In service design projects, collaboration between design consultant and service provider can be problematic. The nature of these projects requires a high level of shared understanding and commitment, which providers may not be used to. We studied designer-provider collaboration in multiple real-life cases, in order to uncover determinants for successful collaboration. The case studies involved six service innovation projects, performed by Dutch design agencies. Independent researchers closely monitored the projects. Additional interviews with designers and providers gave insights in how both parties experienced their collaboration in the innovation projects. During data analysis, a coding scheme was created inductively. The scheme supported us in formulating 12 themes for designer-provider collaboration, amongst them four contextual determinants of shared understanding and stakeholder commitment in SD-projects. The insights from this study were then grounded in literature. Knowledge gaps were identified on themes about agreements of responsibilities, the open-endedness of an SD-process, an opportunitysearching approach, and organizational change that is required for the successful implementation of innovative service concepts.
Background: This paper describes the Co-Care-KIT, a reflective toolkit designed to provide insights into the diverse experiences of home-based informal caregivers during the delivery of care to a relative or loved one.Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the toolkit, including a custom-designed journal, tools for photography-based experience sampling, and heart rate tracking, which enables caregivers to collect and reflect on their positive and negative daily experiences in situ.Methods: A 2-week field study with informal caregivers (N=7) was conducted to evaluate the Co-Care-KIT and to capture their daily personal emotional experiences. The collected data samples were analyzed and used for collaborative dialogue between theresearcher and caregiver.Results: The results suggest that the toolkit (1) increased caregivers’ awareness of their own well-being through in situ reflection on their experiences; (2) empowered caregivers to share their identities and experiences as a caregiver within their social networks; (3) enabled the capturing of particularly positive experiences; and (4) provided caregivers reassurance with regards to their ownmental health.Conclusion: By enabling capturing and collaborative reflection, the kit helped to gain a new understanding of caregivers’ day-to-day needs and emotional experiences.
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Background: For most women, participation in decision-making during maternity care has a positive impact on their childbirth experiences. Shared decision-making (SDM) is widely advocated as a way to support people in their healthcare choices. The aim of this study was to identify quality criteria and professional competencies for applying shared decision-making in maternity care. We focused on decision-making in everyday maternity care practice for healthy women. Methods: An international three-round web-based Delphi study was conducted. The Delphi panel included international experts in SDM and in maternity care: mostly midwives, and additionally obstetricians, educators, researchers, policy makers and representatives of care users. Round 1 contained open-ended questions to explore relevant ingredients for SDM in maternity care and to identify the competencies needed for this. In rounds 2 and 3, experts rated statements on quality criteria and competencies on a 1 to 7 Likert-scale. A priori, positive consensus was defined as 70% or more of the experts scoring ≥6 (70% panel agreement). Results: Consensus was reached on 45 quality criteria statements and 4 competency statements. SDM in maternity care is a dynamic process that starts in antenatal care and ends after birth. Experts agreed that the regular visits during pregnancy offer opportunities to build a relationship, anticipate situations and revisit complex decisions. Professionals need to prepare women antenatally for unexpected, urgent decisions in birth and revisit these decisions postnatally. Open and respectful communication between women and care professionals is essential; information needs to be accurate, evidence-based and understandable to women. Experts were divided about the contribution of professional advice in shared decision-making and about the partner’s role. Conclusions: SDM in maternity care is a dynamic process that takes into consideration women’s individual needs and the context of the pregnancy or birth. The identified ingredients for good quality SDM will help practitioners to apply SDM in practice and educators to prepare (future) professionals for SDM, contributing to women’s positive birth experience and satisfaction with care.
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-Chatbots are being used at an increasing rate, for instance, for simple Q&A conversations, flight reservations, online shopping and news aggregation. However, users expect to be served as effective and reliable as they were with human-based systems and are unforgiving once the system fails to understand them, engage them or show them human empathy. This problem is more prominent when the technology is used in domains such as health care, where empathy and the ability to give emotional support are most essential during interaction with the person. Empathy, however, is a unique human skill, and conversational agents such as chatbots cannot yet express empathy in nuanced ways to account for its complex nature and quality. This project focuses on designing emotionally supportive conversational agents within the mental health domain. We take a user-centered co-creation approach to focus on the mental health problems of sexual assault victims. This group is chosen specifically, because of the high rate of the sexual assault incidents and its lifetime destructive effects on the victim and the fact that although early intervention and treatment is necessary to prevent future mental health problems, these incidents largely go unreported due to the stigma attached to sexual assault. On the other hand, research shows that people feel more comfortable talking to chatbots about intimate topics since they feel no fear of judgment. We think an emotionally supportive and empathic chatbot specifically designed to encourage self-disclosure among sexual assault victims could help those who remain silent in fear of negative evaluation and empower them to process their experience better and take the necessary steps towards treatment early on.
Designing with the Sun is a KIEM-GoCI explorative research project on the theme Energy Transition and Sustainability. The project is aimed at network and agenda building and design research that explores new (cultural) practices of renewable energy consumption, based on a shift from ‘energy blindness’ to ‘energy awareness’. Up until now the solar industry has been propelled forward by technical innovations, offering mostly pragmatic, economic benefits to consumers. Innovation in this field mostly concerns making solar panels more efficient and less costly. However, to succeed, the energy transition also needs new cultural practices. These practices should reflect the ways renewables are different from fossil fuels. For solar, this means using more direct solar energy, when the sun is there, and being able to adapt to periods of low energy. Currently, consumers are mostly ‘blind’ to the infrastructure behind fossil-based energy. However, for energy sources such as solar and wind ‘awareness’ of their availability becomes more important. What could such an awareness look or feel like? How can it be enacted? And how can a change in practice that is more attuned to availability be experienced positively? Solar companies see opportunities in using design to help build motivating practices and narratives within the solar field, enabling awareness through personal relationships between consumer and solar energy. However, the knowledge of how to get there is lacking. In a research-through-design trajectory, and together with partners from the Creative Industries, Designing with the Sun aims to explore new ways of relating citizens to solar energy. Ultimately, these insights should enable the newly emerging field of solar design to contribute to the emergence of more sustainable and rewarding energy awareness and practices.
The Hospitality, Tourism, Innovation & Technology Experts Network (HTIT-EN) is a pivotal initiative aimed at unlocking societal impact potential. The Dutch hospitality and tourism sector, which employs over half a million individuals and annually hosts more than 40 million guests, ranks as the Netherlands’ 8th largest economic sector. However, this sector faces numerous challenges, including the uncertain impact of emerging technologies and issues such as unethical behavior, workforce attrition, and staff shortages, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The advent of emerging technologies like service robots, immersive experiences, and artificial intelligence has brought the sector to a critical juncture. These innovations pose significant disruptions, challenging the traditional concept of hospitality and questioning the positive societal impact in terms of ethical considerations, inclusivity, affordability, and data privacy.Strategically positioned to address these challenges, HTIT-EN focuses on leveraging emerging technologies to create impactful scenarios and shape the future of hospitality and tourism. Our motivation stems from the sector’s societal importance and its continuous influence on our daily lives. By harnessing technology and innovation, we aim to tackle industry-specific issues and extend the positive societal impact to related human-centered service industries.The overarching mission of HTIT-EN is to empower the Dutch Hospitality and Tourism sector to serve as a driving force for technology-enabled societal impact. The primary objective is to align research activities and promote collaboration. Key objectives include bringing together leading professors specializing in technology-driven impact within the hospitality and tourism sector, initiating research projects in line with a shared research agenda and in collaboration with local and international industry partners, and collaboratively developing expertise in emerging technologies that empower the role of hospitality and tourism as catalysts for societal impact. This endeavor contributes to the development and acceleration of the Knowledge and Innovation Agenda (KIA) ‘Key technologies’ & ‘Digitalization’. The aim is to foster an excellent reputation for Dutch hospitality and tourism as a global leader in technology-driven societal impact.We have strong support from CELTH, the Centre of Expertise within the domain of leisure, tourism and hospitality for the overall ambitions of the research project.Societal issueThe HTIT-EN project bridges societal importance and cross-cutting issues in the tourism and hospitality sectors. It’s fueled by the ambition to leverage emerging technologies to tackle industry-specific challenges, including knowledge and skills gaps, labor shortages and replacements, and evolving consumer expectations.Benefit to societyThe platform brings together professors and researchers from MBO, HBO and WO knowledge institutes as well as diverse set of professional partners to stimulate collaboration, align research lines and establish joint a joint research agenda on how technology-driven impact may become a catalyst within hospitality and tourism.
