Design for Life – Renewing Human-centred design to benefit business,organizations and people’s lives

INUSE Seminar26.9.2013Eija KaasinenVTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

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Contents of the presentation

Something about VTT and VTT’s programme portfolioDesign for life programmeDesign for life white paper

Renewal needs on four areasUnderstanding future consumerCoping with complexity in designUser experience driven businessInnovation through co-design

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VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

VTT ISa globally networked multitechnological applied research organisationa not-for-profit and impartial research centre

VTT HASextensive cross-disciplinary technological and business expertiseunique research infrastructurecomprehensive global partnership networks in business,industrial and research communities

VTT CREATESnew technology and science-based innovationsin co-operation with domestic and foreignpartners

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Customer sectorsBiotechnology, pharma-ceutical and food industriesChemical industry andenvironmentElectronicsEnergyForest industryICTMachine, vehicle and metalindustriesReal estate and constructionServices and logistics

Focus areas of researchApplied materialsBio- and chemical processesEnergyInformation andcommunication technologiesIndustrial systemsmanagementMicrotechnologies andelectronicsServices and the builtenvironmentBusiness research

VTT’s operationsResearch and DevelopmentStrategic ResearchBusiness SolutionsBusiness DevelopmentGroup ServicesVTT’s companies- VTT Expert Services Ltd (incl.

Labtium Ltd and Enas Ltd)- VTT Ventures Ltd- VTT International Ltd (incl.

VTT Brasil LTDA)- VTT Memsfab Ltd

VTT Group in brief

Turnover 316 M€ (2012) • Personnel 3,206 (31.12.2012)

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VTT’s mission

VTT produces research andinnovation services thatenhance the internationalcompetitiveness of companies,society and other customers.

VTT creates the prerequisitesfor society’s sustainabledevelopment, employmentand wellbeing.

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VTT’s programme portfolio 2013

Spearhead programmes 2013Green Solutions for Water and Waste – Mona ArnoldBioeconomy Transformation – Jussi ManninenProductivity Leap with Internet of Things – Heikki AilistoSmart Mobility and Low Carbon Energy – Nils-Olof Nylund

Innovation Programmes 2013Intelligent Energy Grids – Robert WeissHigh-performance Microsystems – Aarne OjaMultiscale Design – Tarja LaitinenArctic and Cold Climate Solutions – Jaakko HeinonenCognitive Communications for Critical Infrastructures – Mika LasanenPersonalised Health & Wellbeing - Miikka ErmesHuman Driven Design – “Design for Life” – Eija KaasinenSafe and Sustainable Nuclear Energy - Eija Karita PuskaSensing Solutions – Mikko Juuti

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Design for life research background at VTT

VTT has wide human-driven researchcompetence, distributed in severalknowledge centres at VTT.

Human-driven research teams at VTThave identified common researchdrivers. By orchestrating VTT’scompetences to solve the commonchallenges, we can create world classsolutions.

Design for life research activities cover differentresearch areas at VTT

• Technologies and services for buildings• Transport and logistics systems• Systems engineering• Business and technology management• Organisations, networks and innovation systems• Systems research• Smart interaction solutions• Digital service research

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Design for life research fields

Objectives:

Taking human well-being andvalues as the driving forces forbetter productivity and competitiveadvantage

Empowering people to influencetheir living and workingenvironments.

Finding solutions to big societalchallenges together

Creating enjoyable serviceecosystems

Enabling human control ofcomplexity

User experienceand value formation

Design anddevelopment ofcomplexsocio-technicalsystems

Co-innovationand co-design

User experienceand value in use

Futurecontexts of livingand working, and

impacts oftechnology

Innovation

Design

Business andorganization

SocialScience

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Design for Life projects make the programme ...

...the entity takes shapeonly once the pieces are

put together.

Design for life programme entityconsists of more than 30 individualresearch projects that work towardsthe common research objectives

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Design for life White Paper

In the increasingly technology-mediated world, successful designsolutions need to be appropriate to their purposes, fit for humanlives, and promote well-being.The focus of the design activities has extended from individualproducts to continuously evolving ecosystems that consist ofhuman actors in different roles, technical solutions and physicalenvironments.In the complex design environment traditional human-centreddesign methods meet their limits and there is a threat that wecannot influence the design sufficiently from human viewpoint.

Design for life White Paper proposes four areas where Human-centred design should be renewed to benefit business,organizations and people’s lives

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Design for life challenges

Coping withcomplexity

Innovationthrough

co-design

User experiencedriven business

Futureconsumer

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Four areas that need renewal

Understanding future consumers and their contexts of living and working as well asvalue and impacts of technology. Consumer studies must be more future oriented tosupport the design of future services.Coping with complexity by developing systemic approaches and shared methods todesign, based on understanding the interdependencies between technologies and socialpractices.Utilising the innovation potential of users and other stakeholders as co-design partnersby developing understanding of the collaborative processes of knowledge creation andinnovation.Creating the organizational mindset for user experience driven business. Utilizing thefull potential of user experience requires changing the mindset of the whole organizationin addition to adopting user experience driven design practises.

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Understanding future consumers

Research in this area includes three perspectives:Consumer understanding: Research that aims tounderstanding consumer activity, culture and valuesForesight activities that aim to capture impacts of societaland technological transformation on consumer behaviour andvalues in the futureReflective approaches that address consumer behaviour,innovation and technology design from the viewpoint of ethics,responsibility and sustainability.

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Research needs for Understanding future consumer

Creating a knowledge pool of future consumer behaviour, valuesand cultures in contexts of living and workingApplying foresight methods to capture impacts of technology andsocietal transformation on consumer behaviour. This knowledgecan be used to inspire design, development and business from theangle of human well-being.Understanding human activity to identify and frame unsolvedproblems. We shall gather, integrate and analyse researchknowledge which reveals future challenges for organisations totackle in a proactive manner.

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Coping with complexity in design

Complex socio-technical systems are everywhere in the modern society: theentirety of the healthcare system, the food chain “from farm to fork”, energysystems, emergency services, global service business etc.Complexity is an intrinsic feature of these systems, especially due to the needs for:

balancing between multiple global challenges like well-being, safety, security,environmental and social sustainabilityadapt to situational variations in the operative environment, i.e. the systemsneed to be resilientbuilding ecologies of systems: they are systems of systems that aredeveloping both based on design activities and by usage practices

For a large part, the complex socio-technical systems of today are not designed perse. Instead, they emerge in an interplay of different stakeholders developing theirown parts of the system. Thus the systemic entity, the complex whole, may remaincompletely un-designed and thus its functioning may become ambiguous orunpredictable.

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Research needs for Coping with complexity in design

Systemic design practice which understands theinterdependencies between technologies and social practicesUnderstanding human activity, decision-making and use of tools inreal-life situations, and development of appropriate ethnographicand experimental methodsMethods and practices of developing perspectives of socio-technical transformations and their long term impacts

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Innovation through co-design

Since products and services are more and more tied together inbigger service ecosystems, companies cannot survive in thecompetitive markets without collaborating with other stakeholders.Co-design refers to collaborative design activities with customersor other stakeholders across the whole span of the design process.Users are the experts of their everyday life and can therefore bringnew insights into the innovation process and increase designers’understanding of real user needs and desires. Early userinvolvement reduces costs later and leads to better useracceptance of new products and services. Co-design also helps increating a closer relationship with customers.For companies, it is challenging to find the customer innovatorsand establish links with them in a cost-effective manner. Userparticipation in the global context is a particular challenge.

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User involvement in design

Human-centred design ofproducts of services

Continuousdevelopment duringuse

Fuzzy front end:What to design?

Wide possibilities toinfluence; radical ideas

Established designpractises and tools(ISO 9241-210)

A necessity in servicebusiness; developing bothtechnology and usagepractises

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VTT’s co-design spaces

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Open Web Lab, Owela

Innovating, developing and testing futureproducts and services together with endusersResearching users, needs, attitudes,opinions, and usage culturesEvaluating the acceptability of ideas,scenarios and prototypesUser-designer interaction channel in LivingLab environmentsOver 2500 registered Owela users, part ofthem lead users in ideationProject space can be open or closed toselected users

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Research needs for Innovation through co-design

Development of easy and cost-efficient methods that companiescan use themselves for integrating co-design in their innovationand design processes.Measuring the actual benefits of different co-design approaches.Integration of different co-design approaches into a comprehensive“Finnish co-design” brand.

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User experience driven business

The meaning of user experience for companies is quite widelyrecognized, but it is rarely seen as a strategic or business issue.Emphasizing the importance of UX throughout theproduct/service/customer relationship life cycle could providemeans to differentiate and thus increase the competitive advantageWe have tools to evaluate user experience but user experiencehas been a too vague concept to guide design activities

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Research needs for User experience driven business

More extensive research is needed on how organisationalpractices and culture can be transformed to support UX-orientationin the companies and on how UX can act as a business factor.Define and establish UX driven design process based on concrete,focused UX targets, as well as related methods and tools.

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Thank you!

Eija.kaasinen@vtt.fi

Design for life – New design approach to benefit business,organizations and people’s lives

http://www.vtt.fi/research/spearhead_and_innovation_programmes

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VTT creates business from technology