Helsinki Design Lab 08 Blog

Living Lab Innovations

Mr. Jarmo Eskelinen,
Executive Director, Helsinki  Forum Virium               

The driving force of Jarmo Eskelinen and Forum Virium is the belief in ordinary people as innovators. The company creates innovative projects through combining the services of both the private and public sector, with a clear focus of improving the lives of the citizens of Helsinki.

Forum Viriums Living Lab Innovations provide interfaces for real life by having users as co-creators in all stages of design. Eskelinen believes that there are successful design models outside the one where “designers know best”.

One of the best examples of this approach is the Healthy Helsinki project in the Herttoniemi region of some 1000 citizens in Helsinki. These health promotion services (see Introductory workshops for more information) are designed with the principle that the user feedback received in these projects is the core of the R&D of the services.

This is the UI of reality, community, public and commercial services all working together in projects where design and content lead the way and technology supports it.

Signposts beyond Eco

Helsinki Design Lab 25.08.2008
Sessionn 3
Convener:  Babette Strousse

- What is the next big thing after green?

- Innovation is now

- Human factors beginning from the 1970’s
    • Human factor issues as an issue for designers

- Water – a huge issue in the future (too much, too little, not enough ice etc.)

- What are the signposts that will affect design?

- Instead of asking the obvious questions, we should try to see the hidden “crises”
    • Security, oil prices, plastic -> new, more ecologically friendly ways?

- The next thing – pressure for equal economical possibilities for everyone
    • The pressure for equal economic possibilities coming from both developed and developing countries (cheaper technology etc.).

- future economy
    * new designs, new relationships – unexpected affiliations, new cultural bonds
    * The redefinition of relationships a big issue – redefining civility?
    * No social classes amongst young people in some places?
    * aging culture – possible reconnection to the extended family unit?
    * Sustainability – the new “fascism”?

- What do the current youth believe in?

- Where is the current youth going to push the adult population?
    • nowhere?
    • towards religion?
    • towards an international “hippie” community with a strong heard instinct?
    • towards a new sector to our lives (in addition to work and leisure; something similar to the industrialization bringing the addition of leisure time to life in the turn of the 20th century.

- The way internet is designed creates trends and preferences

- the tools we put on the market offer social structures, but only the ones we enable

- New levels of human boredom (nature of relationships very shallow?)

- The less is more idea – a new level of human boredom (alienation due to technology)

- Boredom has many faces – the 80’s, meaningless things. Cyclical manner – crises help galvanize people

- what the faculty is doing does not meet the requirements of students

- Increased pressure for equality – a new topic for the youth? Role of the students (privileged youth?)

- Other countries looking at America as an example of “what went wrong”??

- New combinations of cultures creating new cultures?

- Future of terrorism – how does it play out?
    • Negativity catching on even in “safer” countries?
    • Danger of heading towards a world war?
    • Weapons of mass destruction strong enough to destroy the whole world – have we learned anything?

- What is the potential role of Africa in the future ( after  the age of “what is the role of China?”)

- Africa dominated by china

- A big in interest and excitement in Africa – driven by 1) general desire to do good (misguided) 2) looking at Africa as a tabula rasa; a place to go and try new things in
    • like Finland after the 2nd world war – a spirit of optimism
    • think of things in a more innovative way
    • history of internal conflicts – out of control
    • Africa is everywhere – is the horizon somewhere else?
          o same situation as when people were leaving Europe to go to the U.S.
- the next big topic for designers – understanding human behavior

- other fields studying humans in various different ways – designers continuing the pattern

- Designers can lack knowledge of human behavior (what drives people?)
    • the knowledge would enhance the designers’ abilities

- Mental challenges of aging as a group – the baby boomers. Challenges for the youth

- the change of demographics, the lack of resources

- A need to not just making the currents things more efficient, but thinking of completely new concepts

- future, living much longer – Life expectancy 125-150 yrs in the future
    • Older people volunteering to die?
    • Information – huge possibilities - “self-medicalizing?”. If the information is available, how can we channel it?

- Some things being left raw to create an environment that’s stimulating?

- Unpredictability molding the human nature and leading to a mental laziness when everything is too easy and predictable

- What happens after the “eco-boom”; can we use biology to design?

- Using the nature to get rid of waste, growing machine parts of things in trees?

- biology used in medical science constantly

- genetically modified food – deriving from an old process, finding the best crops etc.

- Designing our environment?( Is this a signpost, and is it as major as the case of Africa)
    • genetically modified cats for people with allergies, weird-colored fish

- Companion robot for singles? – “not enough” people, a design for loneliness

- “Altruistic youth” – enormous population of older people needing attention, children running off to help people in Africa? The boomer population sitting at home alone.
    * Society stuck together in the past
    * children detaching further from their responsibilities (going back to the point of how communities are structured)
    * humans building imaginary barriers between themselves
    * An effort needed to make the aging issue compelling (learning to make a difference, a marketing and designing problem)

          o  A huge issue to design.
                 o How do we train people to do that – specific education or an integrated way of thinking?

- The leading group of senior designers needs to have a better sense of what they do and who they are – general agreements needed?

- other professions getting specific, designers doing the opposite – trying to know about more areas

- design is a science – a new way of thinking of how we educate ourselves

- a concept is the moment of greatest clarity

- design education – artifact and social design separately (most people don’t have sufficient social knowledge)
    • artifact design badly informed
    • understanding everything from brain structure to family structure
          o revolutionary

- Designers doing cognitive science, multidisciplinary  - ULM. Learning from the past

- Grand ideas water down in practice:
    • Due to poor leadership (?)
    • How can you set it up so it can redesign itself?
    • Challenge for the innovation university in Finland?

- Trying out a new model which tackles new challenges – (rescaling relationships as a school project?)

- Designers in the middle of the stream – teaching students about  today

- “shadow department” project in the University of Copenhagen shut down

- are designers feeling the danger, the need or the possibility to change the industry

- Artifact point of view – how is a business strategy developed? economic-driven

- Design firms could profit more from the same services that the business world is using.
Internal jargon of designers complicating cooperation?

- Are students still as naïve when entering design schools as they were 20 years ago, or has that changed? Students more to the art side (possibly too far) than before?

- Designers integrated into businesses – but are they overshadowed by the companies? Breaking free? yes/no

- Mix of completely different designers

- deep-rooted notion of “art is good, business is bad” – artists assuming that businesses limit them (some do, some don’t)

- The marginalization question – what is it with design that keeps the firms so small?

- Esthetically attractive artifacts a commodity nowadays


- Korea: Before: designers were implemented; hired when needed for a special purpose

– now designers leading whole process

- process is going into designer-oriented thinking


- Design companies not finding workers, schools not preparing people sufficiently for work

- Too many CEO’s – we can not educate everyone to be a leader; what are we preparing people for?

- corporate quality – quality and manufacture important, people will realize the fact that this is critical

- Total quality management - > total design management in the future?

- Marketing people being paid more than designers in design firms – commercial effort.

- A good business logic and deep knowledge of other fields – a goal for some designers?

Helsinki Design Lab
Open Space 2, session 3
Convener:  Babette Strousse
Reporter:  Jaana Hukkanen
Topic: Signposts beyond Eco

- What is the next big thing after green?

- Innovation is now

- Human factors beginning from the 1970’s
    • Human factor issues as an issue for designers

- Water – a huge issue in the future (too much, too little, not enough ice etc.)

- What are the signposts that will affect design?

- Instead of asking the obvious questions, we should try to see the hidden “crises”
    • Security, oil prices, plastic -> new, more ecologically friendly ways?

- The next thing – pressure for equal economical possibilities for everyone
    • The pressure for equal economic possibilities coming from both developed and developing countries (cheaper technology etc.).

- future economy
    * new designs, new relationships – unexpected affiliations, new cultural bonds
    * The redefinition of relationships a big issue – redefining civility?
    * No social classes amongst young people in some places?
    * aging culture – possible reconnection to the extended family unit?
    * Sustainability – the new “fascism”?

- What do the current youth believe in?

- Where is the current youth going to push the adult population?
    • nowhere?
    • towards religion?
    • towards an international “hippie” community with a strong heard instinct?
    • towards a new sector to our lives (in addition to work and leisure; something similar to the industrialization bringing the addition of leisure time to life in the turn of the 20th century.

- The way internet is designed creates trends and preferences

- the tools we put on the market offer social structures, but only the ones we enable

- New levels of human boredom (nature of relationships very shallow?)

- The less is more idea – a new level of human boredom (alienation due to technology)

- Boredom has many faces – the 80’s, meaningless things. Cyclical manner – crises help galvanize people

- what the faculty is doing does not meet the requirements of students

- Increased pressure for equality – a new topic for the youth? Role of the students (privileged youth?)

- Other countries looking at America as an example of “what went wrong”??

- New combinations of cultures creating new cultures?

- Future of terrorism – how does it play out?
    • Negativity catching on even in “safer” countries?
    • Danger of heading towards a world war?
    • Weapons of mass destruction strong enough to destroy the whole world – have we learned anything?

- What is the potential role of Africa in the future ( after  the age of “what is the role of China?”)

- Africa dominated by china

- A big in interest and excitement in Africa – driven by 1) general desire to do good (misguided) 2) looking at Africa as a tabula rasa; a place to go and try new things in
    • like Finland after the 2nd world war – a spirit of optimism
    • think of things in a more innovative way
    • history of internal conflicts – out of control
    • Africa is everywhere – is the horizon somewhere else?
          o same situation as when people were leaving Europe to go to the U.S.
- the next big topic for designers – understanding human behavior

- other fields studying humans in various different ways – designers continuing the pattern

- Designers can lack knowledge of human behavior (what drives people?)
    • the knowledge would enhance the designers’ abilities

- Mental challenges of aging as a group – the baby boomers. Challenges for the youth

- the change of demographics, the lack of resources

- A need to not just making the currents things more efficient, but thinking of completely new concepts

- future, living much longer – Life expectancy 125-150 yrs in the future
    • Older people volunteering to die?
    • Information – huge possibilities - “self-medicalizing?”. If the information is available, how can we channel it?

- Some things being left raw to create an environment that’s stimulating?

- Unpredictability molding the human nature and leading to a mental laziness when everything is too easy and predictable

- What happens after the “eco-boom”; can we use biology to design?

- Using the nature to get rid of waste, growing machine parts of things in trees?

- biology used in medical science constantly

- genetically modified food – deriving from an old process, finding the best crops etc.

- Designing our environment?( Is this a signpost, and is it as major as the case of Africa)
    • genetically modified cats for people with allergies, weird-colored fish

- Companion robot for singles? – “not enough” people, a design for loneliness

- “Altruistic youth” – enormous population of older people needing attention, children running off to help people in Africa? The boomer population sitting at home alone.
    * Society stuck together in the past
    * children detaching further from their responsibilities (going back to the point of how communities are structured)
    * humans building imaginary barriers between themselves
    * An effort needed to make the aging issue compelling (learning to make a difference, a marketing and designing problem)

          o  A huge issue to design.
                 o How do we train people to do that – specific education or an integrated way of thinking?

- The leading group of senior designers needs to have a better sense of what they do and who they are – general agreements needed?

- other professions getting specific, designers doing the opposite – trying to know about more areas

- design is a science – a new way of thinking of how we educate ourselves

- a concept is the moment of greatest clarity

- design education – artifact and social design separately (most people don’t have sufficient social knowledge)
    • artifact design badly informed
    • understanding everything from brain structure to family structure
          o revolutionary

- Designers doing cognitive science, multidisciplinary  - ULM. Learning from the past

- Grand ideas water down in practice:
    • Due to poor leadership (?)
    • How can you set it up so it can redesign itself?
    • Challenge for the innovation university in Finland?

- Trying out a new model which tackles new challenges – (rescaling relationships as a school project?)

- Designers in the middle of the stream – teaching students about  today

- “shadow department” project in the University of Copenhagen shut down

- are designers feeling the danger, the need or the possibility to change the industry

- Artifact point of view – how is a business strategy developed? economic-driven

- Design firms could profit more from the same services that the business world is using.
Internal jargon of designers complicating cooperation?

- Are students still as naïve when entering design schools as they were 20 years ago, or has that changed? Students more to the art side (possibly too far) than before?

- Designers integrated into businesses – but are they overshadowed by the companies? Breaking free? yes/no

- Mix of completely different designers

- deep-rooted notion of “art is good, business is bad” – artists assuming that businesses limit them (some do, some don’t)

- The marginalization question – what is it with design that keeps the firms so small?

- Esthetically attractive artifacts a commodity nowadays


- Korea: Before: designers were implemented; hired when needed for a special purpose

– now designers leading whole process

- process is going into designer-oriented thinking


- Design companies not finding workers, schools not preparing people sufficiently for work

- Too many CEO’s – we can not educate everyone to be a leader; what are we preparing people for?

- corporate quality – quality and manufacture important, people will realize the fact that this is critical

- Total quality management - > total design management in the future?

- Marketing people being paid more than designers in design firms – commercial effort.

- A good business logic and deep knowledge of other fields – a goal for some designers?

What is human-centric in design?

Helsinki Design Lab 25.06.2008
Session 3
Convener: Göte Nyman

CONCLUSIONS:
Human-centric is a wicked concept BUT:
Understanding the “whys” of human behavior supports inspiration for design”!
We must also creatively recognize the inspirational limits of our knowledge!
• social
• technological
• well-being related
• good life –related

CULTURE =
- MIND
- ROLE
- CONTENT
-     CONTEXT
=>
- different practices
- localities
- subcultures

FROM FUNCTIONAL PARADIGM TO  PARADIGM x:

- FROM FUNCTIONAL TO VALUES?
- TO MOTIVATIONS?
- TO EMOTIONAL DESIGN?
- TO EXPERIENCE

UNDERSTANDING THE “WHYS” OF BEHAVIOR SUPPORTS INSPIRATION FOR DESIGN

_________________________________________________________________________

FURTHER NOTES ON THE SESSION:

• Why the question
• Perspectives to human mind? Cultural mind? Mind and content?
• Which view offers inspiration and solutions?

• Starting point: convener skeptical about the idea of human-centricity

• Brain research, vision research => No theory in general of human high-level perception (design –level) , perception that is able to deal with ideas like beauty, style, preferences etc.
• Cognitive research has a philosophical perspective on the human mind.
• Empirical data is mostly lacking
• Design is work and creation in concrete environments
• There is no generally accepted psychological theory of our esthetic mind
• So what does human-centricity mean?
• There is always content and context
• Mind and content have to combined
• Many think that great research is being done and soon we will understand the human mind, BUT BUT …
• Another perspective is the practical world of the designers.
• We can also look at the concept of human-centricity through culture
• Value creation: marketing theory lacks the aspect of practice
• Subject, object, content

• What is the opposite of human-centric? How is human-centric different from human driven?
• Human-centric is usually considered the opposite of a technology-centric approach
• The human mind is always related to culture; content is related to the cultural environment
• Example: World of Warcraft computer game:  the “clans” within the game collaborate and share a culture and an identity.
• Could these clans be called communities of practice?
• The concept has been used to refer to communities of practice engaged in similar activities.
• They develop community specific knowledge that cannot be communicated to outsiders.
• Wenger has studied this.
• Such communities may also have esthetic functions.

• Human minds are also steered by instincts when evaluating shapes. Examples: our reaction to colors, the face of baby.

• Human-centric doesn’t usually include the spiritual side of humans.
• It’s not fashionable to talk about religion or the limitations of our understanding of humans.
• We should not limit ourselves to academic thinking.
• Artists see an infinite number of possibilities of interpretation. Scientists concentrate on things they can say something “certain” about.

• We should differentiate between the conscious and the unconscious, the known and the unknown

• Where do we get inspiration for development? What kind of a concept of human-centricity could provide inspiration?

• 3D animation: seduction - designers want the viewer to “lose” the real world, to immerse themselves.  Then the designer “attacks” the viewer.
• Seduction? The concept means relevance for people. All good design must include an element of seduction.

• Decision making: do people make them consciously or unconsciously and which is better? When problems are complex, it is better to let the unconscious work.
• Complex systems require subjective frameworks to be understood and managed.
• Designers may be better able to create a system based on the unconscious than other experts.
• Intuition = Seeing the whole, not just details. This is something that designers are good at.
• We make more decisions intuitively than consciously. Thus it is interesting to investigate how the unconscious mind works.
• When we think of design, we think of art, industrial design, architecture, but we should think of designers as a group of people solving a problem.

• Converging reality and cyber: When people are online, they are “masters”, they have control.
• Young people manage their social life online. This is changing their mind.
• World of Warcraft game:  the game world can stay apart from the real life of the players, it doesn’t affect it.
• Is there a difference in how people learn by reading books or learning online? Online people interact with others. When people read, it’s an inner world.
• In Japan young people have more friends online than in real life. This is also causing problems (hikikomori phenomenon).
• What is significant in living together, when technology allows other ways to connect with others? Human-centricity is going on in technology too.
• What is it to be a human being “within” technology?

• Needs? Desires?
• In the virtual world desires are important.
• People need connections; the virtual worlds make it easier.

• If we define human-centricity as the core aspect, as a result we might create programs, record brain activity and carry out all kinds of research. But is this of value?

• What would be the criteria for useful applications of the concept of human-centric?
• Well-being: the key elements are changing rapidly; we don’t understand the concept well.
• The current emphasis on human-centricity is a result of us forgetting well-being.

• What is well-being? Joy, enjoyment? Fulfillment, satisfaction. In the Northern countries traditionally: lack of deprivation. In relation to design?
• Can there be criteria? Humans are so complicated. There’s so much we don’t know.
• The essence of being human is self-awareness. Awareness of our mortality.
• How much is well-being the resp. of society? Important in Nordic countries: well-being a political issue.
• In the past it was defined by the architects of the welfare state. The criteria was considered objective. Now we should redefine the criteria, there can be no objective criteria anymore.

• We focus on healing people with medicine etc. But often things like intimacy, friendly interest cure us better.
• Old people don’t what to become objects; they want to be active.

• Is human-centricity individualistic? Should we talk more about communities, family etc?
• What drives humans?
• The word human is difficult: if we talk about consumer-centricity, it’s clearer.

• When engineers, designers etc. discuss “humans”, each talk about a different human.
• consumer is a narrow concept; related to production
• What about the concept of users? Should we just talk about humans?

• A tension between the psychological theory of mind and the cultural theory. Psychology talks about the unconscious; cultural theory uses other concepts. Roles are a mediating concept.
•  But we take roles within communities.
• Identity building is popular in design.
• Which concept/ perspective is inspirational?
• Inspiration and value are keys, regardless of our focus.
• What is the old paradigm? Functionality.
• The new paradigm is going towards the immaterial; things that cannot be measured; the human experience .
• Value creation is becoming mental and immaterial.
• In academia there is a lack of theory on experience; functionality prevails.
• There is no valuable theory of human perception that would help us to understand high level phenomena; but we can research functional things, the brain etc.
• Culture defines what mind is and vice versa.
• If we don’t have content, we don’t have inspiration
• Role is also an important concept.
• Content-oriented research: we have to have genuine content. If we deal with complex human reality, the content has to reflect this.
• Behaviors; motivations for behavior; values (an aspect of cultural identity); aspirations
=> design
E.g. when people clean their house, they do it because they think it makes the better people; this is not a functional thing.
• People do similar things for very different reasons.
• The example of magazines: why people prefer something? The reasons are not technical but motivational.
• Motivation = the will to act or not to act.
• Designing a health care system is very different from designing a product for every day life. Still just a matter of scale.

• In order for the unconscious the provide a solution to a complex problem, the mind has to acquire all the relevant facts

• Academics have bumped into a wall when trying to describe the human mind. They tried to do it through neuroscience etc. Then they discovered emotions, and then experience.

• The example of cars: clients talk about facts and so does the producer. Regardless of this, the decision to buy might be made based on emotions, impressions, image etc. Maybe it is based on a combination of facts and emotions etc.?
• Most important in value: perceived value. How products can convey value? Not just through esthetics, but through a number of other aspects too.
• Göte (the convener) is involved in a study on magazines, on how their value is created and what is the perceived value of magazines compared with that of other products.
• Motivation is a good candidate for the new paradigm, better than experience.
• Functional paradigm is about artifacts.
• The new paradigm could be about designing bigger things (systems etc.).
• We used to admire technology and complex solutions (functional focus) Nowadays we take things for granted; e.g. a mobile phone no longer impresses anyone. We criticize the interface or manual, if we can’t use a thing. Earlier we just felt embarrassed.

Stewardship of the Design

Helsinki Design Lab 30.06.2008
Session 3
Convener: John Kao

• Stewardship for innovation strategy, who takes responsibility?

• Top-down or bottom up?

• Balance between governance and empowerment

• What we could expect from stewardship? What are the responsibilities? Different kinds of stewardship in different countries/cultures?

• What is the model for global Stewardship? Or who?

• Stewardship: leading expert combined with bubbling chaos

• Education institutions hold the torch at this moment - Designers are surprisingly quiet

• Factors pushing open innovation and stopping open innovations – are?

• Processes: top, quasi open and also bottom up experiments?

• Design :a profession or a way of thinking?

• Ex. Gandhi designed India

• Marco’s model: starts with a real problem, assembles stakeholders, collaboration, new structure, business angels

• What happens next? Outcomes? Do the outcomes mach with business models?

• Transformative change programs; invite right people to a strategy process

• Think thank in an organized form like Sitra

• Or an open model with individuals’ ideas

• Or NGO model

• Sitra’s structure: think-thank and doer

• Should there be a similar global doer?

• Seeing/thinking vs. doing and strategic vs. pilot projects - all four has to used in the process

• Where in the map different stakeholders stand?

• Where is the sweet spot? = Stewardship

• Entrepreneur model /business model approach

• Problem: starting from the structure not the content – the real need

• Test for demand / if does not mach with permanent business models – return to old systems easily

• Vision, funding, meaningful experiments, useful exceptions, champion, motivation

• Business model also works but could it be encouraged? NSF? Or find business angels globally?

• In government runs start ups you have to be successful, it is not possible to fail. There should be more possibilities to fail.

• Designers’ visions that nobody understand- support structures needed in order to get prototypes

• Public collaboration possible also without money but how to nurture it?

• Manifesto by the contributors of the Helsinki Design Lab:  - a voluntary group of people would draft, Sitra as a facilitator

• Putting out the key questions so that others could join

• Platform with rules of engagement

• What would be the target group?

• Or no target group= to everyone; politics, business, design schools

• Also to make a Wiki-version so that anybody is free to contribute

• And a blog discussion

• Gathering all the biggest funders of design globally: a meeting arranged by Sitra? Also
to connect EU at least in some point, first an umbrella without EU bureaucrats

• Ex. Davos ( designers are not represented- create similar platform for designers globally)

• To create a toolbox for negotiating stewardships

• Design also as a political tool – designers should have skills to facilitate internal
processes also should be able to facilitate external processes

• Push by the people or by the institutions- which one is more effective?

• Government’s supporting policy – design ideas have to be presented in an understandable way to bureaucrats so that they are able to create supporting policies

• We should not forget : Design should relate to factual reality! Evidence and data

• Inter-disciplines between technology, business and design – all are needed – Design can not solve everything

• A Manifesto of Global Design Strategy will be done by a group of volunteered participants. Mikko Kosonen from Sitra will facilitate

Build the New Design School

Helsinki Design Lab 25.06.2008
Session 3
Convener: Ken Friedman

• Designers should be able to think controversially: should we produce design elite so that the education would be in very high level? Support for this idea varies from country to country

• A new category is coming (a revolution): different areas of expertness. (this is also visible in education: different education lines)

• These areas of expertness are combined in design office and universities should think these different needs.

• knowledge and experiences gives you intuition: first one needs to have knowledge (gained in education)
Design education should think that 1) design thinking should move to the front line 2) design thinking should conquer deeper level (also invisible activities) 3) design isn’t just creating – new areas 4) broader sense of design functions

• Can design studies and politics be combined? In which level? Design is never neutral. Ideas from different feels are beneficial. Designing can be designing in a bubble.

• Reactive – proactive or active level in designing education? Is it more important to have detailed planned education program with specialists or just an active and curious staff? Practical problems arise also here (how big can a faculty be? Which kind of specialists? Funding?)

• Maybe universities aren’t the best places to get a practical knowledge on design. But: both deep knowledge in skills and information are needed for good scientific research. How to gain both?

• It would be ideal if the university around design would be more flexible and loose (especially in the undergraduate level). After that students could specialize to their research area (if they want to).

• Are designers marginal in companies because they don’t have skills to anything else? But how to gain the communicational skills to survive and succeed in companies? Could a new university be an answer? So that students could be able to bridge different subjects. Interdisciplinary studies help with this.

• Is a new type of academic institution needed?
What kind of things to improve in education: Wrapping the discussion

• Conceptual tools are needed in the early phase of studies

• Students should practice to receive critic and give critic.

• Ability to communicate is very important so rhetorical skills should be practiced.

• It is very important to have interaction between companies, engineers, philosophers…

• New kind of interaction could be applied like more guest lectures (here comes financial problems, universities rules and regulations like about education of the teachers) to affiliate inspirations.

• Design could be spread like engineering  throughout universities
Ideas for future:

• To make it possible to students to improve their dreams is to give them more freedom and more practical skills.

• Designers can do other things as well, not just designing.

Role of Art/Artist in Design

Helsinki Design Lab 24.06.2008
Session 1
Convener: Thomas Kong

Canary bird in a mine

Definition of art changes all the time, it depends on the society and the period of time we are living. On general level it can be said that, artists react easily to changing circumstances and to the changes in the society. Artist is like a canary bird in a mine, a sensor of tiny, yet unnoticed changes.

Why are you always making walls? (Question of an artist to an architect)

Things to learn from artists for all
- To see the world from a new, fresh perspective
- To find and nurture your inner child
- To face uncertainties of life and cherish them
      
-Art in relation to Science - Art and science are similar in the sense that both look for something that has not yet been found. There is no conflict between these two forms of thinking.

-Expansion of art to design: Education, art and design

It is possible for art and design to live together, but they are not to be merged totally together! The language of Art and design might be different but it is important to learn to understand the language of each group

-Art culture is more individual -centered culture, when design culture is team - centered culture. This means that an art object can be created by one individual artist
but an design product demands contribution of a group in a process where
negotiations and dialogs take part all the way

The role of Education - educating designers with art

-Art is a part of the skills the designer has/needs

-Art as a creative process is always somehow unpredictable – the final result is more than the mere design process and the planned end product – that is why superb design processes also need artistic approaches

-Critical thinking (reflecting on oneself) is a part of philosophy
 ability to understand ones work in a larger concept and as such important to students of design

The role of art and customer in design projects

Attitudes: how to educate the customers to have a wider and more creative perspective on what they want from the designer?

-Encourage your customers artistic side: make them to understand the creative process and potentiality it carries

- Encourage the risk taking on the customer side - risk taking is part of the creative process – the art in creation.

Metropolies Development Design

Helsinki Design Lab 24.6.2008      
Session  1
Conevener: Teppo Turkki

The Example of Urban Reneissance in Tokio

-In Tokio, in the Roppongi Hills, a new area of town has been designed. Called the Artelligent City, the area combines residential areas, office buildings, ICT, financial and other companies, art museums, venues for cultural events, Japanese zen gardens, academic area. In this way, different layers and aspects of society meet regularly. The area also has better traffic solutions, green areas, new architecture and so on.
-Is this a new paradigm? Has it not been spoken about for years? How is this design contextualized? Tokio is built on a river delta with a unique climate, and differs from other urban areas.
-There is need to find interesting mixes between nature and culture in and out of cities.
-In Asia, this is a new paradigm. There is a need to build different urban areas. The question is, what kind of urban is wanted. Often it is a social and economic mix, and ecology can be a part of it. It all depends on what you want from your urban areas.

Drastic ideas needed to keep creativity in the cities

-In Paris, and other cities in the world, young, creative people can no longer afford working and living in certain areas. Drastic ideas are needed to keep creativity in the cities rather than suburbs. Private investors replicate old solutions to contemporary problems, their impact makes new solutions possible in Japan, but this has been more difficult in Europe. At the moment, investors do not get involved, if the infrastructure (metro etc) does not support the new innovations. In some areas, it is all privately designed. Are there ways of making the city more spontaneous (rather than having the same 20 stores in every single city etc)? There you need rent controls etc to allow artists come in. London has been through this, for example. If the city wants to maintain its ‘spontaneosity’, a top down approach is needed. Less popular areas can be given a new avenue, or a high street, to regenerate the area. There, rent controls and new strategies can be used.
-There is room for this kind of top down investment. It can take the form of commercial enterprises in which governments take part.

Cities with very low density have huge opportunities

-Do we need a new solution or not? Is it about starting something new, or about allowing something new to emerge? There are very different mixes of  interventions. They depend on the particular needs of the city or district. Public interventions can be very innovative. However, in metropolis the solutions are a lot more challenging. A city that has very low density has huge opportunities to design new solutions. In these cases the politics, environmental strategies etc can have more of an effect on the outcome.
-After the New Orleans disaster, what is going to happen there when the rebuilding starts? The Mississippi has moved considerably over the years, an area in lot of flux. The city is difficult to protect.
-A new project in Sao Paolo  is planned to join several socially and economically different. neighborhoods together. Intervening socially and economically is needed. The new area will be a mixed-income neighborhood. In Brazil, like elsewhere, people are moving to cities. There has been very little housing planning, which has had huge social and environmental effects.
- What would happen without the constraints of existing structures?

Japanese are combining new environmental strategies with urban development.

-In Tokio, they have most strict environmental regulation. The Japanese are combining new environmental strategies with urban development. This is needed everywhere in the world. An interesting example from Tokio is the heated island, where gardens are built on the top of  houses, to absorb the heat.
-In Japan a lot of government money involved, butiIn cooperation with the private sector.

Is it the designer’s responsibility to go to the developer and to change the old patterns?
Who should be asked for new strategies in urban areas? Can design solve these issues? An important aspect is committed clients. However, once it gets started, the quality of design is very important.  How to make the existing fabric work, whilst creating new solutions in the urban areas? Design is very important in all this, as it does attract people. The way things look is more than just the appearances. A good example of bad design comes from Harlow New Town in England.
-Is it about creating new metropolis, or about improving the existing ones?
-Communal living. Shared facilities can work  for senior people and students. But does this work for normal family living? Should we design new social environments or social successful places in cities?
-With some solutions (transport etc), relying on people not always possible, rather the work may have to be done in spite of people. Cultural readiness is an important issue in all this.

Young people spend an increasing amount of time in a virtual reality

- Japan has traditionally had a strong consumer culture, now the virtualization of  culture means that young people spend an increasing amount of time in a virtual reality. There are two levels of urban living then, the real and the virtual life. This will affect future developments. The problematic reality of cities is easy to escape in this way. The computer can be used to simulate the urban space, but this different from the actual, physical reality.
-This is a time of huge transition. People escape the real. The virtual can be very similar to the real in some ways.
-The element of narrative in Japan: whatever you sell, must have a story behind it, a combination of real and virtual, these two are no longer opposites.
-In America, the combination of virtual and real not yet so extreme as in Japan and Korea. But this phenomenon is emerging also there.

Design education and employability

Helsinki Design Lab 24.06.2008
Session 2
Convener: Tapio Snellman

Theme was inspired by the lecture earlier on the 24th of June, by

What kind of education is “suitable” and what kind of education should educational institutions provide from a design company’s point of view?

- Is freedom at schools good or bad?
- Should attention be paid on specific skills instead of a more general education?

Teacher’s point of view: “What is important is the understanding of oneself, history and the world. Design students need wider humanistic education instead of mere skills education. We are nurturing their personality.”

Nurturing natural talent or forcing people into a bucket?

It seems that in labor market there is a great demand for specialists this
seems to conflict with the educational institution’s tendency to educate generalists.

-There is need for both kind of talent on the field, the main problem is to find the balance between the demands of the employers / market place and the education the institutions offer

Theoretical education vs. practical education and employment

- Manifacturing processes and mechanics should be familiar, at least to some point to new employees on practical level, no only on theoretical level

Degrees vs. non-degrees

-To learn how to learn is the most important thing, not degrees

-Degrees are not so important from employer’s point of view – personal judgment of the employer is often more important than a diploma or degree

Portfolio and personal trades of the employee are more interesting for smaller companies

Corporations and big companies tend to be more interested in degrees and diplomas

Training

-training is a life experience but it should be also a professional experience
      - In some companies there is no design culture. They should not hire design students                  
         for internships as this kind of experience can crush the students

On global level there are differences in education, recruiting processes and work practices and there is probably no one solution to the problem we tangled in this session.

Managerial Organizational Governance design for systemic innovation – need for structural changes in production and consumption patterns?

Helsinki Design Lab 24.06.2008
Session 1
Convener:  Seija Kulkki

- University for  Innovation in Helsinki

- problem:  systemic design
     •  the current university disciplinary structure does not fit together with the interdisciplinary challenge
     •  people in the university at higher levels of success tend to not see themselves as a part of the problem

- Think Tank at MIT

- Trying to get people to be more open about their role in the system is difficult – how can we get people to change that?

- Organizations have trouble breaking through the paradigm
     •  away from fragmented projects (old school) into a holistic way

- Designing everything from detail to systemic level is a special talent; how do universities and other institutions find and train these talents with a commercial flare?

- For years, we have wanted to help designers understand the challenge of business. Now we are seeing business students being educated in design – middle ground.
     •  Where is this all heading and will there be arguments of who owns design in the future?

- Traditional structured companies lack possibilities to be innovative in strategically new things. Tendency of innovating more of the same; only designers experiment. What kind of structures can we create that do not limit the unknown?

- Integrating 3 groups: designers, engineers and business people to create something new. How do you get people interested?

- Important to train designers to understand about management and vice versa.
     •  Even if we teach management professionals about design, they will not be designers, but they will understand design and not “speak a different language”.

- Service innovation program: the basic problem is not the supply (lots of funding for producing services), but the demand. In Finnish health care (almost free) it would be easy for local communities to have responsibility for the service, but this has not happened.
     •  Although we have innovations, we can not implement them because there is not enough demand.

- Artifact-driven business: how can you take the design organization and elevate its role to the strategic part of the company?

- Being the leader: strange disconnection between innovation and the delivery of a product to the day-to-day market.
     • Why, as designers, do we limit innovations to ourselves instead of expanding?

- A recommended book: Instruction to Deliver (by Michael Barber), a cookbook of how to implement.
     •  What are the barriers to incentives?

- Learning in this context is not just academic. Case-based: teaching to make decisions.

- Management structures, the whole value system.

- Focus on middle ground between business and design. Point of view: target setting directs the activity; who “owns” the design. Extremely critical today. How do we set the criteria and who sets the targets? Difficult in business and public service.

- Connection of thinking and doing: interesting.
     •  Designing is about much more than the finished product.
     •  We teach the students to discover and work together with people like you, to have a vision and learn the skills to design.
     •  Besides that, one key thing is to never lose connection with professional design – put a group of students to design, look at the basic problem, then design, then build. We made a change 20 years ago, but it is still changing right now.

- What is missing in the structure and how can we learn from each other?

- Understanding different ways of thinking helps greatly.

- System implemented in business: networking, getting different ways of thinking on the table. Could work with anything, horizontal and vertical.

- Most business products are disappointing: companies are doing very much, but they are not thinking enough. People working in business do not ask themselves the kinds of questions they did in school; hence they often offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. This is a challenge for the companies.

- The products and services coming from bigger companies are overpriced compared to their value.

- Healthy society needs unorthodox people. Framework and attention span; long-term or short term?
     •  In the U.S., there used to be more research labs that were driving innovations, but these are now gone and absorbed into marketing structures.
     •  Superficial design, no big long-term view. Universities could help, but they don’t have the long-term view either.
     •  Because of capitalism, companies are looking for short-term solutions and missing trying to find long-term solutions.
Hard measure of productivity: no more money for design

- Companies are not reducing their R&D funds, but driving them into specific things: identifying ten core fields yields long-term results

- Automobile industry challenge: a lot of cars selling now, but how to keep this going in the future (climate change etc.)? Target-setting is critical. The mind of consumers can change quickly. In order to change, target setting is critical. Targets are hard to set, if you understand the scope of the problem.

- The world is changing at a fast pace and designers could facilitate this. be forerunners

- We do not sit back and reflect; what is the problem? This means that we could come up with the wrong invention.

- People are getting away with mediocrity.

- Should we reconsider the disciplines of academia?
A multidisciplinary discipline of Nanotechnology – good results. 
If university has horizontal layers, companies should also tackle strategic issues.

- Well-established processes exist, but they do not necessarily get approved

- “How do I please my customers both now and in the future?”

- When you’re doing something that is very long-term, it’s hard to budget: you don’t know what the possible problems are before you face them. Organizations often want budgets even if they are impossible to make when you counter the unknown.

- Finland’s innovation strategy: we have all the institutional and structural incentives etc. for a project-based and technology-driven innovation, but we don’t have the similar institutional, functional and financial demand-driven innovation.

- Big companies shadow down and do not benefit of the opportunities for R&D and innovation in public services.

- Where is the person who will make a difference?

- We need one or two people to make a change, but how can this be made sustainable?

- Since markets are big, companies get away with mediocre products because people are constantly buying.

- In the health section, we don’t have competition, and if we do, it’s the wrong kind. Underdeveloped. – Is the system about to break down? Round Europe health care crisis regularly.

- We have the dynamics to make the system react to the pressure of change.

- Leading people in the health care and public services should look at themselves; people not developing. (This is exactly why we are here).
     •  There are people who see the problems, and have sense of powerlessness.

- Developing the health care system is not that simple.

- In academia, presidents and deans come and go but the faculty is there forever. Same in health care. When people’s jobs are at risk, they fight.

- We need structures, but now the structures became cages so people are victims to structures which limit them.

- Some Design students fear that design will become a tool for business.

- Research quality measured by how much you are published in a-journal Personal choice between financial and ethical.

- Ideas from a conference held last week in Slovenia:  whole world is put to follow the American definition of what is a good science and theory. Why don’t we do something else? 
     •  Laziness
     •  People want their articles to be cited.

- Overly defined; we should not get away from specialization but we want to increase the width of understanding.

- Implicit culture of “art is good, business is bad” in art universities

- How do you get businesses to work together?

- We try to break down complexity by dividing it into small components, so we do not get the full picture.
     •  Good point, process should start from inside out; what do you want to change, how can you use your talent in a better way?

- Universities need to work with people from the outside world instead of just the faculty: heads of hospitals and CEOs etc. so they can get different perspectives.

-  Artist with business engineers, if you can orchestrate that discussion, let the group find an area of opportunity and model it into a business opportunity.

- A system can be so demanding that the current structure doesn’t comply with it

- Danger with that: anything that you define will be valid for a few years, and then you have to redefine them. In universities, there are disciplines that don’t change at all. Faculty who are not getting the attention they need.

- In the U.S.: money goes to the same people over and over. The combination of designer, business person and engineer does not get funding.

- Companies are looking for designers who can organize or analyze

- Biggest challenge: breaking the paradigm of the gap between business and design

- Can designers communicate? – Depends on the context.

- Designers are good articulators (?), but do people want to hear them?

- Designers can think multi-dimensionally, but they need to learn to be empathic and understand the user(s): understand what they are saying, read emotions etc.

- Designers always blamed for commercial flops.

- Current reward system has flaws; momentum to change the reward system needed.

- Universities have to reach out to people and re-define themselves.

- In Finland: Heading toward an innovation university, efficient processes, but to go horizontally and build a system where businesses, public service and universities work together.

- If the conference has value for Finland, the role of designer could inspire change (designer=new thinker in the table in academic content).

- Bringing in outside designers? International.

- Some companies are aware that innovation happens between disciplines.