A strategic design / service design project
In collaboration with Kirkenes Kommune, the AHO strategic design class (with Joakim Formo and Einar Sneve Martinussen as our professors) and my project partner, Daphne Chan.
Nominated for the AHO Works prize for Strategic Use of Design (classwide)
Nominated for the AHO Works prize for Complexity and Holistic Approach (Flexwork)
Nominated for the AHO Works prize for Complexity and Holistic Approach (Flexwork)
All over Norway, there is an epidemic of small towns facing the risk of becoming ghost towns. Kirkenes is one of these communities. How can we mobilise its unique resources, culture and geography as a coastal town to preserve a much loved community?
In this project we utilised strategic design principles to create a deliverable of possibilities for the community of Kirkenes.
In the research phase of our project, we took a one week trip to Kirkenes to learn through experiences, interviews, workshops and site visits.
This gave us a wide variety of insight on everything from social life in Kirkenes, political challenges (Kirkenes borders to Russia), financial challenges and potential, resources, nature, art and culture, family life and more.
We collected all our findings together in an interactive exhibition with Kirkenes locals. Anyone who dropped by could comment and write on our findings. By collecting all our findings together like this, it also allowed us to connect dots and create dialogue around different aspects of Kirkenes that might otherwise have been ignored. More valuable than the findings itself, was the dialogue that was created around it.
Final deliverable
Finally, our findings led us to several concepts that may help the community of Kirkenes see some potential paths forward. Daphne Chan and I's deliverable was Flexwork, a proposal that leverages remote work as an opportunity for social sustainability and mission-controlled innovation.
The culmination of insight and project proposals was presented further to create engagement, awareness and dialogue about the future of Norway's small towns.
