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16.12.2014 14-16 

Collaborative futuring with and by makers
(Sampsa Hyysalo, Cindy Kohtala, Pia Helminen, Samuli Mäkinen, Virve Miettinen and Lotta Muurinen)

What difference does a living lab make? Comparing two health technology innovation projects
(Sampsa Hyysalo and Louna Hakkarainen)

Venue: Aalto Arts, room 885, Hämeentie 135C, 8th floor

 

Collaborative futuring with and by makers
Sampsa Hyysalo, Cindy Kohtala, Pia Helminen, Samuli Mäkinen, Virve Miettinen and Lotta Muurinen

ABSTRACT: Maker spaces and maker activities offering access to low-cost digital fabrication equipment are rapidly proliferating, evolving phenomena at the interface of lay and professional design. They also come in many varieties and change fast, presenting a difficult target for, for instance, public authorities, who would like to cater for them but operate in much slower planning cycles. As part of participatory planning of Helsinki Central Library, we experimented with a form of collaborative futuring with and by makers. By drawing elements from both lead-user workshops and participatory design we conducted a futuring workshop, which allowed us to engage the local maker communities in identifying the issues relevant for a public maker space in 2020. It further engaged the participants in envisioning a smaller prototype maker space and invited them into realizing its activities collaboratively. Our results indicate that particularly the information about future solutions was of high relevance, as was the opportunity to trial and elaborate activities on a rolling basis in the prototype space. Insights about more general trends in making were useful too, but to a lesser extent, and it is likely that these could have been gained just as easily with more traditional means for futuring.

Available here:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2014.983937

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What difference does a living lab make? Comparing two health technology innovation projects
Sampsa Hyysalo and Louna Hakkarainen

ABSTRACT: Living laboratories are increasingly common and promising arrangements in collaborative design. Their strength lies in being real life, open ended, sustained and complex coproduction arrangements, but these characteristics also make it hard to research what difference a living lab collaboration would make – after all the project within a living lab should be quite different to one conducted without it. This paper reports on a rare opportunity to compare two unusually similar innovation projects, one of which relied on a living lab and the other that did not. Contrary to what one might have predicted, the living lab collaboration did not make the development paths very different, and the key challenges regarding design collaboration remained closely similar. Extensive redesign in pilot use, an extended learning period between developers and users, consciously built collaboration arrangements, effective boundary spanners and investment in conflict resolution were equally paramount to success in both cases. The living laboratory did make meeting these challenges quicker, and lessened the strain that redesigns caused to customer relations.

Available here:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2014.983936

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