Design and Technology Futures Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA)

Overview

Key facts:

• The aim of the Design and Technology Futures curriculum at the Estonian Academy of Arts is to combine different disciplines and prepare students for design-led innovation, possible only through interdisciplinary cooperation. Our focus is on how to deal with complex problems and develop value-creating concepts. Our project are typically more complex and rooted deeper in user fundamental needs than most regular product development courses. Our Design Studio projects put the knowledge gained from other subjects into practice tying together the whole curriculum. Students learn to work in interdisciplinary teams, find and describe problems in difficult real life scenarios and find out how to create value and sell the ideas to different stakeholders of these complex systems.
• The curriculum draws from three fields: design, engineering and entrepreneurship. During their first year of study, students learn how to work as members of multidisciplinary creative teams, how to mix and match their skills with people who have a very different understanding of the task at hand, how to bind together the findings, pin-point the opportunities, create clear concepts and communicate these to industry partners. By the second year, students practice leading small creative teams, learn how to run user-centered research, develop innovative concepts and communicate results in a tight timeframe with limited resources. Students learn how to use and mix methods from different fields of study and how to make coherent projects in a team with widely scattered skillsets.