Eva Brandt is an associate professor at The Danish Design School.

As a researcher Eva Brandt strives to achieve an ever greater understanding of design processes. What is it that designers do when they design, and how can design work be facilitated by the development of design approaches, etc? Her research is closely associated with practice and is typically carried out in cooperation with companies, design agencies and/or partners from the public sector.

Eva Brandt sees dialogue and cooperation among people with a diversity of backgrounds and interests as essential sources of innovation. Therefore her work mainly involves interdisciplinary projects that involve a wide range of stakeholders such as researchers, designers, technicians and end-users. The design approaches, methods and tools that she develops are dialogue-oriented and usually playful, experimental and explorative in nature. They belong in the category that is often referred to as co-design and are essentially about developing various ways of ‘rehearsing the future’. The goal is to discover and test new roles and networks and to develop interesting design concepts.

For example, her work may involve various types of design probes, design games, improvisation and the development of future scenarios with inspiration from theatre, applications of anthropologically oriented video recordings or virtual meeting rooms – approaches for use in the complex working communities that Eva Brandt calls design laboratories.  

Her research approach is experimental, and she often draws on theories etc. from other disciplines such as anthropology and ethnology or the world of theatre and other artistic disciplines. With inspiration from the surrealists’ use of random occurrences she develops design games, among other methods, where unexpected and surprising combinations of words, images, etc. stimulate the participants to think in new directions.

Currently, Eva Brandt is involved in the strategic research alliance TempoS (Iscenesættelse af temporære rum for bruger dreven innovation – Staging temporary rooms for user-driven innovation) (2010-2015), which is a partnership that involves DTU Management Engineering, the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen, and The Danish Design School. The purpose is to generate knowledge about user-driven innovation and to develop an innovation practice based on the establishment of temporary rooms, that is, relatively brief and narrowly defined collaborations. The alliance is funded by The Danish Council for Strategic Research.

Senior Interaktion (Senior Interaction) (2010-2012) is a partnership that involves the City of Copenhagen, the IT University, The Danish Design School and a number of private companies; it aims to develop technologies etc. to promote networks among senior citizens. The project is funded by the Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority.

LEV VEL (Living well) (2010 – 2012) is an innovation platform driven by the Alexandra Institute. The Danish Design School is involved in the sub-project ‘Mødestedet’ (Meeting place), which is aimed at creating a physical and virtual meeting place to stimulate senior citizens’ physical, mental and social health.  The project is funded by The Danish Council for Technology and Innovation under the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation.

In 2008-2010 Eva Brandt took part in the research project Design-Anthropological Innovation Model (DAIM). The concrete project objective was to design a model for better waste management. DAIM included a pilot project involving the waste management facility Vestforbrænding aimed at reducing waste and increasing recirculation. The project resulted in the book Rehearsing the Future, co-edited by Eva Brandt. The book was published by The Danish Design School. The DAIM project was funded by the Danish Enterprise and Construction Authority, and in addition to design firms from Denmark and abroad the list of project partners included Vestforbrænding and the Mads Clausen Institute at the University of Southern Denmark. See the articles Innovation in Waste Management and User-Involvement Leads to More Sustainable Waste Management in the webzine Mind Design and the interview in the annual publication Insights into Danish Design Research 2009 from the Danish Centre for Design Research.

Interdisciplinary collaboration and user-involvement were also the topic of Eva Brandt’s Ph.D. dissertation, Event-Driven Product Development: Collaboration and Learning. The project was an industrial Ph.D. study in cooperation with Danfoss A/S.  
Eva Brandt graduated as a civil engineer from the Technical University of Denmark in 1995 where she also earned her Ph.D. degree in 2001.