Haaga-Helia's Teemu Moilanen received the prestigious accreditation of a service design Accredited Master trainer

Haaga-Helia's LAB8 lead, Dr. Teemu Moilanen received an accreditation to become the highest level service design trainer. He is the world's 26th Service Design Master. Dr. Moilanen, who holds over 20 years of experience from developing services, is pleased for the accreditation.

— "I've been working hard for this, even the accreditation process itself takes weeks to prepare to", he tells.

The master level accreditation for service design trainers is done by the service design organisation Service Design Network (SDN). SDN has over 30 000 member across the world.

The need for expertise is growing

Moilanen says that his accreditation is only the beginning, because one of the main objectives for the Service Experience Laboratory LAB8 that he's leading, is to become the most dynamic Laboratory as platform for applied research in Finland whose all trainers are accredited by SDN. At the moment LAB8 has three SDN Accredited Master trainers - Dr. Riina Iloranta and Dr. Mário Passos Ascenção.

Moilanen believes that the need for service design expertise is growing in the future.

— "Service design has taken its place as one of the most crucial building blocks for developing businesses just in a time frame of past few years", he explains.

Comparing to conventional design, service design highlights the importance of human-centricity and the understanding the needs of the end-users. The aim is to create human-centred and functional solutions that have a drastic, positive impact on the customer experience.

Finnish service design in demand

There's multiple influencers in the Finnish service design scene and e.g. the Helsinki-based Hellon has gained reputation as one of the most reputable service design companies in the world. Moilanen tells that the Finnish service design is in high demand at the moment, a golden era as one would say.

— "Finland is a pioneer in many aspects when thinking of service design. Our level of expertise is top-notch and globally acknowledged", he states.

Moilanen tells that that there is a small and highly innovative community of service designers in Finland, that is rapidly growing. This is fortunate in many ways as being on the top means continuous learning and improvement, because trends and phenomenons are constantly evolving.

Strong ties to the industry

LAB8 is known for its expertise on special fields which includes developing services with service design and providing service design training for companies. The experts of LAB8 has completed over 100 service design projects over the past years and there are many satisfied customers from Blue1, Diacor, and Hartwall Arena to Helsinki Music Centre and S-chain.

Additionally, LAB8 has trained hundreds of service designers to answer to the needs of the industry. Besides service design, LAB8 provides e.g. trend reports, high-tech tools for service development, gamification and other fast and agile methods for improving business processes.