Topic outline

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    Welcome to the Emerging Designs course 2021. Emergence refers here to how design spaces and solutions emerge when knowledge is construed by what is referred to as design work.

    Development of students' designerly metacognition is a significant learning objective in this course. Theory on the course is primarily based on research about design, i.e. we discuss, explore, and reflect, how design space is informed and explored and how explicating it can benefit design process.

    We apply design theory to a Product-Service System (PSS) development. The topic is rural healthcare in Nordic countries. The exceedingly sparse and aging population poses challenges to maintain high quality healthcare in Northern parts of Finland and Nordics. Technology provides novel opportunities for tackling this. On the course we aim to develop a conceptual solution for 2030 healthcare model, with detailed descriptions of some touchpoints within this model. There will be lectures and a workshop also on the project domain with topic experts.

    There are two key research projects sources providing us a great starting point and bits of information, which will lead to the emergence of the solutions. The key ones are AMRI (accessible Magnetic Resonance Imaging) at Aalto (ARTS and ELEC), and VOPD (Vård och omsorg på distans (VOPD) – Healthcare and care with distance-spanning technologies). There will be direct involvement with the research projects, and the student teams of the course.

    NOTE: there will be a workshop with VOPD on the first Wednesday of the course, 3.11.2021 at Aalto. This is of critical importance for the teams.

    The project outcome will be presented in Dubai World Expo in Jan-Feb 2022, which provides a great venue for the students to portray their skills.

    The lectures will take place in Otakaari 1, room U261.

    Header photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash