Design? Probably. Human-centered? Not for now.

Welcome on board! Through this first blog post, your will learn about our very first steps regarding the “Life events for dignified old age” adventure, such as our understanding of the project brief, the roundtable discussion with our partners, and a few elements about our research strategy.

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.

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.

Good presenting is clear thinking made visible

In the final weeks of the course, our attention turned to defining our design proposal more comprehensively and preparing to present our efforts in the final show. While these initially seemed like two distinct activities, preparing the presentation actually turned out to be a helpful thinking tool that supported us in developing our proposal.

Coffee table for biodiversity

This blog goes through the final steps in the process of team 1C to our final design proposal to Metsähallitus and the Ministry of Environment, and our efforts to combine human-centered design methods and environmental sustainability. It explores the role of design for government, in this case for a state-owned enterprise, in the Anthropocene.