daily lives and the municipality.
de Meester Burger is a tool to be used in class. Students work in small groups on municipal themes of choice. The steps of the tool guide students through an exploratory process enabling them to explore their own opinions by facilitating a tangible conversation. Students discover, share, and discuss various insights concerning the chosen theme. The tool supports a what-do-you-think and learning-by-doing approach, delivering advice to the municipality based on insights and ideas generated throughout the steps. Overall de Meester Burger aims to create a meaningful learning experience in class increasing students feeling of understanding and belonging towards the municipality.

This graduation project was in cooperation with Ontzorghuis, a Dutch charity that is focused on supporting the parents of children with special needs (CSN). It is crucial that CSN parents receive extra support, especially in the early stages when the child's diagnosis is still unclear. Parents of a CSN have extra responsibilities and care, which can easily overwhelm them and lead to burnout. In fact, 78% of CSN parents started working less after getting their child, and 60% ended up overworked and burned out (Okma, Naads, Vergeer & Berns, 2014) . Their extra care can also lead to an escalation: if the parents' well being is declined too much, the CSN has to be placed out of home. However, currently the Dutch care system is focused and structured around the child with special needs, not on the parents. Parents of special needs children are currently not seen as informal carers, giving them no right to extra support (Ross, 2020). This leaves the parents in a vulnerable position. The goal of this project is to use systemic design to develop a strategy for Ontzorghuis, to have a long-term impact on these parents.

After researching the context, several key actors in the system around CSN parents were identified: the national government, municipal councils, the care domain, charities and network. Ontzorghuis is part of the charity actor. For each of the actors, one or more interviews were conducted with someone working in this domain, 12 in total. The insights of the interviews were combined with those from literature research, to analyse the interactions between the actors. This forms the basis of the system map. The map consists of 25 points, representing the challenges actors have to face together. This system map was then used to investigate the possibilities for systemic impact for CSN parents. Leverage points were identified, and used to map out future interventions. The insights were converted into an actionable strategy for Ontzorghuis.

The first step of the strategy is to make CSN parents visible within society. The graduation design therefore had the goal of helping actors reflect on their role in the system around CSN parents. Storytelling was chosen as the mechanism to convey the system, as "storytelling allows for thorough understanding of complex systems with limited time investment and without requiring expertise on systems design" (Talgorn & Hendriks, 2021, p. 50). Using storytelling also allowed room for the empathy needed for this vulnerable but inspiring target group. The end result is a children's book for any actors of the system, using a metaphor to tell the story of a CSN parent interacting with the system, and inviting readers to reflect.

New approaches to overcome complex societal problems of today are the need of the hour, especially to enable the transition to a sustainable future (Concilio & Tosoni, 2019). Here, social innovations present new ways to tackle global problems on a local scale; that when put together, can create a transformation on a systemic level while shaping societal beliefs, routines and behaviours. Scaling these social innovations is important to enable the requisite large-scale transformations. This project builds on a specific scaling strategy that aims to shift cultural values, mindsets and beliefs- namely, scaling deep. Given that scaling deep is an abstract and intangible concept, the project aims to develop an actionable strategy that supports social innovators in their scaling journey. The key research question being: How can design be used to transform the abstract and theoretical concept of scaling deep into something more tangible and implementable in order to make it usable for social innovations? In the first phase of the project and this report, the phenomenon of scaling deep is explored from a theoretical and practical perspective. Qualitative research (carried out by using a research through design approach) reveals that engaging new stakeholders is one of the biggest hurdles for social innovators wanting to scale their innovation into a new context. Here, scaling deep is a means to overcome this hurdle. Literature review highlights ‘common ground’ and ‘community building’ as two key conditions for social innovators to achieve impact at a larger scale (Yee & White, 2016; Beers et al., 2006). However, at the individual or micro level, a change in mindsets (and frames) is necessary which starts with the awareness and articulation about these implicit concepts (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2002; Buchanan & Kern, 2017; Hay et al., 2007; Dorst 2011). Building upon these insights, scaling deep is further defined as an internal transformation process as well as a social process that focuses on alignment rather than forcing perspectives onto someone. In addition, friction, in the sense of realising conflicting frames, is seen as an enabler for change. This phenomenon is called fruitful friction. Here, friction is the notion of becoming aware of your implicit frame and realising the difference to other peoples’ frames, which is seen as a first step to create openness for change. These characteristics are captured in a conceptual framework, ‘Fruitful friction towards common ground’, in order to use fruitful friction as a strategy to scale deep. The framework proposes to deliberately trigger friction fruitfully as a lever for change to enable the emergence of common ground and allow social innovators to scale deep. In the second and third phase of the project and the last part of this report, the conceptual framework is translated into a design toolkit ‘Are we on the same page?’, making the strategy of scaling deep actionable. It triggers people to express their tacit perspective (frames) which facilitates the emergence and capturing of common ground. ‘Are we on the same page?’ is a process enabling toolkit that helps social innovators to conduct an online workshop using fruitful friction to reach a shared understanding with new stakeholders. In sum, this thesis unveils the potential of fruitful friction as a strategy to scale deep, allowing social innovators and their stakeholders to reach a common ground. The framework makes the abstract and theoretical concept of scaling deep more tangible; while the toolkit, helps social innovators to practically implement scaling deep into their projects.

The role of data in the strategic design field is unquestionable and essential, being a catalyst for creativity and decision making. Design teams gather large amounts of data at the beginning of projects, to understand how the context of the problem looks like and how they can get inspired for the ideation of the outcomes. In the context of this Master thesis, data is the first pillar of an input-output processing system, which is used in the field of strategic design (process) and can result in new business models (output). Until now, design practitioners have relied highly on manual data saving (whiteboards, post-its and notebooks). Digital data saving, on the other hand, can ensure that data and the embedded knowledge are not lost or damaged and that can be easily retrieved. Especially within bigger teams where there are multiple data and knowledge creators, it so happens that the knowledge gap between novice and expert designers is large. This typically results in the hindering of quality of the outcomes of design projects, as team members are limited to their own data and knowledge accessible to them, as opposed to the entirety of the team. The second pillar is the process, referred to as strategic design. Business Models Inc. (BMI), a design consultancy for strategy and innovation in Amsterdam, makes use of a variant of strategic design, which is known as Business Design. At BMI, data is used extensively in the understanding phase of the design project and ideation, where the goal is not only to get the Business Design team inspired but also the client, who co-creates with them. The type of data that they make use of is, therefore, a combination of quantitative (e.g. consumer surveys, market outlooks, financial statements of the client) and qualitative (e.g. their curated collection of business models, SWOT analysis, customer interviews and co-creation sessions). This type of data helps the team create new business models and value propositions, which are the output of the input-output processing system. There is an increasing trend in the design industry to start incorporating data science practices, allowing designers to have access to new insights which are up to date and can be shared among team members. This has been proposed in literature and applied already in the design industry, for instance, design consultancies already combining data science with design thinking tools. The premise of this project starts with wondering how the ideation of new business models and value propositions could be further enriched if a data science approach would continue to be welcomed in the design field. The outcome of this project has explored what the best utilization of data would be within the design process, hinting at an exploited usage of data in ideation. The final concept is a 3-horizon roadmap that exposes how BMI could firstly, organize their data; secondly, find it as efficiently as possible, and thirdly, inspire a new customer segment in the creation of new business models and value propositions.

This thesis is the result of a graduation project that researched the field of Visual Thinking and facilitation in collaboration with Flatland Agency. Flatland is a design consultancy that facilitates co-creation sessions to overcome complexity in groups. Flatland has existed for 9 years and their service has moved from graphic recording to facilitation of co-creation sessions to create and activate strategies visually. The professionalisation of Flatland’s services has resulted in a need to redefine their service offering. However, Flatland’s growth has resulted in an increased variety of projects and project outcomes. Flatland indicated that a more explicit and systematic approach to session design could help to support their methodology. Such a systematic approach could support Flatland’s methods as proof of concept. Thus, the initial aim of this project was to: develop guidelines to help Flatland design and facilitate their co-creation sessions more deliberately. Qualitative research of the context of Flatland showed that Flatland’s facilitators are designing every session anew and completely based on their own experiences and knowledge. Besides, Flatland’s facilitators have different focus points when designing for the same context. Moreover, Flatland is not sharing knowledge structurally about the core of their business, facilitation, and session design. Thus, these insights identified a threat of knowledge scarcity for Flatland. This means a potential loss of the company’s capital will occur when facilitators leave the company without sharing their unique knowledge with other facilitators. To overcome this threat sharing knowledge is crucial. A reframe is proposed to overcome this threat. Thus, the central aim of this project became: Design a reflection process for Flatland in which their creative facilitators (and designers) can iterate on their visual thinking session design and tools, to enable a more deliberate design approach to Flatland’s sessions. A structured reflection process is designed based on literature on reflection and helps to overcome the threat of knowledge scarcity of Flatland. This reflection process supports the facilitators and designers of Flatland in creating tangible insights from their session in order to share this knowledge about facilitation with other colleagues. By doing so, the facilitators become aware of the variety of facilitation styles, and their benefits. The threat of knowledge scarcity can be resolved if all facilitators know the Flatland’s different session design approaches. The design of this thesis consists of three parts: the structured reflection process, an implementation strategy for this process and two reflection tools. The implementation strategy is designed to ease the reflection process into the Flatland’s way of working. It starts with an awareness campaign to make Flatland aware of their lack of sharing knowledge about facilitation. The first tool is a reflection template that is designed to make Flatland go through a full reflection cycle. The second tool is an explainer that is designed based on the literature of Visual thinking, facilitation, and co-creation. This explainer aims to create a shared language for Flatland’s reflections. The awareness campaign and the reflection tools are validated with facilitators and designers of Flatland.

From the internet to the sensors in wearable devices, people leave their digital traces behind both online and offline. Data is getting ubiquitous and cheap. Some new fields, like business intelligence, are recognized and emerging. As a trustworthy and precise material, data is also a valuable source for designers. It provides accurate and detailed data on users’ behaviors and brings some new perspectives on users’ needs in the design process. Meanwhile, big data is a new field for most designers. Most designers, especially novice designers, often lack big data related knowledge and skills. When they face big data, they usually feel clueless and anxious. It is difficult for them to deal with big data well. This thesis's foundational objective is to support designers in applying big data in the design process effectively and confidently. It is about keeping exploring the possibilities of design and making sure that design stays at the cutting edge of the big data era. This project focused explicitly on novice designers who are inexperienced with projects involving big data.

To provide this appropriate support, the key pain point was targeted from designers’ big data related project experiences, which is the feeling of being overwhelmed by big data when designers face it. In the end, I designed the data management platform to help designers relieve this feeling and have a better performance at big data involved projects.

This thesis will introduce the project process. First, I did the literature review to learn about big data, how the relationship between big data and design is, and how the relationship between big data and design process is. Afterward, Context Mapping was conducted to learn about the designers’ experiences in applying big data in the design process. With the literature review and Context Mapping, I understood the project from both a theoretical and design practice perspectives. Then, I held a session to explore the problem space. The session was organized with designers to learn about their difficulties when dealing with big data.

After the session, I realized that the biggest challenge for designers is being overwhelmed by data when translating big data into insights. It results from the massive big data content and cluelessness when designers face big data. It affects designers’ efficiency and confidence in the design process. To explore the solution space of the challenge, I held a co-creation session with novice designers.

In the end, Data Management Platform was proposed. The concept's goals are to relieve designers from data overwhelmingness and assist designers in dealing with big data. The Data Management Platform can provide designers an overview of the project and prevent designers from feeling lost in the big data content. By guiding designers to apply big data in an appropriate process and assisting designers with some tools to collaborate with different people, designers can confidently and effectively make full use of big data. In the end, the concept was evaluated.

This graduation project is a collaboration between the Inclusive City Hub (part of Delft Design Labs) and the Gemeente Delft. This project focuses on the topic of participation for creating people–centered cities. The initial problem definition of the project was to understand how the municipality of Delft can design with the people of the city by moving towards a participatory approach such that they can address the needs of people at optimal moments during the process.

Based on the analysis and findings from research the problem addressed by this project was redefined. The redefined problem was how can we reduce the threshold of the municipality to embrace and adopt participation as a part of their daily way of working. From this question the two problem areas to be addressed were defined as; one, a lack in ability of the municipality to act on participatory frameworks and two, a lack of willingness of the municipality to make participation a part of their culture.

The resulting solution and final outcome proposed was to design a sensitizing participation journal or booklet for use by the people working in the municipality. The main goal of this journal is to equip folks at the municipality to act on the participatory framework of Delfts Doen by means of the tools provided in it. The journal also hopes to inspire and sensitize the municipality about participation, paving the way to increase the willingness and bring about a culture change in the municipality regarding participation.

To conclude, the challenges with participatory design lie in the adoption of a new mindset within large organizations such as municipalities, since this mindset strongly challenges the existing power structure and hierarchy within an organization. It is expected that the findings of this thesis can contribute to this knowledge by building on how these challenges can be overcome by focusing on the needs that must be fulfilled for people working in organizations such as municipalities.

Organisations need to go through continuous change in order to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage. This change is often expressed in a vision which should engage and involve all stakeholders. However, implementing change successfully turns out to be a challenge since two in three change processes stall. Ink Strategy is a visual consulting agency that helps organisations to formulate their vision. They use visual thinking to create a shared image of the vision, with a tangible visualisation as concrete output. This is accomplished in co-creation sessions with their clients. While vision formulation is important, Ink aspires to extend their service to later phases of the change process. They want to offer a more holistic solution to their clients and collaborate on longer projects. However, Ink’s clients approach them as visualisers and not change consultants. To overcome this, Ink needs to discover the needs of their clients and develop their service accordingly. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate how Ink can extend their visual thinking services to add value in later phases of the process of organisational change. To reach this aim, literature research, internal and external analysis, observations and client interviews were performed to find the strengths and weaknesses of Ink and the challenges their clients face in the change process. Ink’s strengths and their clients’ challenges were matched to form opportunities. The most promising opportunities for Ink Strategy are:
Planning the change;
Translating vision to daily work;
Training ambassadors;
Training and activating people;
Sharing results;
Changing daily work routines.
These opportunities provide a general answer to the aim of this research. The opportunity “Changing daily work routines” was developed into the new service “Redesigning Routines” to show more specifically how Ink can extend their portfolio. Redesigning Routines is a service that follows Ink’s services on vision formulation. The aim of the service is to translate the abstract vision to concrete, daily work, help people to understand the values that drive their behaviour and give them direction on how to change. This is achieved by a workshop with a co-creative, visual approach. The workshop provides a safe space for reflection, helping people to make their values explicit and formulate concrete steps for change. The end result of the workshop is a visualisation of a newly designed work routine, that is in line with the new vision, and a concrete list of actions to ensure people will start to experiment with desired behaviour. Eventually, this should result in behavioural change among employees, to accomplish the company vision. The service connects well to Ink’s current portfolio since it bridges the gap between an abstract vision and concrete, daily work that needs to change. The service mostly helps to empower people: it helps them to understand underlying values that drive behaviour and to gain direction on how to change. This approach might be rather unique: consultancy firms do provide services on change activation, but they do not consciously take into account the underlying needs of employees.

More and more people are flying. The industry increases at a rate of 5% per year and is predicted to keep on doing so for the next 10 years (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d.). In order to offer their customers more destinations to travel to, an increasing number of airlines are cooperating with each other within alliances. SkyTeam, the company for which this project was executed, currently is the second biggest airline alliance worldwide. In 2012 SkyTeam introduced SkyPriority: a set of eight privileges for customers with a first or business class ticket and for customers within the highest tiers of the airlines’ frequent flyer programs (FFPs). These SkyPriority privileges, such as priority check-in and priority boarding, make alliance-wide travelling faster and more convenient. However, after the introduction of this service in 2012, no new services were added for this group of Highly Valued Customers (HVCs).
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The resulting challenge for SkyTeam is to develop a proposition for SkyPriority customers that fits the desires of the wide variety of customers and is differentiating among other highly innovative airlines and alliances.
In this graduation project, possible directions for such a proposition are explored.
APPROACH
To gain insights in SkyTeam, extensive research was done on the company, SkyPriority and the industry in which SkyTeam operates. In addition, a case study was performed on one of the member airlines in order to map out the implications of the different types of partnerships and regulations on the customer. To gain insight in the journey of SkyPriority customers, 26 SkyPriority customers were qualitatively interviewed. In addition, 50 SkyPriority customers participated in a quantitative study, based on the ‘Elements of Value’ theory of Almquist et al. (2016). Hereafter, all insights from the customer research analyses were combined and led to the concept of a digital personal assistant. After an iterative process with feedback from the member airlines, multiple evaluation sessions and user testing with a mock-up, the concept was developed into a final proposition: Cura.
SOLUTION
Cura is a digital personal assistant that can be integrated as functionality into the mobile application of the 20 member airlines. It aims to create consistency between journeys with multiple airlines and reduce the experienced stress and hassle when travelling. By automatically collecting upcoming flight-details from the e-mail inbox of the customer, the assistant is able to provide him with the right information at the right time throughout the whole journey. In addition, it shows the customer the privileges he can make use of, taking into account his cabin service, FFP status and the airport he is visiting. By doing so, Cura aligns the customer’s expectations of the trip with the actual experience. Moreover, the assistant can be used regardless of the airline the customer is flying with, as long as it is a SkyTeam airline. As a consequence, the customer doesn’t have to download an extra app, but can keep using the app of his most frequently used airline. This not only increases the relevance of the apps of the 20 airlines when travelling with multiple airlines, but also creates consistency between the different journeys of the customer.
IMPLEMENTATION
In order to deliver the most accurate information possible, several requirements that are important for the well-functioning of Cura were listed. To realize the assistant, it is recommended to initially break the proposition down into a minimum viable product (MVP). Although this version of the assistant wouldn’t yet be able to give intelligent suggestions (based on e.g. personal preferences, time, location and past behavior), it would already fulfill the most urgent needs of the customer: taking away stress and confusion and creating consistency between the different journeys. After this, the recommended improvements will result in a more personalized and complete version of the assistant.
VALUE FOR SKYTEAM AND THE MEMBER AIRLINES
The service increases the customers’ benefit when travelling with the SkyTeam airlines, fosters the loyalty of existing SkyPriority customers and could attract new customers. Moreover, the concept responds to the wish of the member airlines to become more digital, but also allows them to customize and deliver the service as being their own. Worth mentioning is that there currently is no other alliance that offers such a product to its HVCs. Therefore introducing Cura would, as desired, differentiate SkyTeam among highly innovative airlines and alliances.