Helsinki Design Lab - powered by Sitra
 

HDL is now closed. For more info, click here.

HDL Living Archive

Helsinki Design Lab's roots stretch back to 1968. In 2008 Sitra resurrected the initiative and operated it for five years. We are now closing this chapter of the project's life, and in doing so creating a living archive. Our intention is to open up the work of HDL as a useful platform for others who carry forward the mission of institutional redesign.

The full website will remain in place until at least the beginning of 2015. You are free to copy, remix, and extend the content here using a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. Below we've curated a shortlist of useful posts from this site's history.

  • Basics
  • What does "lab" mean to HDL?
  • Defining our mission
  • How did HDL choose projects?
  • Marco explains strategic design
  • The 'bus schedule' story
  • Booting-up
  • Recruiting rules of thumb
  • Qualities to recruit for
  • Creating this website
  • Establishing a visual language
  • Operations
  • Projects as probes
  • The pivot
  • Going beyond 'open'
  • Cultures of decision-making
  • On Post-it Notes and Powerpoint
  • Examples of our work
  • A typical week at HDL
  • Sketching in the middle of a project
  • Small events
  • And of course the projects...
  • ... and publications
  • Other resources
  • UNICEF's guide to Innovation Labs
  • Labs: Designing the future
  • Dark Matter and Trojan Horses
  • HDL
  • Projects
  • Publications
  • About
  • Team
HDL Global More speaker briefings

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Posted by Bryan Boyer
September 1st, 2010
liveblog 
Case Study CASE STUDY Redesigning surgical instruments with careful ethnography and strategic design

What is HDL?

Helsinki Design Lab uses strategic design to uncover the "architecture" of large-scale challenges and develop more holistic, complete solutions for improvement. We strive to advance knowledge, capability, and achievement in this discipline, regardless of geography or nationality. HDL most recently operated 2009-2013 and is now closed.

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Categories

  • Announcements
  • Competencies
  • Elsewhere at Sitra
  • Field Reports
  • HDL Global
  • HDL Studios
  • Weeknotes

Authors

  • Bryan Boyer (195)
  • Dan Hill (21)
  • Justin W. Cook (1)
  • Kalle Freese (2)
  • Maija Oksanen (1)
  • Marco Steinberg (14)
  • Seungho Lee (2)

Memory lane (5 random posts)

  • Week 110
    This week was as pleasant as 110 is round. Progress on many fronts and no emergencies, though we do have a glimpse of a storm that might be rumbling...
  • Week 170
    Summer was here, but then it left. We're back to gray and rainy skies. This has given me license to indulge, temporarily, some of the more arcane...
  • Week 077
    Done. Is there more to be said? We're done with the big event, this team's first stab at hosting a gathering of 100+ people from all over the...
  • On the ground in Jyväskylä
    Yesterday was a whirlwind tour of Jyväskylä, which we visited to see a cross section of how one city thinks about its...
  • Guest Blog: The Bus Schedule, Not The Building
    Editor's note: We offered this blog as a platform to four HDL Global participants who are documenting the event for everyone to get a glimpse of how...
  • Elsewhere
    Facebook
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    Vimeo (videos)
    Flickr (photos)
  • Contact
    Sitra
    Itämerentori 2
    00181 Helsinki
    Finland
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    license. Remix, re-use,
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