Global challenges need imagination. Danish design’s human-centric approach turns complexity into practical solutions with real impact.

Expanding the role of design

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Designers and design thinkers are applying a familiar mindset to unfamiliar challenges, carrying values shaped in one context into many others. Design is not only confined to shaping objects: it functions as a strategic tool across products, services, systems, and infrastructures united by a shared sense of responsibility, clarity, and understanding. Where Danish design once shaped the modern home, it now also shapes how we live together on a changing planet.

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This work sometimes begins with everyday, invisible needs. Solutions such as Coloplast’s redesigned colostomy bags and Obtinu’s discreet bladder control products place dignity, comfort, and empathy at the core. These designs address intimate challenges with care and simplicity, improving everyday life and reflecting a long-standing Danish commitment to usability, respect, and human-centricity.

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That mindset continually scales outward into the systems people subconsciously interact with every day. At its widest reach, design engages directly with shared resources and planetary concerns. Løvskal Ochre rethinks material use with a colour scheme made from natural pigments, creating a desirable industrial alternative, while facilities like C.F. Møller’s seawater pump integrate design into energy infrastructure to support sustainable urban heating and make systems feel accessible to the communities they serve.

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When everyday needs and experiences are approached from the user’s perspective, aesthetics and usability become active drivers of change. Clever Café reimagines electric car charging stations as a welcoming, human-centred experience that makes sustainable choices feel intuitive. HomeGrid applies the same logic to energy systems, helping households manage energy consumption with knowledge and ease. Design can help social transition by turning complex and essential systems into meaningful everyday experiences. Danish design impacts the personal and the systemic, solving problems worth solving in a global context where clarity, care, and scalability matter more than ever.

Problem-solving for the future

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People engage with systems when they understand how they work. This approach is central to how Danish design operates at a systemic level and is increasingly important in a world defined by acceleration and technology. But technology and AI alone do not create progress. What matters is how they are shaped, applied, and used. Danish designers have long approached technological advancement within a context defined by responsibility and long-term value. The UNHCR Digital Gateway simplifies administrative systems to provide refugees and asylum seekers with dignified access to essential services, while Be My Eyes connects visually impaired users with volunteers through a simple, human-centred interface. Across digital platforms, services, and infrastructure, the same principles apply: accessibility, understanding, and trust.

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Design provides direction, leading the way to ensure that innovation remains connected to real human and societal needs. It is the bridge between complexity and comprehension. When embedded beyond the obvious spheres, it can guide behaviour, create access to markets, and support the common good. This is where Danish design’s legacy remains critically relevant today, in its ability to move fluently and meaningfully between the intimate and the industrial, from individual needs to planetary concerns.

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_{These reflections draw on insights shared during a roundtable with members of the Danish Design Award jury. Their perspectives provided a valuable lens on how Danish design is evolving and where it is headed. Participating jury members were:}

_{Kaave Pour, 21st Europe and Everyday^}

_{Linda Nhu Laursen, Aalborg University Design Lab}

_{Mari Randsborg, Cobe}

_{Rise Vestergaard, Vestas}

_{Jenny Grettve, EIT Culture & Creativity}

_{Paula Gerbase, Georg Jensen}

_{Jacob Wildschiødtz, NR2154}

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Explore more innovative cases below

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