About Milla Mäkinen

Milla Mäkinen
Helsinki | Finland

Service Design for Change

Milla Mäkinen Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK), Principal Research Scientist

I am a solution oriented and innovative Service Designer, Change Designer and Facilitator specialized in experience design with 15 years of experience in creating and researching social and organizational change in culturally diverse environments around the globe -from Ecuador to the furthest corners of Finnish Lapland. My expertise areas include change needs assessment using ethnographic and service design tools, change process design based on service design thinking, creative workshop facilitation, service design training and coaching, and monitoring and evaluation of organizational and societal change processes.


I work for the people who have experienced being invisible or unheard. They exist in every organization and community. The projects and organizations that I work for are my tool to make all the people involved in the change in question seen and heard. This is the only way to foster innovation, creativity and sustainable change. I am a true believer in experience based knowledge and use service design, organizational and work psychology, design research, transformation design and professional facilitation tools to bring experience based knowledge to the core of change, combining online and offline tools as needed.


Through my work life I have been able to discover how very different kinds of people feel and interpret the world, daily life and other people around them -and what are the keys to get them to understand each other better and, consequently, get along and work together better. I believe that professional facilitation and service design are great tools for this.


Currently I am working in facilitating the creation of experimental organization culture, in particular. At the same time I am studying the potential of service design for creating systemic change by researching the links between service experiences and social cohesion within my PhD. 

To me, service design means...

Service design is a great framework for facilitating change in different levels of a society: societal level, organizational level and human-to-human level. And why not also on individual level? At the moment service design means a lot to me. It is the main tool that I use -after years of working in change, with service design I found a language and framework in which put my work. However, as with all the change management tools, as service designers we need to be mindful of doing it right and using our tools in ethically.

Milla’s contributions

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Case Study
Case Study
Touchpoint Article Measuring Service Design Impact - Lessons from social change-makers

Measuring Service Design Impact - Lessons from social change-makers

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Touchpoint Article Service Designing Together for Better International Employee Experiences

Service Designing Together for Better International Employee Experiences

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