Gulay Ozkan, founder of GEDS was invited on May 5th 2021, to give a seminar to students at Integrated Design Management Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MITidm) titled “Strategic Design: A Bold Opportunity for Designers“.
The talk was oriented towards widening the perspectives of designer and create awareness that they can create by using strategic design. Thus, they could shift their work from the product design level to the strategic design level. With this purpose, GEDS’ award-winning work Horizon2020 project MATUROLIFE design management case was presented.
MATUROLIFE project is presented as a great example to show the opportunities that may array for designers by obtaining knowledge about strategic design. The partners of the project developed three assistive technology prototypes that will make living for older people easier, more independent, comfortable and fashionable by putting creative and artistic design at the heart of the innovation journey.
MATUROLIFE project received findings of 6 million euro from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Moreover, this project brought together 20 partners:11 SMEs from 9 EU courtiers to work for 36 months. Without design management managing, such a diverse scale will be close to impossible.
In the talk, specifically user engagement practice of MATUROLIFE was highlighted. In addition, the strategic design was presented as an opportunity for designers to have a bigger impact by being a part of such grand projects.
We would like to thank to MITidm Director Tony Hu and Harvard University Art & Sciences Career Service Director Amanda C.Peters for their invitation.
