Designing for wellbeing

our neighbours visiting the open-doors event. Even though we missed
a general awareness of our work at “home”, we were lucky to encounter
some neighbours in other ways. That said, being on location helped local
involvement tremendously. Moving into the neighbourhood crossed the
boundary of our being tourist-like outsiders, and encouraged students’
sensitivity and an empathetic mind-set.
Difficulties with the winter weather and other practical issues while
establishing the temporary design studio helped us to build a feeling of
community. Everybody had the patience to wait a week for the internet
connection: “We are in the field, this is real life, we cannot expect everything
to be ready for us,” stated the students. Simple, unexpected challenges
made the students turn towards the suburb surrounding them, for example
the need to spend time in the local library to get access to the internet.
At the same time they adapted to the suburb and got used to the idea of
visiting unknown places. During the project, students visited most of the
local activity centres and other places enjoyed by local people. Acting
local sensitised us to local issues. It re-contextualised our design, because
reality is different in an eastern suburb compared to an admittedly exclusive
design university. What may seem important at the university or in a
design office, might prove to be trivial on site. The suburb showed us local
priorities in which sophisticated design plays a far smaller and a lot more
practical role than in the university corridors where design is appreciated
even in abstract. Mellunkylä inhabitants do care about their environment
and its aesthetics but the design needs to become personally meaningful.
Beyond user centricity
To understand the local systems of meanings, we benefited from the
understanding and methods developed in user-centred design research,
where intensive involvement with people is de rigueur. These methods
93 · Design studio in the field