Arno Verhoeven

Design for

Accessibility, Benevolence, Design, Equity, Inclusivity, Prosperous Futures, Sustainability

Year

2018-20192019-20202020-20212021-2022

Arno Verhoeven Headshot

Arno is Sr. Lecturer in the School of Design at the University of Edinburgh, and Programme Director for the Design for Change [MA].  He’s trained as a social scientist, a designer/maker, and a concept/product designer, and works at the intersection of these disciplines, primarily in understanding, scoping and proposing alternative technical futures based on actions, behaviours, and agency of people and the built environments surrounding them. Areas of research interest include design thinking, design practices (particularly prototyping) and the relationship between stories, narratives, and experience as tools of collective knowledge, as part of design communication.

Insight

What is your favourite part of the D4C Programme?

Very difficult to say what my favourite part is. Amazing students, great colleagues, good friends, and stimulating value-driven projects – the fact that it’s a programme is perhaps my favourite part.

What area of design are you most interested in?

That’s a funny question. I don’t see design as a field, that is composed of different areas. Rather I see design as “a way”. In that sense, it is difficult to segregate design into differential components. Rather, the strength of design is in the way it can be integrated into everything.

What do you think is the role of design for change?

Change is constant, but it has two faces: either it’s done through our own agency, or it’s imposed on us by the agency of others. And it has two dimensions – the change you want and the change you don’t. I suppose the relationship between this view of change and design has to do with “having a plan” – whether it’s proactive, or reactive. But more significantly, it’s perhaps an awareness that we should be ready with “plan b” – being free to acknowledge that design isn’t strictly about “solving problems” as it is about trying to understand the nature of these wicked problems themselves.