Kaasinen: Design for Life – Renewing Human-Centred Design

26.9.2013 14.00-16.00

Eija Kaasinen: “Design for Life – Renewing human-centred design to benefit business, organizations, and peoples’ lives.”

Venue: Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Room 885, 8th. floor, Hämeentie 135 C

In the increasingly technology-mediated world, successful design solutions need to be appropriate to their purposes, fit for human lives, and promote well-being. The focus of the design activities has extended from individual products to continuously evolving ecosystems that consist of human actors in different roles, technical solutions and physical environments. In the complex design environment traditional human-centred design methods meet their limits and there is a threat that we cannot influence the design sufficiently from human viewpoint.

In this presentation Eija Kaasinen introduced for discussion VTT’s Design for Life White paper with four areas that need to be developed in human-driven design:

• Understanding future consumers and their contexts of living and working as well as value and impacts of technology.
• Coping with complexity by developing systemic approaches and shared methods to design, based on understanding the interdependencies between technologies and social practices.
• Creating the organizational mindset for user experience driven business.
• Utilising the innovation potential of users and other stakeholders as co-design partners.

Principal Scientist Eija Kaasinen is the programme leader of VTT’s Innovation Programme Design for Life. The programme is orchestrating VTT’s human-driven research projects and activities.