Activities

The project involved two different types of training activities.

Firstly, short-term staff training activities were conducted to educate educators about the DC4DM model, enabling them to implement the model with their students. These activities included a co-design workshop and a bootcamp.
Secondly, intensive training programs for students called Learning Labs were organized for higher education learners.

Learning Labs are 10-day design-led workshops where students from design, engineering, and management collaborate to create new technological solutions for more sustainable and ethical futures. Multidisciplinary teams, mentored by international experts from diverse backgrounds, explored the potential of digital technologies proposed by selected tech-SMEs or startups.
Three Learning Labs were organized in the partner countries: Funchal, Portugal; Milan, Italy; and Saint-Etienne, France.

Co-design workshop

The aim of the co-design workshop was to train educators on the potentialities of the DC4DM model and, at the same time to validate the model by collecting feedback from their professional point of view. Also, the workshop represented a great moment to start sharing and collecting the educational resources – tools, courses, format – each participant adopts in his professional practice, which could be used to implement the model toolbox.

Participants: educators from the 5 partners institution

Date:

  • Part 1 – 3rd December 2020: the activities have been dedicated to introducing and training participants the Digital Creativity for Digital Maturity model (v1) and collectively sharing the educational resources.
  • Part 2 – 21st January 2021: the activities have been dedicated mainly to debating and discussing the DC4DM model and to collecting the multidisciplinary knowledge from the consortium to evolve it

Organized by: Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI)

Venue: Online activity

Programme: download the full programme

Check the Miro board to see the workshop flow and activity

Download the detailed report to read the workshop results

Bootcamp

The aim of the bootcamp was to train educators on all the core elements of the DC4DM model and the three areas in which the model have been conceived: pre-process, process and post-process areas. The 24 Digital Creative Abilities (DCA) have been presented through specific activities that leads to the creation of the DCA cards and the definitions of the 3 major pillars that drives the model and that are fundamental for achieving Digital Maturity: Tech-foresight, Sustainability and Ethics.

Participants: educators from the 5 partners institution and members of the Advisory board

Date:

  • Part 1 – 20th July 2021: the activities have been dedicated to understanding the DCAs including in the model and start clustering them to create drivers of Digital Maturity.
  • Part 2 14-16th September 2021: the activities have been dedicated to define the 6 drivers of Digital Maturiy and confirm the DCAs within each driver. Also, educational resources have been selected among the ones available within the consortium to start implementing the model of action.


Organized by: Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI)

Venue: Online activity (Part 1); Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano – Campus Bovisa – Milan (Part 2)

Programme: download the full programme

Check the Miro board to see the workshop flow, activity and results of Part 1.

Download the detailed report to read the overall bootcamp results.

Learning Lab Funchal - Portugal

“FEEDING MADEIRA. Regenerative and distributive food system for sustainable future”.

The first DC4DM Learning Lab happened in Funchal and focused on food, intended as the whole food chain system, from production, to distribution, consumption and regulation. To design new sustainable food systems, the participants were invited to embrace the theme from different perspectives by considering the role of producers, consumers, and policy makers. They had to identify a design opportunity that would consider the application of one of the proposed digital technologies to shift to more distributive and regenerative systems for the island of Madeira.

Within the main topic, 4 macro-themes have been identified as relevant for Madeira Island and its sustainability: Agrobiodiversity; Pollinators; Waste; Forest & Water.

Download the LLab introduction to read more about the proposed topic.

Date: 5th to 15th July 2022

Participants:

  • 5 local tech-driven startups: Friic, Phytoalgae, SafetyNet Technologies, Musiquence, Bio Reboot,
  • 40 bachelor and master students’ degrees from the 4 HEIs partners institutions (Politecnico di Milano, Universidade de Madeira, Ecoles the Mines, Telecom Saint’Etienne). The students involved have been organized in 6 teams with mixed background – product, interaction, communication and service design, design&engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering.
  • 10 educators, 2 from each partner’s institution.


Programme: download the full programme

Open call: download the open calls for students and for startups

Educational material adopted: Digital Maturity Toolkit V1

Students’ results:

Learning Lab Saint’Etienne - France

“MOBILITY. Towards a mobile future in a sustainable and intelligent environment”.
The second DC4DM Learning Lab will happen in Saint’-Etienne and focused on the creation of future vision and tech solutions that will enable people to improve the experience of mobility within cities as intelligent environment. To design new systems for mobility, the participants were invited to embrace the theme from different perspectives by considering also the sustainability challenge of our century.

Within the main topic, 3 macro-themes have been identified: Mobility and Biodiversity; Mobility and Culture; Mobility and Energy.

Download the presentations to read more about the proposed macro-themes.


Date: 25th October – 4th November 2022

Participants:

  • 4 local tech-driven startups: Le Coursiers Stéphanois, League for the protection of birds (LPO), Où Sortir, Raidlay
  • 40 bachelor and master students’ degrees from the 4 HEIs partners institutions (Politecnico di Milano, Universidade de Madeira, Ecoles the Mines, Telecom Saint’Etienne). The students involved have been organized in 5 teams with mixed background – product, interaction, communication and service design, design&engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering.
  • 10 educators, 2 from each partner’s institution.


Programme: download the full programme

Open call: download the open calls for students and for startups

Educational material adopted: Digital Maturity Toolkit V2 

Students’ results:

Learning Lab Milan - Italy

“FUTURING CARE. Rethinking well-being by envisioning digital solutions seamlessly integrated into daily life”

The third DC4DM Learning Lab happened in Milan and focused on the creation of future vision and tech solutions that will reshape the concept of care in 2023. In this LLab the concept of care have been considered from a convergent perspective as a combination of human and environmental health and their interaction and interconnectedness. Indeed, the planet’s health is crucial for individuals’ physical, mental and emotional health. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Virtual Reality, Wearable sensors and Internet of Things are emerging technologies with outstanding potentialities for care and well-being. Therefore, new digital care scenarios and solutions can be envisioned towards the creation of a more equitable and sustainable well-being ecosystem for future generations.

Within the main topic, 3 macro-themes have been identified: Food as medicine; Mental and emotional care; Everywhere’s care

Download the description of the proposed macro-themes.

Date: 30th January – 9th February 2023

Participants:

  • 5 mentors: ForwardTo (Future Thinking) Foodtech Acceleration Platform (Food as medicine); MIDA SpA and Unicef (Mental and emotional care); Medtronic (Everywhere’s care).
  • 6 tech-driven startups: Yape, H-Cube, Acus, Weart, Additive Italia, AnotheReality
  • 40 bachelor and master students’ degrees from the 4 HEIs partners institutions (Politecnico di Milano, Universidade de Madeira, Ecoles the Mines, Telecom Saint’Etienne). The students involved have been organized in 5 teams with mixed background – product, interaction, communication and service design, design&engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering.
  • 10 educators, 2 from each partner’s institution.


Programme: download the full programme

Open call: download the poster and the open calls for students, and for startups

Educational material adopted:  Digital Maturity Toolkit V3

Partipant where involved in a introductory activity a week before the beginning of the LLab. The purpose of this activity was to encourage them to delve into the macro-theme, initiate research on its main trends, and gain an understanding of what constitutes a trend.
Here the instructions of the activity:

Students’ results:

Andrea Botero Cabrera

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Andrea Botero is Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture of Aalto University and conspirator at the design studio Suo&Co. As of August 2022 she will be Professor of New Frontiers of Design at Aalto University. Her design works explores technologies, services and media formats for collectives and communities. Through her research work she aims to understand how collectives come to understand the design spaces available to them and how designers could support more various infrastructuring processes around them. Andrea has a Doctor of Arts (DA) in New Media from Alto University, a masters (MA) in product and strategic design from the School of Arts and Design Helsinki and a BA in industrial design from Universidad Nacional de Colombia.

Roberta Anelli

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Roberta is a Sociologist and Criminologist with a passion for social and technological trends. She has always dealt with new methodologies for the management and development of ideas, new approaches to understand the market and design the right target and personas, building the proper business strategy.
Experienced Business Innovation Advisor demonstrated history of working in the management consulting industry. Skilled in Innovation Management, Open Innovation, Innovation Lab, Business Model definition and Innovation scouting.
She has a strong experience in social trend analysis, working on the understanding and study of citizens’ and consumers’ opinions and behaviors, useful to companies for the analysis of new strategies, also using AI and NLP tools.

Vincenzo Tanania

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Vincenzo is a Director in PwC New Ventures with the role of Innovation Team Coordinator. He gained experience in public and private sector with national and international customers.
He focused his multidisciplinary activity on innovation management, technology transfer, digital strategy, new business model definition, program and project management, business process reengineering and organizational restructuring.
He coordinated Strategic and Management Consulting projects aimed at enhancing the innovation potential of the production system also supporting services for the creation of new innovative Companies, Startups, Spinoffs.
He currently coordinates Nudge for Innovation, the PwC Innovation Programme promoting a culture of innovation and enhancing company’s resources and skills through a guided methodology, supporting employees in the ideation, development and launch of innovative solutions.

Tommaso Nervegna

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With a background in interaction design, Tommaso has accumulated more than 14 years’ experience in product and service design, brand strategy, and customer experience.
His primary responsibility is supporting growth and learning by ensuring every team and project is equipped with the best design-led methods and knowledge.
To make this happen, Tommaso has spent the past 14 years working between Italy, UK, Middle East, Turkey, Greece and the Dominican Republic, working tirelessly to develop and deliver experiences to help teams and clients harness the power of customer-centricity to create new service and product experiences that people will love

Pawel Pokutycki

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Pawel Pokutycki (PL/NL) is an interaction designer, researcher and lecturer at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague and Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands. In 2005 he initiated early activities of the RFID Lab, later called the AR+RFID Lab, an experimental interdisciplinary platform for research in the application of Augmented Reality (AR) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies in the field of art and design. He is a core member of the Alternative Learning Tank (ALT), a nomadic school and artistic organization that focuses on research, creation and implementation of didactical programs on progressive and radical fields of knowledge which are often neglected by educational institutions. His recent projects focus on exploring relationships between new media theory, political, social and cultural studies by concept development and prototyping for interactive media. He believes in a methodology of design based on his own, peculiar interpretation of the Black Box Theory presented at a TEDx event in 2012. Currently he is conducting multidisciplinary research on “Humane Technology for the Global South: Ethics of Interaction Design in the (post)Colonial Context”, besides Europe frequently lecturing and giving masterclasses in such countries as Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, India and China.

Marco Taisch

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Marco Taisch has been Full Professor at the Politecnico di Milano since 1991, where he teaches Advanced Production Systems, Sustainable Manufacturing and Operations Management and where he coordinates the Manufacturing Group of the School of Management. Since 2002 he has been particularly dedicated to the study of technological trends carrying out some technological roadmaps and studies of technologies foresight on manufacturing as a consultant for the European Commission. He is a member of the Board of EFFRA (European Factories of the Future Research Association), of the board of the Italian Intelligent Factory Cluster and of the Lombard Intelligent Factory Cluster. He is co-founder and scientific chairman of the World Manufacturing Foundation, under whose aegis is annually organized the World Manufacturing Forum, the world event for the definition of the agenda on manufacturing. He is a founding member of Miraitek4.0, two spin-offs of the Politecnico di Milano on Industry 4.0 issues. He is president of MADE – Competence Center Industry 4.0, the largest of the eight competence centers of the National Industry 4.0 Plan. Consultant to several companies including Leonardo, Thales Alenia Space and Siemens.

Manuel Zacklad

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Manuel Zacklad is a professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) in Information and Communication Sciences (ICS), holder of the “Expressions and Cultures at Work” chair, vice-president of the CNAM’s scientific council (2013-2018), and director of the Dicen-IDF laboratory (Dispositifs d’Information et de Communication à l’Ère Numérique en Ile-de-France, EA 7339) His research focuses on three topics that revolve around the digital transition and its consequences based on several theoretical approaches.
First, the study of social and organizational changes induced by the generalization of digital technology is approached from the perspective of document theory (documentarization and documents for action). The second topic is the design of new information dissemination and sharing systems involving new knowledge organization systems (socio-semantic web). Finally, the search for new forms of socio-technical innovation is part of the perspective of conviviality economies and is based on the analysis of cooperation processes taking into account the so-called “immaterial and relational” activities (semiotics of cooperative transactions). More recently, he has participated in the reflection around an interdisciplinary theory of design. 

Matteo Losi

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In April 2020, Matteo Losi was nominated Head of Presales Architect and Innovation for SAP EMEA South. This region includes Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Israel, Turkey, Middle East and Africa. Losi is responsible for developing knowledge and driving customer and prospect choice towards SAP’s innovative digital transformation and cloud scenarios. Previously, Losi worked as Digital Transformation Chief Expret and Database & Data Management Sales Director in SAP Italy to enhance SAP’s Platform and Digital Core strategy to help Italian companies develop Digital Transformation paths based on SAP HANA and SAP S/4HANA. Matteo Losi joined SAP Italy in 2001 as Head of Presales & Business Development. In recent years he has held strategic roles in the presales area at EMEA level and in South Africa as Head of Presales Africa in Johannesburg. Before joining SAP, Losi gained significant experience at ST Microelectronics, Siemens, and as a consultant at Ernst & Young Consultants. Losi holds a degree in Electronic Engineering from Politecnico di Milano.