693. Re-inventing the public library through codesign (Finland). A talk with Virve Hyysalo

[Motor] Finland built a very special library to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its independence. But calling it a library is almost feels a little bit too small. It's really a hub, a meeting place. A place to practice democracy and equality. Its name is Audi. Audi is a beautiful building, just in the center of Helsinki. And it's always alive with activity. You can grab a coffee, read a book, sue something, book a rehearsal room for your band or even record a podcast. It's one of those places the tourist absolutely should visit because there is nothing quite like it. But it's just as important for us the people who lived here because something is always happening. Today I'm talking with the services designer who worked on created this remarkable library. This interview is part of my collaboration with the government design Finland Network and we are recording our conversation online. After my chat with the designers others from the network challenge with their questions. Birbe Hüselo is a senior designer who works now in Pentagon design. In this interview we talk about the co-design work that went into created all the library in Helsinki. She walks us through the methods they use and how these approaches made it possible to include different marginalized groups in the design process. We move from the big picture to the tiny details, really diving into how this project was shaped with create attention and love. My name is Mariana Salgado, this is the senior ideas forum. My name is Birbe Hüselo and I'm specialised in public design and city design. Nowadays I work at strategic design agency called Pentagon design. As a designer I'm very passionate about the social nature of change with the aim of creating more equal democratic, sustainable, resilient societies and cities. Previously I worked as a part of the based specialist in city of Helsinki almost ten years. Back then I was also in charge of the co-design process in all the library. I'm a doctor of arts in service design and my doctoral thesis focused on the co-design process of Helsinki's all the central library. We thought we were going to talk about that because we wanted to know, well, because this is a network of designers working for the public sector. We thought that we are very interested to know what you have done in the city. We were exploring how collaborative design practices can empower citizens as active contributors in public service development and it was really interesting. I guess in professional life my motto is to put people first and give people choices or at least trying my best to promote these themes in everyday work. So when you started with the process, the same process of the library already, what kind of library did you dream of or what did you envision? There was actually no blueprint for the type of library we envisioned. We knew that what we wanted to build wasn't something that already existed or they could copy from elsewhere. We knew that we needed help and we also knew that citizens would love to help us with the means of co-design because they love library so much. We were very aware of the library projects underway around the world and the ones that had just recently opened their doors like the Dock one in Orhose and the People's Palace in Birmingham and Amsterdam, and we also discovered an oba library, the New Dachman's Gallery in Oslo, the Sjendaimediatek and all these new libraries, they were like really big icons for the city and very well known kind of like landmark buildings and they served also as catalysts for a positive change and as important community hubs. With a lot of like dynamic spaces for learning, collaboration and community engagement, I tend to interrupt a lot. But for me, I wanted to know in which way you wanted it all to be different. Well, the new library is versed in a kind of like keystone institutions in addressing a number of like pressing urban issues like social cohesion, democracy, segregation, well-being, citizen skills, digital skills. And we wanted the new or the library to have a kind of very strong profile in the society and in the city. And back then when we started, we envisioned kind of like five different roles after vision for the audit. We wanted all of it to be kind of a good neighbor and open and safe place where people can come together and kind of like learn to trust the strangers and a community hub for a positive change for sure and an active citizenship. And also we wanted to promote the reading reading. So we wanted audit to be the reader's best friend in the city, increasing the enthusiasm for reading and learning. Then the fourth one was kind of how audit could become versatile laser service and kind of like enjoyable experience in the city. And the fifth one was reliable support like a place to update once digital and civic skills and get support for different kind of kind of like daily questions that you might have as a citizen. So these kind of these five roles are these the result of the code sign? So that was part of the contents in the architectural competition program. So that that was our starting point for the vision for the audit. But I think we succeed quite well if I look at audit nowadays. So that is a fantastic place that we all love. So why did you want it to bring the citizens now to do the planning with you? Yeah, we had this big promise right from the start that we are going to bring 1.5 million people yearly to the new library. So we know how to make them come. So that's why we wanted to plan the new library very closely with the citizens and stakeholders. Well, that was super ambitious considering that in Finland we have 5 million inhabitants, right? Like we have to say it because yeah, but I was lucky to work within a team which which kind of like wanted to keep the ambition level high. So we were kind of like repeatedly asking from ourselves like what are the citizens needs and motivations and expectations for the new library. And what are the maybe kind of like new user groups that we need to pay especially attention to and how do we balance between very different user needs and kind of like where is the world going? What the world needs and also like what Helsinki is lacking like what role the new library should play in the city center. What do we need here in Helsinki? Did you envision that there was going to be so many tourists? Because it's full of tourists. Of course, there is a lot of cities in there, but also foreigners and tourists. Yeah, the examples from the world, the new libraries that I mentioned, they really draw tourists, or do tourists already back then, but I know that the opinion varied a lot, like many specialists inside the city of Helsinki didn't believe that library could be such an appealing place for tourists. So they were not the most important user group for us. And who was this user group that, because you said that there is new user groups, who are these new user groups? Yeah, the multilingual user groups were very important for us, because we knew that the kind of like inhabitant profile in Helsinki is changing, and also different kind of minorities were very important for us, then families, children and young people, and then these kinds of people that say that they use library in theory, but never visited in practice. So we wanted to give them reasons to come. There were many kind of like non-customers or potential customers that we didn't really reach, although they might have library card or they kind of like in theory, love libraries, but but in their daily life they can't find any reason to visit. So we wanted to bring them in. But I want to add a few crucial points like why we wanted to co-design the Audi. The first was to understand the expectations and needs and hopes, and also the possible barriers that be friend target groups and citizen groups had while using the library, and then turn their needs and wishes in the better services and spaces and contents in other words the new library concept, but also, and I think this is more important. We wanted to explore the concept of public space with the help of co-design, because if you think of the term public library, we kind of like wanted to reinvent and bring the public back to the public library, because we know that the name of the public space is kind of like part of the library institution, but we were thinking that is their kind of like potential there, that we could kind of like reinvent what the public space means for the citizens and partners, and we kind of like thought that people want to come together. I mean we all carry knowledge, stories and ideas within us, and our kind of hypothesis was that this is a kind of like animate need in a society and already could address it in a new way. So the concept of public was very, very important for us also because it has these democratic connotations. It implies openness, accessibility, inclusion, and the term emphasizes the role of libraries as kind of like connectors and bridges between the people and then the public sphere or the public space. And I think that libraries when they are as their strongest, they are places where citizens can be active and they are institutions where the kind of like the identity of society is both kind of like constitute and questioned like every day or every week. So the co-design wasn't just to make an appealing like service and service and space concept, but also finding new opportunities for citizens to influence and take part in the decision making and thus kind of like reinventing this public space and strengthen the local democracy. I think that the libraries, if you think of the city context, the libraries are places where people can kind of like feel the presence of democracy. So they were the most important two regions. How much before the architectural competition you started to do the co-design? Yeah, we were really early, so that was one of our strengths. But if you think of the different phases in this kind of very vast large project, there are many very important kind of like access points where you need to be very careful that the citizens needs and hopes and voice kind of like influences the whole planning process. So the architectural competition isn't the only one, but we started before the architectural competition. So the citizens needs and hopes also influenced the architectural competition and its contents and we even made the architectural competition open for everyone so that citizens could vote for different competition entries and give their comments on them. And there were two rounds in the architectural competition. So it started with this like vast amount of entries and then six were selected to the next phase and it was open to public input both phases so they could influence on the results. So what was the top five aims of the co-design process for you? Yeah, already was co-design with over 3,000 citizens and stakeholders and we were kind of glibbing the years 2012, 2018. And I'm not sure whether I can list exactly five things, but let's see how many points I come up with. Yeah. Well, our ambition was to create a process that would be motivating and fun and enriching and attractive for citizens and stakeholders and at that point city of Helsinki didn't have cross-sectoral participation model and not that much experience of using co-design or participatory methods or even like design was a new thing. We were living the year 2012, so Helsinki was the world design capital back then. And the planning of all the was to kind of like the first large scale project with the city was willing to make open and participatory and it's still one of the largest in European context. And the aim was to try out like what co-design and participation and engagement can mean in public sector context and can co-design and participatory methods be really kind of like fun and effective, equal and individually relevant, inclusive and practical at the same time. And we wanted to find ways to make co-design very kind of like human and approachable while we knew that the funding and the decision making processes of the new library took place in a kind of like high political manner. And we kind of like wanted to reinvent the participatory methods we didn't want to use just kind of like surveys or interviews. We wanted to write the story of the new library with the citizens and really make them feel that they are part of it. And also we wanted to kind of like foster inclusive design and bring in user groups that are or some reason marginalized, sorry about my pronunciation or otherwise not usually that motivated to participate. We wanted to find those groups and give them a voice like which one for example when you say marginalized groups? Well for example the multilingual people and also I think that children and and families and young are easily groups that are somehow passed or by path in a co-design process. You need to have special methods for them. So I think that we were living in a time where many locals or citizens had suffered from many top down closities led by city administrators and they were quite distrustful anything coming from the city of Helsinki and also this trust will to urge us when we started. And we wanted to win their trust and make the participation really real and effective and authentic and democratic. Yeah, maybe I can mention that at this point, that we were competing, competing in a playful manner against the Gakan-Guggenheim Museum projects. And finally, at the end, I think that we won because of the participatory process and the co-design process. Because with the help of the co-design, we were at the end able to influence on the decision makers and on the financing. And our library director, Tula Haavisto, wrote one of her articles and this is a direct vote from her that the Helsinki City Council's 75 votes were given for and only eight against the construction, construction of the new library. And during three hours meeting, high quality and detailed speeches on the importance of libraries were given one after another. And how was this possible? The key was and is simply involving the citizens into the project from the very beginning. Since 2012, there have been large and small efforts to make choices and plans with the users. And these activities have resulted booming and concrete public support to the project well known by the politicians as well. And inside the library, it has demanded new thinking and learning new skills and introducing participatory methods is a kind of revolution inside the organization. Yeah, I think that is a great quote from Tula. But you were competing in which sense? What do you mean when you say that you were competing with the Guggenheim Museum? Yeah, it was an ongoing project at the same time with the OLD library. And if you think of the city of Helsinki, it's impossible to support or finance both at the same time to very massive cultural projects. This interview is part of the list. Designal de Servicios finished the sign in public sector DMD in English, Finlandia, Edisenio, Bibliotecas, Edisenio. Even though some of the list titles are in Spanish, content can be found also in English. All the list of episodes in English, which has now more than 40 episodes, can be found in the D&D in English. In the libraries, Bibliotecas Edisenio list, you will find nine episodes, nine stories about places where design and libraries meet. Each episode is another design story. Sometimes it's a story of a building taking shape. Sometimes it's a creation of an oral library woven together with rural community. And sometimes it's about libraries becoming to democratic stages, places where people gather to speak, to listen, to be heard. A range in the podcast into list is my way of giving shape to this archive of voices and oral collection of the sign stories. I want this story to be easy to wander through, like shelf in a library, pulling out whatever catches your curiosity. I hope this way of organizing brings a more clarity, which is not evident with a podcast, a little more ease and maybe a little more delight. As you explore this co-designed work. Now let's continue listening to Birve, that she has much more to tell us. So can we go now to the methods? What kind of co-designed methods and activities did you choose to use? We had over 10 different co-designed methods than activities. And this will be an epic response if I try to describe them all in detail, but I'll try to give you a short and sweet answer. So we created a palette of collaborative design activities and methods that were kind of like tailor-made to different target groups. And they were, we knew that they were kind of like complementary, each having its kind of shortcomings and strengths, like co-designed methods usually do. But still when used together, they gave us good understanding of different users, user needs and expectations for the new library and generated new kind of design ideas and solutions for the library concept. But yeah, we started with the Dream On campaign and with the help of Dream On campaign, we launched the whole co-designed phase of the central library audit and the campaign used outdoor advertising campaign and a digital dreaming platform for crowdsourcing citizens' ideas and also very important pop-up events around the city where we were able to meet and interview citizens and very famous Finnish opinion leaders, celebrities, authors and artists like Esa Saringen or Ekpatopinen or Rosalikson, we're also invited to share their ideas and thoughts about the future library and the role it should play in the city center and they gave the campaign like a strong face and story and visual identity. So that was a great success. And then we had the invicational workshops for kind of limited target groups and they were organized around special claims and concepts that were challenging for us to plan and design. I participated in this once. Yeah, and they required kind of deeper collaboration with users and partners. For example, the makerspace concept on the second floor or the services for multi-lingual groups. And then we had the co-design events in the Helsinki Library Network like around the city and invocal libraries. There were two different co-design campaigns that were carried out in more than 30 libraries in Helsinki and then we had the Central Library's day-colder network and the network was created to promote cooperation and new cooperation models with partners and stakeholders and we invited them to workshops to ideate these collaboration models together and envision the future library. And then we had the participatory budgeting project and we invited citizens to decide on the use of 100,000 euros development budget and citizens also further developed the pilot projects that we had created on the basis of the customer insights that we gathered in the dream-on campaign and citizens decided which pilot projects library should implement. And then we had the citizen designer community and it consisted of 28 carefully picked participants and citizens and they collaborated with us for three months and they presented the results directly to the mayor and the architects and other planners. So that was very kind of like deep collaboration. And like I mentioned earlier, we made the architectural competition open and interactive so that citizens could vote and comment for the competition entries and then we had the open idea competition called "idea nagaet" and it was an open competition to find ideas for new service solutions and concepts for the central library and then we developed the solutions with the winning teams. So I guess that's in much show. [laughs] - That different message. - Can I say that I also participate in this idea competition? [laughs] So tell me, what were the most difficult? What were the big challenges? Because you have done a lot of different type of activities, methods, and what was difficult there? Well, the co-design process would have benefited from clearer definition of objectives in the higher up decision-making process, but better strategic steering of the project. And also anticipating how the results of the co-design feed into different phases of the planning process. And the strategic steering involved tensions, which were kind of like inherited on to the co-design process or on that level too. So we needed to find kind of like practical solutions to tackle these tensions during the co-design process. And we paid special attention to six different type of collaborative design work. In order to be able to reach our aims, so we'll talk about the framing work. That's the first collaborative design work type. And we mean the kind of like incorporating the different views of a signed democracy, conflicting aims and interests by the term framing work. And then we talked about the relevance work, like ensuring the implementability and effectiveness of the results within this kind of large scale planning project. And the third type was selection work, like approaches and tools to motivate different cities and groups to participate, empowering participants, selecting participants in equal and representative manner. And then the fourth one was design maturity building work. We wanted to train the staff members as co-design agents and facilitators. And we wanted to build the design know-how or the design maturity like within the library organization. And that was really important. And then we talked about the intermediate design work, like careful workshop planning, the methods, the templates, the timing, and then the sixth one was the collaboration work, like the workshop facilitation, the group and collaboration dynamics, the careful documentation of the results and their analysis. So I mean, my answer would be that better strategic steering for the whole design process and a more co-ordination between the different phases of the planning process. Perfect. And one thing I wanted to ask, this is my last question before I open the mic, because we don't have a lot of time left. I understood that the new library law was prepared in simultaneous with the co-design work of the library. So I wanted to ask how one influenced the other? Yes, they were, like you said, simultaneous processes. And yes, they had big effects on each other. We kind of like tried to test out and prototype the new focus areas in the library law with the help of the design process of all the so the objectives for the new library law were to promote active citizens, citizenship, democracy, and freedom of expressions, and opportunities for lifelong learning and competence development, and then the more kind of like traditional ones, availability and use of information, reading culture, literacy skills, and equal opportunities for everyone to access education and culture, but the active citizenships, sheep and democracy and freedom of expression, and the lifelong learning and the competence development, they were kind of like new areas in the library law. So they were parallel processes which affected each other, yes. And we wanted to kind of like find support for these new areas in the law with the help of the design process of all the hopefully you can follow me. And my thoughts. Yes, but I would like to ask you one example, because you say that you tried to test and prototype the new focus areas of the law. So can you give me one small example? What did you prototype for the law? Yeah, well, maybe I cannot give you a very concrete answer to that, but we started 2012. Like if you think of the whole planning process of all the, it was testing out what the new roles for a library could be and what the kind of like new profile for this kind of very appealing place in the city center could be like it's a kind of flagship project for the, or all libraries in Finland. So I think that the whole planning process was kind of like testing out and prototyping the new ideas or the focus areas in the library law like will they really be successful and relevant or not? Okay, does someone want to do a to make a question to be a bit? Ah, someone wanted to ask you yes, how was your team or like, okay, our team was very small. We had two persons when we we begun, but like I said, we wanted to build the design capability inside the library organization. So like the library staff and many specialists in the library were also involved. Like I could say that I had 30 specialists in kind of like co-design agent team inside the library, although they were they were just me and then one other team member, one full time contract planning the old. But yes, there was a lot of a lot of work. But these 30 specialists, 30 persons that you have more, could you train them in co-design? Yeah, yeah. The whole process was planned so that they could be trained and they gained a lot of experience in facilitating the different kind of co-design methods and activities and they were interviewing the citizens and facilitating the workshops, analyzing the results, yeah, doing every sort of role and work and kind of helping us a lot. So what are the advices that you give to the different stakeholders? I think it's very important to create a kind of like common ground at the first, like if you think that there's different departments or different organizations involved in the project from the start. So you need to kind of identify the shared objectives and aims and I also know that even if it sounds very simple, it can be actually quite difficult, but that's kind of like starting point. And then if you think about the co-design, I think it's very important to identify the most important user groups that should be involved in the process and then plan the method so that it's very kind of like motivating for them to participate and kind of take good care that the voice of different groups, that you can really hear the voice of different user groups. And I would say that you need to resource a lot of time and resources to do the participatory phase in a sustainable way, in a inclusive way, because it gives you the bottom for everything, like when you start to take the plans and the concept drafts further, you always can know how to lean into the inside work that you have done perfectly well. And it gives you so many ideas and answers and points of view. p coolatihoittiillsetageご수 pos Biblegoitys, melhoriainen querwal, hä áreask Stormjan ko Jennäkset, hankana kulel saturated вопрос산geju Ofsydosenselen. 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