Students came up with great and novel ideas to develop customer experience in Särkänniemi: for example, treasure hunt for adults to increase local international participation, VR role-playing experiences to increase the use of unoccupied spaces, winter activities to attract more visitors in off-peak times, adventure areas to promote inclusivity and smart and personalized AI-based services to help visitors to relive the experience. Several leading figures of Särkänniemi attended the final presentations of the teams and gave invaluable comments for the teams. We are impatiently waiting if some of the ideas will see the daylight in Särkänniemi over the next few years!
Summer school entitled ”Design thinking meets AI and goes to Särkänniemi” is a good example of how opening doors to international collaboration between universities can offer students new and unique learning experiences. In addition to this, this collaboration serves the development of a data-enabled design method by testing its suitability in different environments and with different audiences. The findings will be published later in academic articles.
The course was given in collaboration with the TU/e team, led by Prof. Mathias Funk, including Peter Lovei, Renee Noortman, and Sujithra Raviselvam, and the TAU team, led by Profs. Thomas Olsson and Kaisa Väänänen, and Maria Hartikainen and Saara Ala-Luopa as teaching assistants.
We thank the students for their commitment, the Särkänniemi staff for their exceptional hospitality, and the Computing Sciences unit at TAU for making this summer school possible!
You can read more about data-enabled design here: https://chi23.data-enabled.com/
