Malmö University DESIS Lab

Malmö University DESIS Lab, Malmö, Sweden

Malmö University, School of Art and Communication & MEDEA
Östra Varvsgatan 11
http://medea.mah.se

Coordinator and Operations Manager: Anna Seravalli
MEDEA Malmö University
Östra Varvsgatan 11
205 06 Malmö
+46 72 744 55 24
anna.seravalli@mah.se

Malmö University with the research institution MEDEA and the department
School of Art and Communication have many years of experiences of working with participatory design, where academic researchers and students work together with other actors outside the university: companies, organizations, institutions and individuals. The last five years they have been setting up enabling platforms in the form of Malmö Living Labs.:
Living Lab Fabriken is an open lab space located at STPLN in Västra Hamnen, Malmö. Where users (citizens, researchers, companies, public institutions, NGO’s etc.) that enter the lab get access to tools, new technologies, knowledge and skills in order to experiment with, and prototype ideas, products and services.
Living Lab the Neighbourhood aims at creating a co-production and innovation environment for collaborative services and social innovation anchored in a geographic environment in Malmö that today seldom is associated with social and economic growth. Living lab the Stage focuses on new ways to produce, promote, distribute and finance cultural productions as well as on ways to engage audiences in participating in professional creative processes.

Objectives and Activities (past and present):

Through collaborative and multidisciplinary work groups the labs sets up small-scale experiments to explore how new media practices and collaborative services can enhance everyday life experiences and yield sustainable development. To support project activities continuous match-making processes are facilitated where student courses are connected to research work. At the School of Art and Communication there are a-level courses in “Design for sustainable development”, “Designing Communication processes for social change” as well as planned courses in “Social innovation” on the Interaction Design Master Program. Cases consist of everything from how to support social integration and urban exploring to new forms of democratizing urban development and sustainable transportation.

Primary Research Areas:

Participatory Design, Design for social innovation and working in the intersection between societal and social innovation, as well as technological innovation.

Future programme:

A new course on Design and social innovation will be integrated into the new Interaction design master program at Malmö University. A new program; Collaborative Urban Design, is under development, which will include large strands on social innovation within an urban context.

Main partners:

Among the labs main partners you will find municipality departments, NGO:s, Business partners and research institutions

List of projects and research:

-Living Lab The Neighbourhood

-STPLN

-Urblove
 

-Social Innovation Incubator, co-designing an incubator for the city of Malmö

Project example

Location