CONEXT

For my final bachelor project at Industrial Design, I designed Conext; A discussion tool for next level co-creation at citizen-evenings by making connections. The goal of this project was to empower citizens during the redevelopment of their city within the co-creation process at citizen-evenings.

 

Conext helps all stakeholders involved, civil society, architects and municipality, within the redevelopment of a city during citizen-evenings. Within this process of co-creation at citizen-evenings, there is quite often a lot of chaos. Within these evenings Conext makes sure that citizens will be empowered throughout the process by actively participating and making sure they feel heard through the use of visual tokens. Conext also engages all citizens through equal contribution, brings an overview for all stakeholders during the process of what is said and in what phase of the process the group is. Conext is a tool that guides all stakeholders by providing a clear, freeform process. Within the session, Conext guides the participants in redesigning their city by making compromises and building relationships for a collaborative solution in which all values and interests are integrated.

 

The process consists of two phases. An explore phase, in which values and motivations are explored and clustered, and a create phase, in which solutions and steps to take are designed and reflected on. During this process tokens and icons support the group of co-designers. The icons represent the topic discussed and the tokens create an overview of the connections and compromises made. Conext supports stakeholders in feeling empowered with equal contribution, creates overview and by building to a collaborative solution.

 

Skills used and developed in the Final Bachelor Project

Throughout the Final Bachelor I applied skills learned in my bachelor. I have applied an iterative process to be able to discover strengths and weaknesses in the concept. Also to discover this I collaborated with all stakeholders, in a test I also applied a multi-stakeholder collaboration. To be able to analyze the scope of the design space I observed and participated in the context I am designing for and interviewed experts within the context of co-design. I used sketching and prototyping skills to be able to explore, communicate and validate my concept. Another way to explore and validate the concept was through user testing. I applied business skills in a way due to the collaboration I had with the company LOS stadomland. I consciously chose to collaborate with them to be able to design a product for a client and suitable for the context. This was done to be able to validate if a company would be willing to buy and further develop the project.

 

I feel like I have grown a lot by taking responsibility by planning and organizing the process. I learned how to communicate my idea and take conscious decisions within the process. also when using these skills within my project I have developed all of them in a higher level and more professional way.