Climate change is happening. As mitigation efforts can no longer stop climate change, adaptation is needed to ensure climate resiliency. National regulations and policies often fail to meet the specific contexts of the local scales, and thus, communities need to render themselves capable of adapting through Community-Based Climate Adaptation (CBA) projects. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is seen as a powerful technology with much potential for aiding communities in their adaptation goals, but how this collaboration is to be designed is still unclear. This project uses a More-than-Human-Centred (MtHC) approach, as well as the CreaTures framework and the Augmented Collective Intelligence framework, to explore the collaboration between urban communities and AI technology. This exploration is done to assess how AI systems can enhance the capabilities of communities, and how residents can be motivated to adopt MtHC approaches in their adaptation measures. The process, stakeholders, and challenges of CBA projects, as well as opportunities for AI-based interventions, are explored through literature research, expert interviews and a thematic analysis. Following this, design concepts are explored in collaboration with an expert panel, prototypes of further developed iterations are tested, and a final concept is created. The final concept, called Entangled Intelligence, is tested both with a participant group and the expert panel, in order to retrieve insights on the research questions. The project and its limitations are discussed, and a set of characteristics of AI that support MtHC approaches to CBA is presented.

This graduation project investigates the relationship between care and community and reflects on the possible impact of these learnings on design practice. Care is a complex dimension of life, which entails the act of providing everything that is necessary for the maintenance and repair of the world (Tronto, 1993). From this perspective, we can reframe many of the challenges in our society as challenges of care, and recognize the importance of addressing care outside of traditional (institutional and consumer-based) perspectives.

One of these divergent perspectives is community-based care. There are indications that communities might offer interesting alternatives of care, however, research on community care often focuses on the outcomes for individuals, rather than on the internal dynamics of the community where care is experienced. For this reason, exploring what communities can tell us about the practice of care becomes promising. In this project, I investigate the interaction between care and community, by pursuing a small-scale care intervention in two Dutch central living organisations.

The outcomes of this research reflect that communities offer an unique perspective from which care can be addressed. Care in communities is direct, embraces diversity, evolves constantly and thrives on both structured and spontaneous practices. Interestingly, the relationship between care and community is even deeper, care supports the construction of community. Given its promising qualities to address care, I suggest three ways in which design can support community care: designers can support care within communities, support communities with care, and support care that exercises community values.

Context and problem statement (Chapter 1)
Disinformation, false or misleading content that is shared deliberately, can be a danger to public health. When citizens don’t follow evidence-based treatments or measures and do take non proven, unuseful or dangerous treatments (Freeman et al., 2022; Montagni et al, 2021; Prieto & González, 2021). This became clear especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. More broadly it is a danger to democracy.

Within the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport there are several hurdles to effectively deal with disinformation. Too narrow and present focussed problem frames are used, with little alignment and a lack of starting points for concrete interventions.

In response to these problems, my design goal is to catalyse a broader and anticipatory problem frame of disinformation, find concrete starting points for interventions dealing with disinformation and align key stakeholders.

Method
A combination of methods is made (Chapter 2). First, systemic design (Meadows, 2020), finding elements, mechanisms and starting points in a system, enables to create a broader problem frame. Second, anticipatory governance (Guston, 2014) adds the temporal dimension, creating an anticipatory problem frame. It consists of four phases. Foresight, creating plausible future images. Engagement, involving people inside the organisation to respond to the plausible future. Integration, implementation of those responses and ensemble harmonising these efforts. Third, experiential futures (Candy, 2010) enable alignment between stakeholders through future prototypes: objects as if they came from the future.

Section 1 - Foresight
Expert interviews and consultation of academic, popular ‘mainstream’ and ‘fringe’ literature is conducted (Chapter 3). This leads to a (dis)information system map (Chapter 4) showing mechanisms that influence the system like doubt, trust, crisis and polarisation. Currently, the system is unbalanced. Yet, there are leverage points where interventions can bring back balance. The second outcome is a driver and trend analysis showing how the elements in the system map might develop. A new systemic and anticipatory problem frame is proposed (Chapter 6) that reveals new threats, but also opens up possibilities to bring balance.

Section 2 - Engagement
A future scenario (Chapter 7) is written that communicates the systemic and anticipatory problem frame. Two aspects are central:
In 2033, we will live in a country with ideological splintering. Due to climate change, an extreme heatwave during the summer causes a great threat to public health.

This scenario is developed into experiential future prototypes (Chapter 8, Figure X). The future prototypes were used in a 1:1 simulation with key stakeholders in the government (Chapter 9). Participants were asked 1) to reflect on the future that was embodied in the artefacts, and 2) to suggest interventions inspired by the future prototypes. The simulation showed alignment (Chapter 10) on the new anticipatory problem frame and even sparked a shared future vision:
Becoming an empowering government based on mutual trust.

Section 3 - Integration and Ensemble
A disinformation team is initiated, together with a policy maker from the Ministry. This makes sure the results from this project can be integrated after the delivery of the thesis.

Through bottom-up initiatives citizens have the ability to adapt their environment to their own desires and ideas. It is a way to take power and create a city that is truly based on what the residents want, rather than it being opposed on them.

Right now there is a growing movement in the Netherlands where municipalities want to embrace bottom-up initiatives and give the citizens the opportunity to contribute in shaping the city through participation. Citizens are invited to express their opinion or to receive support for their own ideas.

The citizens themselves have to take action to make bottom-up participation happen. However, many citizens are not familiar with the possibilities. As a result, only a small number of citizens participate. Most of the power of participation falls in their hands. This leads to outcomes that are non-inclusive and are often only beneficial for this select group of citizens.

There is, however, a growing group of people who are indeed interested in bottom-up participation but do not act on it as they experience too much resistance and too many obstacles. An opportunity can be found in enabling these interested but inactive citizens to get familiar with initiative information and take action towards durable bottom-up participation. The aim of this project is, therefore, to carefully navigate the present obstacles and explore how to address them with design.

The exploration consists of iterative design sprints combined with the research through design approach, which allows me to chart the citizens participation landscape in a practical and experimental way.

Research through design is the main approach of the thesis in order to get as close to the experienced obstacles as possible. On the basis of fast iterative design sprints several prototypes are tested that actively involve stakeholders. The prototypes are tools to navigate deeper into the context, gain insights and create a clear foundation for the final design.

The knowledge gained through the explorative design sprints ultimately give shape to the following design goal: Design a tool that can enable interested but inactive citizens to get familiar with initiative information and take action towards a durable initiative.

The goal results in Growing the Movement, which is a new participatory tool that guides interested citizens through the biodiversity initiative landscape and its possibilities. Through the tool citizens will acquire a personalized set of cards. The cards will guide them step by step through the multitude of information and invites them to take action in form of biodiversity initiatives. By interacting with the cards the user will be introduced to the possibilities of bottom-up participation. They will be educated and supported in taking biodiversity action to influence their own local environment. 

With noticeably mounting indications for climate change the fatal consequences of human activities become more and more apparent. The majority of our everyday life products hold their share in the pollution of the environment. By unearthing resources, processing, transporting, use and disposal. Here, industrial designers and innovators have long been a substantial contributor to the problems we face and many inadvertently still are. Now, production and consumption must change as quickly as possible to prevent the worst effects of the ecological crisis and to keep the earth habitable in the future.
In this context, designers often try to improve the current situation by inventing and innovating greener solutions. However, sustainable design efforts are not enough, as long as we merely focus on innovations which keep exploiting resources, fill “sustainable” market niches, cause rebound effects and offset environmental gains. Given the urgency, we now need to focus more on mitigating the impact of existing unsustainable products.
This goes under the umbrella of exnovation. In recent years, the term has gained traction and is increasingly perceived as an essential element of sustainability transitions. It targets the removal or reduction of existing technologies, products, structures etc.

This graduation project aimed at exploring exnovation efforts in context of design.
The initial research phase focused on how designers can facilitate the exnovation of products in the most harmless way possible. Literature review showed that not only the environment itself should be taken into account, but designers must also persuade the users of products in order to achieve a lasting effect. Only when considering the consumer behavior and the product’s related practices, uses, and other interconnected aspects an exnovation can be successful. The research resulted in a compilation of several independent approaches, methods and leverage points for design action.

The second phase was an investigation of a real exnovation case. The removal of the charging adapter from the Apple iPhone box served as subject of an analysis. The study showed that users were not willing to give up the adapter for sustainability concerns for several reasons. Based on the findings and the previous research, several design interventions were developed that aimed at increasing the acceptance for exnovation. These interventions were tested with participants to inform the final design.

The final outcome is an online toolkit for designers. It walks the user through various factors to consider when exnovating a product. After the user answers a set of questions, the most suitable exnovation strategies are presented. These strategies emphasize design possibilities, considerations and give tips. In this way it does not only sensitize designers about the topic in general, but also inspire further steps for the particular product exnovation.

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.

This design project investigates how commoning can support the practice of urban foraging, resulting in a framework that describes the social characteristics of commoning and the abilities and opportunities for urban foraging. The framework led to a design showcase, called Get To Gather, which is an interactive board in public space to let citizens experience the practice of urban foraging, as an entrance to the foraging community.

Commoning is a verb of “commons” that describes the social process to manage the commons. The goal of the commons movement is to reclaim commonwealth, and transform the focus on privatization into collective use of resources while preventing them from being commercialized. Commoning is a social process that relies on active collaboration and cooperation.

The practice of urban foraging describes going from place to place searching for things to eat or use, in an urban context. Foraged food is also described as “zero-footprint food” since it is entirely outside the profit-making food production system we know today, which provides people to live self-sufficient and supports a resilient food production system in the city. Foraging goes beyond the consumption of wild edible plants because it is a social activity, in which people pass on knowledge, culture, and traditions from generation to generation. This project focuses on foraging as a leisure activity in the Netherlands.

Foraging is getting more popular, which resulted in the concern of external authorities about the safety of people and the environment. Also, beginner foragers experience fear of eating poisonous or dirty plants in the city. In combination with the social motivations of urban foraging, this resulted in an inspiring and robust network, a community that wants to make sure that everyone forages safely and with care for the environment. Therefore, the community expresses a need to involve beginner foragers into their network.
Urban foraging is an act that transforms unused urban nature into a place with social interactions. In the city, there are fragmented municipal plots that do not fulfill a specific function. In this report, these areas are man’s lands. The final design is an entrance to the foraging community at these locations, to create awareness about the community, and involve beginner foragers to teach them how to treat the environment correctly and perform the practice safely. The design is ‘do it yourself,’ so people can make the design by themselves without waiting for external authorities. Get To Gather transforms unused urban green spaces into places for social access.

The design shows how commoning can support the practice of urban foraging, by making the foraging community, and nature in the city equitable accessible for people outside the community. It frames urban foraging as a practice with social benefits, by showing the community, in which foragers have strong social ties with fellow foragers.

The research in this thesis is done to discover what elements play a role in evoking imagination.
A framework is constituted with the elements familiarity and instructions that are believed to play a role in evoking imagination. The elements are discussed through a literature research and the exploration of objects fitting in the framework. Eventually via a design experiment the influence of familiarity and instructions on imagination is tested.
The outcome of the design experiment exposed that familiarity of objects is evoking imagination in their understanding of their purpose. And the ‘script’, instructions 'inscribed' in objects is providing or limiting space for multiple interpretations. Creating a space for possibilities.
The understanding in how to evoke imagination is helpful to interaction design, because it can challenge our conceptions of how to challenge the user in their interaction with object and the constitution of meaning.