Hello!
I’m Teemu. I think and I do.
(UX/UI/Product Design, mostly!)
Me as a designer
I’ve been in the design game for a fairly long time – over 20 years! I started as a graphic designer working mostly for magazines and news media, but by now I’ve completely migrated to the digital domain*. In the last few years, I’ve helped create quite a few digital products and services, for customers big and small.
As a designer, my work is grounded in the usual suspects: Design Thinking, double diamond, service design methods, etc. But! I also have a tendency to read a lot, learn new things, and consequently add new flavors to my ways of working – naturally, depending on the nature of the project. Lately I’ve been intrigued by the emergent AI tech and its myriad possibilities in design work (who hasn’t, really?) and on the other hand, the role of human creativity in all this.
Whatever I’m working on, I strive for my solutions to be engaging, functional and user-friendly. I love to tackle even difficult problems and hone the deliverables down to the tiniest detail (considering common sense and budget restraints, of course). I believe good design is also born out of good communication, and that is something I emphasize in every project, especially in team environments.
I can jump into a new project with ease and get a grasp of things quickly, thanks to my long multi-domain experience. I prefer working in projects that involve concepts and strategy to some degree – but I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty in a dev team, either!
*) “fun” fact: I did websites as early as back in 1998 – but couldn’t really make them as visually pleasing as I would’ve liked with the technology available back then (think <table><tr><td> etc). So I figured, well, this internet thing is going to blow over soon anyway, and moved on to print design…
Senior Product Designer based in Helsinki, Finland
20+ years of design experience
Professional dad joker
My skillset in detail
I’d like to call myself a “holistic designer” – in a sense that I’ve worked with a lot of different people with different disciplines in different environments, and I like to think something of that all has rubbed off on me. Not that I’m a world-class expert in every topic, but I often collect little bits of knowledge here and there, learn a bit more and put them into use. So if your product needs some nice illustrations to freshen up the UI, no problem! Logo needs updating? Can do. Some user research needs to be done? Let’s go!
My principal areas of expertise & interest beyond the core Product Design skills are Design Systems and DesignOps, and I try to introduce those approaches wherever possible, since even a small dose of either one can improve the work processes and team operation a lot. Accessibility is the bedrock of much of my design work – I believe pretty much every product or service should be accessible out-of-the-box these days.
Other topics currently on my radar are the emerging AI technologies and how they relate to design work and , Design Leadership and Motion Design.
