Kirsten Bonde Sørensen is an industrial Ph.D. scholar at the Danish savings bank Middelfart Sparekasse and attached to Kolding School of Design.

Her field of research is strategic design, where the designer is not only involved in the traditional design process but also in establishing the underlying problem definition. According to Kirsten Bonde Sørensen, a core issue in strategic design is how design and, not least, design thinking can be used in business development processes. In a strategic design process, the solution may result in a physical as well as an immaterial outcome.

In her industrial Ph.D. project Kirsten Bonde Sørensen aims to develop a new and different service for the bank’s current and potential customers that reflects the bank’s world view and values. This service should also serve as a new type of consumer communication. Her theoretical framework for the project is the rhetorical analysis of values and value-based communities as well as the theory, method and praxis approach of the design discipline.

Through creative workshops with the customers Kirsten Bonde Sørensen has discovered that many people hold values and perceptions in relation to economic issues that were handed down to them from their parents or grandparents. The goal of the project is to develop a method based on creativity to help the customers develop a stronger awareness of their own values and needs. She uses so-called generative tools, known from user studies, to help the workshop participants reflect on their experiences, dreams and values with the aid of creative and visual assignments. The strength of the method is that the generative tools appeal to our emotional side and deeper layers of our consciousness, thus uncovering values and possibilities that we were not necessarily aware of before the workshop.

In other words, in this project Kirsten Bonde Sørensen aims to use creativity and reflection to enable people to establish a dialogue with themselves about important life issues. This will help the customers of Middelfart Sparekasse develop a better understanding of their own situation and make more qualified decisions. To the bank, which has worked with self-management for a number of years, the project is a key element in relation to a strategic goal of bringing self-management to the customers.

Kirsten Bonde Sørensen teaches design and rhetoric at Kolding School of Design and other institutions of higher learning. In addition, she gives lectures to companies and others with an interest in creative processes, innovation, communication, and design.

Kirsten Bonde Sørensen graduated as a designer from Kolding School of Design and holds a Master’s Degree in Rhetoric from Aarhus University from 2007.