Creativity
led by
empathy.

Hip and knee replacements are among the most common planned operations in Estonia, and patients used to wait years for them. When their turn finally came, many were no longer fit for surgery. The brief assumed we would help manage the queue more efficiently. We proposed getting rid of it instead: a care journey where patients start preparing as soon as surgery is indicated, get support with lifestyle changes and chronic conditions, and go into surgery once they are ready.

We interviewed patients across Estonia and the professionals around them, from orthopaedists and family doctors to physiotherapists, mapped the current journey, and validated it with over 40 specialists in a co-creation workshop. The proposals were then tested in workshops with Estonia’s major hospitals.

The Health Insurance Fund turned the work into Estonia’s first care-journey standard designed from the patient’s perspective, piloted in hospitals across the country, and into the country’s first outcome-based funding model. The project won Gold in Service Design for the Public Sector at the Estonian Design Awards 2024.

2021–2022
Team: Ruth-Helene Melioranski, Maarja Mõtus, Riina Raudne (EKA)
Role: Service design

For heart patients, much of the treatment starts after they leave the hospital, and that is where many lose their footing: 30–40% struggle with medication, lifestyle changes and keeping in touch with their care team.

I framed the collaboration with the clinic and guided an international MA student team through interviews, observations, a service safari, stakeholder mapping and co-design. The analysis looked beyond missing information, at fear, trust, responsibility, hierarchy and the everyday routines that take over after discharge.

The teams developed concepts for structured waiting-time communication, peer support, reflection tools and clearer patient communication. Several of them moved forward for implementation.

2025
Team: Daniel Kotsjuba, Riina Raudne and international MA students
Role: Team lead and mentor, Design for Social Innovation

Imagine getting a call from your family doctor telling you that you might develop a serious disease in ten years. As genetics-based medicine moves into everyday care in Estonia, family doctors will be having these conversations, and they need to be designed as carefully as the tests behind them.

Together with the partner, I helped the student teams move from a technical medical innovation to the services and conversations around it, through stakeholder research, systemic analysis, behavioural design and prototyping. The work focused on trust, prevention and shared decision-making.

2024
Team: Daniel Kotsjuba, Riina Raudne and international MA students
Role: Team lead and mentor

In 2023, more than 8,000 young Ukrainians were studying in Estonian schools. Without a common language, students mostly stayed within their own groups, and meaningful encounters were rare.

With the partner, I helped the student teams narrow the broad topic of integration down to everyday contact between young people, and to services the Refugee Council could actually run with its own people and resources. The work included desk research, observations, interviews, co-design and prototyping.

One of the concept teams received the LAETUD award at the EKA Design Showcase.

2023
Team: Andrea Wollensak, Riina Raudne and international MA students
Role: Team lead and mentor

The programmes help Estonian companies and organisations get from environmental awareness to concrete action. I designed and facilitated the Green Tiger Academy’s development format, adapting design sprint logic to sustainability and circular design, and worked as design lead, trainer and mentor in both programmes.

Over several cohorts we worked with around 40–50 organisations and nearly 200 experts and leaders, from Neste, Ericsson, Bigbank, Verston, Timbeco, Thermory, Äripäev and others, through circular audits, opportunity framing, strategy work, prototyping and team coaching.

Partners: Rohetiiger, Enterprise Estonia, with external experts including Markus Vihma and Kaimai Kuldkepp
Role: Design lead, trainer and mentor

With Lotus Timber, we analysed operations, strategy and climate impact, then developed three concept directions: a logistics service, a reframed product category and a new cladding attachment system. One of the concepts has since been patented.

EstHus was already a sustainability-minded company, so the question was how to turn that into a stronger market position and closer customer relationships. One answer was a digital house passport.

Both companies finished as winning teams in their masterclasses.

Circular Design Masterclass
Role: Design lead

Estonia had no shared principles, instructions or visual language for explaining how to sort waste, so every waste station and shopping centre made its own signs. We started the project on our own initiative and brought producer responsibility organisations, the Ministry of the Environment and municipalities around one shared goal.

The result is a system of 62 pictograms in three languages, an implementation guide for waste stations, and a redesigned customer journey at Tallinn’s Pääsküla waste station. In Võru, the signs also carry the Võro name of each waste type, which visitors were curious to read.

The pictograms are now used across Estonia, in waste stations, universities, factories and shops, and received the Baltic Sustainability Award in Design in 2024.

2021–2023
Team: Kristiina Kerge, Teele Puusepp, Joonas Kerge (Things Foundation), with municipalities and waste collection centres
Role: Design lead: service system, visual logic and implementation

Kuhuviia.ee helps people find out where to take things they no longer need, whether for recycling, reuse or correct disposal. Built with producer responsibility organisations, it became Estonia’s national guidance tool, and its search data later shaped the pictogram system.

I led the design across the product concept, interaction, service logic and public communication. Kuhuviia.ee received the Environmental Act of the Year award in 2015.

Team: Kristiina Kerge, Tõnu Kerge, Joonas Kerge (Things Foundation)
Role: Design lead

In 2017, I took over the management and later the leadership of EKA’s Interaction Design MA. My predecessors had done an extraordinary job of establishing the programme’s vision, so my aim was to design a learning process to match it, and to keep the curriculum in step with what will be expected of designers.

As head of curriculum I was responsible for programme development, teaching culture, the guest expert network, industry collaborations and the student journey, together with many colleagues and guest experts, including Nesli Hazal Oktay, Kristjan Mändmaa, Sigmund Abou Chrouch, Quinn Feller and Kärt Viljalo.

The programme received the highest possible result in international accreditation and built partnerships with design schools in Europe, Asia and South America. Its students and graduates have won festival awards and gone on to strong careers, and in 2020 the EKA Council named me Supervisor of the Year for my MA thesis supervision.

2018–2026
Role: Head of Curriculum

Bringing design into the running of a design school is less obvious than it sounds. D-Team is an internal programme where EKA employees take a real challenge from their own work through problem framing, user and stakeholder understanding, idea development, prototyping, testing and reflection. The aim is to grow design champions inside the academy.

Role: Programme designer, facilitator and coach

A semester-long incubator for curriculum teams and university leaders from creative higher education institutions such as EKA, EMTA and Pallas. Together with Marleen Soosaar, I designed curriculum development as a design journey: future backcasting, curriculum audits, value propositions, student journey maps, concept visualisations and individual consultations.

Team: Marleen Soosaar and the participating curriculum teams
Role: Co-designer and facilitator