Browsing by Author "Akkola, Matilda"

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Constructing the future of design : How design professionals perceive their changing role
(2018) Björklund, Tua A.; Akkola, Matilda; Maula, Hanna
A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
Design and design thinking have boomed in the past decade, expanding design considerations into new areas of application and a wide range of organizations across industry types. What implications does the changing role of design have for design practitioners? How do they see their role going forward? To add the voice of designers themselves to research, this study builds on 66 interviews that were conducted in 2017 at six offices of a design agency in North America and Europe. The interviewees reported believing in the continued growth of design, with increasing importance and influence of both technology and the human element in design, designers acting as boundary spanners. Five pairs of opposite myths of the future were identified, representing trends in different directions in their emphasis on key influences, scope, organizing, skills and prestige of design. As our perceptions and the sense we make of the world around us influence our choices and actions, the beliefs we hold of the future can be self-reinforcing. The results emphasize the expansion of skills in creating and harnessing interconnections between technology, people and design that designers believe will be required in the future for the field to flourish.
Mentorointi yritysympäristössä
(2015-12-11) Akkola, Matilda
Perustieteiden korkeakoulu | Bachelor's thesis
Selling design and design thinking issues in big corporations
(2018-08-21) Akkola, Matilda
Perustieteiden korkeakoulu | Master's thesis
Design and design thinking have gained a greater foothold in companies during the last decade, yet designers have to push to build awareness of their profession within organisations. Despite the efforts, many companies still struggle to embed design tools and the design thinking mindset into their culture and transform into more user-centric organisations. Sometimes change can start from the lower levels in the organisation and spread bottom-up with the help of issue sellers, who proactively start to sell issues they find important. This thesis studies what kinds of issues middle-level design managers sell in a big, traditional, technology company and what kind of issue selling tactics they use in their selling attempts. The thesis consists of a literature review and an empirical study conducted in one case company. The literature review reveals that issue selling tactics is an understudied topic, and that more research could help to conduct transformations organisations. A framework was also constructed based on the existing literature, which is used in the empirical part of this thesis to examine the used tactics in the case company. The results show that the design managers try to sell multiple issues simultaneously and that they use multiple different tactics in their issue selling processes. The results also suggests that when selling cultural issues, the selling is not only targeted upwards from the issue seller’s position, but rather towards people all around the company, transforming one part of the organisation at a time. Targeting the issue selling attempt is brought up frequently in the interviews and thus a new tactic is formed in addition to the previously recognized ones. In addition to illuminating the types of issues and tactics designers utilized, this thesis provides clarification to existing literature by exploring the relationships of different issue selling tactics. Many tactics overlap each other and thus comparable research may have been difficult to conduct. By understanding the different roles that different tactics play in advancing issues, companies can enhance issue selling in the organisation, which in turn may help the companies stay dynamic.