November 16, 2015

PlatFORM wins Core 77 Award for Innovation in Design Education

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Living Labs is so excited to announce the 2015 platFORM program won a Core 77 Award for Design Education Initiatives.

Andreas Eiken, Maia Rowan, and Lisa Papania; Project Leads

A collaboration between the Faculty of Design and Dynamic Media, Living Labs at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University

platFORM is a collaborative product development class that brings together design and business students to work in trans-disciplinary teams from the beginning of a project. Together they develop products, services, and systems that address contemporary social, economic, and environmental issues. Student projects are addressing issues such as sustainable travel, social isolation, textile waste, cosmetics packaging, and food packaging.

Entrepreneurship has the opportunity to make massive changes in the way we can live sustainably in our economy. We need to be agile and efficient in addressing existing and impending problems in society. Design is starting to move more upstream in the process. The designer as entrepreneur is an emerging field. We want to equip designers with tools to create their own careers in a new sustainable economy. It’s no longer about putting lipstick on a pig, design is at the core of successful ventures. The role of business is also changing. It is longer an option to be sustainable, but a necessity. Business students tend to create obvious solutions that address symptoms rather than problems. Our goal is to add more depth to the process and use a wider lens to position their products in a greater context. Finding a method for these two industries to collaborate early on can be difficult. This is where educational institutes come in. We have the ability to experiment with new relationships with fewer barriers, in the spirit of research and experimentation.

platFORM is a collaboration between the Faculty of Design and Dynamic Media, Living Labs at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. It is also a partner course at CityStudio, supported by Leslie Ng from the City of Vancouver. Thank you to the Beedie School of Business Dean’s Circle for their generous financial support of this innovative program. platFORM is part of the Scotiabank Platform Program which prepares enterprising art and design grads, who are early stage entrepreneurs, to enter a competitive marketplace.

Project Website | Projects with an Impact video

2014 cohort instructors: Andreas Eiken and Maia Rowan (Emily Carr University, Masters of Design Candidates), Lisa Papania and Sarah Lubik (SFU Beedie School of Business).

Students teams from 2014 Cohort /Box Band: Mario Fong, Dol C Imnamkhao, Vivian Lin, Rachelle Roberto / Hole Seam + Hem: Jayde Chang, Miguelito Buenacruz, Victoria Lee / Jayde: Sydney Juzenas, Haoqian Liu, Lisa Liu, Vincent James / Pronto: Brandon Ling, Leah Pirani, Johannes Schut / Twisted Laundry: Cheryl Li, Lauren Watkins, Ryan Budd

Project Team
Project conceived and designed by: Andreas Eiken, Maia Rowan, and Lisa Papania.

2014 cohort instructors: Andreas Eiken and Maia Rowan (Emily Carr University, Masters of Design Candidates), Lisa Papania and Sarah Lubik (SFU Beedie School of Business).

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