Practical experience
Landing a job takes more than talent, it takes action. Demola gives you the chance to tackle real challenges, collaborate with others, and build proof of what you can do even when things are uncertain. By actively participating in a Demola project, you can turn your skills into competencies and concrete experience.
Partnered with Innovative Companies
Our platform, created together with leading companies and professors, connects you to real-world innovation projects. You’ll work as part of a team on an innovation and development project, guided by Demola’s expert facilitators. Participating in a project will give you practical experience and the confidence to deal with complexity in any job.
At Demola, innovation projects are built around real-world project topics co-designed with companies and public-sector organisations. If selected, you'll join an innovation team working to develop meaningful solutions that respond to validated needs.
Our projects tackle complex, relevant problems grounded in industry and societal needs. You'll work in a team to design and demo solutions, benefiting from the insights and findings of previous Demola projects. Most Demola projects last around two months, but the exact duration depends on the programme they are part of.
Each team benefits from expert guidance through coaching sessions and facilitated community events. Demola's facilitators bring years of experience in innovation and adapt their support to match your ambition and commitment. You are expected to take an active role, both individually and as a team.
You'll co-create with other teams and Demola's experts, and validate and test your solutions with real stakeholders to continuously refine your approach. High-performing teams gain access to a network of professionals from Demola's industry partners for further input and exposure.
You'll build in-demand, career-ready skills in creative problem-solving, AI-assisted innovation, project management, international collaboration, and resilience - all while working in an environment that mirrors real innovation practices.
Your team owns the outcomes created during the project. Use them in job interviews, your portfolio, a Master's thesis, or even as the foundation of a startup. In some cases, your work may also earn you academic credit (ECTS) if you are a student.
The impact
Ready to turn your skills into competence? Our claims are backed by feedback from our community of participants and alumni.
Strongly agree (49.3%)
Agree (43.6%)
Neither agree or disagree (5.3%)
Disagree (1.3%)
Strongly disagree (0.5%)
2 272 people took part in the survey.
New skills
65.6%
Valuable work experience
63.9%
New friends
51.5%
Startup ideas
34.4%
International teamwork experience
30.5%
Industry contacts
23.9%
Self-esteem
23.9%
New motivation to study
22.8%
Confidence in career choices
20.3%
Researcher contacts
17.6%
Better position in the labor market
13.5%
Other
1.5%
Based on Q4/2022 survey
If you’re currently studying at or near one of our Demola locations or partner universities, you’re welcome to join a Demola project.
In our partner cities, the projects are also open to graduates and professionals who are exploring new career paths or interested in co-creating and launching startups in the future.
Many alumni have participated in more than one Demola project – the current record is seven. For active alumni, we facilitate further development in their academic studies or future careers:
Explore or fine-tune your Master’s thesis topic through a Demola project and find a potential industry collaborator for your Master’s thesis after the project.
Develop an expert profile that highlights your project contributions, as well as innovation and interpersonal skills. Top-performing participants will have their expert profiles shared and recommended within Demola’s partner network, verifying their skills and proactive mindset.
Build on your project results, connect with like-minded teammates, and use your entrepreneurial mindset to lay the groundwork for a startup.
Get onboarded with Demola
Create a Demola profile.
Browse project in your location and apply to those that interest you.
If you get selected, confirm your seat and start the teamwork.
Apply to one or more projects today!
Jyväskylä, Oulu
Human Beings in the Modern World
How can mobile and XR experiences reveal what is happening right now and in the next few hours around you? Everyday urban life is full of small moments, shifting rhythms, and emerging possibilities that often go unnoticed. This project invites participants to imagine a near future where cities quietly communicate with their citizens through mobile and XR experiences woven into daily routines. The challenge is to explore how extended reality can make the present and the immediate future visible in subtle, meaningful ways. Events about to begin, places filling with energy, moments of calm or movement, and collective urban moods could appear as digital layers in the city, transforming ordinary walks into moments of discovery. The focus is on speculative, experience-driven design rather than utility alone. How might everyday life feel if the city itself could whisper what is unfolding nearby? How could digital presence enhance awareness, curiosity, and connection without overwhelming attention? The outcomes may include futuristic concepts, XR experiences, narrative environments, or prototypes that explore a city that feels alive, anticipatory, and emotionally aware a city that reveals itself moment by moment.
Apply by 29 Mar
Oulu
Future of Work
Online product presentation has barely changed since early e-commerce: photos, text, specifications. Yet buying physical products — furniture, clothing, tools — is fundamentally spatial. Customers want to see scale, feel context, visualise fit. XR makes this possible, but creating spatial product experiences today requires 3D modellers and developers. Only large retailers can afford it. Independent brands and small sellers have a smartphone, a product, and a few hours. No tool meets them there. The creator economy has proven that when the right tools exist, individuals produce enormous amounts of quality content — the missing piece is a spatial product authoring tool designed for non-technical creators.What inputs does a small brand creator actually have available — smartphone photos, video, basic measurements — and how far can an AI pipeline take these toward a spatial experience without manual 3D modelling? Which spatial interactions deliver the most purchase-relevant value: true-scale room placement, 360° rotation, feature hotspots, material variants? How is the spatial content distributed and consumed — web AR link, embedded product page, messaging app?In this project we want to demonstrate creator workflow — an end-to-end authoring tool: from smartphone photo/video input through to a shareable spatial product experience. Simple is beautiful, let’s focus on customer experience and the value-adding elements.
Apply by 14 Apr
Oulu
Byte-powered Future
Fatigue causes serious accidents and quality failures in professional vehicle operation — forestry, mining, trucking, construction. Current measures are administrative: shift limits and self-reporting. They set thresholds but offer no real-time visibility into the operator’s actual physiological state. Modern vehicles already carry the contact surfaces — steering wheels, seats — that can capture heart rate, HRV, and behavioural signals non-intrusively. The gap is intelligent integration that detects fatigue early and acts on it, not just alarms.What combination of non-intrusive physiological signals (PPG from steering grip, seat pressure, skin conductance) and behavioural signals (steering corrections, gaze) gives the most reliable early fatigue warning? How should the system communicate without creating alarm fatigue or distraction? What might be the novel ways for the vehicle to act when driver fatigue is identified?In this project we are looking for demos and prototypes to identify fatigue, stress or other important factors through physiological markers and concept different ways these could be addressed.
Apply by 14 Apr
Oulu
Byte-powered Future
Car “modes” today are manufacturer presets that adjust mechanical parameters — sport, comfort, eco. They ignore the actual experiential context of a drive: solo commute, family trip, work session between meetings, decompression after a hard day. Modern vehicles already know who is in the car, where it’s going, what’s on the driver’s calendar, and how they’re behaving. The ingredients for contextually intelligent experience orchestration exist — but no user-facing framework lets drivers compose, save, and trigger personalised flows that coordinate multiple vehicle systems together.Which contextual dimensions — time, occupancy, location, calendar, biometrics — are genuinely useful triggers versus noise? What is the right interaction model for composing experience flows under driving attention constraints — explicit user definition or AI-learned proposals? Which vehicle systems should be customizable within a flow — lighting, audio, climate, navigation filtering, HUD, what else?We are aiming at creating a working interface where a non-technical user creates, saves, and triggers custom flows with contextual AI suggestions. The context of the project is cars, but the similar approach can then be used for industrial use cases, such as heavy machinery or trucks.
Apply by 14 Apr
Oulu
Human Beings in the Modern World
Urban planning decisions shape cities for decades, yet citizen engagement remains PDFs, public hearings, and comment forms — processes that reach only the most motivated, most vocal residents. The majority never engage, not because they don’t care, but because the mechanism doesn’t meet them where they are. XR changes the proposition entirely: instead of asking residents to imagine a proposal from a floor plan, you place it at full scale in the actual location through their phone. Feedback becomes spatial, immediate, and accessible to anyone who happens to walk past — not just those who attend a council meeting.Which planning proposal types benefit most from spatial XR presentation, and what fidelity level is actually needed to support meaningful feedback? How should a planner without 3D or development skills publish a proposal, anchor it to a location, and manage the feedback it generates? What feedback mechanisms work in XR — open text, spatial annotation, structured rating — and how are outputs structured for practical planning team use? We are looking to develop a functional web AR demo covering both the planner publishing flow and the citizen feedback experience, demonstrated on at least one real or realistic planning scenario.
Apply by 14 Apr
Oulu
Byte-powered Future
The skies above cities are filling up in the future. Delivery drones, inspection drones, media drones, security drones, recreational flyers, and research platforms now share low-altitude urban airspace that was effectively empty a decade ago. This growth is accelerating: logistics companies, infrastructure operators, emergency services, and defence-adjacent actors are all expanding drone operations in urban environments. Yet from street level, a drone overhead is essentially anonymous. There is no visible equivalent of a licence plate, no public registry lookup, no way for a citizen, business owner, or city official to know whether a drone flying over their building is on a permitted mission. Finland’s regulatory framework (EASA U-space, Traficom drone registry) provides the legal backbone — but none of this is accessible in real time to people on the ground. This project builds the missing transparency layer.What is the right identification interaction: point your phone at a drone and get information (AR overlay), scan a visible QR or RF signal on the drone, or query by location and time? Which is technically feasible within a project sprint? How should flight purpose categories be communicated to citizens in a way that is informative without being alarmist — what is the right language and visual vocabulary for authorised commercial, recreational, media, inspection, security, and unknown/unregistered drones?In the project we are looking to design an identification prototype — a functional mobile tool (web or app) that, given a GPS location and timestamp, identifies the drone and returns verified information about whose drone it is and what is it doing here.
Apply by 14 Apr
See how Demola has helped students around the world succeed in their careers and personal lives.
Master’s Degree student in Research and Innovation in Higher Education
Excellent
20/04/2023
“I enjoy connecting with other people who are not from the same area and field, and creating new things. I think Demola is a very great platform and, since I’m interested in education, I think this is a great idea to help students and other people to learn in a different way and to be closer to the work life.”
Master’s Student in Public and Global Health
Excellent
20/04/2023
“I joined Demola for the third time already, since I enjoy how my personal skills are developing here and I love the feeling of freedom of thoughts, to be able to think, feel and express anything.”
Master’s Student in Sustainable Digitalisation
Excellent
20/04/2023
“I wanted more experience in interdisciplinary project work and real-life, tangible development of solutions with external stakeholders. I also wanted to practice what the design process is like in the real world and how to present novel ideas in an attractive, business- oriented way. And Demola delivered!”
Master’s Degree Student in Engineering and Technology
Excellent
10/06/2022
“In Demola we focused on creating solutions that can and should be applicable and should happen in real life, concrete and implementable solutions that can have an impact. Those type of solutions that go way beyond than just making a new website or a nice social media page.”
Master of Business
Excellent
17/04/2023
“If you have successfully completed the Demola project, it is proof of your passion and that your mindset is inevitably customer-oriented. Demola is definitely an experience I can recommend to all students.”
Get the information you need with our comprehensive list of FAQs below:
Where can I stay up-to-date on the new projects and events?
Will I get my Demola certificate automatically after finishing the project?
I got accepted! What's next? How can I find my teammates?
What do the project's final results look like? What are the evaluation formats?
How much time should I prepare for Demola project?
Do you have any questions about Demola? See our help center
Join Demola and work on career-relevant projects with global impact.
