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News • Helsinki • Finland • 2012-11-21

Involving users in developing public services – Designed Solutions 2012 projects soon in full swing

The Designed Solutions 2012 programme sets out to tackle five different challenges within organisations in the public or the third sector by means of design. With the designers for each individual project having now been selected, it\'s time for the actual planning, which will involve workshops, observation, scale models, cartoons and community art. But as the tendering process proved, there is not much previous experience to fall back on when it comes to collaboration between public sector organisations and designers.

Funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and carried out together with World Design Capital Helsinki 2012, Designed Solutions 2012 is a programme that involves the re-design of the inside of a police van, the school dining concept in a school in Vantaa, and the courtyard area of a nursing home in Riihimäki, among others. The aim is to find fresh solutions to the challenges we face as a society by looking at them from a new perspective, through the eyes of a designer.

Proposals for the three biggest projects funding-wise were invited through a public tender. The other two projects recruited young designers through an application process and a series of marketing events. The tendering process in the autumn invited designers to come up with ideas for the kinds of processes and tools needed to fulfil the aims of the projects. The most suitable designer for each project was chosen together with the client.

“The overwhelming interest in the programme took us all by surprise. We received applications from around twenty designers for each project. Because the challenges in these projects are complex, we were hoping to attract applications from multi-professional design teams and networks. And we did, since we now have people from across all fields of design involved, meaning that we get to test a wide range of different design methods,” says Project Manager Päivi Hietanen.

A participatory design approach

One thing all the design projects in the programme have in common is that they encourage user and stakeholder involvement. Police, school children, nursing home residents, new entrepreneurs and other project clients will all have the chance to share their stories and participate through workshops and the creation of scale models, idea walls or cartoons.

The projects will bring about solutions across a wide spectrum of design, including the design of products, services, processes, concepts, spaces and models. The practical implementation and further development of these solutions will be up to the project owners.

First lessons learned

Besides seeking new ways to solve social challenges, Designed Solutions 2012 aims to encourage the use of design services in the public and third sectors. The competitive bidding, however, showed that collaborative projects between designers and public sector organisations are an area where more work is needed.

“The bidding process made it obvious that designers are not familiar with the public procurement procedure. Some of the tender documents were poorly prepared, and some were submitted after the closing date. This is clearly something that needs to be looked into in design education. On the other hand, the fact that we saw such a large number of applications come in shows that designers are interested in public sector development projects,” Päivi Hietanen remarks.

Meanwhile, the use of design services in the public and third sectors is a fairly recent phenomenon. Among the key objectives of the Designed Solutions 2012 programme, therefore, is to increase awareness about the many ways of leveraging design, to spread information related to the sourcing of design services, and to introduce design thinking into new contexts.

The results of the projects can be seen in winter 2013. Project reports and feedback will be used as a basis for producing designed solutions that can be replicated in different contexts.

Projects and designers included in the programme

The Designed Solutions 2012 programme features the following projects and designers:

Police van as a mobile workplace – Designing a functional space for work and customer service

Project owner: National Police Board

Designer: NR Design Oy

Design funding: EUR 45,000

Loft Helsinki – Pop-up work spaces for entrepreneurs in empty city-owned facilities

Project owner: City of Helsinki, Office of Economic Development

Designer: Diagonal Mental Structure Oy

Design funding: EUR 40,000

School dinners rock – Participatory project to improve the school dining experience for pupils

Project owner: Vantaan Tilapalvelut Oy and the City of Vantaa

Designer: Design Studio Muotohiomo Oy

Design funding: EUR 40,000

Forgotten places – Giving cultural sites new significance in the eyes of local youth

Project owner: Satakunta University of Applied Sciences

Designer: Päivi Raivio

Design funding: EUR 25,000

A path to feeling good – Participatory project to design a courtyard that will help empower nursing home residents

Project owner: Me Itse Ry Riihimäki and Riihimäen Kehitysvammatuki Ry

Designer: iam design Oy

Design funding: EUR 20,000

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