The experience of using a car can be defined as a lot of things. How comfortable it is to drive in? Or just sit in? What entertainment features does the car have that can keep all passengers entertained for a car journey? Or even for the more extreme motor heads, how does the engine sound when going through a tunnel? All of these factors shape how a driver and the passengers would experience a car. However, when you take a step back, there is so much more to it. This project will be looking into the experience away from driving; the non-driving experience.

As part of a University Research Project set up between the Industrial Design Faculty at Technology University of Delft, and Ford Research and Innovation Center, this project will be going into detail about how data can be collected from wearables in order to enhance and improve the user’s non-driving experience of cars. More specifically, how can the approach and leave scenarios of using a car be improved through this use of data.

The initial stages of the project were focussed on understanding where the problem lies. What context is best suited and has clear pain points, or potential moments of surprise and delight, to the problem? This was done through a number of research tasks including literature research, interviews, and workshops with a large variety of potential users.

The context of using your wearables to improve the routine of family cars was chosen to go into further detail and exploration. Families often have different routines that happen simultaneously at times, and it was interesting how a family car can be so flexible in adjusting to each members routine. Data was looked at throughout this project in order to get an understanding as to how it can be used in a way to create a relationship between car and driver.

Throughout the development phase of the project, ‘Ford Experience’ came to fruition, which did exactly that. It used data from the wearables of both the main driver, as well as family members and other passengers, in order to adapt and respond to a number of different inputs from individuals. Throughout this day-to-day use, the vehicle works with the user in order to provide the best possible, and most efficient experience possible.

Designing with data helps the service providers to monitor and gain deeper insights from users. However, there are not many design methods of data-enabled design for most design teams to rely on. This research focuses on the early exploratory phase of the design process. The goal was to find a solution that could assist in contextualizing the big-thin data by using experiencing prototyping approach for exploratory purposes. A design tool, data-contextualizing canvas, was designed and iterated by three studies (including seven sessions with eight participants in total) in this project. It assisted designers to prototyping the simulated user scenario in a structured way. And designers could extract insights and relevant data points by using it. The tool was a representation of the new data-exploration process proposed in the end of this research. The design process of data-value-data described a sequence of creative data exploration for establishing the design hypothesis in early design phase. The data-contextualizing canvas was considered to have benefit in 1.offering a constructive way to explore the data and help in inner communication, 2.proposing a different perspectinve in using the big-thin data as design materials, and 3.raising the awareness of user value.

The project is done in the context of the visual thinking Agency Flatland. The aim of this project was to explore reverging in the context of visual thinking.

Reverging is the phase that bridges the diverging and converging phases in creative facilitation. The goal of reverging is to revisit and rearrange the options generated in the divergent phase to create a better understanding of all the options to select the best ones in the converging phase.

The initial design statement was to make reverging more deliberate at Flatland instead of implicit at Flatland. As reverging is a deliberate activity (Kalina, 2018: Heijne & van der Meer, 2019).

DISCOVER
To better understand the project's topic, a literature review, interviews with Flatland, and case studies have been conducted.

The literature review concluded that reverging is essential for creating a shared understanding of the options generated in the divergent phase. Moreover, it was found that sketching and visualizing help externalize (tacit) knowledge. This enables the sharing, grounding, manipulation, and generation of ideas. Finally, transdisciplinary learning and knowledge creation can be supported by boundary objects, allowing the translation, transfer, and transformation of knowledge.

The interviews with Flatland reveal the different skills and characteristics needed as a facilitator or illustrator at Flatland, why visual thinking works according to Flatland, and how they would identify reverging in the Flatland process.

The case studies disclosed that the Flatland methodology is more a process flow to hold on to instead of a strict step-by-step plan that needs to be followed. Additionally, it revealed the success factors, risk factors, and requirements for fruitful reverging in visual thinking.

DEFINE
Based on the findings from the discovery phase of the project a general model was constructed to bring all the findings together. The general model served as the starting point for the design requirements and opportunities.

In addition, reverging at Flatland has been described and analyzed more in-depth. The analysis revealed that there was no common knowledge about the concept of reverging. However, it was found that reverging was done at Flatland, but more unconsciously rather than deliberate. Two types of reverging moments at Flatland have been identified: (1) reverging exercises done with the client during a session and (2) the activity called whiteboarding, which is a separate session without the client to make thinking steps based on the output from the previous session.

This project focused on the second type of reverging moment because it is a formatted and formulated phase at Flatland, setting a clear boundary for highlighting the problems and developing a design. The main difference between reverging at Flatland compared to the rules described in theory is that it is done without the client. This may lead to the not-invented-here syndrome, which often results in the client's difficult acceptance and implementation of the outcome, according to Buijs & van der Meer (2013).

DESIGN BRIEF
Based on the output from the general model, design opportunities have been identified. The chosen opportunity for this project was to guarantee client ownership by involving the client more in the whiteboarding reverging process. A design statement and requirements have been formulated to guide the final design’s creation.

Additionally, the metaphor of a magic map maker has been formulated to describe the selected opportunity. This narrative was used to make the findings from the research more concrete and get the conversation started.

DESIGN
Different creative sessions have been held to come up with the starting point for a solution to guarantee client ownership. Based on the input from the co-creation sessions different minimum viable products were created iteratively. These have been discussed with Flatlanders and adapted according to the feedback obtained during the iteration rounds.

DELIVER
The final design, the whiteboarding tool, consists of three sub-parts:

The Flatland workstyles, based on the narrative of the metaphor of the magic mapmaker, balancing the map maker and wizard workstyle throughout the entire process
The Flatland journey is adapted from their current setup of the general project flow. The whiteboard phase was not included yet. The Flatland journey aims at making that explicit. Revealing the problem in the focus area (whiteboarding phase) of reverging steps happening without the involvement of the client and therefore the client potentially lacks ownership of the final outcome
In order to solve this problem finally the Whiteboard canvas has been developed to help Flatland involve the client in the whiteboarding phase and make their reverging steps explicit so they can be shared and discussed with the client.

CONCLUSION
The impact of this project was created through (1) the research, (2) the metaphor, and (3) the tool.

The research highlighted the discrepancy between the literature and Flatland’s way of working. The gap served as the initial starting point for giving recommendations to Flatland and coming up with the final design.
The metaphor served as a narrative for Flatland to talk about the highlighted problem and reflect on their workstyle.
The whiteboard tool served as an intervention to do the whiteboarding in a more structured manner with the client's involvement. The canvas has been tested with members of the Flatland team and is ready to be used in Mural, Photoshop, or real life!

To conclude the project, the limitations have been highlighted, and future research directions have been proposed.

Intending to implement a data-enabled design approach to use this data in their creative design process, Ford established a research collaboration with the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. As part of the collaboration, several lines of research were carried out, like data strategy, data visualisation, and early prototyping in the form of graduation projects. In one such work, Mellado Cruz (2021) identified that exploratory inquiring as a means to derive insights from data visualisations has great potential in supporting the creative design process. With her empirical studies, she could generate theoretical knowledge about this process; however, bridging work was needed to convert this knowledge into a practical and actionable outcome.
In this project, I address the research question, "How can exploratory inquiring on data visualisation be operationalised in the Ford design team to support their creative design process? ". I begin the process with a phase of immersion into theory and context- using published literature about exploratory data analysis,
data visualisation, creativity, and design theory to obtain theoretical understanding and the thesis reports of past graduation projects. At the end of this phase, I identify three potential opportunities that can aid in implementing exploratory inquiring in Ford design teams. One of the opportunities- to conceptualise exploratory inquiring as a collaborative design method- was identified as the most feasible in terms of the scope of the project, practical and desirable for the Ford design teams. A preliminary concept method was developed based on the learnings from the literature in line with this direction. This was iteratively prototyped, tested and refined for three cycles in the design iterations phase. The version at the end of the third cycle was used to create the final deliverable- a toolkit consisting of an information booklet that helps in circulating the procedural knowledge of the method within the team to create awareness and canvasses that support the execution of the method. In the last parts of this report, I provide recommendations for future studies to tackle the limitations I faced in this project and possibly inspire new works in the area of data-enabled design.

This report describes the development of the Ford Concreate, a data immersion toolkit designed for the Innovation Management for Smart Vehicle Concepts team (design team) of Ford’s Research and Innovation Centre Aachen. The collaborative data physicalisation toolkit consists of three elements: an instruction process, the physicalisation tool and a set of reflection cards. Together, these elements lead the target group to collect inspiring insights from quantitative data by stimulating reflection and creative thinking through physical interaction with data. By consciously engaging with data while creating a physical representation of a dataset, users better understand the data and reveal patterns that lead to new insights. The toolkit is designed for use during creative sessions, led by a session facilitator. With recent advances in data-based technologies like AI, machine learning and IoT, designing with data is becoming impossible to avoid. Within Ford, the amount of collected data is growing, forcing the design team to look for new ways to integrate its data to improve continuous product and service innovation. This led to the initial goal of ‘using data as creative material’, as quantitative data is currently solely being used for testing and validation rather than to inspire the entire design process. To specify and achieve this goal, the fields of creativity and data representation were identified and studied, focusing on answering the following research question: How can data be represented in a way that stimulated creativity during the design process at Ford? It was concluded that data physicalisation could stimulate creativity and lead to better insights as it encourages reflection and creates deepened understanding through active interaction with the data, which led to the development of the toolkit: the Ford Concreate.

Vehicles are becoming more and more connected, and in combination with various services, they generate large amounts of data, which is mainly used in development processes for testing purposes in Ford. However, sensor data has more potentials for product development, and one valuable potential is to contribute to product innovation in the early design stage, which can be seen from existing studies on data-enabled design. However, the large amount and complexity of data make it hard for the Ford Research and innovation (R&A) team to approach data, nevertheless apply data in the design process. In addition, there are no available methods and tools that fit in with Ford’s data availability and workflow to guide them to apply data for product development, which can make the R&A team feel clueless in their practice. 
Based on the challenge, I framed the initial research question of this project as: How to facilitate the Ford R&A team to apply user data to enhance creativity in their ideation process? Then, I conducted research, product development, and evaluation to deliver the final design intervention. Afterwards, the concept "A toolbox for creative problem solving with data "was developed and tested. Based on the evaluation of the toolbox, I designed a guidebook containing a three-step method as a guide to applying the toolbox. The second-round evaluation shows that the final design intervention is believed to provide innovative methods and tools for the R&A team to generate insights from data combinations for the problem framing process and cultivate creative thinking during the session. Moreover, the three-step method for combining data fills the method gap for the implementation of data-enabled design in organizational practice. In conclusion, the final design intervention sufficiently fulfils the design goal and contributes to the method study on data-enabled design.

This report describes the development of an implementation strategy for using data in the design process of a design team at the RIC of Ford in Aachen. The implementation strategy consists of a card set and a poster to show contemporary developments in using data in the design process, a service concept, a practical tool kit to start using the data and an organizational implementation roadmap. Throughout the project, a co-creation approach was used by working on one of the commercial vehicle concept projects. This resulted in barriers, enablers and drivers of different approaches for the team. First, I consulted literature on design and data to create an overview of the approaches in this field. I concluded that contemporary approaches use open data such as social platforms to find users expressed thoughts and feelings, or (owned) sensor data to find users functional needs in measurable behaviour. In a case study the insights from literature are visualized in the form of cards to create a tangible artefact for evaluating the different approaches and also act as later reference. This was the first deliverable of this project. The case study resulted in a set of preliminary set of drivers, enablers and barriers for using data. Next, a design intervention was done in the team’s service design project. Together the qualitative insights gathered and analysed. Then I chose parameters for “a behavioural data profile” and designed a service concept based on these parameters. In this service concept behavioural data of the user is used as input for personalized service functionalities. This allows the team to research behaviour and create the foundation for more advanced research. From this step I translated the learned lessons into a final set of barriers, enablers and drivers. This set allows the team to use this specific approach in future projects as well. The main barriers are now defined as: (1) Designers and researchers having different perspectives when setting up research projects resulting in an inability to create the described design concept. (2) There is no clear indication for the design team where and how to use data in the design process. To overcome these barriers a practical tool-kit was designed to allow the team to bridge the gap between the qualitatively gathered data and defining a product-service concept based on a data profile. The value of this practical tool-kit is supported by literature showing the trend towards in-situ research approaches and an evaluation process. The roadmap, the final deliverable of this project, presents directions for applying this approach and presents steps for further organizational implementation. For future research I recommend developing an accessible persona dashboard of the implemented services for Ford to perform easier and more focussed research in the relations between the different sub-functionalities of the vehicle. The practical tool-kit, set of cards and the roadmap help the team in answering their question: “how to use data to better understand our users and their behaviour” by indicating an appropriate approach, an example project and a practical tool-kit.

Ford aims to implement a data-enabled design approach, using data to inspire and inform the whole creative process. In this context, in 2020, they took a step to reach this goal by setting up a University Research Project with the Industrial Design Faculty at Technology University of Delft, proposing data visualisation as one of the research lines. In this master thesis project, the role of Data Visualization in Data-Enabled Design projects is investigated, specifically how to use Data Visualization more efficiently to generate insights and inform the creative process of Ford design.
The initial stages of the project were focused on understanding how Ford is using data in the design process and reviewing the published literature about creativity, data, data-enabled design, data visualisation, and exploratory data analysis. Then, through a critical reflection about the intersections of the theoretical research, eight possible design directions were identified in which data visualisation can support the creative process, termed “crossing bridges”.
Afterwards, in collaboration with the company, the one with higher potential, “Exploratory inquiring”, was selected to investigate further. Hence, three empirical studies were developed: personal explorations, a design students workshop and one workshop with Ford employees.
The last steps included the analysis and discussion of these sessions individually and comparatively, considering the limits of this research and the proposal of different aspects to consider in future research. Finally, I present a guide to support Ford in performing Exploratory Inquiring.

Jolly Dutch is a Dutch board game company that is trying to grow within the board game industry. The Dutch board game industry is growing rapidly, and it is perfect for new companies to take advantage of this. This report will show the possible opportunities for Jolly Dutch in the Dutch board game market. It will look into new possible strategies for Jolly Dutch and possible board game designs that fit that strategy.
To find the answer to the research question “How can one create a future proof strategy for Jolly Dutch?” different methods were used. First of all, market research was done through multiple interviews with experts of the board game industry, a questionnaire on a board game forum and desk research. With the market research information, search areas were found and eventually converted to a new strategy. As a final step, this strategy was explored through the use of an online interview with potential customers. This resulted in a new strategy for Jolly Dutch and a board game that fits this strategy.
This strategy suggests that Jolly Dutch should continue to focus on their sustainable games and expand this. Jolly Dutch could take the opportunity to focus on creating a subscription service that combines sustainable games with the principles of the subscription model.

Over the past decades, multiple HR constructs have emerged that organizations strived to adopt and integrate into their daily businesses. The most recent development is Employee Experience (EX). EX is essentially a framework for creating engaged employees. Engaged employees have been linked to multiple desirable business outcomes, such as smoother employee recruitment, increased employee retention, increased employee efficiency and higher organizational profitability. EX can be defined as the sum of perceptions employees have about their interactions with the organization, and how this aligns with their expectations. This graduation project aims to explore how organizations can improve EX. It was carried out for Livework, a Rotterdam based Service Design studio. The project explores how organizations are currently working on EX, what creates excellent EX and how organizations can receive the tools to understand and improve EX. A literature review is conducted on the evolution of HR constructs. Relevant insights from established constructs, such as motivation and job satisfaction are collected and related to EX. To understand how organizations understand and currently address EX, a set of interviews is conducted. This set of interviews yields a three-step model that describes what needs to be done to improve EX. The three steps are:
1. Learning about the value of EX
2. Learning how to improve EX
3. Measuring impact.
To structure the large amount of information available on EX, a model is selected. First, six different models are compared to assess their suitability for structuring EX. Finally, one model is selected and further adapted to create the EX pyramid. The pyramid depicts five employee needs that organizations need to satisfy to create excellent EX: Safety/Security, Rewards, Connection, Growth and Work/Life harmony. The EX pyramid and the EX cycle provide all the information an organization needs to improve EX. Ideas are generated to design the way this information is communicated to Livework, who this project was carried out for, and their client organizations. The problem statement used to guide the phase of idea generation and prototyping is: How can organizations adopt fitting EX strategies? The final design is the EXcellent process: a process towards excellent EX. This process consists of three phases: prepare, understand, and imagine. During the prepare phase, Livework consults the EX pyramid to create a better understanding of the model, which is used throughout the process. During the understand phase, Livework and the client conduct qualitative and quantitative research to understand how well the organization is satisfying their employees’ needs. In addition, the business objectives of the organization provide direction for the pyramid levels that needs to be improved. During the imagine phase, Livework and the organization define interventions that will be used to improve specific levels of the pyramid. A digital slide deck of over seventy interventions provides inspiration for these improvements. The outcomes of the EXcellent process are a better understanding of employee needs, business objective and how they together deliver concrete steps an organization can take to improve EX.

Nowadays, a common approach to cope with the inherent uncertainty in innovation is the use of multidisciplinary teams following a Design Thinking (DT) process. However this strategy has its pitfalls, such as the lack of experience with DT or the communication issues underlying a group of people with completely opposed backgrounds. In order to better understand the context of the problem, a series of interviews and two workshops with practitioners were conducted. The insights, together with the literature review helped to frame a design challenge and eventually to arrive at a design solution. After several iterations, the Impact Creative Toolkit took shape. The Impact Creative Toolkit aims at mitigating the struggles of such a team-settings that follow a DT process. More concretely, it supports multidisciplinary teams in the ideation process. It assures a constant reflection around what are the benefits, emotions and consequences for the end-user behind the ideas that come up during the creative session. The toolkit is composed of three tools: Impact Designer — where the problem statement and the desired impact are defined —, Impact Analogies — an idea generation using analogies of the pursued impact —, and Impact Detective — a roleplaying exercise where the impact is assured. An evaluation of the tools took place, from two perspectives: from the practitioners and from the HEC framework for creative tools. A number of changes were implemented and recommendations for future use suggested.

Creative facilitation sessions come to solve the complex problems the world is facing nowadays. Using participants from different work areas to walk through a problem together, these sessions are guided by facilitators. They are the ones expected to bring a creative mindset to the involved people.
LEF Future Center, part of Rijkswaterstaat since 2008, brings a contribution to the power of change and the problem-solving capacity of their stakeholders. They have a set of creative environments to properly stimulate participants during the facilitation sessions. This project, done in combination between TU Delft and LEF Future Center, focuses on supporting participants’ creativity during sessions at LEF.
The creative diamond (Guilford, 1950) is the basis approach
for facilitation sessions, distinguishing between participants’ divergence and convergence thinking. During the first, many ideas are generated, while comes to a final idea/decision when converging. It is common to let participants make use of different means to generate ideas, like whiteboards, sticking notes, and markers.
It is known that people might underrate their own creativity, and the facilitators' work is to facilitate participants’ creativity. Written, visual and verbal communication is important to let participants express their ideas to each other during sessions.
Besides the classical creative diamond, newer studies have shown the need to differentiate
a step in-between the divergence and convergence phases (eg. Tassaul and Buijs; Kaner; Heijne and Smit). It is called revergence and aims to revisit and rearrange every generated idea during the divergence, by making clusters. A literature study was executed to investigate further developments in the creative diamond approach, as well as what influence people’s creativity.
At LEF, facilitators let participants generate as
many ideas as possible (when diverging), and to come up with a final solution to the indicated problem (when converging). Further investigation with context observations and interviews with facilitators was performed. It was confirmed that not every facilitator does the converging phase of the session, and that many are not aware
of the reverging as a separate stage from converging. In the end, clusters of ideas can be created in a messy mean, leading to deliverables for clients that may not show the full creative potential of the session.
As a way to stimulate participants’ generation of ideas and the creation of clusters, the design of the tool thus focuses on supporting facilitators to perform the revergence phase of sessions. Joining findings from both the literature review and context mapping, a promising direction was identified in the use of combination tools for the three phases of the sessions. Using rapid prototyping tests
of the tools, a toolkit structure for performing the reverging phase was designed: the Clustalk toolkit.