
Swinburne Design Factory Melbourne
The Design Factory Melbourne champions design thinking as a creative discipline to unlock innovative opportunities and solve wicked problems.
What we do
Bringing together academic rigour, a global perspective and more than 10 years of experience in design thinking, innovation and proven entrepreneurial capabilities, Swinburne Design Factory Melbourne (DFM) can help you and your team:
- navigate uncertainty
- explore new possibilities
- build real skills that will make a real difference.

We’re educators, advisors and innovators
As educators, our bespoke career-oriented educational offerings are designed to suit the audience-specific needs from young undergrads to professional emerging leaders.
As advisors, DFM operates at the intersection between university and private and public sector enterprises, harnessing the interdisciplinary creative energies between researchers, academics, students, our clients and the community.
As innovators, DFM excels at problem finding, defining and solving, by leveraging our local and global network of design expertise and years of experience to deliver client-led innovative outcomes.
Become future ready by design
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Study innovation
Welcome to where creative intelligence thrives. From undergrad to professional, DFM provides life-long learners with relevant skills – from problem-scoping to problem-solving – that will enhance and advance careers.
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Become an innovative business
DFM thrives at the intersection of problems and possibilities. Taking a client-led, evidence-based research approach, we leverage our creative intelligence and proven approach to unlock insights that inform better decision-making and mitigate risk.
The Design Factory Melbourne approach
Co-creation
is fundamental to our practice
Different perspectives
enable us to facilitate innovation
Hand-picked teams
bring interdisciplinary expertise to innovation challenges
Diversity
of minds, skills and experience drives our R&D capablity and impact
Global Design Factory Network
Aalto University in Finland launched the original Design Factory in 2008, and in 2012, DFM became the first founding member of the Design Factory Global Network (DFGN) in the southern hemisphere.
Since then, DFM has been an active part of this global community of innovation labs, which has expanded to include respected universities and research organisations across 25 countries in Europe, the Americas, and the Asia Pacific region.
Innovation resources at your fingertips
These resources are available for you to download.
Daily Practice of Innovation
Small actions, big shifts
Passion-based Co-creation
The Design Factory approach
Re-think. Re-frame. Re-imagine.
Building resilience
Dive deeper
Get to know who we are, how we work, and how we’ve brought value to clients around Australia and the world.
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Meet Design Factory Melbourne
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How we work
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Success stories
Ready to explore what might be possible?
Please reach out. We'd love to hear from you.