City of Helsinki to embed designers at high level

It is hoped that the project can act as an exemplar of how design can be used in city development.

The Design Driven City project will see three service design specialists employed to work along city staff to bring design processes to all areas of city development.

The two-year project follows on from Helsinki’s tenure as World Design Capital in 2012, and aims to promote the use of design in cities.

Helsinki is looking to appoint three design specialists to the two-year project. City officials are looking for candidates with three-to-five years experience and a background in service design and user-drive participatory design.

They will be tasked to deepen city-staff understanding of citizen needs and propose ways citizens can take more active roles in city development.

More details are available (in Finnish) here.

International Design Foundation Board member Marco Steinberg says, ‘World Design Capital 2012 inspired cities to review the possibilities offered by design, and the new project will help cities to apply the methods of formal design process.’

Helsinki economic director Marja-Leena Rinkineva says, ‘Helsinki believes in the power of design. Design Driven City manifests that design will continue to feature prominently on Helsinki’s agenda.’