DESIGN FOR IMPACT:
considering the various ways in which
design can have an impact on
well-being and society at large

Dr. Paul Hekkert is full professor of form theory and head of the Design Aesthetics group at the school of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology. Paul conducts research on the ways products impact human experience and behavior. He published articles dealing with product experience and aesthetics in major international journals, and is co-editor of Design and Emotion: The experience of everyday things (2004) and Product experience (2008). In 2011 he received a VICI grant from the Dutch Science foundation (NWO) to develop a Unified Model of Aesthetics (UMA). Together with Matthijs van Dijk, he published Vision in Design: A guidebook for innovators (2011), a book that describes an approach to design and innovation that has been widely applied in both education and industry. More recently, Paul co-authored Designing for Society: Products and Services for a Better World (2019, with Nynke Tromp). Paul serves as a member of the editorial boards of The Design Journal, Empirical Studies of the Arts, and the International Journal of Design. Paul is also member of the Dutch Creative Council and captain of science of the Top Sector Creative Industries.
His current research interest concentrates on the role of design in major social transformations in such diverse areas as energy use, sustainability, mobility, or health care. Paul firmly believes that designers have a range of special skills (e.g. imagination), capabilities (e.g. reframing) and methods (e.g. ViP) that make them perfectly suitable to lead such transformation processes. His research interest thus revolves around areas such as social design, social innovation, system design, and value-driven design.