Programme
11:00 AM – Trial lecture - How does the view you propose on change as a processual, collective dynamic of local adaptations relate to radical and incremental conceptions of change? What are the potential implications of your proposed understanding of transformation for service design practice?
13:00 PM – Defence
Thesis abstract
Public service systems are vital for advancing social outcomes such as equity and inclusion. In changing societies, sustaining these outcomes requires actors to adapt their interactions to diverse and evolving situations. Yet current design approaches often lock actors into fixed relations, creating rigidity instead of enabling them to adapt public service together.
This thesis explores how actors within public service systems can collectively and continually design these systems from within. Drawing on 2.5 years of participatory, situated experimentation in the Norwegian child welfare system, the research positions public service design not as a distinct approach led by a few, but as a relational process where many are involved in shaping public service through their everyday interactions.
The thesis thus reframes public service design as a distributed, ongoing process and argues that enabling this process is key to sustaining socially desirable outcomes in changing societies. Based on the empirical work, it proposes and demonstrates a set of enabling practices and suggests that this focus in public service design can better sustain social outcomes over time.
Biography
Audun Formo Hay is a design researcher and community psychologist. He conducts participatory and interdisciplinary research, exploring how to design more adaptive and dignified public service systems. He has previously worked with systemic therapies, supporting marginalized families within Norway’s child welfare system as both a therapist and a leader. Audun teaches and supervises systemic practices across fields such as design, psychology, psychiatry, and social work.
Supervisor
Josina Vink (AHO)
Co-Supervisor
Dagfinn Mørkrid Thøgersen (Norwegian Institute of Public Health)
Adjudication committee
1. opponent: Honorary Professor Ezio Manzini, Politecnicio di Milano
2. opponent: Associate Professor Anna Seravalli, Malmö University
Coordinator: Professor Andrew Morrison (AHO)