This study centers around the development of a crafting tool within the CardioVitaal cardiac rehabilitation (CR) program, aimed at transforming physical activities into personally fulfilling experiences for patients post-rehabilitation. The design vision emphasizes leveraging health crafting theory to empower patients to discern what brings them joy in exercise. Through literature reviews, expert interviews, collaborative sessions with cardiac patients, and iterative design processes, a digital crafting application was designed. This app serves as a digital companion, offering personalized activity recommendations, action planning flows, and reflection prompts to support patients in sustaining physical activities beyond the confines of the CR program.

The In-House Creative Studio faces a significant challenge due to an increasing workload among its team of creatives, which includes visual designers, concept creators, copywriters, producers, photographers, and project/event managers. This team may only experience slight expansion, despite the growing demand for campaign and event materials targeted at three main groups: B2B, B2C, and Talent. Consequently, the Creative Studio is forced to be selective, unable to approve all project requests due to the overwhelming volume of work. Ideally, the studio would like to take on more projects. However, the creative team's efficiency is frequently undermined by the considerable time spent managing internal stakeholders, the misalignment resulting from unclear communications, and inefficient workflows. The primary source of these issues was identified as stakeholders providing incomplete or illogical design briefs.

This graduation project explores how Conversational AI might be used in the context of setting up inter-organisational project briefs to help briefing writers improve their design briefings.

Explorative research on the challenges within creative corperate processes and GenAI opportunities clarified that design briefings are a major bottle neck within creative corporate processes

Recognizing this, it becomes evident that to effectively address this bottleneck, stakeholders need assistance in improving the quality of their design breifings prior to the meeting and without external help from the Creative Studio’s briefings reviewers.
This resulted in creating an conversational agent that enabled stakeholders to self-evaluate and improve the quality of their v1 briefings without external help before the first briefing meeting with the Creative Studio.

The final design was evaluated over the span of two sessions with an internal stakeholder of the case company and the Creative Strategist. In the first session, Jelly’s ability to assist the briefing writer was evaluated. In the subsequent session, the feedback comments of Jelly were compared to that of the Creative Strategist.

The results suggest that while Jelly has been effective in certain areas, such as providing detailed feedback that aligns with feedback standards of the briefing reviewers, it requires refinements in user interface language, feedback customisation, and context-specific content generation. The feedback from Jelly, when accurate, led to noticeable improvements in the quality of v1 briefings, aligning with the goals of enabling the stakeholder to self-evaluate their briefings independently.

The findings suggest that Jelly was found to be capable in offering valuable feedback that improved the quality of the briefing.

This thesis concludes with critical reflections to anticipate the future of GenAI in creative corperate processes. The first anticipation includes proposing a new relationship between GenAI and human creatives in the form of co-performance; where one fulfills a role, the other enhances its performance. The second anticipation states that large e-commerce organisation would have terms in their employee contracts that would consider personalised chatbots created by them as intellectual property of the company. In other words, in such organisations, personalised chatbots would likely be developed through a centralised approach.

Ultimately, the design contributes to the field of conversational AI design approaches in the context of corperate creative processes by providing a practical and reproducible example.

Traditionally, conventional consultancies provide operational guidance to customers. However, market demands have shifted towards a human centred approach, leading to an increase in design consultancies. Design consultancies deliver not only great results but also introduce innovative ways of thinking through a process-driven approach differing from the result-driven process that clients were used to. The new ways of working poses a new challenge of rising uncertainty. Building trust with client organization reduces the inherent risk of working together, thereby building a stronger relationship. This helps consultancies gain credibility and create mutual reliability, improving brand loyalty and customer retention.

Similarities with the creative problem solving process and trust building process were drawn to form a template. Further the research was scoped to see trust building from an individual standpoint, i.e. design consultant being the facilitator in enabling clients build trust towards them. The project was set with the research question of “How do individuals in design consultancies help build trustful relationships with clients amid the constant shift in design perceptions? “

From empirical and theoretical analysis, eight driving factors and many trust building actions were identified. Apart from this, the research identified a lack of trust building awareness, how it is important to build trust around your context and with yourself. Further a trust building journey was developed that establishes how trust is built in a step wise approach and how it can be empowered for skill development for individuals seeking to work in a consultancy environment.

The design solution is a guidebook developed to raise awareness and help surface the factors necessitated towards trust building through narrative-based learning. Narratives of working professionals experiences highlighting suitable actions taken for trust development helps individuals reflect on their ways of working and embed new actions that improves trust building.

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.

Project aim
Recently, the importance of developing spatial thinking has been recognized with the European Union stimulating its development at an early age. Many studies of ways to foster spatial thinking of young children, through online activities as well as embodied activities, have been conducted and provide valuable insights that can be used in preschool settings. In design and engineering, spatial thinking is required to imagine and visualize novel and creative solutions and products. However, design play in preschools has not been researched in the context of spatial thinking so far. Next to this, little is known on individual differences in the way preschools use and develop spatial thinking skills in early childhood. Therefore, in collaboration with Sciencehub TU Delft the aim of this project was to:
-Gain insight into diversity of learners and the way they engage and interact with design activities in a classroom context.
-Develop educational innovations which take the diversity of learners into account, and stimulate spatial learning in the context of Design and Technology Education.
-Develop a tool for educational professionals which communicates the findings of this project.

Methodologies employed
Throughout the project the following methodologies were employed:
Literature research exploring spatial ability in the context of preschoolers, education, design and play.
-Participatory qualitative interviews and observations with preschoolers in their classrooms to explore different play preferences.
-Generative design research methods grounded in ethnographic research and therapeutic practices to discover how preschoolers with different play preferences interact with an empathic, story-based open-ended design challenge.
-Focus group with preservice teachers to explore how they currently take the diversity of learners into account.
-User tests with preschoolers and teachers to test and improve the proposed design interventions.

Research outcomes
Exploring the context of preschooler and teachers resulted in the following summarised research outcomes:
-Important play preferences for preschoolers are: construction play, pretend play, open-ended objects, and defined objects.
-The play preferences of children influence the length and nature of design activities as well as the design outcomes.
-Design activities stimulate children to practice spatial thinking in a creative context.
-Teachers know a lot about their students, so the intervention should allow them to use this knowledge.

Intervention – preschoolers
Based on the research outcomes two variations of assignments, which have the same learning goal, were designed. Each variation focused on a different set of preferences, allowing the preschoolers to interact with the assignment that fits their preferences best.

Intervention – teachers
A booklet summarising the outcomes of this project was made. An actionable step-by-step plan and worksheet were created with which teachers can design their own variations of assignments based on preferences of students in their class.
The interventions were evaluated with preschoolers and (preservice) teachers, and showed promising results. Recommendations regarding improvements and implementation are provided.

The application of multidisciplinary collaboration has become a trend to prevent knowledge isolation obstructing business development (Schaubroeck, Tarczewski, & Theunissen, 2016), particularly in the IT industry as it pursue problem-solving innovation.

An IT service company is currently striving to transform into an IT innovation consultancy. Despite having a full-functional workforce and the Project Journey model, it is challenging for them to sell and conduct problem-solving projects to their clients. Not every employee from various disciplines is ready for multidisciplinary collaboration.

The project went through a variant Double Diamond process. The initial assignment was to mitigate the potential misunderstanding between different disciplines. After the generative design research to investigate the context and identify problems, the researcher concluded with a reframed problem as an essential need to have a continuous and concrete guideline for the company’s multidisciplinary way of working (WoW).

The conceptualization process commenced with two co-creation workshops involving frontline workers. Subsequently, the solution is refined based on the insights from previous research and feedback during the sessions. The researcher also drew inspiration from established literature, such as the classic RACI model for multidisciplinary project management and the organizational change management model Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA). The final solution comprises three components.

Firstly, as a multidisciplinary WoW framework, Project Journey Blueprint was outlined under seven factors in the service blueprint format. It is more concise, intuitive, and actionable than the classic RACI matrix, with an emphasis on value-based illustration. It reduces misunderstandings between different disciplines and fosters a more efficient and effective multidisciplinary collaboration.

Secondly, a co-creation toolkit called Project Journey Embassy was developed to facilitate the Project Journey guideline development with the aim of evoking ownership and mutual understanding. It includes a generative workshop within each discipline and an alignment workshop across all the disciplines, resulting in a consensus on the multidisciplinary WoW guideline. The guideline includes the ideal team configuration and a Minimum Viable Team (MVT) for future projects.

Last but not least, a three-stage implementation approach was introduced to bridge the guideline into practice. The process begins with the bottom-up co-creation, followed by a circular organizational-level PDCA, where the Project Journey Blueprint is executed and updated quarterly. The third stage employs project-level PDCA where insights will be reported to discipline ambassadors and discussed in organizational 'Check' moments. The ongoing cycle ensures a resilient continuity of the multidisciplinary WoW.

The three-fold solution provides a clear path to foster the transformation towards problem-solving innovation by enhancing multidisciplinary collaboration. It can apply to a broader scope, as there is a common structure and similar project flow across the entire IT industry.

Collaborations are often transdisciplinary whereby people with different backgrounds need to be able to work together and therefore share knowledge. This means people have to cross knowledge boundaries. Crossing these boundaries can be done with boundary objects that help to transfer knowledge across these boundaries (Carlile, 2002, 2004). Touch can expand the vocabulary that people have at their disposal and therefore contribute to making transferring experiential knowledge and crossing boundaries easier.

To make the research of how touch can be applied to enhance transdisciplinary learning more concrete, a specific context has been chosen, namely the organization ‘Centre of Expertise Societal Innovation’. Within this organization, they want to create learning communities whereby knowledge is shared and preserved between students and others stakeholders in consecutive projects. This has led to the following research questions:

“How to improve the transition between graduation projects within the Urban Innovation program of EMI with a haptic language design to preserve knowledge within the different communities of practice.”

The knowledge that the organization wants to preserve is so-called tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is hard to express in words. Therefore, guidance is needed to help people express their tacit knowledge. From the theory of transdisciplinary learning, it is retrieved that the 7 habits of the mind are important to foster transdisciplinary learning. These habits also include using the senses of the human body. Therefore, it is interesting to combine transdisciplinary learning by expressing tacit knowledge with the senses of the human body. Especially the sense of touch is interesting to use because touch can deepen communication and is one of the most versatile senses.

The literature study in combination with exploratory research on how touch can be used in communication, has resulted in 6 haptic design principles for transdisciplinary learning. These principles can be used by designers that want to create physical haptic designs for transdisciplinary learning. The 6 haptic principles are:

1. Haptic design triggers people to touch it
2. Haptic design makes people conscious of touch
3. Haptic design enables different touch experiences
4. Haptic design translates and adjusts between different disciplines by providing the same meaning for everyone
5. Haptic design evokes interaction between users
6. Haptic design gives people the tools to make their thoughts and ideas tangible

With the principles, a final concept design has been created, called MIMIC. MIMIC is a haptic language design that helps users to express their internal thoughts, ideas, and feelings by providing tools to make these internal thoughts, ideas, and feelings tangible. Translating to external forms will make it easier for others to understand. MIMIC consists out of two sets of cubes, the basic set made of wooden cubes with different weights, and the haptic set of cubes with different materials from 10 categories on each side cubes. Furthermore, a guide, an instruction sheet, and warming-up exercises are created to give guidance to users for sharing relevant knowledge and the use of the haptic language in general.

The need for creativity has never been bigger. Technological changes, raised expectations in the area of sustainability and safety, increased focus on customer experience ask for pro-active innovation. On top of that has Covid-19 changed the world fast and radically the past half year. The world went in lockdown and because of that organisations have accepted work-from-distance as the new normal. In order to stay relevant and be adaptive to the rapidly changing landscape, organisations have recognised creativity as catalyst for innovation. Organisations initiate innovation programs to evoke culture change by fostering experiential learning in creativity. Employees are expected to adopt a creative mindset by applying trained skills and knowledge into daily practice. However, uncertainty of learning something new and the ambiguity of creativity create resistance under employees making them fall back into their old routines. In order to make this cultural change stick, an employee-centered approach is necessary. To understand how employees can be guided/supported in learning experientially using creativity in their way of working, the central aim of this research is to define how creative confidence can be boosted. An extensive literature study showed that there are seven creative culture factors to empower employees in their confidence to use creativity. The extent employees feel empowered is interdependent on the culture factor work climate (domain-specific). A creative climate has the ability to empower autonomy and thereby the confidence to use creativity. Therefore, the other five creative culture factors need to be established, namely: integral strategic vision, supportive leadership style, flexible organisational structure, accessible professionalism and available resources. To develop a creative climate twelve dimensions are derived from insights of both literature and multiple exploratory research activities. These dimensions are either comfort (stability and direction)- or freedom (exploration and own interpretation) orientated. To boost creative confidence a creative climate should be evolved in which these orientations are experienced in balance. To be able to bring this balance into practice, a guide has been conceptualised focusing on online project meetings. Facilitators can use this guide to build-up an effective meeting flow for their weekly online progress meetings. This DIY-guide is called 'Creative Rooms', which includes a basis structure with different ‘meeting rooms’, a folder with extra templates and facilitating notes. With Creative Rooms a facilitator can build-up a meeting flow regarding guidelines based on the creative climate dimensions. Each meeting room in this flow contains activities and features to enhance a creative climate relevant for position in the meeting flow. The facilitator navigates the meeting group through the flow in order to achieve alignment, connectivity, implementation and creativity. These are the four success indicators for effective meetings with a creative climate (the 12 dimensions). The use of Creative Rooms has been evaluated with employees, faciliatory experts and a meeting group to test the clarity and effectiveness of the guide. These evaluations led to the revised design in the shape of a package containing: DIY guide, reference manual and implementation assistance from a customer support manager. Thereby the Creative Rooms package is a guide to boost creative confidence within and beyond online project meetings.

The U_CODE (Urban Collective Design Environment) project started to create an environment for urban co-creation with citizen. To achieve this, U_CODE has designed and developed a new kind of participatory platform for different European countries. To have an effective co-creation session, U_CODE facilitators need to have a good knowledge and understanding of different culture and values that can affect the co-creation sessions. The purpose of this project is to design guidelines for Super Moderators (SuMo) in U_CODE project to facilitate the co-creation sessions in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. First, I reviewed the literature to find the cultural differences in three countries based on available cultural dimensions models. Then, I made a blueprint for co-creation sessions using U_CODE documents and interview I had with U_CODE specialist. Adding the cultural differences to the blueprint, I made guidelines for each of three countries, which was validated by professional facilitators. Then, I ideated some concepts to find the most effective interaction between the guidelines and facilitators. I tested the concepts with interaction designers who had an experience in facilitating co-creation sessions. Based on the feedbacks and the company’s priority, I designed an app for the guidelines. Finally, I evaluated the final design with a culture professional, an international facilitator and a corporate facilitator. This report is concluded with a discussion and a list of limitations and recommendations for this project.

Thanks to an increasingly digitized and connected world, citizen participation in urban projects is transforming from a privilege to an expectation. As cities grow and urban developments impact more and more people, it is vital that these projects reach out to as many individuals as possible and that the voice of these people is heard and taken into serious consideration by Urban Designers. In partnership with U_CODE, an EU Horizon 2020 project, this research and design thesis explores the Urban Designer’s perspective on public participation, what information Urban Designer’s want from citizens and when, as well as how to present this plethora of citizen data to the Urban Designer and his / her team. Most participatory process results end up in a report that no one reads, but this project aims to change that by proposing a digital interface designed with and for Urban Designers specifically to be able to better review, digest and incorporate citizen input into their professional designs. This design was based on multiple forms of research and case studies, including interviews, creative sessions, workshops and user tests. Not only was the end result a digital interface but also a redefined participatory process that starts with asking the right questions and understanding the ‘why?’ behind citizens’ designs.

A new context where designers and other professionals from different fields are becoming increasingly more involved in tackling the daily challenges that we are facing as societies has emerged. Oak & Morrow, a strategic design studio based in Rotterdam, wants to position themselves among this context, by acquiring new knowledge on how their expertise on strategic design could be used to tackle projects on societal challenges. Driven by the curiosity of the studio on projects that aim at solving social problems, this graduation project was set up as a collaboration of Oak & Morrow with TU Delft. The research of the project provides insights on the value that the discipline of Futures thinking can add to Strategic design when designing for projects related to societal challenges. Moreover, it argues that the combination of both disciplines can be used as a knowledge base to develop solutions for societal challenges that have a positive effect on the systemic level. The project has dealt with both a research and a design part. The research part has explored three different areas, being 1. Futures thinking and Strategic design, 2. internal analysis of Oak & Morrow and 3. societal challenges and social innovation. Different types of qualitative methodology has been employed to tackle these three areas, with research methods including literature and generative research, among others. As part of the research activities, different sessions such as a Contextmapping session with Oak & Morrow, or a testing session with design students have been conducted. Based on all the findings of the research of the project, a toolkit has been designed for Oak & Morrow to use Futures thinking and Strategic design to design for societal challenges. As part of the information reviewed to collect insights for the design of the tool, existing tools and methodologies of the disciplines of Strategic design and Futures thinking were analysed during the research phase. These served as inspiration for the ideation of the toolkit for Oak & Morrow. Moreover, the main conclusions of the research that inspired the design of the toolkit have been compressed in different sets of criteria. These criteria defined the characteristics and purposes of the toolkit. The toolkit designed for Oak & Morrow includes activities of Futures thinking and business innovation and contemplates guidelines of social innovation. The toolkit has been structured in three phases: 1. Preparations phase, 2. Uncovering value opportunities and 3. Towards systemic change. Each of the three phases includes different tools focused on a different step of the Futures thinking, business innovation or social innovation process. Overall, the project’s outcomes uncover the value of combining Futures thinking and Strategic design for designing for projects related to societal challenges with a systemic impact. Moreover, the toolkit gives Oak & Morrow the opportunity of exploring a new line of expertise and making stronger their current strategic toolkit. However, to fully measure the value of the toolkit, this should be evaluated in actual design projects with a real case, client demands and the common time constraints of a professional project.