75% of all mental health issues arise between the ages of 14 and 25 (Kessler et al., 2005). Suicide is the number one cause of death among young people (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2023), one in three adolescents experiences performance pressure (Kleinjan et al., 2020), one in seven adolescents has depressive symptoms (Kleinjan et al., 2020) and life satisfaction has decreased significantly over the past 20 years (Kleinjan et al., 2020). All of these statistics show one thing: a lot of adolescents have poor mental health and they seek more professional help because of it. However, youth care cannot handle this increased demand. This combination leads to problems and therefore a new approach is needed. In my project, I used a systemic design approach and focused on promoting well-being instead of only fixing mental health issues. Accordingly, the main research question in my project is:

“How can the systemic design approach contribute to improving well-being among adolescents (ages 16-18)?”

I used a systemic design approach to look at the larger system around adolescents to find new opportunities for possible interventions. I interviewed a lot of different stakeholders and explored their perspectives and their interactions with other stakeholders. I processed these insights into a giga-map, which helped me formulate three themes and eventually choose one theme: ‘Who is responsible’. This theme deals with a social norm where parents are held responsible for the upbringing and well-being of their children, whereas adolescents at this age distance themselves from their parents and need other adult support figures (McElhaney et al., 2009). In addition, the support adolescents receive in this system depends on individual motivation: some people recognize their role, others do not. From this theme and all the insights from the stakeholder sessions, I formulated a future vision which is represented by this African proverb:

“It takes a village to raise a child”

The shift needed to achieve this future is from scattered islands to a connected proverbial village. To achieve this, I chose teachers' mental models as a leverage point (Meadows, 1999). By showing teachers the value of their role, the value of promoting well-being and the value of connections, I hope they will also change their behaviour. From that goal, I designed my intervention OmDraaien, where three teachers are each given a role: a teacher, a parent and an adolescent. They play an interactive game in which they play a scenario and interact with ropes (connection pieces) that represent their relationships. After this interactive game, the participants reflect on the game they just played and relate it to their own work.

To shortly answer my research question, a systemic design approach has helped me to look at the broader system around adolescents and has therefore helped to create not only stakeholder value, but also potential systemic value. In addition, a systemic design approach has allowed me to discover an underlying problem: stakeholders focus just on symptomatic solutions rather than also on fundamental solutions.

Youth participation is becoming increasingly important in municipal governance. However, despite the introduction of new tools, podcasts, and events designed to foster participation, engaging young voices in policy-making remains a challenge. This project explores whether a different perspective on this challenge can lead to more meaningful engagement.

This project is part of Healthy Start, a collaborative initiative between the Delft University of Technology, Erasmus Medisch Centrum and the Erasmus University Rotterdam, which seeks to enhance the well-being of young individuals. Among its ambitions is the enhancement of youth participation. The project will emphasize youth participation in municipal policy in Rotterdam.

Using the Frame Innovation method, a design approach focused on redefining problems to uncover innovative solutions, this study aims to discover unique insights by ‘reframing’ the issue of youth participation. Achieving an understanding of the stakeholders and their values was accomplished through a Research through Design approach. A variety of design activities were undertaken, including engaging policy advisors in creative sessions at Het Timmerhuis, and deploying cultural probes during dialogues with young individuals in a sounding board group and at the Rotterdam Blaak library.

The findings reveal that stakeholders have diverse needs. Not all officials view participation the same way, and differences among young people are significant. Four main themes emerged, reflecting the values of these diverse groups:

Open Hearts, Open Minds: This theme underscores the importance of genuine interactions and empathy, highlighting how prejudices can complicate matters. For example, officials may fear being perceived negatively by the public, while young people worry about being seen as inexperienced.

Navigating the Unknown: Participatory processes involve uncertainties, requiring both youths and officials to venture into unfamiliar territory. This theme explores how they can feel in control despite these uncertainties.

Driven by Responsibility: This focuses on the sense of duty and how it affects engagement. It questions when stakeholders consider something important enough to warrant their involvement.

What You Do Matters: This theme emphasizes the significance of feeling that one’s contributions are impactful and explores the dynamics of power within participation. Both youths and officials can feel powerless, doubting the impact of their efforts and not seeing the success of their actions.

Reframing the problem based on these themes offers new perspectives on addressing the challenges of youth participation. Navigating the Unknown might suggest a future with a municipal “travel agency” for participation, providing guidance, resources, and connections to make the participatory process less daunting and more accessible. Or adopting an “open hearts, open minds” approach one could imagine facilitating transparent discussions about roles and aspirations, enhancing engagement and ensuring participation leads to meaningful outcomes.

This report proposes new strategic approaches to youth participation in Rotterdam’s policymaking. By gaining a deeper understanding of the problem space and reframing it, these new perspectives offer avenues for further exploration. Insights into the frame innovation methodology are also shared to inform future studies.

The Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) has been finding it increasingly difficult to carry out its task in recent years. Increasingly, they have been in the news negatively with reports such as poor conditions in Ter Apel, hopeless waiting times for applicants and having to pay penalty payments. Besides the media attention, it is also a point of discussion in politics at national and European level. The complex policy that will follow from this makes for a situation of tension for the IND. In order to respond appropriately to both politics and applicants, it is important for the IND to be agile and responsive as an organisation. To achieve this, the IND wants to become more innovative, which partly means retrieving ideas from the organisation and then experimenting with them with the aim of improving processes, also known as bottom-up innovation. Currently, one team within the IND, the Einsteinbrigade, is responsible for facilitating this bottom-up innovation. Although this team is very effective in identifying which innovations are of value to the organisation, they do not always manage to convey this value to those responsible for implementation.

This thesis project explores what exactly underlies this phenomenon, and how design can address it. Through qualitative research methods, the following research question is dissected and explored:

Why are some of the Einsteinbrigades completed experiments not followed up with an implementation project?

The insights obtained revealed the root cause of this problem, but more importantly which bottlenecks lie below. These bottlenecks were translated into design goals from which a direction was chosen for the continuation of the project. It reads as follows:

With my to be designed intervention, I want to achieve that Clients within the IND respond to the needs of the Business by making the Einsteinbrigade capable of effectively conveying the value of an experiment to the Client.

Within this design goal, 6 principles were identified that have been proven to help implementation; (1)The expected benefit; (2)The compatibility; (3)Sensing surprise; (4)Perceiving multiples, (5)Embodying alternatives, and (6)Verbal Mastery. From testing these principles, strengths emerged that were incorporated into the final design.

The design took the form of a framework in which the insights gained from the experiment can be compiled from which an interaction can be designed appropriate to the Client and the experiment. The interaction creates a unique experience for the Client, but above all makes it tangible and recognisable what impact the innovation is having.

During the evaluation, it emerged that the interactions provide a unique moment within IND’s current meeting culture, and strongly contribute to conveying the value of the results. In addition, In addition, placing the insights in the framework allows new insights and connections to emerge, contributing to the narrative, and ultimately interaction. In addition, designing the interaction stimulates creativity, which was recognised as a necessary replacement instead of the current way of presenting results.

In conclusion, it must be acknowledged that this design is not conclusive for the Einsteinbrigade problem. It is a first step in the right direction of making the IND a mature organisation where bottom-up innovation is central to improving processes. Ultimately, it is recommended that to execute successful bottom-up innovation, there must be an organisation-wide leadership with corresponding clear agreements.

For decades, the Marineterrein used to be a military base that was closed off from the rest of the city. Due to budget cuts, the Ministry of Defence decided to gradually leave the Marineterrein in 2011 and return the territory to the city of Amsterdam. The Marineterrein has been undergoing area development since 2013, gradually opening to the public and business activity since 2015. In recent years, an important focus has been on weaving the area into the urban fabric of Amsterdam.
The Marineterrein now offers values to many different target groups, as more and more Amsterdam residents are finding their way there for recreation, sport, and business. I believe that the Marineterrein’s values of inclusiveness is the most important values, given that these core values of the city of Amsterdam and have been eroding in recent years.

However, exactly this value is under pressure due to the decision to turn the Marineterrein into an innovation district. An innovation district is a city area designed to bring together innovative companies, start ups, and knowledge institutions to stimulate innovation and economic growth. While the decision to convert the Marineterrein into an innovation district is well-founded given its history, research indicates that such districts tend to rapidly gentrify both economically and socio-culturally. The emergence of an incomprehensible monoculture, as innovative companies mainly attract the “knowledge class,” deters many other target groups and results in innovation districts becoming enclaves.

Citizens engagement might be the solution to maintain inclusiveness in the innovation district Marineterrein. By involving citizens a sense of ownership and affection can be stimulated. Collaboration and understanding of diverse perspectives are crucial for mutual tolerance and social cohesion. Within the context of the Marineterrein, a opportunity lays in involving citizens in “open innovation.” Open innovation is a participatory method of innovation. At the Marineterrein, the primary issue for involving citizens in open innovation the lack of effective communication interfaces between citizens and companies. Companies tend to operate behind closed doors, leaving citizens with no space to provide feedback or engage in a dialogue about innovation. The undesirable scenario of the Marineterrein drifting away from the rest of the city seems to become a reality. Therefore, the design goal of this project is to develop an interface that demystifies the innovative character of the district and stimulates citizens to engage in open innovation.

My.I.D. is a design concept that might be a first step to engage citizens in open innovation. Visitors can choose from eleven innovations routes to explore the innovative nature of the Marineterrein. Along the routes, visitors encounter inspiration points that tell stories of innovative projects or experiments that the companies are working. Visitors get the opportunity to not only listen to the story but share their own thoughts, concerns or wishes regarding the innovation. Besides they can listen to the responses of or visitors. The responses are shared with the companies for a better understanding of citizens’ opinions and ideas. This cross-pollination might lead to the emergence of new collaborations or synergies. In that way, My.I.D. aims to improve the mutual understanding and relationship between citizens and innovators.

Finding work is essential in the formal integration and the new Civic Integration Act, for which the municipality is now responsible (Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, 2022a). A publication from CBS found that 41% of the asylum holders who came to the Netherlands in 2014 had a job after five and a half years. In addition, newcomers, more than non-newcomers, have a temporary contract or work part-time (2021b). Although there is a shortage in the labour market (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2022a), newcomers do not always seem to profit there.

OpenEmbassy, the client for this thesis, researched the subject in Rotterdam and found several insights contributing to the problem. For instance, newcomers perceive informal work as more accessible than formal work (2021). Moreover, a significant driver is the minimal financial difference between a formal job and the social assistance benefit (OpenEmbassy, 2021).

The problem of the non-accessible labour market for newcomers can be described as complex (Snowden & Boone, 2007). This project explores the complexity of the labour and integration system while focussing on the individual needs of newcomers and municipal civil servants. The approach is a combination of the double diamond approach (Design Council, 2019), combined with elements of Vision in Design (Hekkert & van Dijk, 2011), the use of an interaction vision (Pasman et al., 2011) and various mapping explorations.

The research consists of OpenEmbassy’s analysis, including insights from twelve interviews. Furthermore, additional literature research, seven in-depth interviews and thirteen street interviews contributed to the insights. A deeper analysis resulted in journey maps and thirteen driving forces from clustering interview quotes, supported by the literature research and synthesised in three frames or design directions. Directly discussing informal work with someone from the municipality can cause trouble. The newcomer may get a fine or be seen as a fraudster, or the municipal officer is summoned because of not reporting it and not thus not following the legislation.

Thus, the design direction resulted in the following design statement:

The design intervention wants to make talking about the underlying reasons for informal work more accessible by creating a more symmetrical and trusted relationship between municipal officers and newcomers.

The design statement resulted in Werkkaart, a card set municipal officers can use with newcomers. The intervention has as its primary goal to make the conversation more symmetrical and to create shared ownership, starting from the game’s main rule. Both players choose cards to shape the conversation, during meetings at the municipality. Werkkaart does not tackle informal work directly but purposely indirectly. The design consists of 45 cards, categorised into eight themes, an appointment booklet with an opportunity card, a manual and a gameboard. The cards’ content comes from different inputs, of which the framework of OpenEmbassy (2019) based on Strang et al. (2019) forms the base. Fifteen participants evaluated Werkkaart and noted, among other insights, that the physicality of the cards supports ownership in the conversation.

The demand for robots in the industry is increasing. Organisations acknowledge the need to innovate in order to keep up with the competition. When robots were first introduced, they took over human tasks if they could execute the task faster than humans. However, this often has a negative effect on the meaningfulness of work. That’s why cobots were introduced, robots that could work together with humans in the same workplace. This provided the industry with many new opportunities. However, as with any new technology, research has to be done to find out how this technology can best be implemented. That’s why FRAIM was founded. They are researching how cobots can be introduced without decreasing the meaningfulness of humans’ work. FRAIM decided to join the Brightsky project, to take their research into practice. However, with the Brightsky project, FRAIM is facing other challenges. Not only does the technical feasibility have to be researched, but also the employees’ needs and other stakeholder values have to be taken into account. A challenge that can be perfectly tackled with a human-centered design approach.

Firstly, through interviewing and stakeholder mapping, the essential stakeholders are identified. These stakeholders have high power or/and high interest in the company and thus contribute to the future of the organisation. Afterwards, the stakeholders are brought together for a co-creation session. In this session, the stakeholders discuss their individual needs and values to identify the contradictions and similarities. Next, a shared vision is created, representing the stakeholders’ view on ‘optimising’ the workflow.
A stakeholder which is often negatively affected by the implementation of robots, is the employee, their needs are often neglected. That’s why this project’s focus is mostly on this stakeholder. During context mapping sessions, the themes of meaningful work are identified. These themes represent the conditions of meaningful work for the employees at KLM Engines.

During the research phase, it became clear that the stakeholders are unaware of the contradictions and similarities of their values. Furthermore, the knowledge and skills needed to understand the possibilities and limitations of implementing robots and their consequences on the stakeholders are lacking.
In the design phase, a co-design is created to tackle this challenge. Co-design is chosen, because it is well-known to be used for bringing together different expertise and for sharing knowledge and skills. Besides, the concept of game design is used. Game design helps to represent a real-life situation in a fun and engaging way and helps the participants to explore different scenarios. Using game design helps to visualise the consequences of robots on the workflow well.

The co-design is tested and evaluated to assess if the co-design meets the design requirements and to discover how the tool can be improved. A final iteration is done to improve the concept.

Lastly, the project is concluded and reflected on. The limitations of the project are discussed and future research and design recommendations are proposed.

This thesis set out to explore the meaning of autonomy and use this knowledge to create a tool for designers to communicate the complexity of the concept with their clients. In today’s society, we value autonomy and we strive to ensure that everyone can lead their life as autonomous as possible. In fact, we view autonomy as ultimate independence and freedom from outside influence. But by insisting so hard on independence and personal responsibility, it can feel like failing if you do not manage to do everything on your own. From the research done in this project, it was found that autonomy is more than being able to do everything yourself. Autonomy actually means making decisions and doing things in a way that you like or need. This can also mean that you do not want, can or should do it alone and that you need or want to be supported by the world around you. You decide yourself, as an individual, who or what can provide that support. The relationships you are part of are part of the context you are in and which can support you the way you want. The insights gained throughout the project are boiled down into a comprehensible framework explaining the different components of autonomy: the individual, important relationships, boundaries of support, and the context. Exploring the framework with designers revealed that the framework could be implemented throughout the design process in different capacities. As the first step to designing with autonomy is understanding what autonomy is, the choice was made to come up with a design for the first phase of the design process. The framework has served as the foundation for the development of a toolkit for designers. The Autonomie voor/in/met/en Design toolkit supports designers in communicating the importance and complexity of autonomy with their clients at the start of a project, by providing tools to uncover assumptions the client might have regarding the autonomy of their target group. While the toolkit is designed for the first phase of the design process, it is the first step in putting autonomy higher on the priority list of designers and clients.

In 2019, close to one million Dutch citizens lived below the low-income threshold. Their monthly income averaged below €2.110 for a family of four (SCP, 2019). Many poor citizens struggle to improve their situation, with almost half of them remaining in poverty for more than four years on-end (CPB, 2019).

Luckily, Dutch national- and local governments and their supporting organizations are continuously trying to support citizens in poverty. These parties offer financial and qualitative aid, coming together in “the poverty reduction system”.

However, the municipality of Utrecht has identified that this system does not always sufficiently support citizens. The system can be complex and bureaucratic, making it inaccessible for some citizens. Cognitively challenged women with a non-Western migration background are extra vulnerable to the complexities of the poverty reduction system. They struggle with low-literacy, communicative skills, and cultural barriers. The Municipality of Utrecht, Stichting Al Amal, and Buurtteams Utrecht want to improve accessibility of the system for this group. This project is the result of that collaboration.

In this project, I aim to design an intervention that makes Utrecht’s poverty reduction system more accessible for cognitively challenged women in poverty with a non-western migration background. Throughout my research, the experiences of citizens and the social workers supporting them have been the focal point. I explored the cause of the target group’s non-participation in the system through multiple creative sessions, interviews, and context explorations.

From my research, I learned that the issues already start before these women come in contact with the system. The target group refrains from requesting help altogether because they feel overwhelmed by the many available options, lack clear information about their options and rights, mistrust the authorities, do not feel that their situation is urgent, or feel ashamed. They let their financial struggles go untreated because of these factors, often making their situation progressively worse with time.

I focused my design activities on this early stage, looking for ways to improve accessibility early on. This was a co-evolutionary process, where learnings from design explorations inspired new directions to chase after. In this search, two themes arose. First, the theme of ‘motivating growth’ allowed me to explore alternative ways
of making the target group rediscover their own aspirations to improve their situation. How can we make people believe in their own potential again? Through this exploration, a new theme arose: “Opening up”. I found how the target group pushes the topic of poverty away. However, the network of people around them could probably be of great help. All this knowledge and support could be unlocked if people just opened up towards each other. I challenged myself to find
a way to let these people open up about their experiences, in a way that felt comfortable to them.

The concept that came fort is “a tea box full of stories” (figure 1). This concept is a low-threshold conversation starter that motivates citizens to open up about poverty-related experiences during tea time. The tea packets have questions and quotes printed on them, inviting the users
to start a conversation about these topics over a pot of tea. The quotes, which are written by other Utrechters, show them that these problems are universal, and that being vulnerable is okay.

The tea box unlocks and activates an informal network of knowledge and care, where friends, neighbors, and family together explore how they can support one another. It shows citizens that they do not have to carry the burden of their troubles alone. The tea box also offers multiple different links to U-Centraal; an organization that can help citizens find the right professional support once they are ready for it.

Al in all, the tea box offers a first low-threshold stepping stone towards a more accessible system. Firstly through an activated community that shares knowledge and support, and secondly by offering professional support in a pro-active yet unforced manner.

This graduation project was in cooperation with Ontzorghuis, a Dutch charity that is focused on supporting the parents of children with special needs (CSN). It is crucial that CSN parents receive extra support, especially in the early stages when the child's diagnosis is still unclear. Parents of a CSN have extra responsibilities and care, which can easily overwhelm them and lead to burnout. In fact, 78% of CSN parents started working less after getting their child, and 60% ended up overworked and burned out (Okma, Naads, Vergeer & Berns, 2014) . Their extra care can also lead to an escalation: if the parents' well being is declined too much, the CSN has to be placed out of home. However, currently the Dutch care system is focused and structured around the child with special needs, not on the parents. Parents of special needs children are currently not seen as informal carers, giving them no right to extra support (Ross, 2020). This leaves the parents in a vulnerable position. The goal of this project is to use systemic design to develop a strategy for Ontzorghuis, to have a long-term impact on these parents.

After researching the context, several key actors in the system around CSN parents were identified: the national government, municipal councils, the care domain, charities and network. Ontzorghuis is part of the charity actor. For each of the actors, one or more interviews were conducted with someone working in this domain, 12 in total. The insights of the interviews were combined with those from literature research, to analyse the interactions between the actors. This forms the basis of the system map. The map consists of 25 points, representing the challenges actors have to face together. This system map was then used to investigate the possibilities for systemic impact for CSN parents. Leverage points were identified, and used to map out future interventions. The insights were converted into an actionable strategy for Ontzorghuis.

The first step of the strategy is to make CSN parents visible within society. The graduation design therefore had the goal of helping actors reflect on their role in the system around CSN parents. Storytelling was chosen as the mechanism to convey the system, as "storytelling allows for thorough understanding of complex systems with limited time investment and without requiring expertise on systems design" (Talgorn & Hendriks, 2021, p. 50). Using storytelling also allowed room for the empathy needed for this vulnerable but inspiring target group. The end result is a children's book for any actors of the system, using a metaphor to tell the story of a CSN parent interacting with the system, and inviting readers to reflect.

This report journeys through the research and design processes, activities and outcomes of the project that brings young adults closer to their intangible heritage and cultural identity. Intangible cultural heritage (or ICH) being at the core of this project, is a fairly new and lesser known concept. With its presence in daily life as traditions, rituals, languages, know-hows, belief systems and the like, it forms the very essence of culture and of people’s identity. At the focus of this project is the intent to guide and enable young adults/youth between 18-30 years to explore ICH such that it incites reflection and sharing, which in turn make the young adults realize their culture and identity.

This thesis set out to research the problem of loneliness among adolescents in the high school context. For a long time, loneliness had mainly been recognized as a problem among elderly. Only in the last few years, people have been starting to realize that this is a concerning problem among adolescents too. In order to get a better grip on what loneliness is, and what the role is of the high school context, extensive research was done to answer the main research question: Following the current situation in Delft, which steps should be taken next in the high school context to better deal with loneliness among adolescents?
Four sub questions were formulated in order to define the challenges and opportunities for the design phase. Answers to the sub questions were found through various research activities, like literature research, expert interviews and contextmapping sessions. Analysis of the data led to seven main insights. Following these insights, it was explored what a better way was to look at the problem.
Currently, loneliness among adolescents is framed as problematic, because it can progress into chronic loneliness with severe consequences. Existing initiatives that aim to solve this problem often help adolescents to step out of social isolation or help them improve their social skills. Besides that, loneliness is also framed as something that does not happen to young people, which makes adolescents struggle with identifying with the word, or they feel ashamed to admit when they do feel lonely.
In order to take steps towards a more preventative and holistic approach, the problem was reframed: a problem of ignorance, by not treating the feeling as something we all experience and that teaches us about our underlying human needs.
Following this new frame and additional exploration, the design statement was formulated: we want to show high school students how feelings like loneliness are indicators of underlying, fundamental human needs by letting them collectively reflect on these needs and thei relation to emotions, while also making them aware of the universality of those needs.
A creative design process followed. Potential design directions were explored through brainstorming and organizing a focus group.
Validation of the concept was done through a user test and by interviewing stakeholders. The concept was detailed further and the Under-Needs toolkit was introduced. The Under-Needs toolkit provides the tools for the high school context to educate students on their emotions and underlying needs. While it does not directly tackle loneliness, it aims to teach students how to reflect on feelings like loneliness and trace them back to underlying needs. This will help them to make better sense of feelings like loneliness because they get taught how to see them in the bigger picture.

This project tackles the challenge of the Municipality of Utrecht to align their efforts in the poverty reduction system to the needs of the target group of citizens living in poverty. The municipality has identified that there is a need for improvement on this aspect to fulfil their ambition to support citizens beyond mitigation of the impact of poverty and offer citizens opportunities to get out of poverty. Research has been conducted on the phenomenon of poverty, the poverty reduction system, stakeholders in the system and relevant trends and developments. Based on insights from this research a desired future for the poverty reduction system has been formulated. This desired future consists of a simple system that stimulates prevention of problems, offers integral support, works with a personal approach, is based on trust and is a system in which impact is reflected on. Several possible directions to arrive to this desired future and solutions within these directions are explored and have led to a strategy for the municipality: Working towards a poverty reduction system that offers integral support to Utrechters in poverty by connecting them with the right organisations in the system. This strategy consists of three steps and has been given shape in the form of a concept. The concept consists of a tool to enable guiding organisations in the poverty reduction system to identify integral support and connect with organisations that offer the identified forms of support. This way the guiding organisations can provide citizens with integral support.

Loneliness is a large and growing problem among adolescents. Body image has a strong relationship with loneliness, especially among young people. Therefore, a promising way to increase social wellbeing among this group is by increasing body satisfaction. This report presents various aspects that should be taken into account when designing an intervention for this topic and demographic. Several designs are suggested, one of which is made into a prototype and validated. 
Cognitive models theorise loneliness as a consequence of bad coping behaviours for body dissatisfaction, among other things. Body dissatisfaction often results from internalising dominant cultural beliefs about appearance. An example of a dominant belief is that having a fit body can be interpreted as an achievement of discipline and perseverance that an individual has worked hard for. The reverse then also rings true: unfit people are lazier, less disciplined and more likely to give up. Many of these beliefs are so common that they seem unchangeable. However, history shows us that appearance ideals have changed dramatically in the past and that they result from the intricate way society is organised and how it develops within a period.
Changing these beliefs is difficult and slow, but a good place to start is by realising there is often more nuance and variety in beliefs about being healthy and fit than we assume. While one person values a low-fat sixpack for the hard work that goes into it, another values the freedom a healthy and able body provides. It seems these behaviours and beliefs are closely related to expressing identity and feeling connected with others. This leads us to the question: Are there no other, more socially healthy ways to create this connection? 
The intervention this report proposes offers a fun and light-hearted reason for adolescents to discuss their aspirations and the influence of dominant cultural beliefs and discover that there are more differences between people’s personal motivations and aspirations than they may know.

This graduation project was a collaboration between TU Delft and VanBerlo, a strategic and product design agency based in the Netherlands. The motivation of this project was to understand how the Design for Transitions team, a part of VanBerlo, can start to apply Systemic design within their design practice. This team addresses societal and transition challenges that often present multi stakeholder, fuzzy contexts. Systemic design and its applicability in dealing with complex, multi-stakeholder, open and fuzzy problems could offer value to the DfT teams approach. First, two explorative research questions were posed. One, was to find out how DfT conducts their design activities and what is their current design approach. This was established through interviews with DfT designers and by studying past projects. Alongside, a second exploration was conducted on the field of systemic design and a key practice in it: visualization. By studying scientific publications, exploring resources such as yearly conferences and events, theoretical knowledge on this field was established. Additionally, designers who are systemic design practitioners were interviewed to learn from their experience on how they applied this field into practice. The resulting outcome was a set of principles and practices that were evident in professional systemic design practice. By combining insights from the two streams of explorations, four opportunity areas were determined where DfT’s design process could benefit from systemic design. The opportunity areas were: Frame the brief as a complex systemic design challenge, study human insights in the form of relationships, conduct the synthesis of data and knowledge in relationships and lastly, apply visualization for sense making and sense sharing. These four opportunity areas outlined techniques, tools and methods that could be further explored. To establish the context in which these opportunity areas could be explored, two design challenges addressed by DfT were taken up. The resulting solutions were a set of tools and templates that were informed by the opportunity areas. These solutions were applied in the design process of each of the two challenges and an evaluation could be conducted with internal designers from DfT. The resulting insights were useful to learn what solutions worked and to determine the feasibility of systemic design overall for VanBerlo. In order to achieve the goal of the project, that is to help the DfT team apply systemic design into their practice, the revised tools and templates were gathered into a resource named The Systemic Design Toolbox. This toolbox introduced the very first steps for how DfT and the studio at large could begin to explore systemic design. Each tool is presented with a guide to illustrate what value the use of it offers, what outputs can be expected and instructions plus templates that support the use of the tool. Overall, the outcomes of this graduation were very well received by VanBerlo and indicate promise to become the path, in not only applying systemic design, but sensitizing the studio on the changing landscape of design and the need for adopting new skills as designers.

This report outlines the design process, research activities and results of a graduation thesis on power and privilege in multi-stakeholder public and social sector design processes. Due to a perceived gap in the design field, both in education and practice, the aim of this project is to support designers in becoming more aware of power dynamics in their work in order to motivate them to challenge, rather than reproduce, existing inequities. As the result of a number of research activities, a framework for power literacy was developed to meet this aim. In the context of design, power literacy is the ability to be self-aware of, sensitive to and understand the impact of power in the design process, and to then act in a way that aligns outcomes with intentions. The framework focuses on the development of power literacy through the practice of reflexivity—the capacity to identify underlying social structures internalized by yourself and others around you, and to then recognize their impact on power dynamics and equity. By building these skills and making these underlying dynamics more visible, designers will be better equipped to create design processes that are socially just, decolonial and democratic. The framework includes four power literacy skills (recognize, name, understand and act) and five forms of power in the design process (privilege, access power, goal power, role power and rule power). Based on the research and the resulting framework, a design goal, target user group and a number of design requirements were set at the start of an iterative design cycle of ideating, designing and testing. Subsequently, a field guide for power literacy was designed as the final deliverable. The field guide helps designers navigate through the power literacy framework in an educational, interactive and impactful way, supporting them in the development of a number of reflexivity skills. From initial evaluations of the field guide detailed in this report, the design has been able to provoke a deeper (and at times uncomfortable) awareness of power and privilege for designers working on social and public sector projects. Moreover, it has brought about a number of ‘aha’ moments for designers, sparking a greater motivation to challenge inequities within their own design practice.

In this thesis, the value of design is researched within the context of municipalities and how civil servants deal with complex problems. Loneliness amongst adolescents is a complex problem that many are not aware of yet. Of the youth between 12 and 18 years old in Delft, 42% states to feel lonely (GGD Haaglanden, 2016). This issue needs to be addressed by Team Youth of Gemeente Delft. However, the civil servants and their partners do not act upon it. This led to the following research question of this project: “Will a design-led approach enable the civil servants of Team Youth from Gemeente Delft to act upon the complex problem of loneliness amongst adolescents in Delft together with other relevant actors?” First, three sub-questions were posed to find out what the design-led approach should consist of. They were answered through literature and field research. The first question addressed systemic design and showed that such an approach allows different actors to collaborate to find a mutual understanding of a situation. This enables the actors to create and follow a shared vision, for which interventions can be developed. The second sub-question gave insight into the current situation of loneliness amongst adolescents in Delft. A causal system map was created, which revealed six interconnected root causes that give a subjective explanation of why the problem is as it is. When researching why Team Youth currently does not act upon this situation, it was found that the policy implementation process is not performed optimally. This process was researched, and four areas of improvement were found. The involvement of unvaried parties, a consultative role of the civil servant, a conventional approach and an undefined structure of the process counteract when dealing with complexity. The third sub-question concerned the research of design principles that might improve or enrich these four areas. Co-design was discussed, which demands a collaborative role and the use of participatory techniques. To create one structured process that focuses on dealing with complexity and creating mutual understanding, the Systemic Design Toolkit process was mentioned. The insights and design principles from the research were translated into requirements for the design-led approach that would be set up. A research through design process followed, in which a systemic co-design process with four phases was set up, performed and researched. First, a network and co-creation team was built. Next, two co-creation sessions took place to explore the problem field and solution space. In the last phase, the results were discussed with Team Youth, which led to a defined action for the policy implementation plan. With the insights and results from the process, and help from actors in the network, the assigned actor was able to enact the action and develop an intervention. The research and evaluation of the performed process resulted in an adjusted list of requirements on which the final proposal is based: the WIJ-model (Welzijn Implementatie Jeugd model). This systemic co-design process enables civil servants to act upon complex problems during the policy implementation phase and implement well-being amongst the youth of Delft.

This MSc Design for Interaction graduation project aims to explore how design may enhance policymaking. In light of this, an extensive study was conducted at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. This study entailed an ethnographic study of nine months during which six policymaking cases were studied as well as a four month experimental study was conducted. The six policymaking cases served to identify an opportunity to enhance policymaking with design, whereas the experimental study served to further investigate this opportunity. Based on these endeavours, and in light of the identified opportunity a design intervention was developed and evaluated.
The six policymaking cases were studied from the perspective of balancing exploration and exploitation through methodological congruence; policymaking practices need to appropriately balance between utilizing existing knowledge and means - exploitation - and generating new knowledge and means - exploration - according to the determinacy of the problem at hand. However, it was found that policymaking predominantly possesses exploitative traits and, more specifically, is remarkably non-experimental. As such, it was argued that current policymaking practices may best be enhanced with experimentation throughout the policymaking process. In light of this, it was found that the systematic, deliberate way designers experiment may be helpful in policymaking as well. As opposed to policymaking, in which an experiment is typically the final piece of the problemsolving process, in design, several ‘safe to fail’ experiments serve as points of departure, initiating a progressive iterative process of working towards a solution. As such, it was found worthwhile to find a way to apply this particular way of experimenting in policymaking as well. However, this particular way of experimenting does necessitate a particular disposition that is not found in policymaking in which ideas are nipped in the bud, taking decisions is postponed, intended solutions and measures are kept abstract, there is hardly any room for intuition and making mistakes, and learning and having to change course are seen as politically risky. Hence, it was argued that the context and dynamics required for this way of experimenting may only be found outside of the political system; ‘safe to fail’ experiments may be conducted most effectively and efficiently by policy implementers themselves - that are given sufficient discretion - rather than policymakers. In order to see how this can be done, the abovementioned experimental study was conducted. This study clearly showed that these ‘safe to fail’ experiments cannot simply be delegated; it requires taking into account the commitment, capacity and capability of policy implementers to conduct ‘safe to fail’ experiments and responding accordingly.
In order to enable policymakers to do so, guidelines were developed and tested. Although the guidelines do not directly help in making policies in a more experimental manner, they do help minimize the risk associated with experiments, increase the chances of successful execution and contribute to the process of having policy implementers conduct ‘safe to fail’ experiments As such, they may help smooth the way towards making policies in a more experimental manner.

In the last decade, an increasing amount of people has become aware of the negative impact their behaviour has on the environment. However, most consumers are not aware of the negative environmental impact of the products they purchase and possess. Research has been done on different aspects of products for a circular economy, such as product longevity, and on the purchase process but mostly for marketing reasons instead of sustainability. Research has also been done on the gap between intention and behaviour of sustainability minded people. This research presents barriers, but no research was found on translating these barriers into solutions. Little was found in literature about making appropriate sustainable buying decisions. The main objective of this thesis is to stimulate consumers to exclusively purchase products with long-term psychological value, with the ultimate goal of reducing the ecological footprint of the consumers. In the first part of this research the characteristics of personal long-term value of products are identified. Data for this study is obtained through ten in-depth interviews and literature review. The second part of this research aims to identify how the purchase behaviour could be changed and which factors influence the purchase behaviour. This part contains a literature review and utilises the research through design method, in which five different prototypes are tested. The third part of this thesis translates this new theory into practice. Three new prototypes are developed, which should together affect the change in purchase behaviour. These products are validated with five participants over three weeks. The results of the interviews show three categories of psychological long-term product value: products that carry memories, products that satisfy basic needs and products which enable human goals. These last two categories complement each other. The research on behavioural change shows that the human goals should be discovered first, which results in a personal set of long-term product values. Next, consumers have to be reminded of their values during the purchase process. Finally, sufficient commitment should be created to resist the products that do not fit the personal set of long-term product values. For this, a game is proposed to raise awareness and discover this personal set of long-term product values. This game enables the consumer to train the reasoning behind the desire for products. The validation test showed that the game is successful in creating awareness and in training consumers to reason about products with personal long-term product value. To make the consumer remember their set of personal long-term product values in the purchase process, two reminders are proposed: the ‘Product Calendar’, and a sticker set ‘Stick to your values’. These designs remind the consumer of their long-term product values, translate the game into real life and create commitment. In conclusion, this project enables designers to understand long-term psychological product value, gives them a framework to design for purchase behavioural change, and the designs of this project enable consumers to make more sustainable purchase decisions.