Ir. Arkel, T. van

Thomas is a researcher at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. His main research interest is how designers can achieve positive impact on society through their design interventions.

Academic Background

Thomas graduated from the Design for Interaction programme in 2020. During his Master programme he became interested in doing research on design during a project in which the role of reframing was empirically explored through the reasoning patterns that characterise the reframing process. This experience led to setting up his graduation project as a research where he investigated how designed artefacts can foster durable behaviour change, through developing and experimentally exploring a theoretical model which couples the effectiveness of an intervention to the user's experience of how appropriate the design is to their situation.

He is currently involved in two—more practice-focused—research projects: on how creative professionals can cultivate synergetic partnerships with professionals from public safety organisations to create impact on complex issues, and on understanding the role of behavioural models and frames in developing novel action perspectives to support professionals in job activation programmes.