Copyright © Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash
In the dynamic realm of academia and innovation, the SPOT Student Program encourages students to explore the positive societal impact they can have in society through human-centred design and processes. Mainly focused on engineering students, the program aims to build better awareness of how students’ field of study connects to different economic, environmental, and societal issues.
Developed through the collaborative efforts of Aalto University and the Tecnische Universitet Delft (TUDelft), this program is run by an interdisciplinary teaching team including engineering, design, and behavioural scientists, who support students in understanding the innovative solutions that have a societal impact based on technological inventions.
With the aim of infusing new perspectives into ATTRACT R&D&I projects, the SPOT program trains 120 students annually, helping them raise awareness of the impact of engineering in academia and industry and bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world application.
The early 2024 SPOT edition
One of the courses that form part of the current edition of the SPOT program is made up of 72 students, where one of the assignments in the course was to explore modelling novel concepts that bring together augmented reality and head-worn 3D-visualisations, inspired by H3D-VISIOnAiR.
Students reflected on various tasks and fields that require detailed focus and precision. Their concepts were very diverse, ranging from the communication of emergency repair protocols of complex machinery to fine dining food preparation training. A major focus during the course was being able to prototype as a tool for learning and gaining meaningful feedback from a broad range of stakeholders.
During the course, students had the opportunity to learn from a broad range of teaching staff, work in a hands-on manner with support from prototyping experts, and interact with company representatives sharing the prototyping process, philosophy and cases from different industries.
“Prototyping with various stakeholders and showing the students how that is done in the industry increases the awareness of the societal impact they can have”, explained Senni Kirjavainen, researcher at Aalto Design Factory and part of the SPOT teaching team.
Sushant Passi, a course teacher and prototype fabricator at the Aalto Design Factory, shared this point of view on the importance of making, as part of the learning process: “The process of making allows a novel idea to be viewed from a variety of perspectives, and a real chance to become something meaningful”.
More information about the program is available here.
