Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
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In Rethinking Villa Breda, the first <strong>for</strong>mulation of the design brief took<br />
place when negotiating the project contract between Aalto University<br />
and representatives of Kauniainen, including the director of culture and<br />
leisure, director of social and health services, and chief of senior services.<br />
This took place approximately six months be<strong>for</strong>e the project started. The<br />
brief was further elaborated in several meetings. Additionally, to create<br />
shared expectations and objectives, a half-day workshop focusing on framing<br />
the design problem and the design brief to be given <strong>for</strong> students was<br />
organised a few weeks be<strong>for</strong>e the students started. More than ten people<br />
participated in the workshop organised by the project coordinators: the<br />
professors responsible <strong>for</strong> the three student courses and the core representatives<br />
from Kauniainen. It was decided that the design brief should<br />
be left purposefully open, so that each student team would need to frame<br />
their own approach based on their learning during the course. This enabled<br />
meaningful foci <strong>for</strong> the students and made it possible <strong>for</strong> them to suggest<br />
diverse perspectives <strong>for</strong> public senior services.<br />
The overall topic was to develop ideas <strong>for</strong> senior services to be provided<br />
by the Villa Breda service centre in Kauniainen. Instead of just focusing on<br />
physical healthcare, the students were encouraged to look at, <strong>for</strong> example,<br />
the meaning of cultural services in seniors’ <strong>wellbeing</strong>. Accordingly, the<br />
services did not need to be limited to the ones provided <strong>for</strong> the permanent<br />
service centre residents or even the elderly in general, but could cater <strong>for</strong><br />
a wide range of customers and people living in Kauniainen.<br />
A general structure <strong>for</strong> the three courses was created including a) a<br />
kick-off event at Kauniainen at the very beginning of every course, b) one<br />
co-design workshop to verify and co-design ideas together with people<br />
living in Kauniainen and with invited experts, and c) final presentations<br />
in Kauniainen <strong>for</strong> anyone interested in learning about the project. In<br />
between these events, the students conducted their own studies on the<br />
topic, the city of Kauniainen and its inhabitants. As many students were<br />
not Finnish, they didn’t know the area be<strong>for</strong>ehand.<br />
59 · Co-design with the public sector