2013
Founded in
Better Services Are Our Mission
Palvelumuotoilu Palo is a Finnish service design agency based in Oulu and Rovaniemi. We work nationwide with companies, public sector organisations and non-profits to develop better services, customer and employee experiences, and digital solutions through human-driven design.
140 +
Completed projects
310
Arranged trainings
We are an excellent combination of developers and researchers
Initial Spark
The initial spark was ignited in 2012, when Piia and Sari took part in service design training. The training was led by Essi, whose passion for service design was contagious among the participants. That training did not only awaken an interest in service design; it also brought Piia and Sari together.
The founding of Palo in 2013 was the result of chance and shared thinking. Piia had been considering starting a company, but solo entrepreneurship did not appeal to her. Sari, meanwhile, was wondering whether entrepreneurship could be the next step in her career. When they met through a project, the conversation turned to entrepreneurship — and both realized they shared the same dream. This is how Palvelumuotoilu Palo was born: the first company in Northern Finland to focus solely on service design.
Service Design Vision
From the very beginning, the company stood out through its vision of using service design in a broad and versatile way. We believed that the best results are achieved when the client’s own expertise in their field is combined with service design methods. From the start, Palo has emphasized:
- the involvement of people and different stakeholders in co-creation
- empathy and a deep understanding of customers’ needs
- the creative application of service design methods
- and the use of clients’ tacit knowledge
With this vision Palo has carried out numerous projects and trainings in both the public and private sectors. The industries have ranged from IT to health and social care services, and the development focus from digital services to the development of city centres. We have had the opportunity to support the development of both customer and employee experience, as well as strategies and internal operations.
One special highlight on our journey took place in 2017. At that time, the municipality of Ii’s InnoHiili project, in which we worked as service design experts, won the European Commission’s prestigious RegioStars Award. We were involved in the project by implementing three service design modules. One of the key reasons for the project’s success was its particular focus on involving local residents.
During our existence, we have also invested in spreading the service design mindset in Finland. Concrete examples of this include the service design card deck published in 2018 and our popular blog. In fact, we strongly suspect that it is one of the most-read blogs on service design in Finland.
Injecting New Energy
In 2022, the circle was literally completed when Essi joined Palo’s team — this time as an employee and expert. Her strong vision of service design complemented Palo’s work perfectly and helped the company create an even deeper impact in collaboration with clients. In spring 2024, Palo underwent a change in ownership when Essi became one of the company’s owners. This move further strengthened Palo’s position as a creative, participatory and innovative service design company that works proudly from Northern Finland.
Today, Palo is still the same company that began its journey in 2013.
Palo’s journey continues — evolving, inspiring and creating impact.
Our Solutions
We help organizations build better services around the people who use and deliver them.
Our service offering spans several core areas: general service and business development, strategic and internal organizational development, customer research and testing, workshops and design sprints, and training and coaching. Additionally, we provide a model for ongoing flexible collaboration with organizations. Currently, we want to concentrate on three interconnected areas: employee experience, digital services, and physical space — because today’s service experiences rarely live in just one of these dimensions alone. Alongside practical service design work, we have also produced service design tools, including service design card deck, several work templates available on our site, and design games for collaborative work. Also, we host a popular and very extensive blog on service design in our website.
In short: Palo combines hands-on service design competence and skills with tangible tools that help organizations build better services and run their own design processes more confidently.
Employee Experience Design
A strong employee experience is the foundation of a thriving workplace. We use service design to develop work processes, daily practices, and work environments that genuinely support how people work and how organizations succeed.
Employee experience covers the full journey an employee has with an organization, from recruitment through onboarding, daily work, leadership and culture, to the eventual end of employment. Research consistently shows that investing in this experience pays off: it reduces staff turnover, increases productivity, lowers operational costs, strengthens commitment, and drives more innovation. It also shows up directly in customer experience, since employees who feel good at work pass that on to the people they serve.
In practice, this means working closely with teams to map current processes, surface friction points, and co-create new ways of working, internal services, and shared practices, always grounded in real employee needs rather than assumptions.
Digital Service Design
User experience largely determines whether a digital service succeeds. To earn real adoption, a service has to match what people actually need, expect, and are used to. Digital service design applies the same human-centered thinking, process, and methods as service design more broadly, but with attention to the particular demands of digital channels: growing volumes of data, opportunities for personalization, and the need for accessibility and ease of use.
We support organizations across the full digital service lifecycle, from defining requirements and shaping new concepts, to mapping and refining digital customer journeys, to running focused design sprints and testing prototypes with real users. The goal throughout is the same: fewer points of friction, smoother and more memorable user experiences, and digital services that genuinely fit the people who rely on them.
Spatial Service Design
The spaces where a service takes place shape the experience just as much as the people involved. A physical environment is never just its structure; it’s filtered through what people perceive, remember, imagine, and share with others in that space. Seen this way, built environments function as interfaces between the digital and physical, and between people and the services around them.
Applying service design to spatial planning makes the process more human-centered: it clarifies why certain design choices matter, surfaces the real problems worth solving, sequences design work in the right order, and ensures investments are well-considered and tested before they’re made. We work with organizations on workplace environments, customer service spaces, and the prototyping and testing of physical workstations and layouts, always involving the people who will actually use these spaces in the design process itself.
Our Values
Palo is defined by the values it represents. Like a compass, they guide us in our journey.
Impact
We keep the client’s goals and things that create value in mind. We focus on creating measurable impact and testing ideas and solutions in practice. Ordinary solutions are not an option for us.
Working Together
We believe that by working together and listening to customers, we achieve the best results. It is also important to involve the right people at an early stage and commit all parties to the development process.
Creativity
For us, creativity in service design means an open attitude and the courage to throw oneself into the process; the ability to seek inspiration from different elements. Solutions emerge when creativity is supported by a process proven to be reliable.
Development
We continuously learn from one another and from the work we do. We keep up with the times so that we can effectively harness the winds of change in our own journey across the waters of service design.
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Our Experts
We are a multidisciplinary team of service design professionals united by a strong passion and drive to create better services together with service providers. Our team has a wealth of research and design expertise. You can contact us directly.
Piia Innanen
Leading Service Designer, Owner, CEO
Piia is the CEO of Palo and a seasoned professional in user-centred design, with particular expertise in digital service development, strategic design, and service design training and coaching.
Service design methods, deepening customer understanding, and creating new service concepts have become a second nature to Piia through her work. Piia is equally trusted to sweat the details and manage the bigger picture.
Sari Komulainen
Leading Service Designer, Owner
Methodical Sari is Palo’s Operations Manager, with particular expertise in conducting customer insight research, applying a variety of service design methods, and developing service concepts.
Sari is a naturally creative thinker with a knack for solving practical problems and shaping future visions alike. She is an effective organiser of tasks and projects, with much to contribute to the field of service development.
Essi Kuure
Leading Service Designer, Owner
Essi is Palo’s Creative Director, who thrives especially in the world of experimentation and prototyping. Her areas of expertise include service design training and coaching, co-development and workshops, and creative methods.
Essi has a broad understanding of service design — both theoretical and practical — including its possibilities and limitations across a variety of development processes. Essi never tires of being inspired by service design, having come to know it from the perspectives of studies, projects, research, teaching and business.
Contact Information
info@palvelumuotoilupalo.fi
(inquiries, offers and tenders)
Hallituskatu 23 A 6, 90100 Oulu
Markkinakatu 6 A 4, 96200 Rovaniemi
Tel. 050 470 4818
Business ID 2541389-9