Creativity empowered by empathy.

Finding pathways to a circular future

Through designing and running the Green Tiger Academy development program, and as a Design Lead in the Enterprise Estonia Circular Design program, I've had the chance to make use of my passion and decade-long experience in sustainability to help enterprises along on their green transition journeys. Together with partners like Neste, Ericsson, Bigbank, EAS, Äripäev, Verston, Timbeco, Thermory, Maru ehitus, EstHus and others, we've used designerly thinking to run circular audits, seek opportunities, envision strategies, prototype new products, services, employee engagement activities, and much more.

Growing the next generation of responsible design practitioners

In 2017 I took over the management, and shortly after leading of the new Interaction Design master's curriculum at EKA. As my predecessors had done an extraordinary job establishing the inital vision and approach for the program, my goal was to design a high quality learning process, and develop the curriculum to match it with expectations towards designers in tomorrow’s world. In addition to IxD.ma, I helped to develop the Digital Product Design BA program, the Service Design Strategies and Innovation masters, Open Academy courses on human centred design, and am using design methods to help facilitate EKA's complex in-house developments.

Enabling better choices towards sustainability

Kuhuviia is an interactive platform for the environmentally-minded that guides and helps to find responsible ways of getting rid things no longer needed. A self-initiated non-profit, our team has over the years gained nationwise recognition, established partnerships with organisations, Estonian ministries and become one of the spokesmen of sustainable topics in the country.

Nudging sustainable habits, one tiny step at a time

Effectify is a personal green lifestyle coaching application & gamified employee engagement platform. It is a free app and website that nudges users towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Cleverly designed using psychology and gamification, it engages the environmentally minded in green lifestyle, and provides and effective employee engagement tool for businesses.

Unleashing Estonian creativity

From wooden submarines to skateparks and hundreds of albums in its portfolio, Hooandja is the biggest reward-based crowdfunding platform in Eastern Europe. With over a thousand successful campaigns, we established the crowdfunding paradigm in the region, introduced a new expression in the Estonian language ("hoogu andma"—to back a project) and became the go-to funding solution for local creatives. As a co-founder and designer, I was responsible for the platform's features, design and visual promotional materials.

Redesigning a human centered care journey for hip and knee replacement patients

Together with the Estonian Health Insurance Fund, we embarked on a journey to map the hip and knee replacement patients' current experiences, and proposed a redesigned service that would address the biggest discovered opportunities. We engaded patients throughout Estonia, gathered stories from health professionals, mapped down the journeys and opportunities, and held co-creation sessions with healthcare providers.

Simplifying the management of the European Union Presidency

As Estonia became the presiding country of the European Union in 2018, I helped the Government Office to set up a digital platform for internal communication for the presidency officials. The initial brief called just for the visual design, so I proposed deconstructing it and including research and analysis to better match the planned platform with actual needs. As there was no budget nor time allocated for the exploration, I conducted a series of co-design workshops with the stakeholders to fast-track through the process.

Helping freelancers focus on what they do best

BillFuel was a hassle free invoicing service. Its premise was to allow individuals issue invoices quickly without the need to have their own registered companies. As a co-founder, I was responsible for the design, from discovery to implementation.

Giving home buyers tools to envision their dream houses

Creatomus is an Estonian startup with a mission to disrupt the real estate industry by giving the buyers of prefabricated buildings a tool to design and configure their homes. I helped the team to map potential future customers and redesign the application accordingly. Drawing inspiration from games, car dealerships and interaction patterns, we designed an elegant flow that made advanced 3D manipulations intuitive for novices and experts alike, and helped to set Creatomus up for future success.

Arming the civil society with humanised information

I worked together with Praxis, a leading politcal think tank in the Baltic region, to help their team to envision and deliver several online platforms for citisen engagement, and eventually rebrand the organization itself. The rebranding became both one of the initiators as well as an output for a long introspective process inside Praxis, during which the think-tank reimagined itself from a political studies centre to a proactive pioneer in all topics regarding government. We developed interactive visualisations, conducted workshops, employed trainees and set up a new culture of storytelling and visualisation. Some of the developed platforms included:

Meieraha Tax Calculator, an application that made the state budget personal by relating it with one's income, 2014

Kodupilt, an interactive infographic comparing performance statistics of Estonian local governments, 2013

Meieraha (Our Money) interactive visualiation of the Estonian state budget, 2013

Valitsemise Valvurid (the Watchers or Government), a web application tracking the fulfilment of coalition promises, 2011

Improving the experience of dialysis patients

Optofluid Technologies, a team developing sensors for monitoring the medical dialysis process, was looking into creating an application to accompany their hardware. Through a series of observations and conversations we built empahty with nurses and patients, and proposed a concept that would add additional value to the data Optofluid's technology was gathering.

Making investing approachable for all of us

I partnered with the equity crowdfunding provider Fundwise, a spin-off from Hooandja, to help them user research, conceptualise, prototype and design their new platform.

Helping to plan your visit to Tallinn

The Tallinn City Government’s Tourism Office needed to figure out how to structure and design their new, responsive website. The site hosted more than 40000 visits per day, and acted as an information gateway to tourists arriving to Tallinn. While the project resources were scarce for exploratory research, the Office had been collecting a vast amount of data about Tallinn’s visitors, from web analytics, visiting statistics to interviews and questionnaires. Working with the immense data, we synthesised patterns, which were distilled into detailed personas, and inspired building up the information architecture and necessary features for the upcoming redesign.

Engaging conferece guests on a new level

When TED Talks launched their localized TEDx platform, it didn’t take long before a group of enthusiastic minds came together to bring the format to Estonia. Privileged to be part of this team, I started by designing signage and name tags and was soon responsible for the guest experience. Aiming to differentiate, surprise and delight, we mapped down the whole journey and crafted each touch point from the registration, tension building till the event with its many activities and aftercare. Over the years, we experimented with the visceral experience—the visuals, sounds, smells, even taste—and designed activities, interactive installations, and other nudges to help the naturally introvert Estonians break the ice with other participants.

Letting the art speak for itself

The Estonian Academy of Arts needed a new web presence and I was asked to help figure out how that could come to life. The project that might seem as a simple redesign effort presented a complex organisational challenge, as the new platform had to marry the communication needs of nearly 30 EKA’s departments with distinct philosophies and capabilities. Human centred approach came to rescue, as it offered the common ground to unify the stakeholders. My process included over 30 interviews, many card-sorting sessions, co-design sessions with students and other methods considered novel at the time. Although the website’s visual design has been updated many times over the years, the underlaying information architecture and content management principles remain the same to this day.

Verifying the Application of Online Gamification Methods to Introduce Pro-Environmental Behaviour

Mentor of the Year

Clear Communication Award, Nomination

Clear Communication Award, Special Mention in Clear Communication Promoter category

Environmental Act of the Year

Estonian Design Award 2014 Silver in Screen Graphics

Postimees' Cultural Locomotive of the Year

Estonian Civil Pioneer of the Year