Contributors
Melanie Becker is a strategic designer driven by a human-centred design approach. She is keen on translating research findings, brand values and market requirements into holistic value propositions and meaningful user experiences delivering additional value to people and businesses. She currently works as Senior Design Strategist at Noto, a product design studio in Cologne, Germany. From 2015 to 2018 she was part of the team behind the funded project ‘Design for Wellbeing. Nord-Rhine-Westfalia’, which resulted in a wellbeing-centred design and innovation process applicable by the creative industry. Melanie holds a Dipl.Ing. in industrial design from FH Joanneum Graz, Austria, and an MFA in advanced product design from the Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden.
Jo Broekx is architect and Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Belgium. He coordinates the first year’s design studio in architecture, which focuses on the conceptual and contextual part of the design process in dwelling.
Rebecca Cain is Professor of Transdisciplinary Design, in the School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University, UK. She also holds the position of Associate Dean for Enterprise. An industrial designer by training, her expertise is in bringing together different disciplines and working with industry and society to design and research future products, environments, services and systems that create positive outcomes for people. She works across sectors including mobility, energy and healthcare. She founded the Design Research Society’s Special Interest Group for Wellbeing, Happiness and Health, which she now co-convenes.
Emily Corrigan-Kavanagh is currently Research Fellow in Communication Design at the University of Surrey, UK, on the ‘Next Generation Paper’ project. Her role involves investigating the design aspects of new augmented paper technologies, such as how associated augmented content is generated and activated, as well as planning, running and analysis of reading studies and co-design workshops with prospective users to test and reconceptualise resulting prototypes. Prior to this, she completed a PhD at Loughborough University, UK, on ‘Designing for Home Happiness and Creative Design Methods’. Her research interests include designing for augmented paper, design for happiness and wellbeing, creative methods and visual research methods.
Diana Cürlis studied communication design at Folkwang University of Arts, Essen, Germany. Her work is focused on social innovation and ecological sustainability. Her current efforts aim at the improvement of the welfare of people with dementia and their caregiving relatives through participatory design. Whilst being a team member of ‘Design for Wellbeing. Nord-Rhine-Westfalia’ she gave birth to her second son and came in contact with new aspects of subjective wellbeing by letting go of all autonomy and working on the funded project with the least amount of sleep possible.
Liesbeth De Donder is Associate Professor in Adult Educational Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel where she teaches research methodology and civil society and community development. Her research focuses on social participation and inclusion, caring communities, feelings of safety, and elder abuse, with a particular interest in participatory methodologies.
Pieter M.A. Desmet is Professor of Design for Experience at the Faculty of Industrial Design, Delft University, the Netherlands. He is founding director of the Delft Institute of Positive Design (DIOPD), a research group that focuses on emotion- and wellbeing-driven design. Pieter is partner of the research and design agency Emotion/Studio, and board member of the International Design & Emotion Society. He has published over 150 scientific (journal) papers, book chapters and books on a variety of aspects of experience-driven design, reaching an audience of both scholars and practitioners. Besides his research, he contributes to local community projects, such as a recently developed sensory wellness neighbourhood park and a cultural Rotterdam-based ‘House of Happiness’.
Carolina Escobar-Tello is a progressive researcher, designer and facilitator working across industrial, service and systems design. Currently, she is Lecturer in Design at the Loughborough Design School, Loughborough University, UK. With extensive professional multicultural design and management experience in the industrial, not-for-profit and governmental arena (UK, US, Europe and South America), her work has been published in journals and international peer-reviewed conference proceedings. She is an expert in design for happiness/wellbeing, sustainable design and social innovation, and co-convenor of the Design Research Society Special Interest Group on Sustainability.
Thorsten Frackenpohl apprenticed as a merchant before starting to study design at the Köln International School of Design, Cologne, Germany. At the age of 25 he and André Poulheim founded the design studio Frackenpohl Poulheim in Cologne – which is now called Noto. Between 2007 and 2011 he was part of a newly established Chair of Industrial Design at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and was responsible for the launch of an industrial design master program. He is fascinated by the creation of meaningful experiences that lead to business success. Many of Noto’s products have received international design awards such as the Red Dot Product Design Award, the iF Product Design Award, the German Design Award and the prestigious Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Gold for the inflatable tent ‘The Cave’ for Heimplanet.
Luke Harmer, PhD (Royal College of Art, London) is Designer, Researcher and Lecturer at Loughborough University, UK. His design work has a transport focus and he has designed both public and private vehicles, as well as working on industrial, medical, electronic and packaging. His research work is concerned with embedding the user and environment into the design process.
Gitte Harzé is both architect and interior architect, and lectures at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Belgium. She coordinates the first year’s design studio in interior architecture and is a lecturer, teaching computer-aided architectural design, in the first and second bachelor in interior architecture.
Marc Hassenzahl is Professor for Ubiquitous Design/Experience and Interaction at the University of Siegen, Germany. He combines his training in psychology with a love for interaction design. With his group of designers and psychologists, he explores the theory and practice of designing pleasurable, meaningful and transforming interactive technologies. He is author of Experience Design. Technology for All the Right Reasons (Morgan & Claypool), co-author (with Sarah Diefenbach) of Psychologie in der nutzerzentrierten Produktgestaltung. Mensch-Technik-Interaktion-Erlebnis (People, Technology, Interaction, Experience) (Springer) and author of many peer-reviewed papers at the seams of psychology, design research and interaction/industrial design. More information can be found via www.marc-hassenzahl.de or https://www.facebook.com/experience.interact/.
Sander Hermsen is a Senior Researcher in Design and Behaviour Change at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands. Hermsen conducts research on designing effective, evidence-driven interventions that support vulnerable people in healthy behaviour change. Another core research interest focuses on creating evidence-based and theory-driven methods and tools to enable designers and health professionals to use insights from the behavioural sciences to inform their work.
Sarah Kettley is Chair of Material and Design Innovation at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research spans disciplines in order to develop design methodologies for emerging and embedded technologies. With a background in jewellery and silversmithing, Sarah has developed craft as a methodology for the development of wearable technologies, and she leads multidisciplinary teams to engage in critical relational design research with mental health and wellbeing sectors.
Holger Klapperich studied industrial design with a focus on user experience at Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen, Germany and critical practice at Goldsmith University, London. His research interest is efficiency in the context of everyday automation. He tries to answer the question: How could an automated process/automated processes be designed to be experientially rich? Holger explores the area of tension between manual and automated activities. From 2015 to 2018 he was involved in the funded research project ‘Design for Wellbeing. Nord-Rhine-Westfalia’.
Henning Köhler studied business administration with a focus on corporate development in Cologne, Germany, South Africa and India. During his studies he focused on innovation management and gained experiences with the innovation process by working for start-ups as well as corporates. His motivation for the project ‘Design for Wellbeing. Nord-Rhine-Westfalia’ lies in the deeper practical understanding of the sources of innovation and the business value behind subjective wellbeing. In his role as Business Designer for Noto, Henning focused within the funded project on implementing complementary lean start-up methods, testing different validation methodologies and ensuring adaptability of the developed innovation process for corporate needs.
Matthias Laschke holds a diploma in industrial design and a doctorate in philosophy, with a focus on human–computer interaction. He is Senior Research Scientist in Marc Hassenzahl’s workgroup, Ubiquitous Design, at the University of Siegen, Germany. He focuses on the subject of experience design, addressing topics such as professional contexts (e.g., health care, duty roster) and mobility. Additionally, he focuses on the design and aesthetic of transformational objects (e.g., ‘Pleasurable Troublemakers’) and persuasive technologies, addressing diverse topics such as sustainability, procrastination, willpower, adherence or mindfulness in traffic. He is supervisor of different lectures, theses and national research projects in Germany.
Rachel Lucas is a psychotherapist currently working for the Student Counselling Service at the University of Bristol and at Affordable Talk, Bristol, UK, alongside her private practice work. Rachel took the MSc course in person-centred psychotherapy at the Sherwood Psychotherapy Training Institute in Nottingham, UK. She has provided both open-ended and short-term contracts across varied contexts including: Counselling Xtra, Nottingham, Women’s Aid, Nottingham Trent University Counselling Service, NHS Employee Assistance Programmes and the Family Intervention Project. Rachel worked on an EPSRC research project at Nottingham Trent University, partnered with Mind, looking at ways to support mental health, and compiled a review of relevant UK and EU literature with Sarah Kettley.
Geke Ludden is Associate Professor and Head of Chair of Interaction Design, Department of Design, Production and Management, University of Twente, the Netherlands. She is also a research fellow of the University’s Designlab. She is editor of the Journal of Design Research and has published in major design and (e-)health journals such as International Journal of Design, Design Issues, Journal of Medical Internet Research and Journal of Personalized Medicine. She is co-editor of the book Design for Behaviour Change, published by Routledge in 2018. She studies the design of products and services that support healthy behaviour and that engage people in therapy at home.
Kai Ludwigs has studied as a psychologist and economist. In 2014 he founded the Happiness Research Organisation (HRO), an independent research institute specialising in app-based research, located in Dusseldorf, Germany (www.happiness-research.org). He specialises in measuring happiness, wellbeing and quality of life with modern technologies; and is a board member of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies.
Artur Mausbach is a Senior Research Fellow and the Automotive Transitions Studio Leader at IMDC, the Intelligent Mobility Design Centre at the Royal College of Art, London. He is an architect and urban planner committed to sustainability and design research. He has worked globally as a consultant for the car industry and has had architectural designs built in the UK, Austria and Brazil. He has an MPhil on ‘Environmental Urban Structures’ and an ‘Architecture and Urbanism’ BA and MA from the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil; and a PhD in ‘Vehicle Design’ from the Royal College of Art (RCA). Since 2002, he has worked in academia as lecturer, researcher, professor of design and architecture and head of Smart Cities post-graduation course, at the University of São Paulo (USP), Istituto Europeo di Design of São Paulo (IED-SP) and other institutions.
Deger Ozkaramanli is Assistant Professor in Human Centred Design at the Department of Design Production and Management and a research fellow at the DesignLab, at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. She is fascinated by the richness of the dilemmas people experience in daily life. That is why, as a designer and researcher, she pursues dilemma-driven design in her work. She has published her research in leading design journals, such as Design Issues and The Design Journal, and regularly organises workshops in dilemma-driven design to understand and increase the impact of her work on design practice. Her aim is to understand and influence the emotional, social and ethical significance of design through addressing the complex and morally loaded dilemmas evoked by products and services.
Ann Petermans is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Belgium. She chairs the Design Research Society’s Special Interest Group on Design for Wellbeing, Happiness and Health. Her research interests pertain in particular to designing for experience in designed environments and for diverse user groups, and research related to design for subjective wellbeing and how architecture and interior architecture can contribute in this respect. Ann is editorial board member of The Design Journal and publishes in various high-quality journals. She is also co-editor of the book Retail Design: Theoretical Perspectives, published by Routledge in 2017.
Anna Pohlmeyer is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, Co-Director of the Delft Institute of Positive Design and board member of the Design Research Society Special Interest Group on Design for Wellbeing, Happiness and Health. Her trans-disciplinary background combines studies in psychology (Humboldt University, Berlin), a PhD in engineering (TU Berlin and University of Luxembourg) and years of teaching and doing design, which is also reflected in her research expertise on design for happiness, human-centred design methodology, and prolonging positive experiences through design.
Tiiu Poldma, PhD, FDRS, CFERDIE, is Full Professor at the School of Design, Faculty of Environmental Design/Faculté de l’Aménagement, University of Montreal, Canada. She is a regular researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Montreal (CRIR) and Director of the FoCoLUM Lighting Lab. Her research interests include wellbeing and ageing well, how form, colour and light affect perceptions, and understanding lived experience in interior spaces from pragmatic phenomenological perspectives. Research work includes developing intersectoral projects that favour universal design integration, collaborative, co-design and participatory methodologies within Living Labs. In 2015 she was nominated Fellow of the Design Research Society for her contributions to design research.
An-Sofie Smetcoren is a postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Adult Educational Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and member of the Belgian Ageing Studies. Her main research interests concentrate on how urban environments influence the daily lives of its inhabitants (e.g., access to housing, services and care) and thus how processes of social inclusion and exclusion take place in communities. Alongside this is her particular interest in engaging with the experiences of and to give voice to socially, politically and economically marginalised groups, with a focus on older adults. Her PhD was entitled ‘“I’m not leaving!?” Critical perspectives on “Ageing in Place”’.
Ruth Stevens holds a PhD in Architecture and is a fellow of the research group ArcK for architecture and interior architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Belgium. Her research is focused on further developing a general frame of reference to design for human flourishing in architecture, through both theoretical work and testing a developed design tool to design for human flourishing in practice. She has presented her work at various international conferences and has published in, among others, Interiors and The Design Journal.
Marius Tippkämper studied communications design at Folkwang University of Arts, Essen, Germany, with a focus on interaction design and generative art. In 2014 he acquired his diploma, but continued to work at Folkwang University as a student assistant to Professor Claudius Lazzeroni and later as a lecturer, teaching programming. After some freelance work as an artist and as a web designer and developer he proceeded to work at ixdp. to develop hard- and software prototypes for the ‘Design for Wellbeing’ project. After its completion he began working as an interface designer and front-end developer at Grey Rook in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany.
Leandro Miletto Tonetto holds a PhD in Psychology. He is Professor of Design at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, São Leopoldo, Brazil, and co-founder of Zooma Consumer Experience. He has coordinated research projects for organisations such as UN Women (Brazil), Dropbox and Samsung. His research focuses on design for wellbeing and emotion as a means to foster human development and health. His work has been published in Applied Ergonomics, International Journal of Consumer Studies and Quality Management in Health Care, among others.
Cathy Treadaway, PhD, is Professor of Creative Practice at the Cardiff School of Art and Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London, Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, York, UK, and a founder member of the CARIAD research group. She is an artist, writer and design researcher with a background in design and digital technologies. For the last six years she has been leading international interdisciplinary research investigating how to design interactive playful products for people living with advanced dementia, to help in their care and to support their wellbeing. Further information can be found at https://www.laughproject.info/.
Emmanuel Tsekleves leads design for global health at ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University, UK. Driven by the UN’s sustainable development goals, his research focuses on tackling community health challenges across the world. He is currently working on: understanding cleaning practices and driving infections from homes in Ghana; developing health and care policies for senior citizens in Malaysia; and in promoting seafood across Europe through novel packaging design. He is the convenor of the Design Research Society Special Interest Group on Global Health and editor of Design for Health, published by Routledge.
Jan Vanrie (PhD, Psychology) is Associate Professor of Human Sciences and Research Methodology and coordinator of research group ArcK, Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Hasselt University, Belgium. His research interests lie at the intersection of environmental psychology and perception, (interior) architecture, and design research and education. Within ArcK, he works with several colleagues in the research cluster ‘Designing for More’, investigating how people experience and interact with the built environment and looking for ways to support designers in design approaches such as design for subjective wellbeing, design for experience and universal design/design for all.
Dominique Verté is Professor at the Department of Adult Educational Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research interests have focused on political, social and cultural participation in old age, community development, civic engagement, age-friendly communities and issues relating to health care policy. He is one of the founding directors of the Belgian Ageing Studies. This is a research project which aims to measure the living conditions and quality of life of older people in Belgian municipalities. The project promotes evidence-based policy at the local level by providing input and mobilising knowledge for planning inclusive, age-friendly policy programmes.