Design meets human resources

In March Design Inside organized a lecture and workshop Design meets HR department on design and business collaboration. Due to corona restrictions it was held online with altogether 180 first-year bachelor students from the School of Business attending. 

‘We wanted to provide business students an overall view on the value of design for business’, says design teacher Paulo Dziobczenski.

Students got introduction into several topics, such as design for business, user-centered design, design-thinking methods, recruitment and candidate journey. Tua Björklund from Design Factory introduced the topic and Dziobczenski brought in a designer’s perspective on how designers approach problems through user-centered design.

For the assignment, the students were given a task to analyze recruitment ads from the applicant’s perspective. They investigated how certain companies communicate with their candidates and practiced how user-centered design can improve the recruitment process. They learned how designers solve problems by constantly validating their assumptions with target users.

‘In the end, students were assigned to advise companies on how their communication and relationship with prospective employees could change to be more honest and efficient, and hence attract top talents to work with them’, explains Andrea Bandoni, designer in residence who organized the collaboration between design and business professors.

‘I was happy to see the interest demonstrated by the students through their questions. It shows how a collaboration between business and design professionals should be reinforced in educational activities at Aalto and elsewhere’, says Paulo Dziobczenski.

The idea is that this will be an annual design collaboration in the course Johtamisen perusteet, a mandatory course for all first year business bachelors, led by professors Olli-Pekka Kauppila, Samuli Patala and Frank Martela at the School of Business’s Department of Management Studies.

‘It is great that Aalto provides the opportunity for students to be exposed to design so early in their careers. This knowledge can make a huge difference for them in the future, as business and design collaborate more and more in all kinds of projects’, affirms Andrea Bandoni.

More information:

Designer in residence Andrea Bandoni, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, [email protected],