Autor: katjadietschi

About experiencing new feelings, looking into private gardens and talking to strangers

Thinking of Emmen, in my head were always just military aircrafts, industrial buildings and a lot of traffic. Normally I just knew the main street close to our school in the Viscosistadt. Studying in this industrial zone surrounded by grey buildings I always had a feeling of being in a robotic-like town.

By walking through the streets and seeing people bringing their groceries back home while pushing the stroller in front of them or having a quick chat in front of the Volg supermarket showed me that this town has more heart than I thought. Walking through the smaller neighbourhoods reminded me of my own hometown, where everyone tries to have a nice garden and children are playing outside with their scooters. I can see that the municipality of Emmen is interested in offering every age category enough options to satisfy their needs and wishes. Even though that this means to have several hairdressers, but whatever…

I think Emmen is doing a good job by trying to improve their energy issues for the future. Unfortunately, I got the impression that some residents living there are not really commited to this topic or don’t get informed well enough of what is going on in their hometown. Talking to two woman on the street, I got the feeling that they are more interested about the location itself and the opportunities they got of the municipality, such as nice walks, close shopping possibilities or an indoor-playground for their children.

Through spending some time in Emmen, walking around and talking to people I’ve got some deeper insights about this town and the project for social design became more tangible and real for me.

Written by Katja Dietschi

Taking a look back at the past two weeks in the module social design

What is social design? What are the energy issues of municipalities? How can we map those issues in an understandable way? How can we as design management students contribute in those situations? How can we create change?

All those questions were buzzing around my head for the last couple of days. Diving directly into the topic of energy issues was a bit overwhelming at the beginning, but at the same time very rewarding. It showed me from the very beginning how social design can be applied in a specific situation on a real life basis. Through the first tasks I’ve learned that social design starts by doing research, getting information and understanding the issues of the certain population in order to then find solutions. This way it is possible to come closer to the goal of social design, which is about the satisfaction of human needs. And here is exactly the connection I see to design management. In our studies we always hear the term “human centered design” and in this module I really see and understand how that actually happens.

Through heated discussions with my friends, parents and grandparents at our dinner table I was able to see the human aspect in the problems I’ve read about. What I realized, one of the main issues why it is hard for citizens to act properly is the topic of money and prices but also availability of information and communication in general. Since then, I have nonstop the question of “how can we change that” in my head. I realized in a later stage after certain readings about the topic of social design, that addressing a number of questions is exactly the way to go.

Another big question which was in my head for a long period of time was the question about what or how we can define a need as a social need? Regarding the topic we are currently working on, I kind of argued with the learnings I’ve got from another reading which was explaining the doughnut model by Kate Raworth. There it is clearly shown how our economy has to work more together with the nature in order to satisfy both sides and finding balance. That way I saw the need for change regarding our energy issues, but I’m wondering if our society would define that as a need…

What I realized is that it is very important for us design management students to show “the world” that designers are not only designing beautiful clothes and nice furniture. We need to show our skills and address complex human issues, placing the social issues as the priority in order to create change in a positive way.

Written by Katja Dietschi

Our task for the module Social Design was to find out more about different energy issues in the municipalities or cities we live in. Doing this task, we realized that all of us came to very different results. What we had in common, was the difficulty of finding the information we needed in order for a useful exchange. Some municipalities are very transparent regarding their energy issues, and with others it was almost impossible to get the information needed through secondary research. Especially in the areas of infrastructure and renewable energies, all of us had some important inputs, but also topics like legislation, mobility, communication, complexity and money were discussed. In the end we came to the conclusion that those municipalities probably have a lot more issues in common, we just didn’t have it black on white.

Through creating this map we learned a lot about the topic in general and we already have some ideas or see the potential in different areas where it needs improvement, and where we can help.

We feel like social design is very important, even though it might get complex.

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