In this co-design project, we wanted to better understand how leverage point theory could be applied to the social design field. We also wanted to develop an alternative perspective on and language for the different systemic levels design needs to tackle to contribute to societal impact and long-term …

In the face of increasingly complex societal challenges, the field of social design is being called upon to deepen its ability to create long-term, systemic impact. This project, conducted with five experienced social designers and one workshop in our ESConference in 2025, explored how systems thinking, …

Citizen science has demonstrated potential to foster local changes in public health, including physical (in)activity. We used community-engaged citizen science to explore how to improve the exercise-friendliness of a Dutch neighborhood, chosen because it scored below average on important health parameters. …

In their relatively short existence, the Expertisenetwork Systemic Co-design (ESC) (ESC) puts these aspirations into practice. As an adventurous and open-ended escapade, ESC is building a community of engaged people around shared challenges, who learn together, create new social narratives, develop capacities, …

Tutorials play a crucial role in serious game development as they provide new users with clear information and guide them through the fundamental interactions in the experience, assisting with the novelty effect. This report discusses the design and development of a modular tutorial tool created for …

This thesis explores how column placement in a semi-sunken parking garage can be optimised to enhance traffic flow, maximise parking capacity, and reliably transfer structural loads from four residential floors above. The project is based on the Sea & City development in Vlissingen, the Netherlands—a …

Collaborative robot arms (cobots) are gaining a strong foothold in contemporary manufacturing workplaces. While more information about the cobot’s impact becomes available, crucial design, work perception, performance, and strategic implications are systematically overlooked. Following a modern sociotechnical systems …

The focus of this deep-dive, facilitated by the ESF-staff, is on digital tooling to design PEDs, to predict and control the energy flows in a PED and to monitor PEDs and evaluate their effectiveness. All this to accelarete PED development in relation to the Mission of 100 climate-neutral and smart cities …

The current multiple crisis require architects, designers, citymakers and stakeholders to re-think their approach to the city and territory, under the urge for a sustainable and inclusive future. While uncertainty and technocracy dominate, they also enable a open investigation and understanding of different …

In the Netherlands, almost everyone has an image of 1930s neighborhoods, post-war neighborhoods, and Vinex locations. That is very different for the neighborhoods with social housing apartments from the 1970s and 1980s. They are forgotten, hardly known, even professionally. And that is a problem because …