Aiming for both rigour and relevance, I am active in academics and practice. My interest is in the hidden influence of design in changing people’s behaviour and thereby in shaping society. My ambition is to understand every aspect of this phenomenon to explain it, as well as to understand how to design it deliberately to build a viable society. In that sense, I am developing design theory and methodology at the cross section of social design and design for behavioural change. In my work I relate to philosophy of technology, behavioural sciences, and systems thinking.
My current activities revolve around writing a book on Social Design (to be published by Bloomsbury in June 2017), redesigning the mental health care sector in the Netherlands, and performing behavioural experiments to develop design theory.
My thesis: Social Design – How products and services can help us act in ways that benefit society.
I worked 3 years in practice as a social designer at the design agency Reframing Studio. In this position I have worked on social challenges like organ donation, political engagement of citizens, and recovery from psychosis. In 2013, we won the Rotterdam Design Prize for temstem, a smartphone application to help people coping with hearing voices.
As member of ‘Redesigning Politics’, a creative think tank that aims to redesign the thinking, institutes, structures and interaction in the field of politics, I had the honour to present one of our proposals on TEDxDelft.
