The Power of the Design Revolution in Helsinki and what that means to me.

The thing that has most surprised me about our visit to Helsinki, apart tom the fact that everything is completely AWESOME here, has been that the revolution of design actually hasn’t happened over night.

I’ve been so in awe of everything Finland have achieved, amplified after meeting with Helsinki City Design Lab and learning that they have smashed out over 200 projects in only 2 years, I hadn’t ever considered the journey to get to this point or what the impact of that design revolution has on every single citizen who lives here. It has not been easy for Helsinki, and one of my favourite quotes from this experience has to be ‘sure it’s a little bit messy, but that’s ok’ – when there is a shared understanding that messiness is not forever and everyone works together to continuously make change improvements.

I mean, I knew that the design revolution literally didn’t happen overnight, but there has actually been a long process behind that growth and development over the last ten years.

For example, Aalto University Design Factory, who are an experimental learning and co-creation platform for education, research and application of product design opened in 2008. Open 24/7 with 1/3 open space, 1/3 prototyping space and 1/3 lectures, workshops and meetings. Experimenting, prototyping and testing are the Design Factory methods for realising ideas, creating sustainability and providing new learning opportunities for all. The Design Factory have created one of the most diverse and flexible spaces for supporting innovation from the bottom up.

The fact that students from other universities all over the world are able to sign up for their courses gives an inspiring introduction to an educational experience that is second to none. Working on real projects, one being with UNICEF looking at the hygiene of the water supply in Uganda, the Design Factory provide students the opportunity to learn by doing, working with trans-disciplinary team members, including a project manager, from across the globe with real budgets, briefs and deadlines to meet – all housed within a safe environment.

The Service Design Academy is on a mission to introduce service design to as many different people, organisations, private, public and third sector companies as possible. Whether that’s locally, nationally or globally.

I truly believe that service design can help to completely revamp the way that we educate nationally. Every single nook and cranny of the Design Factory allows for, encourages and supports innovation. That includes supporting teachers and lecturers to try something different, again, in a safe environment through providing a physical space to experiment and grow.

However, this has taken 10 whole years.

Sometimes, I think that perhaps I haven’t done enough in the 15 months since re-joining the College and helping to create the Service Design Academy. I’ve been shouting about the benefits of service design to anyone who will listen. I’ve tried to communicate the good we have done, the benefits we have so clearly seen and the quick wins that staff and students have benefited from.

I’ve put my heart and soul into projects that have failed, and that hurts. Everyone says it’s ok to fail, and I’m one of those people, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to understand that particular failure to make improvements for next time and sometimes that is identifying something YOU could have done better the first time round.

I have discovered in only two days of being in Helsinki that I should actually be proud of what we have achieved in our infant life.

I have realised that we have such a long journey ahead of us, especially embedding Service Design into Dundee and Angus College and that it does not happen over night.

I have unearthed a new found confidence in what we have achieved in such a short time. I think that some of the major problems and challenges we have faced to date stem from a fear of change, the loss that is associated with such changes and that, mostly, it is about communicating in a language that we all understand, managing expectations in an area that is constantly being reshuffled and restructured by the need for stability, sustainability and/or due to financial constraints.

We need to recognise as an educational institute, what is super important, is that everything we do should be for the benefit of the learners and that includes staff! That means we have to share good practice, learn from each other, communicate, spend more time listening and actually implicitly trusting in ourselves and each other.

In only 48 hours, we have learnt and absorbed so much already. I didn’t come with any assumptions. I was willing to completely immerse myself in the culture, eager to learn about the magic behind the design revolution in Helsinki, only to discover that it has all been down to a lot of hard work, trust, respect, dedication and having the right ‘structures’ in place to support freedom.

In between all of that, I’ve discovered a little piece of myself. And that makes me super excited to return home, to the Service Design Academy, to Dundee, to Scotland and now I’m even more prepared to unleash my passion for service design all over again, and again and again………