This research project created a tool designed to empower "brussen", the siblings of children with special needs, aged 7 to 12 to improve their visibility and recognition among their peers through play. Often overlooked within their families due to the primary focus on their siblings' needs, brussen face unique challenges regardless of the type of special need. They can find recognition and support in each other, but the term "brussen" is not widely known, complicating their ability to connect with peers. This project adopts a participatory design and research-through-design approach, engaging brussen in co-design sessions to ensure their perspectives shape the final outcome.

The research highlights the importance of visibility among brussen, with empowerment and play emerging as key elements within the design process. The design activities themselves contribute to knowledge generation, which helps to better understand the complex context of brussen. The project developed a personalized "ByBrus backpack" with velcro buttons, allowing brussen to express their identities and control their visibility in a playful manner. This personalization provides a sense of ownership and autonomy, as the buttons symbolize the unique stories, emotions, and experiences of the brussen. Through this approach, brussen can show their unique experiences, ultimately enhancing their visibility. By addressing the need for social recognition and support, the ByBrus backpack aims to create a sense of community and mutual understanding among brussen, contributing to their overall well-being and resilience.

This graduation project focuses on enhancing resident engagement in innovation testing at The Green Village (TGV), a living lab situated on the TU Delft campus. TGV serves as a field lab for testing sustainable innovations in real-life environments. While residents play a crucial role by providing feedback on these innovations, they often feel disconnected from the process, perceiving their contributions as undervalued or obligatory. This project aims to explore how residents can feel more valued and engaged in innovation testing and the broader TGV community.

The research was guided by two key sub-questions:
1. What challenges do residents currently face in the innovation testing process?
2. What factors contribute to resident engagement within the TGV community?

To answer these questions, the research employed a human-centered design approach, utilizing interviews, focus groups, and auto-ethnographic research. The findings revealed several key challenges that hinder resident engagement. Residents expressed dissatisfaction with the unstructured feedback process, a lack of clear communication, and limited recognition for their contributions. These factors led residents to undermine their roles, influenced by perceptions of how others view their contributions, compounded by the fact that their primary need is housing, not innovation.

The research on factors influencing resident engagement within the TGV community highlighted that community itself is both a cause and an effect of other engagement factors. Based on these findings and relevant literature, a strategic approach was developed to leverage community as a vehicle for connecting residents to the innovation process. Consequently, a community-based resident engagement framework was created to inform and support TGV in developing strategies and interventions that foster resident engagement. This framework is structured around four key elements: Identity, which helps residents form a collective identity within TGV; Interaction, which encourages meaningful exchanges between residents, employees, and innovators; Influence, which reassures residents that their contributions matter; and Impact, which ensures residents can see the tangible outcomes of their input. Together, these elements work to create a sense of community, serving as the foundation for increasing resident participation in innovation activities.

In addition to the framework, several actionable tools were developed to enhance resident engagement. These include the Moments of Intervention-Opportunity Map, which identifies key moments for TGV employees to foster engagement; a sensitizing booklet designed to help TGV employees understand residents’ perspectives and better align their roles in the innovation process; and a quick ideation template grounded in the framework. This template enables TGV employees to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges residents face and identify issues requiring attention. Accompanying this is an evaluation template to assess which ideas could have the most positive impact. Further recommendations involve integrating the framework into TGV’s innovation testing process and conducting additional research to evaluate and iterate the tools for maximum effectiveness. The research also uncovered interesting areas for exploration, including employees’ perspectives on community building within TGV and the influence of gender differences in perceiving empathy.

In conclusion, this project underscores the significance of aligning resident needs with TGV’s innovation goals. By fostering a stronger sense of community and ensuring that residents feel valued, TGV can cultivate a more engaged and motivated resident base, ultimately enhancing the success of its sustainable innovation testing. The framework and tools developed provide a foundational starting point for TGV to establish a more user-driven and collaborative living lab environment.

In special needs families, family dynamics are slightly different from the dynamics in other families. A child with special health care or educational needs requires a lot of attention and special care treatment from all family members. The parents‘ attention is mainly shifted to the care needs of the brother or sister and the siblings are mostly on their own (Okma, Naafs, Vergeer, & Berns, 2014). In Germany, 6.1 % of all children between 10 and 18 years old are officially caring for one of their family members. This means that in every school class at least 1 to 2 pupils are affected (Bühring, 2018).
Literature points to a wide range of positive as well as negative influences on the
emotional well-being of these siblings taking over care responsibilities at home, namely anxiety, depression, behavioral and social issues, but also strengths of character, such as empathy and kindness (Giallo et al., 2014, Martinez et. al, 2022, Milevsky & Singer, 2022).

This project focused on the personal experiences of siblings at a young age (6-12 years) growing up alongside a child with special needs. By conducting literature research, context mapping according to Sanders & Stappers (2012) with children, and
supplementary interviews with parents the following underlying core values of siblings have been identified: 1. Feeling understood, 2. The need for adult attention and feeling cared for, 3. Just being themselves. Briefly, growing up with a special needs sibling comes along with the challenge of truly feeling and acting like a child.
These insights resulted in the design vision and goal for Ontzorghuis, a Dutch organization offering workshops, retreats and reflective tools for special needs families: Designing for playful and engaging experiences to support siblings (age 6 -12) to assume their role as a child by empowering and facilitating the sibling through interpersonal connections. Through a research-through-design approach (Stappers & Giaccardi, 2017) the essential interactions of playfully sharing secrets in the form of affirmations and personal wishes with each other, were identified. The final design proposal resulted in the storytelling tool “Robin” to create a special bond between siblings and their parents. The playful tool enables children and their parents to create secret and surprising stories together that may involve personal needs or dreams of the child covered in the personality of Robin. The storylines are built upon research insights and the final story aims to serve as a conversation starter to understand the child’s perception and wellbeing of the current situation.
A limitation of this project is that within the scope of this master thesis the final design proposal could not be evaluated with siblings in order to try out the interactions, nor the intended context, the sibling’s home. Therefore, it is recommended to further evaluate the different parts of the design proposal in collaboration with siblings, their parents and sibling experts to prove the effectiveness in diverse contexts in order to create space to feel like a child.