Annemiek van Boeijen works as a senior researcher and teacher at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of the TUDelft – department Human Centered Design, section Society, Culture & Critique.

The work mainly focuses on the role of culture in design processes and impact on societies. Aim is to develop knowledge, design methods & tools that support designers to develop a culture sensitive approach to design, understanding people and their contexts from a socio-cultural perspective.

Societal challenges need trans-disciplinary cooperation. Designers and design researchers – if well trained – can play a relevant role, rethinking systems and the role of (new) technology, crossing disciplinary boarders, bring in participative approaches, linking dots, and visualize processes and results. Outcomes are always context specific.

Currently I am working on the development of the new program elective Social Design, a DfI master course for the theme Societal Innovation. The kick off for the first run is February 2025. Co-coordinator is my colleague Abhigyan Singh. We both use our international experience and perspective (zooming in and out).

Author of the book: Culture Sensitive Design – A guide to culture in practice.

 

Initiator and co-editor of the book: The Delft Design Guide: Perspectives, Models, Approaches, Methods. Since the first launch in September 2013, the design guide has already been translated into Chinese and Japanese, and has been applied in our Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) The Delft Design Approach (edX Delftx DDA691x).

Designer and lecturer of the double blended course: Culture Sensitive Design Thinking. This both online and offline course has been developed for both master students and professionals from all over the world. January 2024 the seventh run completed,  For more information check here.

Research project: October 2023 we completed the ErasmusPlus funded research project DoCS4Design, an exchange of the PhD in Design practices at PoliMi, Aalto University, Imperial College, TUDelft, IIT, and CMU. For more information check here.

Research project: From March 2018 till June 2021 Valentijn Visch, Niko Vegt and I started the Healthy Storytelling project, a research-through-design project about obesity prevention through eHealth for people with low-literacy skills. We were interested in how storytelling can be used as a design element. Check it out here.

Watch the summary of Torrie project here.

Watch the summary of Bal & Spriet here.    

Doctoral thesis: In 2015 I defended my thesis ‘Crossing Cultural Chasms: Towards a culture-conscious approach to design‘. Doctoral thesis – AGC van Boeijen

More information on www.designandculture.info with a set of cards for designers.

You can contact me for:

• Design and research projects and research with a specific focus on: design, culture & society; social design; culture sensitive design; a culture-sensitive perspective on societal issues, such as climate change, migration, diversity & inclusion, sustainability.
• Design and research projects in low industrialized context or other (international) projects in which the cultural perspective is key.
• Design methods and tools, particularly to understand the social/cultural context.
• Delft Design Guide in English, Chinese, and Japanese.