Designlab, making space for doing design as a process

The University of Twente has developed the DesignLab initiative to feed the “high tech, human touch” mission of the organisation. The combination of high tech and human touch was made one of the spearheads of the future, in order to bank on the universities unique position as a ‘dual-core university’ with both a strong science and engineering faculty on the one hand and a social sciences faculty at the other. This DesignLab has the mission to integrate the expertise of both academic kernels in “science2design4society”, which means that design knowledge is used to make new technologies available for users and that, together with the latest insights in humanities and business, these are used to tackle problems in contemporary society. To make this happen, the DesignLab needed a dedicated space for doing design in multidisciplinary teams. Because a lot of the prospective users of the lab would not be trained as a designer, it was decided that the actual space of the lab should support the design process. The space that was developed and implemented was therefore not only furnished for the desired design activities, but also structured according the desired design process. It is not yet evidenced that the space actually contributes to a more designerly way of working, the users are however very positive and the design process metaphor proved to be very helpful to build a shared vision within all the stakeholders involved in the DesignLab project.