Midterm excitement – halfway through and more challenges to come!

This blog post reports on work-in-progress within the DfG course! The post is written by one of the two groups dealing with the Ministry of Environment’s project brief on ‘Energy and maintenance in Finnish housing companies’.  The group includes Andre Vicentini from Aalto ARTS, MA in New Media Design and Production, Anssi Laurila from Aalto BIZ, … Read more

Starting the search for solutions

This blog post reports on work-in-progress within the DfG course! The post is written by one of the two groups dealing with the Ministry of Environment’s brief on ‘Waste Prevention by extending (electronic product) lifecycle’. The group includes Merja Lang from Turku University’s MA in Future Studies program and Noomi Schulman from Aalto’s MA Creative … Read more

View the mid-review presentation slides

Photo: Seungho Lee The 2016 Design for Government (DfG) course is halfway through and promising directions were presented in the mid-review event on 5 Apr at Tieteiden talo. In this 3rd year of DfG, multidisciplinary student teams have addressed project briefs from the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Transport and Communications. 2016 project briefs outline … Read more

Invitation! DfG 2016 Final Show

Are you interested in new and proactive ways of policy-making and public service-provision? What happens when multidisciplinary student teams take on policy design challenges? The 2016 Spring Final Show of the Design for Government (DfG) course will showcase some inspiring examples! Highly-committed and -talented student teams will present their research and proposals developed during the … Read more

Dancing with mobility systems

  Starting to dance with systems During the past two sessions of the DfG course we deepened our understanding of Empathic Design methodologies with practical exercises led by design researcher Juha Kronqvist.  Jane Fulton Suri from IDEO defines design empathy as “The ability to step into someone else’s shoes and to understand them through their experiences” (in Koskinen, … Read more

Kick-Off to the 2016 DfG course!

This blog post reports on work-in-progress within the DfG course! The post is written by one of the two groups dealing with the Ministry of Environment’s brief on ‘Energy and maintenance in Finnish housing companies’.  The group includes Ekaterina Perfilyeva from Aalto’s MA in Creative Sustainability (Business) program, Jutta Menestrina from Aalto’s MA in Creative Sustainability (Design) … Read more

Model for Human-Centric Governance

Design for Government (DfG) celebrates the New Year recognising great achievements over 2015 – ‘Design for Government: Human-centric Governance Through Experiments’, which we produced with Demos Helsinki for the Finnish Prime Minister’s office. From Aalto, the 2015 DfG course served as an example of what a part of the proposed process might unfold, the course … Read more

DfG welcomes Professor Ramia Mazé

Welcome Ramia Mazé to the Design for Government faculty! Ramia has started at Aalto in August 2015 as ‘Professor of New Frontiers in Design’, in which her focus is on the expanding roles of design in society – including roles in governance, social innovation and sustainable development. DfG was initiated and established in 2013 by Seungho … Read more

About Design for Government

Are you a civil servant interested in how design can be applied to innovate in policy design? Are you a student interested in designing with the public sector and government? Design For Government (DfG, MUO-E8012) is a 10-ECTS advanced studio course in Aalto University’s Creative Sustainability master’s programme. DfG develops design addressing the complex challenges of … Read more

DfG in Helsinki Design Week – Part 2

During the Helsinki Design Week 2015, we have organised a workshop inviting 11 designers and 10 civil servants to Valtimo, a joint working space of the ministries, early in the morning of September 10th. The aim of the day was to create trust and find tools for the ministries’ civil servants and designers’ to start working … Read more