Designing Innovations for Sustainability

URL study guide

https://vu.nl/en/education/honours/sem02%20(2022-2023)-designing-innovations-for-sustainability

Course Objective

Nowadays, everyone is pretty clued up on what can be done to help build a more sustainable and environmentally friendly society. On a personal level, we know we should recycle, limit our energy use and do our best to buy products with low ‘carbon footprints’, from sustainable sources. In turn, we expect businesses and other organizations to do their bit. Most now have sustainability policies, packed with terms such as ‘life cycle analysis’, ‘holistic management’ and ‘integrated bottom lines.’ Universities are no exception, and like everyone else are becoming
increasingly proactive on green issues. This course intends to give you the chance to come into contact with the (practical) themes of sustainability by searching for innovative solutions for universities in Amsterdam. Besides
gaining a sound understanding of sustainability challenges, you will develop crucial professional competences and work together in diverse teams. You will design practical and innovative solutions for sustainability that can be implemented within the university (i.e. VU, UvA, AUC, VUmc). The main challenge addressed in this/ course is: “How to make the university more sustainable?”
To answer this main question each group of students will work within a specific sustainability domain related to the university. For each domain, there are (several) case studies. You and your group will formulate advice to the respective stakeholders of the university on addressing your case study.

Course Content

The course has been designed to balance learning and training skills related to the design process of innovative solutions for sustainability. The students will apply their newly developed skills and acquired knowledge to relevant case studies at the university. The time table of the course is listed on the following page. In the first part of the course (week 1), an overview of the course will be given, and the design process will be explained. Presentations of the case studies will be given, and students will choose which cases they find most interesting to work on. Teams will be formed based on the preferences of the students. During the next weeks, the student teams will further develop their plans and improve the quality of their projects through extensive feedback sessions and communication exercises. In the second week of the course, the basic knowledge of sustainability sciences will be portrait using the triple bottom line. This week, the “People, planet and prosperity” domains and their interconnectivity will be addressed. These three factors are fundamental in finding sustainable innovations.
In week 3, we will dive into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the role of this framework within sustainable development. Moreover, main sustainability themes will be discussed. In these lectures we will zoom in on specific challenges and opportunities within these domains. The knowledge can be used in formulating the advice for the case studies. The pre-recorded lectures should be studied before the lecture starts. During the meetings we will put the theoretical knowledge from the lecture into practice with your case. In week 4, 5, and 6, we will start the next phase of the design process, namely the ideation phase. During these weeks the development of the solutions will be the main activity. In week 4 each team will draw up various design criteria to define the boundary conditions of your final design. In the fifth week, students will brainstorm on various sub-solutions by using the morphological matrix tool. This tool will help teams come up with different concept designs, after which the final design will be chosen. Next, the teams will come up with various communication strategies to test and visualize their final design. In week 6 the main activity will be to prepare, and trial run the presentations. In the final week of the course (week 7), the teams will pitch their projects. Students are advised to read the following compulsory literature before the respective lectures
to maximise learning results.

Teaching Methods

Workshops
Lectures

Method of Assessment

Presentation
Paper

Additional Information

Honours Programme - OHDIS_2022