Methods:
Service design framework (Double Diamond).
Analytical autoethnography.
Desk research.
Netnography.
Staff questionnaire (Typeform) with in-person and WhatsApp follow-ups.
Semi-structured interviews.
Thematic analysis.
Affinity mapping.
Service journey mapping.
Card-based concept validation.
Warm handoff principle.
Research ethics with informed consent and a distress procedure.
5 – 6 Weeks
Location:
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Deep discovery
The project started with my own experience of living and working as a digital nomad. I used analytical autoethnography to turn that experience into questions to investigate.
/01
Autoethnography
I started working remotely and, over time, became a digital nomad, mostly around Bali. I used my own experience as the starting point looking beyond the freedom of the lifestyle to the quieter strain underneath.
/02
Building
the evidence outward
I then tested those observations against desk research, coworking spaces and staff conversations. The same pattern kept appearing: being surrounded by people does not guarantee meaningful support.
Before fieldwork, I also worked with my supervisor and three advisory consultants to define ethical safeguards: informed consent, voluntariness, no clinical data and a clear route to professional help.
Questionnaires and follow-up conversations with coworking staff confirmed the gap: support was mostly informal, dependent on someone noticing that a member was struggling.
"Never facilitate alone. Ensure a mental health professional is present to handle potential participant breakdowns."
Mgr. Roman Sellner Novotný, Ph.D.,
Thesis supervisor.
"Researcher safety comes first. Consult a therapist to clear your own headspace before opening sensitive topics with users."
Mgr. Tereza Kosnarová,
Service designer, facilitator, and certified accessibility specialist.
"Challenge your confirmation bias. Don't enter the field expecting tragedy; validate the reality, not your fears."
Mgr. Alexandr Kasal, Ph.D.,
Researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health.
/03
The dip
I conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with digital nomads between January and April 2026. A clear pattern emerged: around the third to fourth month, the novelty fades, practical routines settle, but deeper relationships may still not have formed.
This creates a support gap people are no longer newcomers, but may not yet have the connections they need.
That became the key opportunity: a non-clinical bridge between community support and professional help.
Define
Define turned the research into a clear brief: the key themes, the support gap, who the service is for, and the principles it must follow.
/01
Affinity mapping
I grouped the research into four themes: functional loneliness, performance pressure, systemic neglect and reputational risk. These became the foundation for the concepts that followed.
/02
The safety gap
One gap kept surfacing: there was no low-threshold step between everyday community support and professional help. The opportunity was to create a warm, discreet and non-judgemental bridge between the two.
/03
Who is this for
The service has two users: the digital nomad experiencing strain and the staff member who notices but does not know what to do next. The design therefore needed to support both sides.
/04
Three layers,
one navigator
The model connects three layers:
Notice → Support → Hand off.
Staff notice early signals, offer low-threshold support, and provide a safe route to vetted professional help when needed. No diagnosis. No therapy. Just a clear path forward.
Develop
With the four themes defined, Develop turned them into tangible support concepts and tested them with nomads, so the final model would rest on what people actually accept, not on what I assumed would help.
/01
Ideation cards
I built a deck of thirty intervention cards from the interview clusters and from thematic research on comparable forms of support. The cards were not a finished solution but a design stimulus, a way to make possible forms of support concrete enough to react to. Each card sits in one of the four themes: functional loneliness, performance pressure, systemic neglect and reputational risk.
/02
Card anatomy
Every card shares one structure, so a reader sees at a glance what kind of support it is and when to use it. Top: an index number and its theme. Then the intervention name and a one-line principle. A “when to use it” block turns that principle into a concrete micro-situation. The footer states the level of support, from individual reflection through peer and community to professional, and the source it draws on.
/03
Concept validation
I tested the deck one to one with a separate group of ten nomads at Tropical Nomad and B Work, deliberately different people from the interviews. Each card was a concrete support concept that participants could pick, set aside or push back on, naming the conditions under which a given form of support would feel safe. I ran it one to one rather than as a workshop, because the topic is sensitive and a group would have pushed people towards socially acceptable answers. This tested acceptability, credibility and ethical safety, not clinical effect.
Deliver
Deliver translated those validated preferences into a non-clinical service model and a set of artefacts a coworking space could put into daily use, without any member of staff ever acting as a therapist.
/01
Staff protocol
Five steps for the person who notices something: notice, check in, listen, hand off, stay open. It states plainly what staff do and where they stop, and an acute block on the same page says what to do if someone is in immediate danger. The handover principle comes from Pace et al. (2018).
/02
Referral map
A curated map of vetted local and online support, from licensed psychologists to telehealth and crisis lines, so staff never have to improvise where to point someone.
/03
Discreet channel
A wall poster carrying one honest line and a QR code, giving a member a private way to ask for a contact without saying it out loud. It answers the finding that the barrier is not access but shame.
/05
Self-reflection set
Five questions on A6 cards, for the member alone. No one sees the answers. If the last card is a yes, it points to the discreet channel or the referral map. Grounded in expressive writing (Pennebaker, 1997).
