Welcome to

Design Bits

An online course about design for non-designers by Aalto University.

Start the course

Learn the basics about design, how designers solve problems, and design tools in this course.

About the course

Course structure

The course is divided into the following seven chapters:

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Welcome to Design Bits!

We are glad you decided to join us in the journey to learn more about design. As you will see in the course, Design is evolving from designing visuals and products to tackle more complex problems in our society.

I’m Emīlija Veselova, design researcher and Project Employee at the Department of Design, Aalto University, and the responsible teacher for this course. I will reach out to you during the course with updates and to talk about our tutoring sessions via e-mail. But before that, if you have any questions, please send a message to designbits@aalto.fi.

Each chapter starts with an introductory video from one Aalto professor concerning the topic at hand. In this introduction, we have Turkka Keinonen – Professor of Industrial design and Vice-Dean of Research in ARTS – who will give you an overall view about the course and explain some practicalities to complete the course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vxtcRR7Ex0&list=PLJJ2tnFVQ9wRPF-POkOP6RmH3XCjOn6Er&index=1

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Feedback from the students

‘Thank you for the course, I loved it, because of its structure. All theoretical material was short, consisted definitions, facts, videos and examples from real life. I got myself that it was really enjoyable to study compared to other courses I have now. Thank you.’

‘The most helpful thing that I learnt in this course probably is that the design is not only about visual content or tangible objects, but also as a way of thinking and as a mindset.’

‘Before attending this course I thought of design just as looks. Now instead I think of it as a lot more. Things that especially surprised me in this course were that how much more there is involved in design than I earlier thought.’

‘I thought maybe the activity in this course might need some passive works like answering mulple-choice questions. However, I was surprised that I had to complete quite creative work to demonstrate and extend my understandings. It was very interesting, and I am looking forward to complete other activities too.’

‘When on other courses I got questions like “What is PSS?” or “Who are stakeholders”, here I got all the answers and examples! It was fantastic and help me in my journey of understanding design!’

DesignBits

Design Bits

Course structure

Chapter 01 Design relevance

Chapter 02 Design basics

Chapter 03 Pillar Sustainability

Chapter 04 Pillar Collaboration

Chapter 05 Pillar Innovation

Chapter 06 Pillar Management

Chapter 07 Wrapping up

Feedback from the students