Yesterday morning was exhausting and exhilarating. We had a group of students from Delft University of Technology from Netherlands visiting our office on an excursion. There were 28 students of Strategic Product Design, Integrated Product Design and Design for Interaction under our roof.

We started the day by introducing our visitors to our company and business with a few examples of customer works. Then me, Florian Plank (graphic designer, client-​​side developer) and Ding Hong (concept designer) presented ourselves and talked about what we have been doing lately with a few words about our personal histories. The students also had a small presentation about themselves and their studies. They presented a couple of concepts and products they had created. I have to say WOW. For instance, I was really impressed about the concept in which they used just pillars with lights as toys in the playground – children are allowed to make up their own rules for the game. Lights are turning on randomly and touching the pillar turns them off. How simple, but certainly still very much fun. I would provide a link but unfortunately the work is not online.

The day continued by doing small design tasks we had prepared at Fusion. The exercise was simultaneously a competition to create additional interest. Students were divided into six groups and each group got a basic task of designing a new souvenir for Helsinki, when it is time for Helsinki to be World Design Capital in 2012. For additional guidance and design driving, the design teams picked random targets, an objective and criteria for the souvenir. In the end, randomly generated topics were:

• A souvenir lasting only one hour and being wearable for everybody in your country.
• A non-​​materialistic souvenir, incorporating passion for Queen Beatrix.
• A personalizible souvenir for a neighbour, incorporating snow.
• A souvenir priced under 5 euros and lasting 100 years for a first year student in Delft University of Technology.
• A souvenir for parents, delivered free-​​of-​​charge, attracting Nokia as a sponsor.
• A souvenir for a grandpa keeping information alive in visithelsinki​.fi and being totally recyclable.

In fact, the design tasks compose a kind of design game about which I wrote in one of my previous posts Design Games.

Our morning workshop as a whole was a success: our visitors enjoyed their tasks and praised it afterwards as enthusiastic, interesting and fun. To be honest, we also wanted the task to be quite light and fun but still interesting and useful. Who knows if some of the souvenir concepts will actually end-​​up to be a part of World Design Capital Helsinki 2012.

The results were awesome since groups created very nice souvenir concepts in only 45 minutes. It was a really nice experience for us as a company and we will definitively do this kind of things also in the future. Delft U people were so nice and full of energy and ideas that I felt the awesome for the whole day. The visit was a really nice zest for the cold winter. Thank you once again for visiting us!