Dr. ir. Wina Smeenk has been a professor of Societal Impact Design since January 2021 and is part of the Creative Business knowledge center. She is involved in the Urban Leisure & Tourism Lab Amsterdam, the SLUISlab, and the Sustainable Media Lab. Using her developed Empathic Co-design Compass, Empathic Co-design Canvas, her mixed-perspectives methodologies, and the Empathic Hand-over method, she advances research within the labs and enhances their design capabilities, with the goal of creating an inclusive and livable society and city.
In addition to her professorship at Inholland, Wina is actively engaged in practice through her own co-design agency, WiEN’s Designership. She employed her empathic co-design methods to develop the Into D’mentia simulator in both container and virtual reality formats. She also applied her methods in areas such as youth care and the development of a smart residential and working district.
Wina is the founder and primus inter pares of the Expertise Network Systemic Co-design (ESC). She is also the chair of the Network Applied Design Research (NADR), a joint initiative of Dutch design professors from various universities of applied sciences.
