I started as social designer working in service development for the tourism industry and also in the realm of crafts development (my first professional role was as a textile designer). I became more and more involved in projects that took place around service development and realised what a huge contribution design methods could make in this area.

The last decade has been ground breaking in the field of design. The role of the designer has changed hugely because of digitalisation and globalisation and has expanded from being concrete to being more abstract.

Designers are increasingly working with strategic content – this has affected my work as well. Of course, I currently work as a university professor and so research is also one of my main duties.

Finally, the designer also has to be well networked and have an ability to apply her/his knowledge and tools in a multi-disciplinary manner.

I work all the time with global consortiums and other international initiatives. I think that this has become more of a norm than an exception. I have been able to publish the results of my work in recognised channel around the world.

I would like to mention two things:

1) The Doctoral School for Culture-Centered Service Design which is a Service Design doctoral program based on wide-ranging, multidisciplinary research related to service design that’s guided by a human-centered perspective.

The doctoral program emphasises the role of societal, cultural, and natural environments as contexts of design-oriented, practice-based research. The doctoral program is distinguished by the strong connection between research, art, and semiotics of design – as well as societal phenomena, experiences, the environment, and culture.

The fields featured within the program include, as an example, applied art and design, tourism and mobilities, social work, marketing, media, multimodal communication, and learning and education.

2) SINCO is a service prototyping laboratory at the Faculty of Art and Design within the University of Lapland, Finland. SINCO also represents a holistic hands-on approach to service design, co-creation, and user-experience-driven innovation activities.

I think that the best part of working at Stanford is the environment that enables working with research ubiquitously. Research is not only taking place in an office but through interactions and discussions with people. Of course, the amount of great people I get to meet with is another bonus!

I define Service Design through the world of design. I see that Service Design is about using design methods for improving either the human experience or user experience. To me, Service Design is a multi-disciplinary effort and there can be several definitions of it.

I think that we need learning experiences that Service Design can facilitate directly within companies or institutions. Peer-to-peer learning, practice based learning and learning by doing that concretise the necessary changes. I think that implementing a new process is always a challenge but improving an existing one or streamlining it might be easier.

I think that visual thinking and competence is at the heart of Service Design. Of course, this part can be developed also and I really hope that strategic management will adopt it.

In my opinion, Service Design has already established itself as discipline – however, far more important than a set of activities and tools is a core philosophy and the skills of strategic management and thinking as well as the holistic understanding of ‘seeing the big picture’. The world is becoming more and more digital and complex – how could we manage without Service Design?

In my view, the main factors that are overlooked are humanity and the role of individual persons as innovators, the human ability to innovate always and everywhere – and not only during working hours, and also how we are able encompass human creativity and civic intelligence into the innovation process itself.

I think it comes down to the resilience to endure stress. People are afraid of the new and unknown as well as increased workloads. Good people management and the courage to dismiss old process and work assignments is important.

I think that Service Design is a holistic view that connects existing theories in a new way but there is always space to come up with new information and knowledge.

Societal change and climate change – the times are moving and people are in a flow throughout the world. Service Design can help in dealing with complex problems, giving tools for concretising and bringing new solutions.

I think that it’s good to talk about design for services as well as the designer’s role as facilitator – not necessarily as the one solving the design problem but helping out during the process with her/his tools and methodologies.

In this sense, we could discuss more often the process of framework orientated design. The difference between services and products has been considered irrelevant for their common ability to help and support the innovation process.

Minimum viable management; examining how we build teams and organisations that are not held back by administration, empowering decision making, and in this way boosting the innovation process.

More time spent focused on design thinking and philosophy is needed in these hectic times.

The shift from post-it notes to making and Maker culture.

Not by end of the year but next year I’ll hopefully start working on an artistic research project called “Women Living at the Edges of Work around art interventions and empowerment.

I think it’s about working in teams and having a passion and flow for Service Design

My children Sampo and Ruusu who have travelled the world with me from the arctic to the south.