Research – Axel van Boxtel

Caring Pregnancy Toolkit

axelvanboxtel — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 15:41:52 +0000

Summary

Striving for Systemic Change, the project started with exploring a design approach that scaled up the impact of designers’ creative efforts. Building on theories from the domains of Systems Thinking, Leadership and Design, a theoretical framework was established that helps designers navigate Complex Societal Challenges. The Systemic Design Leadership framework was used to address the challenge of perinatal death because this is a pressing issue in the Netherlands which unequally affects vulnerable groups. Eritreans immigrants are considered one of the groups that is most at risk. the Caring Pregnancy Toolkit enables care professionals and social workers to improve antenatal care for Eritrean women at risk. The toolkit embodies three types of interventions: Healthcare Maps, Translation Cards, and Pregnancy Passports. All of the tools are rested with a QR code that connects to an online co-design platform. The online co-design platform connects a community of experts and creatives around a common purpose to facilitate continuous improvement of the tools to adapt to the complex reality of the challenge.

Concept Video

Concept

Perinatal death is a pressing issue in the Netherlands. that unequally affects vulnerable groups. Especially Eritrean immigrants and refugees are at risk due to influential cultural factors such as low education, lack of agency and illiteracy. This project aimed to reduce maternal risks by improving the antenatal care for Eritrean women at risk.

The Caring Pregnancy Toolkit tackles the most pressing issues with three carefully designed interventions. The tools are designed to mitigate the cultural barriers for care such as, illiteracy and language barriers. The tools embodying these interventions are

Pregnancy Passports that allow women to monitor their pregnancy and communicate important cultural values to care professionals.
Translation Cards that improve cross cultural communication and information exchange between care professionals and Eritrean women.
Healthcare Maps that visualize the healthcare system to improve the agency and understanding of relevant and available care for the women at risk.

All tools are rested with QR codes that connect to the Caring Pregnancy Platform. This platform connects a community around a common purpose and allows a design network of experts and creatives to continuously develop the tools to meet the complex and dynamic reality of the challenge.

Caring Pregnancy Toolkit

Caring Pregnancy Platform

Design Process

The Systemic Design Leadership framework was setup to enable designers to navigate complex societal challenges. Building on theories of systemic design, systems leadership and creative leadership, the framework presents a set of attitudes and behaviors that designers can use to inform their decisions when designing for complex societal challenges. In this project the framework was used as a guiding instrument to address the complex challenge of perinatal mortality. A participatory design approach was taken where cultural experts, social workers, asylum seeker nurses, midwifes and Eritrean women where connected and guided to co-create system interventions. After many interviews and various workshops, a toolkit was designed for people who have a direct personal interaction with the target group. The intention of this concept was to leverage the comfort and trust that exists in the relationship with social workers/care professionals to inform and empower the Eritrean women at risk and improve the social/care services to meet the needs of these women. However, the complex and situated problem of the challenge demands continuous development of the interventions. Therefore, the online co-design platform was added to enable a design network to cultivate this continuous development of the toolkit.

Online Co-Design Workshop Setup

In the process, I engaged 30 participants in three sessions from 14 different organizations. The sessions were built to address the complex problem and navigated the creative efforts of the participants to co-design system interventions.

An overview of Exploratory Prototypes

Download Master Thesis

Data Enabled Design

axelvanboxtel — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 12:35:18 +0000

About

“Bon Voyage” is an artefact that invites for ludic engagement with air quality through using sensors as a way to explore. This research project resulted in a pictorial. There we share a data-enabled design process in which we designed to support ludic engagements enabled by indoor climate data.

The concept was developed in a data-enabled design process which consisted of two phases: the contextual phase and the informed phase. In the contextual phase, contextual, behavioural and experiential data was gathered and used as inspiration for design. Between the contextual and informed step our focus shifted from designing for well-being to ludic engagement. In the informed step, a prototype of this concept was deployed in the field to learn about the possibilities to design intelligence into the system.

In the first deployment, a participant struggled with maintaining non-utilitarian everyday practices at home, during the Covid-19 crisis. With this takeaway, we took inspiration from ludic design as it considers more playful and open-ended forms of interaction made possible by interactive products. We learned that stimulating curiosity and uncertainty can promote exploration and help create new connections. A challenge that we comes up through our process in designing for ludic engagement over the long. We propose handles to pick-up where our pictorial left when designing for ludic engagement through data-enabled design.

The printer converting objective air quality data to ludic data.

Close-up of the sensor box which can be placed at multiple angles or hung from its ring.

Download Pictorial

Project Team: Alex de Kruijff, Demi Jansen, Lesley Lock

Exploring Barriers for Inclusion

axelvanboxtel — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 20:01:54 +0000

Download Research Paper

about

design workshop

In this design research project, I created a stakeholder mapping tool to learn more about cultural barriers in the social inclusion of international students. The learnings of the study contribute to the understanding on the role of culture in facilitating inclusion on university campus.

Workshop

The project started with an explorative workshop on social inclusion. In the workshop insights on barriers and opportunities were shared to explore the current situation at the university campus. The workshop outcomes showed that many of the experienced barriers were related to cultural difference and this became the main subject of the study.

Interviews

To allow participants to express their perspectives on a topic with this level complexity, I designed a research tool. The tool allows participants to place the stakeholders that should be involved in the inclusive process and describe their roles and responsibilities. The tool supported an in-depth discussion whilst providing data with a total of 21 participants.

design research tool

Outcome

Findings show that the way inclusion is facilitated can exclude students based on their cultural background. The learnings from the study were used by organizations within the university to improve the social inclusion at the campus.

Surplus Kitchen

axelvanboxtel — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 12:10:25 +0000

About

In this project we searched for a new business model for a company that sells food boxes with surplus ingredients with the mission to reduce food waste by using the Hypothesis Driven Entrepreneurship method. In this approach a new business model is found by iterating through several experiments in which the feasibility of new business models is tested in the field. Throughout several iterations we found Surplus Kitchen.

Concept rationale

Surplus Kitchen is a concept for cooking workshops with leftovers that can be used by cooking studios in the form of a membership. In the workshop people learn how to cook with leftovers ingredients whilst using actual leftovers. By using food that is close to due date, the participants save money on a cooking workshop while learning ways to reduce domestic food waste which helps saving money doing groceries.

Process

In search of new business models, we designed experiments to rapidly test new business models in the field. During this project we spoke with more than 70 consumers to learn more about the market and our business models. We found that consumers are withheld to buy leftover boxes because they don’t know how to cook with them, and they dislike throwing food away at home. Through rapid iteration we were able to shape the concept of Surplus Kitchen and run several pilot events in less than three months.

First Field Experiment

Surplus Ingredients From Local Businesses

In the last iteration we partnered with local supermarkets and cooking studios to setup a cooking workshop. The workshop was fully booked, and both partners and participants were enthusiastic about the concept. Eventually, a viable proposal was delivered in which we creatively evaluated all components of the business model canvas. Alongside a joyful experience, the pilot workshop effectively changed peoples’ perspective on leftover ingredients. Several participants shared that they’ve enjoyed using their learnings by cooking with ingredients that they would otherwise have thrown away.

Pilot Workshop

Proposal

We proposed Creative Cooking Workshops as a new channel for promotion and revenue. By teaching people how to cook with surplus ingredients we aim to reduce food waste in the food chain and at home. The workshops are organized by professional cooking studio’s that use the company’s food boxes as an ingredient to cook with. Representing the brand at workshops and integrating this on social media stimulates the growth of a community. Alongside the revenue and low investment, we expect that the knowledge and experiences that are shared through the workshops and on social media increases consumer loyalty, exposure and growth by referral.

Project Team: Shanna de Lang & Yff Verstraete