Data-driven solutions and challenges to drive innovation and creativity

• If your organization is facing a data challenge and seeking new insights, our students can offer a fresh perspective that can drive innovation and creativity within the organization. Through this forward-looking collaboration, the link between the professional field, education, and applied research is strengthened. The master Data-driven Design empowers students to tackle real-world challenges from multiple perspectives. Through applied research and critical thinking, our students explore practical problems through the lenses of human-AI interaction, ethical and societal impact, technical and data science viewpoints, and data studies. Armed with these diverse perspectives, students develop innovative, data-driven solutions that address complex issues. We provide our students with the skills and tools necessary to navigate and investigate multiple viewpoints. This approach enables our students to approach problems from several angles, making them well-rounded and effective problem solvers. In the past, students have worked on diverse topics, examples include:
  Data-driven gamification: Designed a playful way to teach the general public not to fall for phishing mails.
  Conversational Agents: Created a conversational AI agent to assist the client support for elderly.
  Data-driven storytelling: Created a data-driven solution to help news consumers deal with news overload.
  Recommender systems: Developed a recommendation system that matches literature to our current emotional needs.
  Machine Learning solutions: Created an algorithm to connect people based on personality traits, character, and shared interests.
  Currently, we are looking for collaborations with organizations to strengthen the collaboration among education and the practitioner's field. Our potential clients are organizations that encounter practical challenges in diverse fields such as media, the creative industry, data, AI, technology innovation, public sector, education, sustainability, and health. We are eager to work together to develop innovative solutions that address complex problems and benefit both academia and industry.

Students work on a data-driven solution for a practical problem during the one-year program, consisting of 35 weeks in total, divided into four stages. Students first investigate the problem and explore the current situation. The following stages include synthesizing the problem, ideating on a potential solution, and finally implementing and evaluating the solution. The project is tailored to the organization, as every organization has its own preferences and structure for working with students. As a result, the precise project setup will be determined in consultation with the organization.

Deliverable
The result includes a prototype and advice on implementation. During the project, students discover how data-driven design can enrich users' lives and create value in the project's domain. Students connect their diverse skills in creating data-driven innovations, critical thinking, creativity, and research to complete this challenge and deliver a data-driven solution to your organization.

Your role as the client
Your organization, referred to as the 'Client,' could provide the practical problem as well as expertise, data, and stakeholders. The students do not require weekly supervisions from the client as they have a supervisor from Hogeschool Utrecht. What distinguishes and adds value to the project is your perspective, access to field expertise, data, and stakeholders from your organization. As a result, your point of view, contribution, and insights based on your knowledge and experience have been incorporated into the project.

• Practical problem: This could be any challenge or data problem your organization would like a data-driven solution to.
  
• Expertise: Students can reach out and receive some feedback about their work from experts in your organization to learn from the professionals they hope to become.
  
• Data: To gain relevant insights into the needs of your organization, sharing available data with the student is important. The level of data sharing with the student will be discussed in consultation with the organization.
  
• Stakeholders: Students are required to test and interview stakeholders to ensure the validity, evaluation, and reflection upon the project. Stakeholders can be colleagues or target audiences.
  
• Contact moments: This can vary per period and organization, but preferably at least once per 10 weeks, in consultation with the organization.