On the preveous week, I was at the Design Week Turkey in Istanbul. As I was invited by the organization and representative of Interior Affairs, I had to attend as many conferences as possible while keeping an eye on the workshops and the fair. the subject of this year was “The Potential of Design” and we really did see the potential. Design week also had a guest country: Finland.
It was a 5 days of design bombardment on product, packaging, web designs, user interfaces, user experiences, experiments, fashion and kitchen equipment designs to car and even shoe design.
Finland Link
This years guest country was Finland (Suomi) and great designers from both known and now well known to Turkey were here in Istanbul.
I found opportunity to speak and discuss about their product designs with Fiskars‘ vice president Mr. Petteri Masalin – who is a very kind sportsmen – and Jussi Björman Director of Technical Customer Service of Metsä Wood. All of the Finish representatives were kind about giving detailed information and their personal experiences.
My family has a background with Finland (both in private sector and government) but I learned much about the country in the past week. So I would like to tank both the Design week Turkey Organization and Finland.
Also, this year is the centenary of Finland’s independence. And learning about how Finland was so successfull with the design centered approach in every points of the daily life reminded me of the infamous historical novel of Grigoriy Petrov’s – “The Country of White Lilies” If you have not read it yet, add it to your next reading list.
Design Week Link
The location of the organization was Lütfi Kırdar International Convention & Exhibition Center in Harbiye, Istanbul. Organized by the Ministry of Economy and Turkish Exporters Assembly.
I attended a workshop on UI/UX hosted by Userspots on the 3rd day of the organization and it was mind opening. They divided the participants into 4 groups and gave us 4 different (imaginary) waffle shops. We were to create a persona, a wireframe of the kiosk our persona was going to use to give a quick order. I am going to give the deails of this workshop in another article 😉