Societal Design
Lean, agile and design methods for approaching Societal Design projects
– provided by Aalto University, for free
Handbook for Societal Design
This online handbook is based on the Societal Design Project university course (CS-E5280), held each fall at Aalto University. It is a hands-on course that adds a societal impact aspect into creating services & products. During the course the student groups do strategic design work for real client organisations.
The material in this online handbook consists of short lecture videos, supported by lecture slides and design tools (Lean Service Creation canvases) from last year’s course. There is also a special page for students who are planning to take the course.
What?
Covid-19 forced us to teach this course online in Autumn 2020, and therefore we have the whole course in digital format. Now we are making the content of the course available for anyone via this handbook.
Why?
Lean, agile and design all have an open culture of sharing tools, practices etc. We want to give back and provide our perspectives, ways of teaching and tools open for anyone to enjoy, learn and use. And as a university, we know that knowledge should be free and accessible 
For Whom?
This handbook is aimed for students & professionals who want to refresh their know-how, learn about a specific topic, and perhaps to see how we teach strategic design at Aalto University.
Chapters in the material:
- Chapter 1: Societal Impact
- Chapter 2: Fundamentals of any innovation
- Chapter 3: The blind spot of user centric design
- Chapter 4: Insights
- Chapter 5: Value Proposition
- Chapter 6: Customer Journey
- Chapter 7: Business Model
- Chapter 8: Prototypes
- Chapter 9: Minimum Viable Product
- Chapter 10: Presentation basics
- Chapter 11: 2020 Client Cases
2020 Clients
Click on the logos below to see the final presentations, portfolios and slides prepared by the class of 2020
Sounds interesting?
“Societal Design Project (SDP) is our take on how to blend strategic design, societal impact and personal development into one.”
– Prof. Risto Sarvas
Faculty
Risto Sarvas
Professor of Practice, Information Networks
Risto Sarvas is the Director of Information Networks’s B.Sc. and M.Sc. programmes at Aalto University. He is a former Head of Design and co-founder of the culture advisory business at Futurice. He is also one of the founding members of Lean Service Creation methodology. Risto has trained and coached close to thousand professionals, students and entrepreneurs. Risto has been directly involved in a dozen cultural transformation programmes in Finnish corporations and written few books about design, change and organisations..
Frequently Asked Questions
Unfortunately not, this material is just an online handbook made based on university course. If you want to get credits, you are more than welcome to join the course live each fall. Read more from here.
The handbook consists of around 10 hours of lecture videos, supported by additional readings and exercises from fall 2020 course. All of the material is split into chapters of 30-45 minute videos, slides and canvases, so that you can quickly check the topics that seem interesting to you – or go through all the chapters, as you wish!
Informaatioverkostot.fi of course 😉
