This thesis explores expanding human-centered design to a more-than-human approach to enhance biodiversity in the neighbourhood Oud-Mathenesse in Rotterdam, focusing on the shared gardens. The research uses symbiosis as a lens, aiming to improve coexistence between humans and urban nature. Oud-Mathenesse faces declining social cohesion, which among other things, furthers the disconnect between people and nature.

The envisioned symbiotic cities emphasize rebuilding a sense of community and shared feeling of ownership over the garden. However, the initial step is to strengthen connections among residents by envisioning the future of the garden while acknowledging our historical roots. The final intervention—a participatory installation—highlights commonalities between residents and urban nature, encouraging contributions to the local environment and fostering symbiotic interactions.

The research outlines three key strategies for a more-than-human design approach. First by prioritizing the relationships between humans, nature, and the environment, secondly by adopting a historical perspective to understand past human-nature interactions and by drawing inspiration from symbiotic future visions for a more inclusive and sustainable world. These strategies were compiled into a card deck to inspire other designers. While human-centered design remains dominant, the current environmental crises necessitate incorporating non-human elements into the design process. Although this approach is still emerging, further research and experimentation are needed to achieve true inclusivity.

This thesis explores the challenges of citizen participation in renewable energy projects in the context of the LIFE project and neighbourhood Venserpolder. The research is composed of a literature review on participation and an ethnographic study in Venserpolder and in LIFE project between February and July 2022.
The research resulted in the identification of nine main challenges, with several nuanced sub-challenges. These were divided into four challenge spaces describing the context in which these challenges arise. The most important challenge was to “Find the touchpoints between residents’ lives and LIFE project”. Finding those touchpoints will raise appreciation of participation in LIFE project and improve the quality of the participation.
The ethnographic research in the community centres of Venserpolder and one community centre in Holendrecht, provided knowledge about how residents currently participate in their community, which is something LIFE project can learn from.
This knowledge has been transferred to the members of the LIFE project team through a specially designed workshop in which the participants explored the challenges and reflected on how these challenges are relevant to their project. The workshop concluded with clear future steps the project can take. This workshop can be used further to continuously improve awareness around participation challenges in LIFE project, but also in other, similar projects.
It is recommended to explore how residents experience energy in their daily lives and how you can talk about energy, without talking about energy.

This project is focussed on a design for stimulating interaction amongst passengers in the Seabubble. The Seabubble is an autonomous hydrofoil that is able to fly above water. The Seabubble can transport 4 to 5 passengers on inland waterways. The hydrofoil-technology creates a whole new travel-experience because it provides very stable and silent travel conditions.Haven-Stad is used as a case-study. This water-rich area in het Westelijk Havengebied of Amsterdam will be transformed into a mix of residential- and workplaces. The Seabubble can make community sharing possible within this area.The ViP-method served as the main research & design method to create a future-oriented context for the design. Additionally a creative session and Minimal Viable Products supported the designing phase. The VIP-method requires a construction of a future context in which the design is implemented. This context is created by means of literature-research, a survey and interviews. This resulted in a context in which the challenge of the design lies in connecting 2 divergent type of individual-oriented passengers: the passengers differ in their preference regarding (continuous) technical development, like autonomous vehicles.Additionally a detailed description of the desired interaction is required. The easiest interaction for individual type of passengers is a spontaneous interaction. This spontaneous interaction is described by an analogy: The interplay of confidence and doubt during improvisation.The creative session led to the first ideas of how to exploit the journey by Seabubble as a social stimulus between neighbours of Haven-Stad. This session resulted in several design directions. These directions are used for MVP-testing in which low-fidelity prototypes, in test set-ups, test if the ideas would give the desired effect in practice. The obtained insights are translated into a list of requirements as a guideline for a design for the Seabubble and to provide as tools for stakeholders in the field of shared autonomous vehicles. For this last reason, all the insights are bundled into a guide in a generic state.MVP-testing showed that a certain amount of (cooperative) control provides a motivation for undertaking interaction. This insight was used, together with the list of requirements, to design a control-system for the Seabubble: the SpeedBubble. It facilitates interaction by requiring passengers to cooperate in order to have a sense of control on the sailing speed.The SpeedBubble is a projection that indicates the speed of the Seabubble. The passenger can choose to interfere with the control of the autonomous Seabubble by means of the SpeedBubble; they can collect ‘bubbles’ by moving their hands orfeet. The amount of control depends on the amount of collaboration since the SpeedBubble can only be controlled when the passengers act in successive order (regarding their seating position).The evaluation of the SpeedBubble concept was conducted amongst neighbours in a test set-up. The test showed that the concept stimulates interaction in a spontaneous way. Both divergent type of passengers were actively involved.The SpeedBubble concept could be offered as a customization-option for parties that would want to implement Seabubbles in community sharing contexts.

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.