Publications

Link to Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación Nº 157

Authors: Zeynep Falay von Flittner, Idil Gaziulusoy, Sonja Nielsen & Sanna Marttila

Abstract: Transition Design or design for sustainability transitions is acknowledged as anLink to Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios en Diseño y Comunicación Nº 157 emerging design research and practice area. Although studied and practiced as part of research consortiums for a while, design for transitions has only recently started to be adopted by design practitioners and consultancies with only few examples worldwide. Hellon, a design consultancy based in Finland and the UK, has been actively searching for implementing ideas from design for transitions and have successfully been involved in a set of relevant projects during 2017-2021. These projects include helping the Prime Minister’s Office of Finland to consolidate a sustainability report with co-created input from all Finnish ministries, designing “Nordic Urban Mobility 2050 –Futures Game” –a gamified process for facilitating mobility transitions stakeholders to co-create mobility futures scenarios– and developing “Sustainable Futures Game” –a gamified process to assist companies to co-imagine desirable alternative near future scenarios in alignment with the intergovernmental ambition to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. In this article, as a transdisciplinary team of three design practitioners and one researcher, we present these examples as case studies and share reflections and critical insights on enablers, challenges, and opportunities for implementing design for sustainability transitions in practice and provide suggestive evidence for the contributions of design-led approaches in transitions contexts.

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Authors: Cristina Ampatzidou, RMIT University – Joost Vervoort, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, University of Utrecht, Zeynep Falay von Flittner Falay Consulting, Finland, Kirsikka Vaajakallio Hellon

Abstract: Games have become established tools within participatory urban planning practice that provide safe spaces for collective actions such as deliberation, negotiation of conflicting agendas, scenario testing, and collaborative worldbuilding. While a body of literature on the effectiveness of games to address complex urban planning issues is emerging, significantly less literature addresses the design and development process of serious games with a possible space in its own right within urban planning practice. Our study investigates long term iterative processes of designing a game for visioning urban futures, specifically, how design iterations connect to the application of games in practice by accommodating or responding to emerging needs, goals, and relationships. We approach this topic through the case study of the Sustainability Futures Game, a game designed by the Helsinki-based creative agency Hellon to support business leaders, sustainability specialists, and city officials to imagine desirable alternative urban futures. Through storytelling and collective worldbuilding, players first imagine what sustainable urban living means for a specific city, frame their vision using the UN’s sustainable development goals, and finally create concrete pathways towards reaching these goals. This article uses a genealogical approach to systematically analyse the five design iterations of the Sustainability Futures Game. It aims to elucidate the contextual and relational influences on the application of serious games in urban planning practice to understand how these influences might encourage or inhibit their potential to foster transformation towards sustainable futures.

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Authors: Kirsikka Vaajakallio, Zeynep Falay von Flittner, Sonja Nielsen, Anna Pyyluoma

Abstract: As service design practitioners, we see organisational transfor- mations towards sustainability as a natural continuation for organisations’ customer-centric transformation. However, the complexity of sustainability challenges traditional structures and mindsets even more. In this article, we’ll address three change needs of organisations when transforming towards sustainability, in which service design can add value.

Link to short Paper

Authors: Niko Reunanen, Zeynep Falay von Flittner, Virpi Roto, Kirsikka Vaajakallio

Abstract: Service design is an effective approach for service-based businesses to improve customer experience. However, Double Diamond design process has limitations in identifying the development areas with most business impact. Combining service design process with machine learning presents a new opportunity for alleviating the aforementioned limitation. We present a case from a European service design agency and a Nordic life insurance company to describe the utilization of machine learning in the beginning of the service design process. With this new process we were able to quantify business impact of different customer experience factors and focus the design effort towards the most potential area. Additionally, we increased the buy-in from top management by enhancing the credibility of the qualitative approach with numeric evidence of customer experience data. The work resulted in increased Net Promoter Score for the client organization.

Authors: Kirsikka Vaajakallio, Tuuli Mattelmäki, Anna Pyyluoma, Zeynep Falay von Flittner

Paper presented in Workshop Workshop in conjunction with CHI’18. April 22, 2018, Montreal, Canada.

Link to short Paper

Authors: Zeynep Falay von Flittner, Markku Salimäki, Antti Ainamo, Mika Gabrielsson

Journal of Marketing Management Volume 23, Issue 9-10, 2007

Abstract: This paper explores the marketing activities of "born global" companies that have been established either by one or two designers, or by a designer and a business graduate. "Born globals" are companies that have internationalised their business soon after their establishment. The focus in this paper is on the impact that the mental model of the founders – in terms of marketing competences operationalised in terms of educational background – has on the firmś commercial success in the early stages of internationalisation. Our analysis shows that the marketing competences of the designers we studied were geared toward establishing the founders' own brand as designers or successfully launching their product offering into the market. Participating in international trade fairs, personal contacts with the distribution channel representatives and control of point of sale activities were the main marketing methods. Conventional advertising was used very little, mainly because of the high costs associated with operating in the global arena. After early development and early growth the design-intensive born globals began to suffer with a lack of sufficient marketing competencies. The marketing competences required for managing growth to maturity and managing profitability were crucial, if there was to be any 'second stage' for the design-intensive firm. In the companies we studied, a partnership between design entrepreneur and a marketing professional was a source of sustained competitive advantage in some firms. We propose that our findings are generalisable. We believe that also other design-intensive born globals meet the challenge of higher requirements for marketing competences in the 'second stage' of growth than in the initial stage. Hence, they may find valuable our result of why and how a "co-preneurial" partnership between the designer and a marketing professional can be a solution.