sharing cultures - she

ANNA PYYLUOMA - JANNE ILLI - PETRA LEINO - YURI FUKAMATI

INTRODUCTIONIn this portfolio we propose a design concept for an open platform culture festival. Named “Sharing Cultures - SHE”, the aim of the concept is to bring together women of the Muslim community and the Finnish original population and encourage them to learn and share experiences with each other and thus increase dialogue between the cultures.

The festival is presented as a possible solution for a broader design problem that is how to make environments more inclusive towards different cultures without it becoming exclusive. In this portfolio we present the design process in all its stages and finally outline the final concept for the festival.

ConceptIdeas

Collaborators

Funding

Marketing

Building the Festival

The Festival

Feedback

Future

ExperienceMachine

Brief–

RebriefStory

Research Values Chart

Data Analysis

Proposal

Teaser Video

ContentIdeas

Design Themes & Arguments

PROJECT TIMELINEThis timeline illustrates our design process from the early stages of research to finally formulating the concept, followed by the timeline plan for the festival itself. The timeline flows through the hexagons, guiding you in connecting the puzzle pieces in the correct order.

THE EXPERIENCE MACHINE“Suppose there was an experience machine that would

give you any experience you desired. Super-duper

neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that

you would think and feel you were writing a great

novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting

book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug

into this machine for life, preprogramming your life

experiences? [...] Of course, while in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think that it’s all actually happening [...] Would you plug in?” Robert Nozick:

“Anarchy, State and Utopia”, 1974.

Quite contrary to the Experience Machine thought experiment, we wanted to tackle a real world problem with a real world solution instead of creating a superficial surrogate reality where everything is perfect. We didn’t appreciate the idea put forth by the thought experiment that designers should dictate which experiences would be worth experiencing - we want to use design to enable and empower people to create their own experiences.

ExperienceMachine

BRIEF–REBRIEFOur first research question was:

The next iteration of the research question became:

“HOW CAN DESIGN INFLUENCE PLACES LIKE ITIS TO EMPATHIZE MORE STRONGLY WITH LOCAL MUSLIM WOMEN?”

Our idea was to influence the decision makers (urban planners, funders etc.) in putting more effort in making sure that the services and products they offer are inclusive and accessible. However, after further analysis, discussion and feedback we realized that this question was too vague. The next step for us was to come up with a research question that was more tangible, more precisely formulated and more focused.

“How can designers influence stakeholders to create services that are more inclusive and accessible to

everyone?”

Brief–

Rebrief

FOCUS GROUPWe decided to choose women as our target group since involving and educating women empowers them to become independent thinkers and agents of change in their societies. We also wanted to encourage women to get to know other women from other cultures because through women we can reach children and the rest of the families.UN Women. “Empowering Women to Change the World: What Universities and the UN Can Do”, 2011.

The effect that helping women has on societal well-being has not gone unnoticed globally. Empowering women and breaking down oppressive societal and cultural structures is slowly becoming a trend and such approach has also been adopted by many Finnish immigrant organizations:

“Usually the (immigrant) organizations - especially

those whose operations are partially planned by native

Finns - aim to break such ethnic and religious traditions

that are considered oppressive towards women (for

example the tradition of female circumcision) or

restrictive to the human agency of women. In those

cases the organizations aim to encourage women to

participate in areas of life ‘forbidden’ to them, such as exercise, because according to the organizations

physical exercise - especially in public places - has been

considered to associated with the ‘masculine world’”.Väestöliitto (the Family Federation of Finland). Translated from: “Maahanmuuttajanaiset. Kotoutuminen, perhe ja työ” (“Immigrant women. Integration, family and work”), 2007.

Brief–

Rebrief

Research

RESEARCH

RESEARCH METHODSWe went to Itis on two different days to interview muslim women. On the first day we performed observations and tested out our interview material on six people and then made a few changes based on the feedback, making the questions more open ended to avoid affecting the interviewees with our questions.

We also wanted to use a tangible visual prime to help people be more creative in their answers, so we decided to use picture cards (pictures of different buildings, spaces, activities, people, moods, atmospheres) to inspire interviewees and let them draw images.

Practicing the interviews on the first day also allowed us to be more confident and act more natural when approaching possible interviewees on the second day. On the second day we had 12 people participate in the visually primed interviews, some of the participants also drawing pictures for us. In addition to gathering a lot of raw interview data we also obtained a lot of insightful metadata about our own working methods, attitudes and approaches.

Research

Research

NORA’S DRAWING

Research

RESEARCH PROCESS

INTERVIEWS

Research

INTERVIEW SUMMARIES• A lot of the interviewees find Itis good as

it is and are happy with the services in and around Itis

• There’s no place to take the children while shopping

• A need for a prayer room was mentioned a few times

• Itis is a good meeting place, because the muslim demographic there is larger than in other malls

• Some interviewees had experienced racism, prejudice and even violence in Finnish malls

Research

CARD SORTING

Research

METADATA• We selected the interviewees based on them wearing

a hijab, even though not all muslim women wear it• We tried to overcome the language barriers by using

card sorting and drawing as tools to get data• Being in a hurry was often used as a reason or an

excuse to not take part in the interview• We found it difficult to break the ice and dig in

deeper: politeness prevents criticising the situation, even though we interviewers aren’t connected to the mall.

• People interviewed with friends or family were more open for the situation, loners were harder to talk to (maybe because there were at least two people doing the interview)

• Visual tools to collect data brought out surprising information on general values and preferences of urban environments

Research

DATA ANALYSIS

Data Analysis

FRAMING ACTIVITYBased on what we gathered from our interview notes we built an affinity diagram. Four main themes emerged from the raw data:•Accessible services nearby Itis for the muslim

community•Itis caters to a wide spectrum of needs•Issues and concerns regarding the muslim women’s

experience in Itis•How to improve muslim women’s experience in itis

Those themes were then used to develop further ideas and concepts.

Data Analysis

DESIGNTHEMES & ARGUMENTS

Design Themes& Arguments

DESIGNTHEMESBased on our hitherto research we formulated the following design themes to answer our research question:

How can design influence places like Itis to empathize

more strongly with local Muslim women?

1. Through design encouraging and activating moreinteraction between different users:

• Playful • More dialogue

• Facilitating interaction through design: inviting users to share their stories and ideas, more dialogue.

2. Making Itis inclusive and accessible without it becoming exclusive:

• Providing services for all user groups • Considering the wide spectrum of

users and theirs needs • Both material and social needs • The context: cultural, social, time… 3. Create a safe and caring environment that actively

addresses issues of harassment • Making people aware of the issue • Giving people concrete tools for dealing with

the issue • Getting rid of the bystander effect


ARGUMENTSFrom our design themes arose our design arguments:

1. Since communication brings understanding and empathy, design should encourage interaction between different user groups. During the interviews we noticed that our presence by itself caused spontaneous conversations between different users. However, we want to design interactions that don’t require facilitation but rather happens naturally.

2. Design should enhance inclusiveness and accessibility, since we, as human beings, are different and come from a wide spectrum of social and cultural contexts. Our interviews indicated that Muslim women have multiple needs which were not met at Itis. However, one should avoid creating a solution which is exclusive in other aspects.

3. Since environments should be safe and caring, services should actively address issues of harassment. Several interviewees reported that they had experienced harassment in Itis or similar locations. However, one should concentrate on the positive and not scare people off by giving too much attention to the threat of harassment.


STORYBased on the interviews and analysis of the data we created the following story to illustrate the experiences of muslim women in Itis and concretely present the problems they face

Story

t’s a cloudy spring afternoon. A young muslim woman, Faizah, 18 years old, is waiting for her friend, Nadimah, at Alanya market in Itäkeskus. Nadimah arrives, the friends hug and head to Itis

shopping mall. This is an exciting day: they are going to go shopping for dresses for their high school graduation party.

I

Story

The friends go into one of Itis’ many clothing stores. The dresses there seem a bit short for their tastes so they decide to go find another store. There they bump into two of their high school friends, Tiina and Laura, and decide to continue shopping together. After a lengthy shopping session they all have finally found their perfect dresses and Faizah suggests that they have a sit down and something to eat. They agree on going for pizza and head to restaurant Momento.

Story

Having finished their meals and spent way too much time at Itis the girls decide to head home. Leaving Momento an older muslim woman with a toddler in a stroller approaches the girls. She asks whether they know of a place to take her child while she goes grocery shopping. She mentions that there used to be a playcare place but it seems to have been closed. The girls think about it for a bit but don’t remember seeing such a place in Itis. The woman then goes on her way.

Story

Just as the girls are approaching the exit, an angry looking bald man walks towards the bunch. Nadimah tries to make way for him, but the man bumps his shoulder into her, seemingly on purpose. Nadimah trips and the man keeps walking, shouts profanities at her. The girls are shocked, and Faizah decides to act. “What are you doing!” she yells at the man, following him, while Laura and Tiina pick Nadimah up and make sure she’s okay. An older woman steps in the way of the man and scolds him.

Story

The man tries to leave but another man grabs a hold of him by the shoulder. Faizah, the old woman and the man all have a word with the bald guy and ask him to apologize. He seems a bit embarrassed but refuses to even look at Nadimah and finally manages to break free from the crowd and quickly walks away.

Story

People seem to empathize with the girls and apologize for the man, telling the girls that some people are still scared of and angry at people from different cultures, seeing them as a threat to what they think of as Finnish culture. They have a short discussion about it and agree that these kinds of harassments are luckily getting more and more rare as people become more familiar with people from other cultures. The girls are starting to feel better and decide not to let one idiot ruin their so far great day. They thank the strangers and leave Itis. The clouds outside have shifted and sun is shining.

Story

VALUESCHARTWe structured our findings into a chart that visualizes the key elements of the issue of inclusivity versus exclusivity in our case.

Values Chart

INFORMATION

INTERACTIONACCESSIBILITYINCLUSIVENESS

VS.EXCLUSIVENESS

IN ITIS

COMMUNICATION

Understanding Empathy

PrejudismSafety

NeedFulfilment

Caring

Less Barriers

Feeling Welcome

Values Chart

CONCEPTIDEASIn our project we attempt to bring about something that we feel would create more inclusivity in Itis, which is at the core of our chart and which is dependent on the four major aspects of whether a space is inclusive or not -- communication, accessibility, information and interaction.

Therefore the aim of our design concept is to improve Itis on all those four areas of inclusivity. We came up with four design concepts as possible directions where to take the project.

ConceptIdeas

Share your story = get a coffee + someone else’s

story.

Place it on the wall.

Take it with you.

Post it on social media with a

hashtag.

CONCEPT 1: TELL IT FORWARD

ConceptIdeas

CONCEPT 2:THREADSTORY GAME

•Viestijuoksu ‘Message run’

•Get the object.•Start a story.•Post a picture.•Pass the object from

one person to another.•See what’s going

on through the hashtag.

MAPPING OUT THE STORY

HAVING COFFEE WITH #relaybunnyBEST BUNNIES @ITIS

#relaybunny

ConceptIdeas

CONCEPT 3:INTERACTIVEWALL

Writing down messages, stories, meaningful events and hanging them on the wall for others to read.

ConceptIdeas

Stories

Henna tattoo

Different ways to wear a

scarf.Clothes

Make-up

Food!

CONCEPT 4:FESTIVAL

Connecting Finnish women and Muslim women.

ConceptIdeas

The problem that we wanted to address with our design project was the lack of inclusiveness in Itis and similar places experienced by the Muslim women. We argue that this issue is manifested in feelings of insecurity, lack of services, lack of communication between Muslim women and Finnish original population and therefore, lack of understanding. We also wanted to improve upon things that the Muslim women enjoy in Itis, namely the sense of community and good variety of services.

There are also many scientific papers on the topic of familiarity and contact with another culture breeding empathy towards them, a recent example being “Racial bias in neural response to others’ pain is reduced with other-race contact” by Cao et al., 2015, published in Cortex. Based on this we strongly feel that increasing communication and getting to know the other culture would cultivate empathy and feelings of community between the cultures.

We realised that out of the concept ideas that we had the event/ festival would allow for most diversity and variety in terms of demographics and activities and would help us invite a wide range of partners and visitors. A festival would also be more of an open and evolving concept that would foster co-creation and active participation in planning, organising and attending the festival. As benchmarks we used festivals and events around the world such as: Festival of Muslim Cultures in the UK, World Culture Festival in Blacksburg, Virginia, Maailma Kylässä Festival in Helsinki, events on International Womens’ Day, Tyttöjen Päivä/ The Girls’ Day events organised by Plan.

THEPROPOSAL

Proposal

The solution we propose is an open festival platform that facilitates sharing ideas, stories and information through different activities such as hosting events, workshops and exhibitions with the purpose of creating dialogue and understanding between the different cultures.

The platform goes by the name Sharing Cultures Festival, SHE, which would be held on the International Women’s Day in Itis. The SHE Festival would be built collaboratively with Itis, the collaborating stores and restaurants of Itis and Itäkeskus, volunteer organizations and winners of the Open Idea Competition where anyone could propose content ideas for the festival and the winners would be then participating in the festival as organizers (see HKL’s Taidelinja project for an example of such idea competition, www.taidelinja.fi). We aim at creating a platform, a frame for an event rather than a ready designed concept. We provide ideas and suggestions for activities and methods to help our cooperation partners and participants to come up with their own content and develop the concept further.

Proposal

TEASER VIDEOWe created a campaign video to advertise our chosen design concept, the Sharing Cultures Festival - SHE, and encourage participation.

youtu.be/iVJpzUtI0kU

Teaser Video

CONTENT IDEAS

ContentIdeas

ARTS & CRAFTS• Workshops• Exhibitions• Techniques classes: drawing, painting, video, collage, crocheting, knitting, sewing, photography, performance, environmental art…• Lectures & Discussions

LITERATURE• Book swap• Poetry• Writing classes: poems, short stories, fiction…• Book clubs• Book reading• Illustrations, comics…• Translations: guests, discussions, interpretations• Poetry slam

MUSIC & DANCE• Contemporary, traditional, classical, alternative, hip hop, fusion…• Dance lessons• Dance battle• Concerts• Workshops

FILM• Documentaries• Family films• Fiction• Short films• Indie

FOOD• Workshops• Cooking classes• Recipe swapping• Dinners• Food culture• Mushroom/berry/herb picking

CLOTHES & ACCESSORIES• Styling• Makeovers• Remaking/ Customising• Repairs• Clothes swapping• Flea market

BEAUTY• DIY cosmetics• Make-up lessons• Body art• Pampering• Beauty salon

ContentIdeas

FUNDINGThere are multiple possible sources of funding for this project. We have outlined a list of possibilities:

Grants•City of Helsinki•Kulttuurirahasto•Koneen säätiö•Kordelinin säätiö•Kansan Sivistysrahasto•Jenny ja Antti Wihurin rahasto•Taiteen edistämiskeskus•Iran Heritage Foundation•EU•UN: United Nations Development Fund for Women•Unicef

Muslim community•Helsingin Muslimit•Suomen Islamilainen yhdyskunta

Collaborators’ funding channels

Funding

COLLABORATIONFor our project we need many partners to collaborate with, the main one being Itis allowing us to use their facilities and other necessary resources for organising such a project. The stores and restaurants of Itis and nearby Itäkeskus area are also important collaborators. We would also like to involve volunteer workers and a wide range of non-profit organisations.

Our idea is also to hold an Idea Competition where participants would propose content for the festival, after which there would be a public voting which would result in the best of these ideas getting chosen by the festival organisers to be actually realized in the festival and awarded their necessary resources. Some of the collaborators would assist in holding the festival, others would help with the marketing.

•ITIS•Accessory shops•Clothing shops•Day-spas•Restaurants•Cafes•Alanya Market•Make-up, cosmetics stores•Hair Salons•STOA•Itäkeskus Mosque•Cajsa centre•Facebook communities:

Meillä on unelma Minun Suomeni on kansainvälinenMuslimi Siskojen JorinoitaRuskeat Tytöt

Suomi Says Welcome•Måndag for marketing•Suomen musliminaisten foorumi•Helsingin Muslimit•Suomen Islamilainen Yhdyskunta•Plan•Marttaliitto•Suomen Käsityön Ystävät ry•DODO ry•Kaupunkiviljely•HiMO Club / EtnoFitness•Työväentalot•Schools•Experts: scarf-expert Julie VanSuch,

braid-expert Matti Airola, etc.•Netflix

The list of possible collaborators we have thought of:

Collaborators

INCENTIVES FOR THE PARTICIPANTS

•Raising awareness, gaining more and better understanding of other partners and visitors•Information: Gaining more personal knowledge about the other culture, creating dialogue and understanding through different activities•Networking & Interaction: Between Muslims and the majority, different organisation & other stakeholders•Promoting cultures and different aspects of culture•Cracking prejudice, taking a stand, bringing down barriers between people•Promoting actions and values of organisations and individuals•Promoting equality•Common well-being•Promoting a better sense of community – many cultures creating a community•Celebrating diversity

What kind of value will the festival offer to coop-eration partners and visitors?

Collaborators

Partners:•Good publicity, promotion•A lot of customers•New people – new customers•Hype & activity to the area•Standing out by providing personalised service – a very topical and fresh approach•Giving to the community, improving the feeling of community •CSR (Corporate social responsibility)•A facelift

Visitors:•Meeting new people•Learning about another culture•Being heard and understood•Sharing experiences •Sharing and flaunting skills•Having fun

Collaborators

MARKETINGWe aim to use multiple marketing platforms to reach out to as wide and diverse demographic as possible, using everything from social media channels and print marketing to TV commercials and advertisement in public places. Our collaborators’ marketing channels would also be utilized. Also the Idea Competition would bring publicity to our festival. The SHE web page would play an important part in informing people about the event and would be mentioned in all the marketing material in different channels, as would the SHE festival mobile app, which would be used to both give information to festival goers and to collect feedback.

Marketing

Marketing

MOCK-UP CAMPAIGN

MOCK-UP CAMPAIGN

Marketing

BUILDING THE FESTIVALThe festival would be organized with Itis and its stores, the partner organizations, Idea Competition winners and volunteers. In fact, building the festival becomes a part of the whole festival experience and is also aimed to build dialogue between the different cultures - realizing the goals and values of the festival already at the building stage.

Building the Festival

THE FESTIVAL

The Festival

By the end of the festival people would be able to share their thoughts, comments, and suggestions on the feedback wall and through social media.

After the festival the organizers would gather and analyse the feedback to understand and iterate on how the festival could be improved and developed in the future.

During the Festival everyone would be able to share skills, stories, tricks, watch documentaries, and experience different cultures.

On March 8th, the SHE festival would be held in Itis.

Save the date of International Women’s day to go to Itis and experience the festival.

The festival is advertised in various mediums to get as much visibility as possible.

The Festival

FEEDBACKAn important part of the festival experience would be giving and collecting feedback. For this we have designed a feedback wall that is a multi platform canvas that would function both as a physical wall where people could put their experiences, thoughts, stories and feedback on paper notes, and a virtual feedback space on the SHE webpage and mobile application.

The wall serves multiple purposes: it’s a way for the festival goers to share their experiences with one another, it creates continuity to the entire festival as an anchor between all the festival events and last but not least, it allows the festival organisers to collect important user data and feedback to further develop the festival in possible consecutive iterations.

Feedback

FUTUREThe festival as a concept is an open platform, which means that it can and should be developed further after each iteration and allows and leaves room for experimenting, expanding and changing the content. The first SHE festival in Itis would focus on the dialogue between the women of muslim and Finnish original population’s cultures, but would be meant to function as a pilot of a project which could later be applied to other places and cultures.

We as designers would participate in creating the initial platform but would then step back and watch the concept grow and evolve on its own and be freely adopted by other people and organizations in different environments and locations.

Future

THELETTERSAfter the project we had to reflect on our process and write a letter to a friend who is considering attending the UID course.

Dear Talita,

I remember you mentioning you would like to enroll in the UID course next fall and were asking for my opinion it. I have just finished it and could give you some insights on the course!

The UID course covers a wide range of subjects and allows one to experience the different stages of the design process. First, we focused on research and how there are ways to use it to actually get closer to users, and not just from the distance through a computer screen. We were introduced to ethnographic methods, the importance of collaborative design and its processes, and the values of empathic design. Not only we were introduced to these subjects but also, we were also able to experience them in our own group project.

In the group project we applied all knowledge we were learning, thus making our project more well rounded. We used co-design in different aspects: working with students from other majors and schools within our own group, by interacting with different communities to better understand them, and also, by discussing our projects with the other groups in the course.

An important aspect of this course was the translation from all the data we were collecting through ethnography, co-design, interviews, observation and empathic design into solutions and concepts ideas. Throughout the UID course we were able to use different design methods to help us converge into a meaningful design solution.

You should know that this course is very demanding and challenging. I often found myself having to chose between my group project and the individual work we also had to do. However, I will apply all the methods I have learned in this course in my future as a designer. UID helped me further my knowledge on the importance of connecting to people in order to create change. Focusing on people, especially those less privileged, and understanding them is what human centered design is all about. Furthermore, my definition of “designer” changed a little, from an expert to a facilitator.

I hope this will help you!

XX,Yuri

Hi!

I heard you were thinking of enrolling on the UID course next year. Good for you! I took the course this fall and boy has it been a ride. The course gives a lot but also takes a lot - be prepared to free up your calendar for the work the course requires.

As you might remember my major is cognitive science in the University of Helsinki, and learning the repertoire of a designer has been both interesting and immensely challenging for someone with a strict research background. The first thing I noticed having difficulties with was the intangibleness and abstractness of the questions and concepts in design. I’m used to easily operationalizable research questions with tangible, numeral data as results, and being in a world where there weren’t necessary right and wrong answers was a bit overwhelming at first. This was most evident at the first stage of our design project group work, where I sometimes felt I spoke a completely different language than the rest of our group when attempting to formulate a research question. Luckily I found myself bit by bit reorienting my thinking processes to better suit this field of work and at the end of the course I feel actually quite confident that I have a grasp of the design process and the type of thinking it requires.

I have always enjoyed teamwork and found the group work the most interesting part of the course. Getting to know people from different backgrounds was eye-opening and fun and my team members are great persons. The group work process went quite well even though our group experience a lot of obstacles with people getting sick one by one - I got sick too, and going through a nasty flu when the group work was going on full steam and not being able to participate for a week was extremely frustrating. During that time I did what I could on my home computer but the course work being so intensive it really doesn’t allow for much absence for any member of the group. My problem was also that I had to work at the same time, and it didn’t make scheduling meetings any easier. But in the end I feel it all worked out fine.

The course taught me a lot about the how user inspired design can be used to tackle even the difficult social and cultural problems and have an impact on the world in a way that makes it a better place for everyone. I think that being empathic towards your stakeholders is one of the most important attributes of a designer and the user inspired methods certainly have that empathic design philosophy. Being user centered also means creating something that the stakeholders want or need, not just creating an alluring but ultimately superficial product or service and trying to milk as much money as possible out of it.

I’m sure you will enjoy the course as much as I did. Good luck!

Yours,Janne Illi

Hey!

How are you? I heard that you were thinking of taking the User Inspired Design course next year and that you might be interested in hearing from someone who has taken the course.

The UID course was a real learning experience. The course was divided in two parts: theory and its implementation. As a whole we were guided through a design process from the initial structuring of a research question up to developing a concept proposal, by using user centered design methods. We used ethnographic methods to gain a first contact with our chosen focus group and different co-design approaches to get more data and to develop the concept further.

The theory part of the course was mainly readings and lectures by visiting lecturers. Both of those gave inspiration and insight, but also tools for the group project. I’m not that well read in design philosophies, so much of my efforts went into understanding the different methods, but I feel I still lack a deeper understanding and capability to compare the different discourses. The presentations and especially comments from peers were very valuable for our group work’s process, but also very valuable in the individual work. It’s good to see and hear of other projects in similar development phases because the comparison can also give you a lot of insights. The most I learned from my fellow group members. They all had different kind of backgrounds and experiences, and I learned a lot from their way of working and thinking.

Schedule-wise the course was quite demanding. There were weekly group

tasks, a lot of presentations and some surprise elements to tasks. This all lead to the week filling up with mainly group meetings and less time went to the theory part of the course. Of course that was also a conscious choice on my part of where to put my energy and efforts. One group member was out of the game nearly every week due to illness, but we managed to pull through a concept proposal, that I’m quite happy with.

Overall the course taught me that a good designer is a good group worker, interested in gaining an understanding of the kind of social and cultural issues that should be targeted by designers, but also understands that surprising outcomes and design opportunities can rise from the most mundane subjects. He or she doesn’t overlook without carefully inspecting and manages to hold back until careful research and analysis has been put to place. There are times to wildly ideate, but one must also be ready to re-visit and reiterate older stages of development. A good designer is interested in the subject they’re working on and knows how to overcome their own biases.

I ended the course with a strong positive feeling that us designers can make a difference. As banal as that sounds, it is a big thing for me, because from time to time I question if design does more bad than good. But taking along empathy, a curious mind and a set of methods to help connecting with people can lead to insights that will make a change for the better.

Yours, Anna

Dear imaginary friend,

You told me when we met that you are considering enrolling in the UID course and would like to know more about it before you make the decision. Here are some of my thoughts following the course:

The course can be considered as an introductory course to the different approaches and methods of human centred design. The schedule of the course is very tight and the aim is to cover a wide range of topics thus the course is very intense and inevitably ends up scratching quite a few surfaces. I had already studied human centred design and worked with projects where I had the possibility to test the methods and implement them in real life cases so I was already familiar with most of the topics discussed during the course which helped a lot in navigating in the information overload.

The course is divided into two parts; the theory and the practice. It is structured so that the theory part is mainly covered by lectures with varying topics by visiting lecturers and the group work is done very independently in groups of four. The groups are given weekly assignments that are presented to the whole class at the end of each week. During the classes the groups can get tutoring and feedback from the teacher and the other groups. I think this is when you should listen very carefully and observe what the other groups and your classmates are doing and saying since you’ll most probably end up learning the most from their ideas, thoughts, projects and feedback. In general I would encourage you to try to find opportunities for discussing your work with people from other groups – for me sharing and hearing other people’s perspectives was most fruitful.

Doing both parts of the course is quite demanding since the schedule is so tight and the practical part requires a lot of arranging with the group. For me it felt very natural to prioritise the group work which meant less time for and more stress

about the individual work. However the most valuable part of the course was the group work and that’s where I learned the most from. Our group worked really well together and managed to keep up with the schedule even though at least one of us seemed to be sick every week. The theme/ the case we chose to work on was very challenging which is probably why we succeeded in learning a lot from it both in theory and practice and ended up with a result that I believe could be developed into a real concept that would actually address the issues we aimed at addressing. It was a pleasure to work with the people in our group and I learned a lot from them. I’m really proud of us and of what we achieved in such a short while.

As with every course at this level to get the most out of this course I’d encourage you to be brave and trust your instincts and remain true to your values and to who you are. Don’t pretend to know things you don’t, ask if you are uncertain of something, be curious and have an open mind. Be ethical and honest, respect the people you are working with. Be critical; challenge the teachers, the course material and people you are working with. Challenge the assignments, question their relevance and suggest improvements, be empowered. You are studying and learning, this is the time to test things out, take risks and learn; ergo, don’t be afraid of failing or doing something wrong.

Challenge yourself in the group work by trying different roles, taking on tasks youmay not be previously familiar with etc. Be ambitious but try to remain a certainlevel of realism; you don’t need to do everything in one course and everything does not need to be perfect. Reserve time to do the course, but remember to take care of yourself and make sure you still maintain a life outside the school, in otherwords; take the course seriously, but not too seriously. Enjoy yourself!

Yours sincerely,Petra

sharing cultures - she

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