The Capstone innovation project emphasises creative thinking and user-oriented development

The ideology behind the activity emphasises an entrepreneurial attitude, creative thinking, regional cooperation as well as agile and lightly organised creation and development in cooperation with entrepreneurs in the region.

This fall, a record number of interesting projects are taking part. Companies and organisations have been eager to join in the development of new solutions with TUAS students.

For companies and organisations, Capstone is a risk-free environment for developing and trying out new, even bold solutions. In the future, quick and lightly organised creation and involving the user in the planning process are needed.

“The Capstone innovation project implements thinking known from the Lean Startup philosophy, which includes testing the ideas on real customers as early as possible. Through this kind of thinking and activity, we will learn to take the users into account and build working solutions which the customers are also ready to pay for", says Project Manager Riikka Kulmala from TUAS.

Education in the future is about doing together

The Capstone innovation project combines the Degree Programmes in Electronics, Information Technology, Business Administration and Library and Information Services in a multidisciplinary way. In addition, Capstone unites working life with studies in a realistic and concrete way, thus benefiting both the students and customer companies.

The ideology behind Capstone is based on the CDIO concept, developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which strives to develop education to better meet the needs of working life.

Mere knowledge is not enough, skills are also needed. A close combination of research and practice develops the students' abilities for real working life situations and thus creates even more skilled and realistic workers for the future. Solutions to the problems are searched in cooperation with other professionals and stakeholders.

“The skill to network, question and develop existing and new solutions in a user-oriented way and the ability to think flexibly are central competencies for professionals of the future. Capstone supports this very target”, Kulmala ponders.

The richness of arena sports experiences boosted with a mobile application

On Friday 7 November, the about twenty representatives of the customer companies and organisations involved in the Capstone innovation project will meet each other at ICT-City. In addition, about 120 students will participate in the event to get to know the projects and talk to the representatives of the customer companies.

“The aim is to find for each participating student a project they would like to get involved with”, Riikka Kulmala says. 

As previously, this year’s projects are interesting. An example is a project related to the Metsämäki trotting track in Turku. The objective of the project is to develop an application to boost the richness of arena sports experiences. The aim is that the application being developed would boost the spectator's trotting racing experience on the spot, at the trotting track. In addition to the trotting track project, the project topics include different application needs related to well-being technology and gamification.

The projects will be published on the Capstone website on week 43, at capstone.dc.turkuamk.fi.

The Capstone innovation project combines the Degree Programmes in Electronics, Information Technology, Business Administration and Library and Information Services in a multidisciplinary way. The aim is to combine working life with studies in a more realistic and concrete way in order to benefit both the students and the customer companies.