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 address issues such as sustainable travel, social isolation, textile waste, cosmetics packaging, and food packaging.
Andreas Eiken, Maia Rowan, and Lisa Papania; Project Leads
A collaboration between Living Labs, the Emily Carr Faculty of Design and Dynamic Media, and the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University
Project Website | Projects with an Impact video
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.
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:
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
This project 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, with support from the Scotiabank Platform Program from Emerging Entrepreneurs, which prepares enterprising art and design grads, who are early stage entrepreneurs, to enter a competitive marketplace.
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.
