Student Profiles
Toni-Matti Karjalainen
I went through the IDBM programme in its second season, 1996-1997, while studying at HSE. Our company project, an image study of ski poles in the USA and Canada, was completed for Exel Oy. My Master thesis, commissioned for Nissan Design Europe GmbH and completed in 1999, also incorporated a strong IDBM aspect.
IDBM was in many ways a fantastic experience and has also shaped my professional path remarkably. After graduation I have worked in various research projects at TKK and to complete the IDBM triangle, I finished my doctoral research at TAIK in 2004. In addition to my various research affiliations and company contacts all over the world, I have recently joined Nokia Design where I work as a research analyst.
In October 2007 I started working in the IDBM Programme as Reasearch Director.
Marjukka Mäkelä
I joined IDBM programme as part of my industrial design MA studies in 2001. I’ve always felt that it is important to understand business and technology related aspect in design work, so IDBM seemed to be super-natural part of my studies.
I enjoyed the freedom of combining different studies and to meet people from TKK and HSE. The most exciting part of the programme was industry project. Our project team turn out to be hardworking and ambitious, and we presented new concepts of user interfaces for KONE Corporation. After the studies I’ve kept in contact with many IDBMers through the Klubi.
Joakim Uimonen
In 1998 I found my way to the IDBM programme after getting tired of all the math and physics at TKK. I was interested in cross-disciplinarity and the possibilities of design. My interest had already awakened at the Vienna University of Technology on the basic course of architecture and in a 3D designing class in the USA as an exchange student.
My major subject at the Machine design department at TKK was "product development", which is t he closest you can get to industrial design at TKK. Still while studying at TAIK, the IDBM industry project opened a whole new perspective to what industrial design actually is and what it's like to work in a multi-disciplinary team with a designer and an economist.
The IDBM project, commissioned by Raute Wood, a plywood machinery manufacturer, was very interesting and one of the best courses during my studies. The project was originally supposed to be a report on the use of industrial design in Finnish heavy machine shop industry. It continued by evaluating how Raute could exploit industrial design in their business operations.
From an engineer perspective, a 60 m long lathe line was an interesting object to design, but for the designer it was quite a challenge to develop such a highly automated line. As a result we recommended hiring an in-house designer to develop their own style for Raute, which they eventually did.
IDBM opened doors to courses at TAIK, which later led to further studies at TAIK. First a minor subject of industrial design for my M.Sc.(Eng) degree and later a M.A. in Industrial Design.
My working history has been versatile, from the Nokia Research center to the Creator-Grey Advertising Agency, to the ED-Design Design Agency and today, the Tunturi Bicycle R&D Manager.