Silje Kamille Friis is an associate professor at the Kolding School of Design.

The key emphasis of Silje Kamille Friis’ research is to uncover and document designers’ working processes and methods. As part of her Industrial Ph.D. project, which was a case-based study anchored in the strategic design agency e-Types A/S, she visited a number of international design firms to examine their angles on and approaches to design.
 
In her Ph.D. dissertation Conscious Design Practice as a Strategic Tool Silje Kamille Friis offers rare insights into the practice of design firms. Her study reveals a variety of approaches to strategic design work. As part of her Ph.D. project Silje Kamille Friis developed a method collection with descriptions and illustrations of approximately 80 methods – including several newly developed methods – from the designer’s toolbox. One example is the ‘road map’ method, which helps teams create a shared visualisation of the design process and contributes to the establishment of a shared process terminology. This is particularly essential when people of varying backgrounds work together in long-term, complex innovation projects. Another example is the method ‘Individuals in the future’, where current knowledge and users are combined with future studies, which, in a manner of speaking, project individuals into the future to imagine what their lives might look like in 5 or 10 years’ time. This is an empathetic and visionary approach that connects the present and the future and often uncovers unseen needs and possibilities.

Silje Kamille Friis’ current research questions in her position as associate professor at the Kolding School of Design are, In which inner states does the designer find him/herself in the course of a design process, and how are these states related to the designer’s external behaviour and activities?

Her purpose is to enhance awareness of the less visible, underling dynamics of the design process. This may, for example, involve the inner states of the participants in a brainstorming process. Do they see new possibilities, and are they open to ideas, or do they tend to assess and debate, select and discard? Silje Kamille Friis will use this insight in the courses on the design process that she teaches at the Kolding School of Design. Her findings may also benefit the design discipline in general by strengthening the awareness of designers’ approaches. With her research Silje Kamille Friis also hopes to help designers improve their abilities to manage and synchronise cooperation across disciplines.

Silje Kamille Friis teaches at the Kolding School of Design, where she gives courses on overarching topics such as design process and methodology, philosophy of science, strategic design and innovation. She also acts as a supervisor for students working on their graduation dissertations. In addition, she is an external lecturer at the LAICS master programme (Leadership and Innovation in Complex Systems) at the Danish School of Education (Aarhus University) / Copenhagen Business School, where she teaches innovation process and methodology.

Silje Kamille Friis graduated as an industrial designer from the Aarhus School of Architecture in 1994 and earned an Industrial Ph.D. from the Danish School of Education (Aarhus University) in 2007 with the dissertation Conscious Design Practice as a Strategic Tool.