ABOUT US
The social design research group was established in 2015 at the Department of Design & Communication / SDU
The group has a keen interest in how people can be involved in participatory design processes leading to social value for the individual and society at large. By social value, we refer to changes at a human scale that is felt to be beneficial for marginalized or vulnerable societal groups and communities.
Design research practice is essential for our work
We use design methods to make sense of wicked problems, as a way of engaging and co-designing with people and as a process of making artefacts or services enabling people to cope with difficult situations in life.
Through a number of research projects we have documented our ability to evaluate social design outcomes by bridging disciplines from the human and social sciences.
RESEARCH AREAS
In our social design unit we are concerned with the urgent societal need for rethinking core services of the Scandinavian and European welfare states. In particular, our research projects lies within the following four areas:
NEWS
EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager visit to SDU Kolding
Social Design Unit presents work for EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager Friday the 5th of November, the Social Design Unit presented work on Patient Empowerment, for Executive Vice-President [...]
Innovation prize 2021
Social Design Unit awarded SDU's Innovation Prize 2021! Friday the 29th of October, the Social Design Unit were awarded SDU’s prestigious Innovation Prize 2021, for our work [...]
New publication in Journal of Design Research
How do we evaluate or account for social value in Social Design? The need of documenting and evaluating change in Social Design has been a recurrent issue [...]
New article on art and design interventions in urban space
A new framework for curating urban interventions Urban interventions are often associated with a strong notion of human agency: architects, designers, and artists acting as political subjects [...]
Thomas Markussen
thma@sdu.dk +45 93507196
Eva Knutz
evak@sdu.dk+45 93507135
University of Southern Denmark
Department for Design and Communication Universitetsparken 1 6000 Kolding, Denmark
