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Government meets design at Helsinki Design Lab Global 2010

Three-day main event of Helsinki Design Lab starts on 1.9. The event searches for answers on what does design offer to decision makers and how can design help in solving challenges of our societies?

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Three-day main event of Helsinki Design Lab starts on Wednesday 1st of September. The event searches for answers to what design can offer to decision makers and how can design help in solving challenges of our societies?

The mission of the event is “government meets design”. It provides a forum for a global community of government stakeholders and strategic designers to gain insight into strategic design and its methods of delivering results.

The event gathers 120 attendees from over 20 countries. Participants represent different fields, such as design, business, governance, universities and European Union.

What is Helsinki Design Lab?

Helsinki Design Lab is a mission-driven initiative powered by Sitra. It accelerates the integration of design and government by establishing strategic design as a core competency in aid of governmental decision making and service delivery.

The history of Helsinki Design Lab is interesting: During the summer of 1968, Sitra sponsored the Industrial, Environmental and Product Design Seminar, which was largely responsible for introducing integrated product design to Finland. This opened the door for a broader discussion between designers and industry and is part of Finland’s recognized legacy of design leadership.

Forty years later, in collaboration with the Tapio WirkkalaRut Bryk Foundation, HDL 2008 was held in commemoration of that event to discuss the potential of design in our contemporary era. Three main tools of Helsinki Design Lab In addition to HDL Global 2010 event, Helsinki Design Lab consists of the following tools:

HelsinkiDesignLab.org: Our website is built for sharing like-minded work happening around the world. Besides the HDL case studies, our blog is a source for the latest conversation about the discipline of strategic design, and the changing role of design in the world.

HDL Studios: Within Finland, Helsinki Design Lab is developing its own experiments that bring leading strategic designers together with content experts to create applied solutions for real problems currently faced by government. We call these gatherings “studios.” This summer we organised three studios dedicated to the high level themes of education, ageing, and sustainability.

HDL Global 2010 can be followed in our website and on Twitter

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