Design, Organisation and Strategy
The department of Design, Organisation and Strategy (DOS) focuses on the strategic role of design in organisations with the intention to improve and renew the organisations’ strategies and thereby concurrently co-create value for individuals, organisations, and society at large.
Today’s society is rapidly changing as a result of continuous developments in technological capabilities, organisation networks, market needs, and societal challenges. As a result, designers need to find new solutions for the critical challenges in health, mobility and sustainability. Through insightful analysis, working with diverse stakeholders, and applying design theories, tools and techniques, we develop cutting-edge knowledge on how designers can support individuals, organisations and society with strategic renewal and value creation.
With scholars coming from different domains, DOS takes an interdisciplinary perspective on studying design practices in the interconnection of design, organisation and strategy. Our research aims to advance theoretical and practical knowledge in the following research topics:
Secretariaat DOS
- +31 15 27 830 68
- secretariaat-DOS@tudelft.nl
-
Room C-4-010
Chair of Department Design, Organisation and Strategy
Maaike Kleinsmann
- +31 (0)15 27 88657
- m.s.kleinsmann@tudelft.nl
-
Room B-4-210
Team DOS Support
Deputy Head of Department
General support, Human Resource & Student Assistants
General support, Financial Affairs, Graduation Affairs & PhD Affairs
Research topics
Strategic design in organisations and networks
New (smart) technologies change the way designers work and create value in organisations. In order to advance strategic design in organisations and networks, DOS aims to uncover design practices of envisioning, effectuation (i.e., how design can make things happen) and entrepreneurship.
For example, in CardioLab, we explore how strategic design can contribute to prevent high-risk groups of people from becoming cardiac patients and to provide cardiac patients with a longer and healthier live. CardioLab develops smart product service systems to achieve this. The scientific aim of CardioLab is to develop new knowledge on the role of design in this digital transformation of cardiac care, especially on what this digitization implies for design thinking practices, multi-party collaborations, and data-enabled design.
Strategies for (sustainable) innovation
Emerging technologies and materials provide organisations with new ways to deliver and market product-service systems that are more beneficial for society. DOS will work with organisations to create strategies for the successful development and implementation of (sustainable) innovations. Specifically, DOS investigates individual needs and behaviors of consumers towards societally relevant innovations, as well as the responsibilities of consumers and market intermediaries to make these innovations more acceptable and accessible, for example, via the implementation of appropriate business models.
For example, as part of the PROMPT project, DOS investigates in collaboration with European consumer organisations (e.g., Consumentenbond) why consumers prematurely replace consumer durables (e.g., smartphones, vacuum cleaners) and how this can be prevented via successful design solutions. The final aim of this project is to provide consumer organisations with a testing programme to assess the lifetime of products.
Design theories, methods and practice
Design theory, methods and practice focuses on continued development of design theory and models from creative, collaborative and cognitive perspectives. Furthermore, DOS investigates applied research in the area of design thinking, methodology, and road mapping.
For example, in collaboration with KLM Dutch Royal Airlines, we introduced a design approach in an industry driven by engineering, security and regulation. The KLM Design Doing partnership focuses on organizational design by using different strategic methods, such as passenger journey and tangible business modelling to tackle the different challenges of KLM.
