DD+D Returns to Helsinki Finland!

Byron was invited back to Helsinki by Tekes, the Finnish funding agency for innovation and technology for Finland. He presented "Does Employee Engagement = Customer Satisfaction?" for the Creating Creative Business Conference at the historic Alexander Theatre.
Here is a link to an article on the event
More to come on this soon!

Byron also co-lead a Service Design class with Vesa Kantola at Aalto University's Urban Mill while in Helsinki.
Here is our course description

CSE-E6250 Digital Service Design, Course with Varying Content

3 ECTS

October 14 – 18, Startup Sauna and Urban Mill

Max number of participants: 10

Intensive course on theatrical methods in user centric service design

Byron Stewart, Co-Founder and Artistic Director at Dramatic Diversity/DD+D (Chicago, USA) will be visiting Finland in October and will be hosting a course on emphatic service design using theatrical methods.

The course will be arranged in co-operation with the Urban Mill in Otaniemi. In the course students will learn how to various methods to strengthen their empathy for the users of the service they create and in this way design better services.

The course is open for students of service design at all Aalto Schools. You should be familiar with service design concepts and methods and hence the course mainly targets 2^nd year Master’s level students.

In the course the students will we working on new and innovative concepts for having lunch on the Aalto campus.

Course program:

Monday    14.10 16.15 – 18:00 Kick-off at Startup Sauna Backstage

Tuesday   15.10 09:00 to
Wednesday 16.10         18.00 Independent group work: Lunch in a different culture

Student teams should describe a lunch setting in an other culture (eg. USA mall, arab market, French café, or similar)

Wednesday 16.10 18:00 – 20:00 First presentation of group work and Byron’s intro to the rest of the course

Thrusday  17.10 09.00 - 20.00 Full day workshop with Byron Stewart “A Lunch Hour in Otaniemi Campus”

Design Empathy Introduction – Why is empathy important to designers? Covers biases/assumptions. Review the Empathy framework (Discovery Immersion, Connection, Detachment)

Various excercises.

Creating initial service design for lunch in Otaniemi

Friday    18.9 09.00 - 16.00 Full day workshop – creating the

Service design for lunch in Otaniemi, practical exercises

For more information on the course, contact Vesa Kantola.

To register for the course, send an email with a short explanation (no more than ½ A4) to Vesa Kantola


Here are a few pictures from our class and the process -