Welcome to the Aalto Digi Breakfast on “Designing for Future Life – Strategies for multidisciplinary design for digital communication, entertainment and education”!

5 June at 8:00-9:30 at Aalto Design Factory, Betonimiehenkuja 5C, Otaniemi, Espoo. Breakfast served at 7:45 o’clock.

Please register no later than Monday 2 June at https://www.webropolsurveys.com/S/317623B163D8DD2B.par and forward this invitation to your interested colleagues, too.

This is a discussion event including speakers such as Lasse Seppänen (CEO of PlayRaven), Forrest Oliphant (Partner at NoFlo team, CA), Teemu Leinonen (Professor at Aalto ARTS), Philip Dean (Professor at Aalto ARTS, chairman of the event), and several others. Details of the event at http://www.aalto.fi/en/research/platforms/digi/designing_for_future_life/

The Digi Breakfasts are arranged by the Digi Platform which is Aalto’s new means of collaboration in the field of ICT and digitalisation, to maximize Aalto’s internal synergies in a non-exclusive manner, and to increase Aalto’s external visibility. See the list of forthcoming events at http://www.aalto.fi/en/research/platforms/digi/news

About the speakers and their presentations

Lasse Seppänen, CEO of PlayRaven, represents the entertainment sector of our agenda. PlayRaven http://www.playraven.com is an innovative strategy games studio which was recently one of the successes at SLUSH, gaining 1.7m€ for their game product development, see more at http://m.iltalehti.fi/digi/2014012217961101_du.shtml (in Finnish).  Lasse is an alumni of Aalto’s Media Lab and a veteran game industry executive best known as Remedy’s Executive Producer on Alan Wake.
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lasse-sepp%C3%A4nen/0/13/833

Forrest Oliphant is an interactive designer and a graduate of the Media LabHelsinki, Aalto ARTS. In his MA thesis project Forrest developed a hackable web app framework and a flow-based programming environment for children (and other artists). His Meemoo framework was found from the GitHub by the NoFlo-team developing flow-based programming helping software developers to organize large application, especially when modifying large data sets. Currently Forrest is a partner in the NoFlo team. In September 2013 the NoFlo project was successfully funded and raised more than 100 000 USD from more than 1000 backers. The NoFlo team is located in California, Berlin and Helsinki. http://www.forresto.com/

Professor Teemu Leinonen, Vice Dean of Aalto School of Arts, Design and Architecture, will introduce the theme of future of learning in digital society. Teemu’s field of research is New Media, especially related to applications, solutions and services of e-learning, collaborative learning, collaborative group work and creative work. https://people.aalto.fi/index.html?profilepage=isfor#!teemu_leinonen

Members of the Arki research group at Aalto’s Media Lab will introduce some key themes from their ‘digitisation of (everyday) life’ projects. The focus of Arki is in the co-evolution of digital media technology and the practices of everyday life, with a design perspective. http://medialab.aalto.fi/research/research-groups/arki-research-group/

Philip Dean is Professor of New Media Management and Head of the Department of Media at Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design & Architecture, and also Director of Aalto Media Factory. Philip will chair the event.
https://people.aalto.fi/index.html#philip_dean

About the Digi platform

Digitalization is having a tremendous effect in today’s and tomorrow’s industries, economics and society at large. Digitalization is a key strong area at Aalto University: ICT, media, computation and modelling have been identified as areas of strong expertise in Aalto’s RAE 2009 evaluation. There are about 80 professors at Aalto directly focused on ICT and media, and another 80 are in fields strongly related to digitalization. Topics include, but are not limited to: computer science, media, computational sciences, networks, communications, signal processing, automation, mechatronics, games, information and service economy, and so on. Joining forces across Aalto we can achieve a significant impact in several fields.
See more at http://www.aalto.fi/en/research/platforms/digi/

More information from: ella.bingham@aalto.fi, samuel.kaski@aalto.fi (Digi Platform), philip.dean@aalto.fi (Designing for future life), mauri.airila@aalto.fi (Aalto’s Platforms).
Welcome!

Mauri Airila
Professor, Assoc. VP

24.04.2014 / 12:00 – 15:00
Location: Aalto University, Otaniemi campus, Otakaari 1, E-hall.

MA Joanna Saad-Sulonen defended her dissertation Combining Participations: Expanding the Locus of Participatory E-planning by Combining Participatory Approaches in the Design of Digital Technology and in Urban Planning. Professor Susanne Bødker, Institute of Computer Science, Aarhus University, acted as the Opponent. Professor Lily Diaz will acted as the Custos.

Combining Participations is a trans-disciplinary work on participatory e-planning, which the author re-conceptualises as comprising different types of participation that take place in urban planning, as well as in the design of digital technology. The different types of participation can occur simultaneously in different combinations and affect one another.
 
At a time when the increasing rate of both urbanisation and digitisation around the globe is bringing urban planning and digital technology closer to one another, it is important to move beyond buzzwords such a ‘smart cities’ and ‘living labs’. This thesis provides novel tools, such as the matrix of multiple participations and the Expanded Participatory Design approach, which make it possible to explore a more genuinely democratic vision of cities and technologies and to devise ways of realising such vision.