Design and policy: where and when do they meet

Where do policy and design meet? How different or similar are their processes? And how can design help policy to suit “human scale”? These are some of the questions that have arisen during the first two weeks’ discussions and reflections on the Design for Government course.

First diamond attempt: design for a dignified old age

The first blog of the 2023 DfG course dissects the focus of the mission in the new design brief ‘Life events for a dignified old age’ and presents the roundtable discussions we’ve held to gain a preliminary understanding of the issues and the plan for the next step.

Open Call for 2023!

Would you like to work on your policy challenge with our talented students at Aalto University? We are looking for Finnish public organisations to provide student projects for our course Design for Government in March. If you work on sustainability transitions, governance or cross-cutting national-level challenges, please contact us! Each year we collaborate with Finnish … Read more

2022 Final Show

The Design for Government 2022 Final Show showcases inspiring examples of proactive and ‘designerly’ approaches to policy-making and public service provision. The event saw 6 talented and multidisciplinary student teams present their research and proposals responding to challenges within the Finnish public sector. This year, students addressed a record of two different project briefs, with … Read more

Employment Services Reform

Project Description This project focuses on the current reform of employment services, moving the TE office (The Employment and Economic Development Office) to the municipal level during 2024. Such administration restructure means significant changes to the thousands of employees working in TE Office and municipalities working with employment matters, becoming a substantial part of what … Read more

Sustainable Nature Recreation

Project Description Finland has 41 national parks, which are conservation areas. Visitor numbers of protected and recreational areas in Finland are growing, especially in national parks. In 2021, there were over 4 million visitors to national parks, which is 25% more than in 2019. However, visitor footprint and interactions with nature can hurt the environment … Read more

Designing a toolkit of acts of appreciation

This blog post retraces the last three weeks of the Design for Government project of group 2B with a focus on the making process prior to the toolkit for acts of appreciation. It highlights the complexity of working on organizational culture and reflects on the differences in appreciation cultures between different sectors.