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Redesigning Aalto Events
Designing a centralized event platform and product
To promote events in Aalto we wanted to focus on the overall communication of events and giving extra attention to new and exchange students. This is because they are the perfect group that have not yet adopted any inef cient ways of working, as older staff and students have. They see the problems, feel the pain and understand the frustrations of not being included or knowing about upcoming events.
Problem statment: New students and exchange students have problems finding information on upcoming academic and student events in the aalto community.
To find out where the problem areas currently are in event informing we conducted a workshop on campus. We brought together tutor coordinators who are experts in both welcoming new students each year and new/exchange students who have experiences fresh in their minds of being new to Aalto.
From these we started playing around with solution ideas and came up with ED (event device) that is a friend at the beginning of studies that carries on through out one’s study life. ED is a close event detector that connected to your phone accesses location data and glows green when an event is near. It has an inbuilt hand squeeze generator, squeezed button (to pair) with bluetooth, silicone and fabric body along with a keychain for hanging.
ED is both a friend and an event alerter. It solves the problem of both not feeling included and lonely during the rst weeks at Aalto, as well as, informing about current events. According to our user research and workshops the most popular solution was a new digital platform that unites all the current event data. It also is an open platform for all Aalto students and faculty to know about events and to create them.
The device searches for events near you based on location data and gives you up-to date noti cations on the ones you are interested in. It is like pokemon-go for Aalto events!
ED expresses information only on it’s colour (MOOD). It gives indications on what’s near, if it’s battery is low, if it’s paring to your device or if it needs more squeezing juice for the battery.
In the group:
Parvati Pillai
School of Art, Visual Communication Design (ARTS), parvati.pillai@aalto.fi, https://www.behance.net/parvati