All posts by Minna Mayer
We had a great time in London getting to know the brilliant people from the Helen Hamlyn Centre. Marco already introduced you to the ideas they showed us. The low-cost surgical tools are pretty groundbreaking, so I encourage you to take a look!
For me personally the most interesting discussion on this trip was about the obstacles designers face when working with experts from other fields. The general impression of design still seems to be limited to “object-related” issues. The connection between well designed things (objects) and a working society, are rarely thought of (at least this is my own conception…). So the problem using these methods is not about the difficulty of finding good solutions, it is the difficulty of finding the people who are open to include design and designers in solving these real issues. One goal of HDL 2010 will be to use it as a means to provide government and private sector representatives positive experiences when working in close collaboration with designers. Once they see, they will believe.
Hi, my name is Minna and I work at Sitra with Marco and Bryan. I was not a participant at HDL 2008, so maybe I should introduce myself first… I have worked here at Sitra for almost a year now. I started as our President’s Summer Assistant last spring. After the summer I had the privilege of joining Marco and the rest of the HDL team. Currently I'm working as an assistant on this project and a few others as well.
My design expertise is somewhat limited (except for art classes and I used to work for Marimekko). My education is from the “politics” side of things. I am a student of development studies in the University of Helsinki where I am currently finishing up my master’s thesis. My personal perspective and enthusiasm in this project is on the use of design as a “decision-making tool”. I am especially interested in learning how we can improve lives using design as the primary perspective on issues. On the trip we met up with some interesting people in London, who already gave me some hints for this!
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