Brigitte van der Lugt
Master Portfolio
Professional Identity & vision
I have a personal drive to make meaningful changes by humanizing societal systems. My approach is aimed at increasing people’s autonomy and independence in society by allowing them to participate in policy-making. For that purpose, continuous learning and collaboration with stakeholders is a central element of my work.
People inspire me to dive into the complexity of social challenges and incorporate stakeholder perspectives into the process. Accordingly, the expertise area of User and Society is at the heart of my process. The expertise area of Creativity and Aesthetics is of importance as well. I will use a variety of creative techniques, such as low-fi prototyping, to challenge my perspective and refine ideas. I am a designer that often starts with intuition when prototyping and subsequently alternates with knowledge-driven design. Simultaneously, I pay close attention to people’s reactions to my work and take those insights into the iterative process.
Design for Public Organisations
According to Schaminée (2018), in Designing With-in public organizations, the problems public organisations may face are divided based on the degree of consensus and the available knowledge. He argues that designers can bring added value when there is no accepted knowledge and consensus that can be used to advance the situation, which would be the first sub-group, wicked problems. In this book, wicked problems are defined as dynamic, they change as you work on them; open, accessible to many; networked, rarely be resolved by a single organization or within an individual domain; and complex, simple solutions are not effective or permitted. The mere fact that the solution is not at hand makes me motivated to work on such issues.
Recent news items such as the protests against the arrival of an AZC in Tubbergen and the distribution of tents paid for by citizens have made me reflect on the chosen policy, my previous internship at Directie X and my education on citizen participation theories. As a designer, I can make a difference by designing citizen participation tools for the central and local governments to make their products more responsive to society. In addition, designers could use their expertise to explore future-proof working practices, research the complexity and the ‘question-behind-the-question’ of challenges.
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Master studies
I combined the Master of Innovation Sciences with Industrial Design. As a result, I have created a better understanding of how to design solutions for socio-technical challenges using sustainable and future-proof alternatives. As part of the Innovation Sciences master, I did the specialization track Innovation, Strategy and Policy. This track contains courses that focus on the social impact of innovations and how to create a strategy for policy implications. My studies have motivated me to design for public organisations.