Tulossavotta finished Arctic Circles

Eleven days have passed and Arctic Circles Art & Design Summer School has come to an end. Field Case results were shared in Tulossavotta arranged in Pilke. 

The international and multidisciplinary Sustainability team was proud to present their concept of a cultural park called Varddos. Team's task was to provide a creative input and inspiration for the planners for use and design of the former ice hockey field and Kiianpuisto area in Inari center. The result is a place and a space where people like to meet, chat, be and observe: Varddos. Varddos is the heart of Inari where paths start and end, a place where villagers can gather and strangers meet. It is a place for activities and festivities that keeps old traditions alive and invents new ones. It is built from sustainable and natural materials of wood, stone, land and it is changing and organic in structure. Varddos is tradition going into the future. 

The aim of the Art team was to plan a welcoming party for the artists arriving to the Art Biennale of Ii 2012 and for the local people living in Ii. As a final result of the workshop RiverSounds, the team created an Art Trail that started from the Art Center KulttuuriKauppila and led the people to the new environmental art park of Ii. The performative walk was based on a story written by a local participant. The trail told a story of the spirit of log floating and the artworks that the different groups had made were part of it, as the story continued with the trail. The event and the works achieved their final forms naturally through making. Small groups started planning their works to different places. In the end all the pieces found their place in the puzzle of RiverSounds workshop and the story made it whole.   

There were two teams working in Rovaniemi in the field of service design. The one working with Pilke case suggests that forest would spill out outside the Pilke building. The co-creative processes with customers proved that forest is a state of mind, in a way almost a holy place for many finnish people. In team's results a forest feeling reachs a potential customer even before he steps in. This happens through the touch of forest - e.g. images and sounds. Wouldn't it be nice to traverse on the way a underpass covered with beautiful forest graffities, hear birds singing in the staircase or get guidance by signposts familiar from hiking tracks?

Rinteenkulma Shopping Mall service team presented their ideas about how to make the mall more customer friendly. The team has very nice suggestions for elements upgrading navigating from one shop to another. These elements deal e.g. with infoboards that categorize the shops and marking the parking areas and other mall facilities. The team was inspired by metromaps - good idea to point out the "stops" wouldn't you say? 

WDC2012 Helsinki-Rovaniemi thanks all the participants and partners in cooperation for giving their contribution to the first Arctic Circles Art & Design Summer School!

Users as co-creators in Service Design workshops

Today Service Design groups have been working in the Sinco service prototyping laboratory. They've been developing ideas based on the user information got from the co-creation processes.

In addition to get user information, the idea in the co-creative workshops was to learn to use different service design methods.  The group working with Rinne Shopping Mall had a development interview with customers who were assigned to imagine their dream mall. Another task was to play a game with question cards. Those working with the Pilke case used a "tree method" - a tool for mapping and collecting participators' opinions and feelings. What kind of experiences and expectations users have? They figured this out by building a board game to present Pilke as an user experience from entrance to exit. 

Now the ideas are concretized and will be presented in an approximately one minute long video. The group working with Rinne decided to shoot the whole video in Sinco Service Innovation Corner. The video presenting new service ideas for Pilke is combining material shot in Sinco with some animated pictures. This way the Arctic Circles participants got to use Sinco as a service design method. As you see from the video attached below, Sinco is a tool to create service situation scenes.

Come to see the results of the Arctic Circles' Field Cases in Tulossavotta. Tulossavotta is arranged in Pilke library tomorrow 7.6. at 13-16. Welcome!

Service Design Field Case participants as flies on the wall

The mission of the Service Design groups was to go to their targets and do some shadowing - be flies on the wall. The ones working with the Rinteenkulma Shopping Mall -case observed customers in the mall and drew their paths on the floor plan. This is a method to get information about customers' moves and bring out objects in need of improvement. Shadowing is also a way to find out what are the eye-catching objects in the environment - these spots are documented for further use in workshops. 

Another half of the group went to Pilke to explore the building both outside and inside. What feelings the building invokes? How about when you step in? What do you see, hear, feel, smell? Does the street-view match up to the services that Pilke offers? 

The Service Design groups continue the work with their cases by bringing "real customers" in the design processes. There will be different target groups in tomorrow's workshops. We'll see few methods used in co-creation! It has something to do with trees (how felicitous for working on Pilke!) and games...

Arctic Circles rises to the design challenges in Rovaniemi, Inari & Ii

The Field Case week of the Arctic Circles sprang into action with the Design on Wheels at the end of the first Arctic Circles week! Design on Wheels went ahead as excursions to the culture targets on the way to Inari and Ii where the Field Cases were waiting for the designers! Students taking part in the Arctic Services Rovaniemi -Field Case had also an opportunity to hop in one or the other of the buses and get back to Rovaniemi in the evening. 

The bus to Inari broke its journey at Särestöniemi Museum and Sami Museum Siida. Riversounds' Inari participants visited in Kemi Culture Center's Art Museum. 

Weather favoured people in Inari and they got rid of their "winter furs" by plopping in the freezing cold lake.

Arctic Services Rovaniemi has Science Centre Pilke and Shopping mall Rinteenkulma as partners in co-operation. The group divides into two groups seeking for solutions for challenges described by Pilke and Rinteenkulma. The cases relate with customer experiences and service devising. Arctic Sustainability Inari -group gets to make a design outline for a Culture Park. According to the guideline of group's orientation - sustainability is the main focus for planning. Sustainability is taken into consideration from cultural and environmental points of view. Riversounds Ii is about producing an art work consonant with the headline "Riversounds". Ii hosts the annual Art Biennale of Northern Environment and Sculpture Art, in 6.6.2012. The Art Field Case participants will plan and create artistic and/or interactive environmental performance that will lead the quests to the new environmental art park in Ii. 

Interesting week in the offing! Stay tuned to Arctic Circles!

The results of the three Field Cases are presented at Tulossavotta on Thursday the 7th June at 13-16 in Pilke. Welcome!