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

  • A group of six people/students discussing.

    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.

  • A group of four people sitting and discussing.

    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

Collaborators

Dive deeper

Get to know who we are, how we work, and how we’ve brought value to clients around Australia and the world.

Ready to explore what might be possible?

Please reach out. We'd love to hear from you.

Contact us