This master’s thesis investigates how to improve product care practices for Technical Outdoor Garments (TOG) among consumers. Working with Bever, the Netherlands’ leading outdoor retailer, the research examines ways to extend product lifespans through better maintenance. The study identifies key barriers preventing proper TOG care and develops The Buitenmens Sherpa, a solution to make TOG care more accessible and routine.

The thesis provides a comprehensive overview of TOG, including waterproof, down-filled, and synthetic-fill garments, as well as the importance of Durable Water Repellent (DWR) treatments. It examines current product care practices, the role of care labels, and the specific washing and drying requirements for TOG. The research utilizes the Fogg Behavior Model to analyze consumer behavior regarding product care and explores related work in the field of sustainable consumption..

By examining Bever’s sustainability initiatives, consumer behavior patterns, and circular economy principles, this thesis proposes a notification system that reminds users when TOG need care and makes the maintenance process more accessible. This solution aims to maximize garment longevity, minimize environmental impact, and advance circular economy practices in outdoor apparel.

Due to economic prosperity and population growth, consumption levels have increased particularly in affluent regions, surpassing planetary boundaries and causing significant ecological damage. Recently, researchers have advocated for a sufficiency approach, which aims to reduce consumption to essential levels only fulfilling basic needs. One example of a sufficiency behaviour is the re-use of food leftovers. Food waste reduction behaviours, in particular eating leftovers, are very exemplary measures to take to reach a sufficient lifestyle. By eating leftovers, less new food needs to be bought, bringing down the level of consumption. This thesis explores the drivers and barriers to re-using food leftovers and defines strategies for designing effective interventions. A literature review informed the creation of a initial conceptual model based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, Norm Activation Model, and other frameworks.

To evaluate if the initial model should be adjusted, interviews were conducted. These interviews were analysed using Thematic Analysis, revealed three themes: (1) difficulties of organizing, (2) doing the right thing, and the (3) ascribed value of leftover food. After the model had a final configuration, the model was tested through PLS-SEM, confirming six out of seven hypotheses and identifying five key factors: (1) attitudes, (2) personal norms, (3) skills, (4) awareness of consequences, and (5) perceived health risks. Household organization emerged as an additional critical factor from the interviews.

Design strategies were formulated for each of these six areas, focusing on positive perceptions, ethical beliefs, food safety confidence, skill improvement, and organizational support. An ideation session with design students generated six intervention concepts, which were further developed by the researcher. By addressing these key areas, the proposed interventions aim to foster sustainable behaviors and significantly reduce food waste. This research highlights the importance of rethinking food consumption and waste, promoting a culture of sufficient consumption.

Royal Delft Museum is the museum for Delftware in the Netherlands. It has opened its’ renovated doors in the midst of the pandemic and is mostly populair among foreign visitors. Recently, they have also expressed their wish to better cater to the interests and needs of the domestic public as well. This sparked the opportunity for this thesis project: increasing the attractiveness of Royal Delft Museum for domestic visitors. Extensive research has been done and resulted in several design guidelines which can be found at the end of every chapter. These guidelines were used for the final design.

The project started with an initial exploration of the context of Royal Delft Museum and their customer journey. Secondly, a theoretical framework about museum visitors and their reasons for visiting a museum was developed. Additional research has been conducted to discover more about the societal impact museums have and what challenges they want to overcome in the future.

Data has been gathered about the visitors that have been visiting Royal Delft Museum in order to determine which domestic target group proved the most promising to attract, and thus, which people to interview. Interviews were conducted using the contextmapping method and the insights were clustered. Ideas were iteratively developed and two creative sessions were held; one with the museum, the other one with a group of IDE students.

This eventually lead to a strategic roadmap and the final concept Transform. Transform is an open, creative space which can best be described as a combination of an artist-in-residency and a space for future museum development. The main purpose of Transform is to provide a platform which showcases more diverse perspectives and cultural expressions on a variety of topics linked to ceramics.
Transform is a space which allows for collaborations between artists and the museum. Through Transform, the museum is able to facilitate a space which is beneficial for the museum as well as artists and visitors. It helps the museum to better understand their visitors and to cater to their needs and beliefs. It gives artists a platform and interactions with visitors.

In the validation phase, the designed meaning of Transform and its desirability were tested through interviews with participants. These were among the same participants who also took part in the contextmapping interviews.
The meaning proved to be communicated well; The participants thought Transform was a valuable addition to the museum because it provided a new perspective on the museum experience due to its innovative character. It was found that experimenting with and promoting the events in Transform were crucial for it to be a succes.

In the discussion and conclusion the results are reviewed based on the impact Transform could have on attracting visitors. Things to do differently next time are addressed. Finally, recommendations are formulated for future development of Transform by Royal Delft Museum.

The objective of this project was to design a game that facilitates the discovery of each other’s intimacy. To be even more specific the goal was to create an interactive game that makes it easier for people to talk about their intimacy in an open, non-judgmental and playful way. Eventually, by playing this threshold lowering and accessible game, it helps people to discover each other in terms of intimacy and which would hopefully increase people’s sexual pleasure.

A transition towards a sustainable food system needs to happen to ensure people can live a healthy life on this planet. Picnic as a retailer in the food system is the bridge between producers and consumers of food products. Many people hold values which are in line with the food transition, which means they care for others, the environment, and their health. During the purchase of food however, these values are not always acted upon. This can be described as a value-action gap. There is an opportunity for Picnic to support customers in closing the value-action gap for food-transition friendly grocery shopping.

There is a knowledge gap around what the values are that are important to Dutch customers when online grocery shopping, and which hurdles are present in the service of Picnic to foster the food transition. An exploratory study amongst Picnic customers shows the hurdles are formed by a lack consideration, confidence, and information. Furthermore, other values can be more important and there can be hesitancy towards change. To overcome these, dedicated moments should be created in the shopping journey to consider values. The design statement therefore is:

I want to design an experience for Picnic customers who have values in line with the food transition but do not fully act upon them, by providing them with a moment to reflect and adapt so they can become proud of their actions.

To design an experience for Picnic customers that allows for the desired behaviour, an iterative design process is used. During this process, four design guidelines are uncovered: interventions for reflection on food decisions should be controlled, specific, goal-oriented, and quick.

The final proposed intervention is a Betere Boodschappen functionality, where customers get control over their shopping environment. They reflect on their values through answering three questions and based on those answers get personal suggestions for functionalities that can help them pay more attention to their values. A mixed method study, consisting of a quantitative between-group study and qualitative interviews, is used to test the effect of the intervention. There is a positive significant effect on behaviour and behavioural control over buying sustainable groceries. Customers furthermore indicate that doing better groceries is made easier for them through the functionality, and the store feels more personal. A plan for implementation of the functionality in steps is proposed, and recommendations are made to others designing for transitions inside a business.

In the current moment in time, the interest in sustainability is growing. Companies need to transition towards a more sustainable business model. One of the ways to do this is to become more circular.

The circular economy is an economic system aimed at eliminating waste and on the continuous reuse of resources. The end goal is to get rid of all the waste and, in this way, get lower carbon emissions.

With the production of built-in products for recreational vehicles, like motorhomes and caravans, Thetford creates much waste together with the rest of the market, such as packaging and recyclable parts. During their operations, they are not conscious of the effect which their operations have.

With the growing interest in sustainability, new laws are coming. The government will levy more taxes for carbon emissions and non-circular business operations. Waste, transportation and raw materials will become more expensive due to these new legislations and other external influences.

Besides this, there is a shifting interest from the end-user to more sustainable options. This creates a pull towards sustainability for Thetford, their customers and their suppliers. If Thetford does not change, this will already affect their business operations in the short term.

This project includes a design approach for a five-year strategy to make Thetford’s cassette toilets circular. The process is done in collaboration with as many Thetford employees as possible and with other designers. From this, I derived as a designer multiple relevant ideas. These ideas are tested within qualitative research with Thetford’s current and future target audience.

Another validation is done based on the direct customer’s interests in sustainability. The last validation is done for the interests of Thetford themselves. This validation is based on the investment costs of Thetford, the effect on the carbon emissions which the ideas have, and the extra revenue for the first five years that Thetford can make.

Based on these three types of validation, a hierarchy is created for all the ideas. To derive a logical strategy from this. Within the strategy, essential and desirable activities are distinguished. To get a better overview for Thetford on which activities it is most important to focus. A timing framework is created based on the mentioned information to create a clear five-year plan for Thetford.

The strategy shows that Thetford needs to start by being more transparent towards its consumers. This transparency is crucial for the trust their consumers have in Thetford. To become more transparent, Thetford needs to be more conscious about its sustainable choices. The second phase of the strategy is about closing the loop. The two main activities for this are switching to recycled plastic and setting up a recycling system. The strategy will be concluded with a refurbishing system to slow the loop in the third phase.

The project concludes with a design evaluation, conclusion, discussion and a personal reflection.

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 aim of this thesis is to explore how designers can create well-being for all through product or service design. Well-being for all can be achieved through designing with the focus on Consumer Wisdom. Consumer Wisdom is defined as the pursuit of well-being for oneself and for others through mindful management of consumption-related choices and behaviours. The theory gives insights on providing consumers with products or services that enrich life with well-being for all (Luchs & Mick, 2018). The Consumer Wisdom theory was researched from a consumer perspective by Luchs and Mick (2018) and through a literature study the theory was transformed into a design strategy. Various design theories relate to wisdom, although they do not call it wisdom nor mention it. From these theories existing design directions were added to the 6 dimensions of the Consumer Wisdom theory to provide designers with the information to use the theory into practice. To cluster all the theories addressing wisdom into one tool is unique. Study 2 generated proposed design categories for the established design direction to gain insights on how to design for Consumer Wisdom. These 48 design categories were found through a categorisation task done by my supervision team and me with the use of 135 product and service examples. Merging all the information of study 1, 2 and research on existing design tools, developed three design tool concepts. The ideation was done through the use of a brainstorm session on the format of the tool and by using the ‘HOW-TO’ method. The best concept was chosen with the use of the Plus-Minus-Interesting matrix and the C-Box methods.Before evaluating the tool an iterated on the concept was done. A brainstorm session helped to evaluate the design tools visibility and feasibility. The evaluation showed that the provided examples were necessary to understand the theory. The design categories directed the focus on and helped to design easier for a certain design direction. The final tool is the Consumer Wisdom design tool consisting of a card set to design with. The set consists of: an informative card, dimensions cards, design category cards, design purpose cards and an instruction manual. The tool helps designers use and understand Consumer Wisdom in their design process. In the future the final tool should be tested with design students and design professional to validate its usability, feasibility and visibility.

To successfully introduce a new product to the market it is key to respond to consumer needs and values. In the dynamic marketplace of today, it is thus increasingly important to target the right market segment and to understand consumers in order to offer the right value at the right time. ENGIE, a services and energy company, currently develops a new energy product named Dante. The technical functioning of the product is proven, yet the market entry of the product still seems far away. The actual application and target group of the product are not yet clarified. Therefore, the main objective of this project was to develop an introduction plan to support ENGIE in the commercialization process of Dante. An extensive qualitative research was conducted to generate insights on how Dante could be valuable to possible consumers. The insights gained throughout the project were integrated into an introduction plan. The introduction plan identifies the market segment for the product launch as well as the market segments for expansion. A deep understanding about the first target group was created and communicated in the form of consumer profiles. The commercialization and product development of Dante and how these should respond to future regulations, market trends and technology breakthroughs are presented in roadmaps.