Ville Tikka

Strategic Director / Futures Specialist / Co-Founder

Wevolve 

Change Agency for Wilder Future

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Profile

Strategic Director & Futures Specialist, Co-Founder of Wevolve
Think Tanks | Finland, FI

Summary

Ville Tikka (b. 1977) explores the frontiers of cultural and digital revolution to identify new opportunities for transformative change.

Ville is Strategic Director and Futures Specialist at Wevolve, a change agency that specializes in leading edge trends research and strategic design and innovation. Wevolve identifies future opportunities and creates bold visions, strategies and solutions for companies and organizations that embrace change and want to stand for something big.

Previously, VIlle has worked at Nokia as Senior Futures Specialist – three years in New York and three in Helsinki – exploring trends and innovation opportunities in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and Latin America with ethnographic and co-creative design methods, and translating these into action with Nokia's global design, brand and business teams.

In addition, Ville has done versatile research in academia in Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki University of Technology, and University of Turku; held a dope marketing job at Vice Magazine where he brought the youth media conglomerate to Finland; done conceptual design projects; participated in design exhibitions in the US, Europe and Asia; and received a top nomination for INDEX: Award 2007, the largest design award in the world.

Ville holds an MA in Psychology and Media Studies from University of Turku, has started a PhD in design research at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, and has been regularly speaking at global and local conferences about transformative innovation and emerging trends.
Specialties: Taking things to the next level.

Experience

  • Jan 2011 - Present
    Strategic Director & Futures Specialist, Co-Founder / Wevolve
    Ville works as Strategic Director & Futures Specialist at Wevolve, a change agency he has co-founded. Wevolve identifies new opportunities for change and drives transformation by creating bolder visions, stronger strategies and braver solutions. Wevolve specializes in both creative research and strategic design to instigate systemic change and imagine advanced futures. The company was founded in New York in early 2011 and currently operates from Helsinki, Finland.
  • Jul 2006 - Present
    Senior Futures Specialist / Nokia
    Senior Futures Specialist in Opportunity Identification, Insights Creation, Consumer Analytics and Insights, Nokia USA. ▶Based in New York, working as a change agent and thought leader in the company driving new opportunity identification to support product and service design, innovation, brand change, and business decision making, with the aim to bring new value for business, people and the planet. ▶ Having managed Nokia's global consumer trend research, covering six continents and 23 countries with a budget of over $1M, leading a global team of trends researchers and simultaneously managed several global trend research agencies. Being responsible for producing and publishing one of the key insights sources in Nokia, the Global Annual Consumer Trends, among other creative insights deliverables. ▶ Exploring the vanguard of change, covering everything from emerging online user behaviors and consumer trends to broader societal transformations with a variety of methods including ethnography, expert interviews and online methods. ▶ Translating the insights and foresight into concrete strategies and actions by consulting and facilitating innovation workshops with various internal stakeholders including Corporate Strategy, Design Strategy, Brand Strategy, Marketing Strategy, and Device and Service Business Groups.
  • Sept 2005 - Present
    Doctoral Student / Media Lab at University of Art and Design Helsinki
  • Jul 2006 - Present
    Futures Specialist / Nokia Design
    Futures Specialist in Consumer Trends & Experiences team in Nokia Design. I worked between design studios in Helsinki and London and was focused on: ▶ Exploring the forefront of global societal transformations and the landscape of consumer and online trends, especially focusing on technology and services usage, cutting edge lifestyles and youth trends. ▶ Facilitating new innovation and supporting design work with trend insight, especially working with style oriented Live category design as well as supporting Live category strategy, brand and marketing. ▶ Managing global trend research projects and trend research agencies in the US, Europe, China and India and conducting ethnographic trend research all over the globe.
  • 2005 - Present
    Interaction Designer / Researcher / Nokia Research Center
    Interaction Designer / Researcher, Mechanical User Experience team, Multimedia Laboratory, Nokia Research Center. ▶ Studying novel interaction methods and developing new concepts for tangible user interfaces. Focusing on researching and designing haptic feedback for touch displays. ▶ Managing research projects and university collaborations.
  • Aug 2004 - Present
    Marketing Manager, Sales & Distribution Representative / Vice Magazine
    ▶ Bringing the cutting edge youth media brand, the Vice Magazine, to Helsinki, Finland. ▶ Responsible for local sales, distribution network (the hippest shops, clubs and bars), events, exhibitions and collaborations taking place in Finland. ▶ Collaborating with the Scandinavia affiliates in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. http://www.viceland.se
  • Jun 2005 - Present
    Market researcher / A World Beyond - AWB
    ▶ Facilitating focus groups and conducting consumer research to support the launch and localization of the Music Television Finland. ▶ Offering strategic consulting for MTV Finland to align the content and program schedule according the local preference. http://www.awb.se/ http://www.musictelevision.fi/
  • May 2005 - Present
    Researher / Interaction Designer / Helsinki University of Technology
    Researcher / Designer, Helsinki University of Technology, m-Loma project. ▶ Studying the cognitive challenges in constructing mental representations between locations in the digital and physical spaces. ▶ Designing the user interface for 3D mobile guidance and messaging application.
  • 2004 - Present
    Interaction Designer / University of Art and Design Helsinki
    Designer / Researcher, MUKANA. ▶ Designing MUKANA smart clothing for visually impaired that provides a wearable interface for the guide system, incorporating a neoprene sash, a cell phone, a wireless headset, a GPS module and voice-recognition software. MUKANA helps visually impaired to identify their location and use the phone with Braille number pad as well as provides information about routes or public transportation timetables. ▶ MUKANA has appeared in the blogosphere in over 100 blogs including Engadget and we-make-money-not-art, as well as in Business Week. ▶ It has also been exhibited globally in the following exhibitions: –SAUMA, Design as cultural interface, Design Museum, Helsinki, Finland, 2008 –INDEX: AWARD EXHIBITION, Gwangju Design Biennale, Korea, 2007 –INDEX: AWARD 2007, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2007 –SAUMA, A+D Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles, U.S., 2007 –SAUMA, World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery, New York, U.S., 2006 –SAUMA, Embassy of Finland, Washington, DC, U.S., 2005
  • 2004 - Present
    Researcher / Nokia Research Center
    Researcher, Visual Ergonomics team, Multimedia Laboratory, Nokia Research Center. ▶ Researching multimodal interfaces and video in mobile context. ▶ Studying multisensory integration of perception – how visual, aural and tactile perceptions affect each other and publishing an internal paper on the topic.
  • Sept 2002 - Present
    Research Assistant / Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in University of Turku
    ▶ Planning and accomplishing fMRI brain studies and designing research instruments. ▶ Studying brain mechanisms of tactile working memory.

Education

  • 2005 - 2012
    University of Art and Design Helsinki
    Doctor of Arts in Emotional Interaction
  • 1998 - 2005
    University of Turku
    MA (with Great Honors) in Psychology, Media Studies
  • 2003 - 2004
    Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona
    Erasmus international exchange student

Additional Information

Websites:
Honors:
▶ NOMINATIONS Top Nominee in INDEX: AWARD 2007 - DESIGN TO IMPROVE LIFE, The largest design award in the world. http://www.indexaward.dk/ ▶ EXHIBITIONS SAUMA, Design as cultural interface, Design Museum, Helsinki, Finland, 2008 INDEX: AWARD EXHIBITION, Gwangju Design Biennale, Korea, 2007 INDEX: AWARD 2007, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2007 SAUMA, Design as cultural interface, A+D Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles, U.S., 2007 SAUMA, Design as cultural interface, World Financial Center Courtyard Gallery, New York, U.S., 2006 SAUMA, Design as cultural interface, Embassy of Finland, Washington, DC, U.S., 2005 http://www.indexaward.dk/ http://www.saumadesign.net/ ▶ PUBLICATIONS Olimme kuluttajia - Neljä tarinaa vuodesta 2023 (We were consumers - Four stories from the year 2023) http://bit.ly/2AnZKb Designing Haptic Feedback for Touch Display http://bit.ly/cyE7 Understanding users’ strategies with mobile maps http://bit.ly/SsU0G

Posts

“Library of infographics” /

EDDIE OPARA

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

The Free Universal Construction Kit

The Critical Engineer considers Engineering to be the most transformative language of our time, shaping the way we move, communicate and think. It is the work of the Critical Engineer to study and exploit this language, exposing its influence.


The Critical Engineer considers any technology depended upon to be both a challenge and a threat. The greater the dependence on a technology the greater the need to study and expose its inner workings, regardless of ownership or legal provision.


The Critical Engineer raises awareness that with each technological advance our techno-political literacy is challenged.


The Critical Engineer deconstructs and incites suspicion of rich user experiences.


The Critical Engineer looks beyond the ‘awe of implementation’ to determine methods of influence and their specific effects.


The Critical Engineer recognises that each work of engineering engineers its user, proportional to that user’s dependency upon it.


The Critical Engineer expands ‘machine’ to describe interrelationships encompassing devices, bodies, agents, forces and networks.


The Critical Engineer observes the space between the production and consumption of technology. Acting rapidly to changes in this space, the Critical Engineer serves to expose moments of imbalance and deception.


The Critical Engineer looks to the history of art, architecture, activism, philosophy and invention and finds exemplary works of Critical Engineering. Strategies, ideas and agendas from these disciplines will be adopted, re-purposed and deployed.


The Critical Engineer notes that written code expands into social and psychological realms, regulating behaviour between people and the machines they interact with. By understanding this, the Critical Engineer seeks to reconstruct user-constraints and social action through means of digital excavation.


The Critical Engineer considers the exploit to be the most desirable form of exposure.

Path to success in the international art world / Jaakko Pallasvuo video series IV

The digital universe will never be a national park; it will always be an undomesticated, unpredictable wilderness. Because of mathematics - the fundamental unpredictability of code - there will always be codes that do unpredictable things.
George Dyson, interviewed by Kevin Kelly @Wired

Helsinki Street Eats: systems of everyday life seen through street food / Our recent collaboration with Helsinki Design Lab / Download or buy a hard copy /

http://www.low2no.org/dossiers/food 

// Street food describes systems of everyday life. In its sheer everydayness we discover attitudes to public space, cultural diversity, health, regulation and governance, our habits and rituals, logistics and waste, and more. //

Too often … the focus on the technology overshadows the project, dominates timelines and monopolises budgets: often leaving people with a can and a can opener – and not actually the result that they wanted – a meal.

Koos & The Cosby Sweaters

Buchstabengewitter (letter storm), a generative typography project that transforms three-dimensional linear structures into all the letters of the alphabet. Via http://www.creativeapplications.net/

The great inventions are usually those that take the smallest possible step to unleash the most change.

WALDEN. ANARCHY. NATURISM. In the footsteps of late Thoreau, the 19th century anarcho-naturism is likely to become phenomenal next summer, as the occupy vibe will continue to spread to countryside and beyond… 

“Anarcho-naturism advocated vegetarianism, free love, nudism, hiking and an ecological world view within anarchist groups and outside them. Anarcho-naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillages, and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the artificiality of the industrial mass society of modernity. Naturist individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological, physical and psychological aspects and tried to eliminate social determinations.”

Solution 239-246 Finland the Welfare Game. Ha, our homeland will be so screwed without these twisted, witty & poignant remedies for the socio-cultural maladies of our times. Thanks Martti for the spellbound Yule present!!

Audio

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