Design Factory conquers new continents
Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, is establishing the country’s first 'Living Lab' on product development – a teaching unit on product development actively connected with the daily activities of companies. What makes this interesting to us is that the new unit is inspired by Aalto University Design Factory and will be created as a partnership between the two universities.
From August 2011 onwards, Swinburne, which resembles Aalto University in its focal areas, will employ learning projects sponsored by the industry to complement studying methods in economics, design, engineering and computer science.
A colossal Advanced Manufacturing Centre building to be completed in 2013 is currently under construction at Swinburne. The university management has already, after having previously decided to reserve an entire floor for DF activities, promised to allocate more space for the project.
Professor Kalevi Ekman, the Director and "jack of all trades" of the Otaniemi Design Factory, has been appointed Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology. He was also invited as one of the keynote speakers at the Strategic Design conference to be held in Melbourne in December.
Helsinki-Melbourne all night long
DF activities aiming at better learning and improved interaction require well-functioning and reciprocal cooperation. The idea at the core of DF, which is that the balance of freedom and responsibility offered to students generates action and creativity, is not communicated without effort.
"Three Aalto students have already been sent to Swinburne as exchange students, and a corresponding number of Australian students are expected in Otaniemi. Also, the staff at the Design Factories are prepared to work abroad for a period of time if needed."
Päivi Oinonen, Vice Junior Manager of Design Factory and a student of economics, has also been employed by Swinburne on an initial one-year contract to help launch the DF. She is about to complete her master’s thesis for the School of Economics. In her thesis, she focuses on the activities of DF and explores its potential for internationalisation from the resources perspective.
"Our active role and presence in Australia makes enables the rooting of the operating models and values central for the concept in the Swinburne version of Design Factory," states Päivi Oinonen.
"I really hope that we will be successful in our most important task, which is to remove hierarchies, and will be able to help in the establishment of a DF that is as easily approachable as possible."
Work of thirty years
During a visit to Sweden to observe instruction in the field of design, Professor Ken Friedman received a suggestion from his local colleague to visit to Finland to see what was being done at the Aalto University Design Factory.
The day of Friedman’s visit was, by a lucky coincidence, a regular overactive day at the Design Factory: the place was swarming with students of technology, art and economics, all visibly excited about what they were doing.
Friedman was very much taken with what he had seen. Later, the Director and Research Coordinator of Swinburne Design Centre also arrived in Finland, and the cooperation began to take shape.
"In order to tell the whole story of DF to our guests, and also to ourselves, we had to round up some of the old crew, as few of those currently working at DF have been there for the whole 30 years," explains Kalevi Ekman.
"We invited Professor Matti Kleimola to come back from retirement to talk about the ways in which, at the time, they challenged the traditional teaching methods at the Department of Machine Design at the Helsinki University of Technology."
"We even went to the very same lecture hall where Matti began as a young professor who brought to the job his previous experience from the industry."
"We told our guests how Kleimola, from his experiences in working for the industry, had imported a fresh idea, according to which teaching should have greater impact on students: the students should have the opportunity to do real things originating in the real world; assignments with no right or wrong answers as opposed to theoretical exercises detached from daily realities traditionally favoured by the school."
"We described to them how we, myself later in my position as Associate Professor, carried out a thorough reorganisation of the product development project as it was then and how we have continued with the same idea for 15 years, at first very slowly, until at some point in the early 2000s the pace of development quickened and, with the establishment of Aalto University, DF was founded to take forward new ideas about teaching."
"The visitors got the idea. Later, a group of us set off to Australia on a specific mission and had the chance to take part in a variety of lectures and meetings. We also had a workshop with the locals, and the outlines for future cooperation began to get clearer."
"The end result was the early stages of a cooperation, which was eagerly awaited by the students and staff at Swinburne. The traverellers had only got as far as Melbourne airport, when they were greeted with a billboard four metres high: 'Helsinki to Swinburne landed. The world’s best arrive at Swinburne!'"
What is the appeal of Design Factory?
What is it that takes place at DF that causes such excitement even in places so remote to us geographically?
"The main idea behind DF is to function as an environment that persuades and motivates students to act."
"DF is successful because it bases its activities on a non-hierarchical environment, it is as easy to approach as possible and contains freedom and responsibility in a form that the students can dare to accept."
"Offering freedom and responsibility to students can sometimes also be a painful thing to watch, as where there is light, there are also shadows. Real world problems can be complex and exiting your comfort zone often means getting uncomfortable," comments Ekman.
"Since the early days, the idea behind DF has been to disseminate within Aalto the idea of activities that prepare students for independent work. Our long-term objective is thus to abolish DF due to cessation of need," he explains.
"Every now and then we receive queries about people wanting to establish their own DF in some part of the world. And if people are interested in doing that, it would be dumb of us to say no."
"There is no copyright on DesignFactory: you can copy, plagiarise and develop it as much as you want, but we have developed special models for the export of DF."
"In China, there is a partnership model called 'Powered by', which means providing assistance for starting out in return for compensation, but requiring the start-up to manage on its own after a certain period of time."
"The 'Inspired by' model means that no matter where you have developed the original idea, we hope you include the following phrase as a credit to Aalto: 'Inspired by Aalto University,'" concludes Ekman.
Text: Eeva Pitkälä
Photos: Mikko Raskinen
