Insights

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Anna Kuukka

Translating insight and creating tools for understanding

Anna has a multidisciplinary design background and she is accustomed to switching perspectives between research, trend forecasting, concept design, design management, product development and brand building. At Design Factory she is in charge brand communication and art direction of artifacts, services, spaces and other experimental touchpoints. Anna is passionate about creating design solutions that bridge abstract and concrete ideas, enable stakeholders to share understanding, and, above all, improve the life of their end-users.

Anna has a MA in design from Aalto University (2013) including International Design Business Management as her Minor.

 

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Tua BjörklundAnna Kuukka
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Teo Keipi

Social aspects of innovating design thinking

Teo is a social scientist with a background in social psychology, economic sociology and behavioural economics. His past research has involved group decision making, attitudes and behavioural patterns linked to identity including issues of trust, wellbeing, risk assessment, accountability and social tie effects among others. His research at the Design Factory focuses on mapping contextual factors that influence motivational, performance and cooperative aspects of organisational decision-making that can be enhanced by the design thinking approach.

In terms of Design Factory projects, Teo contributes primarily to Design+, DesignBites and DRIVE, studying how the design thinking approach and nuanced group dynamics can be leveraged for innovating business strategy.

In the private sector, Teo has been involved with building cooperative strategies between corporations and start-ups in addition to studying corporate experiences of innovating and integrating start-up expertise within complex and well-established companies.

Teo has a PhD in Economic Sociology from the University of Turku (2016).

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Tua BjörklundTeo Keipi
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Floris van der Marel

Floris is design researcher skilled in creative facilitation and design coaching combining Participatory Design and research practices to contribute to political activism by amplifying unheard voices and challenging power imbalances and normative hierarchies.

Based on data collected in the Design+ project Floris is contributing to our understanding of designers’ experiences in large tech organizations as they attempt to challenge the status quo in engineering-heavy organizational cultures and in DesignBites he’s diving into the creative responses of entrepreneurs and their communities tackling the pandemic. He’s also continuing working with participatory design in hospital settings based on a 2019-20 visit in Design Factory Melbourne.

Floris draws from a MSc degree in design research from Delft University of Technology and Middle East Technical University, as well as a BSc degree in industrial design engineering. Prior to joining Aalto Design Factory, he worked at the Frisian Design Factory in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.

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JoelFloris van der Marel
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Tua Björklund

Connecting theory and practice

Tua is the co-director of the Design Factory, an assistant professor in leading for creativity in the School of Engineering and the deputy director of Materials to Product (M2P). Her work revolves around understanding, teaching and developing co-creation efforts, turning ideas into improvements in organizations and education.

Tua heads research at the Design Factory, looking into sustainable design practices, innovation in organisations, co-creation and the impact of the Design Factory. In addition, she manages the research projects CREATNet, Design Plus, Design+Sustainability, and ATTRACT, investigating how design thinking can change the way companies organise for innovation and how collaborative experimentation can give rise to new opportunities. She is also a deputy editor at the Journal of Engineering Education.

On the teaching front, Tua is a part of Design Factory efforts to promote developing university teaching. She teaches responsible innovation and human-centered design in Mechanical Engineering in Society, Prototyping for Innovation, and Design thinking and creativity for innovation, as well as design innovation in executive and professional education.

Tua has a DSc degree in work psychology from the Aalto University School of Science, and an MA degree in cognitive science from the University of Helsinki.

Publications on the Design Factory

Recent journal publications

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