Ulla-Maaria Mutanen's lecture

from University of Helsinki, Center for Activity, Theory and Developmental Work Research
This presentation discussed future directions in professional design by challenging the current conceptions of production and consumption. The main indication is that organisations that wish to innovate and foster creativity need to conceive products that exist simultaneously both in physical and online form, make designers play with users, and support crafting and voluntary development outside businesses.

New ideas emerge on fringes, group of amateurs...
Why ordinary people create things? The following points are her answaer to that question

Why? no pressure, no fear of failure
Why ordinary people want to make stuff?
answer in 11 points:

1Get satisfaction of being able to create things (K. Marx: human become themselves only by producing things)

2The things people have made themselves have magic powers. They have hidden meanings that other people cannot see.

3The thing people make they usually want to keep and update. Crafting is not against consumption, it is against throwing away.

4People seek recognition for the things they have made. Primarly it comes from their friends and family.

5People who believe they are creating genially things are looking broader.
(blogs, chat-rooms, web-portals, photo sharing services)

6Work inspires work. Seeing what other people have made generates new ideas and designs.

7Essential for crafting are tools, which are accessible, portable and easy to learn.

Quoted reference: Democratizing innovation E. von Hippel

architects or designers? Who is the more organised?

The question started to be debated two weeks ago while we were presenting our exploration themes. Arriving here, coming from architecture and having seen only messy agencies during my internships, I discovered the gap between the vision we had on both sides of the work method of the other one. Each side thinks the other one is more organised and the process method is more rigorous. Without doubt designers win, in architecture we've never heard about any protocol in any school.

5Ws and an H (What? Where? When? Who? Why? How?)

Tested on the problem: How to help people who are affraid to go to the doctor? Released by the bench of banana.
Sometimes a little bit too superfluous, hopefully the bench of banana carried by Pal helped us to redefine the W of what we were speaking: Who is affraid of the doctor or who is the doctor who frightens his patients? It was a not too bad solution o eplore the xplore the problem as it didn't take too much time. But I am not sure this method was the most appropriate, I'd rather tested the be the problem method for such an issue.