Inland team: Pia
What have you been doing before?
I have a colourful history with different occupations and working experiences. Late 1990’s I graduated as a teacher of flute playing from the Conservatory of Helsinki. Some years and different music schools later, my daughter was born, we lived one year at Utsjoki, I worked as a nanny in different kindergartens, and finally started audiovisual communication studies at Edupoli. The next 15 years passed by with a new profession and working for different employers with different graphic design assignments.
The year 2013 was the next turning point in my life — once again I found myself applying to a new school. The same year at the autumn I started my BA design studies at Aalto University. Following five years I studied full time hard and determinedly to become a designer.
2. Why did you come to Inland?
I applied for this position to this particular organisation because I am an idealist. Public services, a welfare state, solidarity towards underprivileged, and equal rights for living as “a citizen of a planet earth”… These, are some of the values I believe and want to believe in. That is to say that working as a service designer here at Inland Design (=Migri’s in-house co-design team) is more than just a work for me — the work encounters with my own values and furthermore with the content of life that is meaningful for me. So — instead of saying “I came to Inland”, I have to say that “inland came to me”, and I am honoured to be part of it.
3. How do you want to work in Inland?
Numerous designers say these same phrases, but I am really serious when I say that “as a designer, I want to work for a better, more functional and more equal world”. To make this fine cheesy sentence more solid, I try to place it into Inland Design and Migri (=The Finnish Immigration Service) context.
To implement the objective of making the world at least somewhat better, more functional and equal into practice, I commit myself to this:
1. As an individual, a designer, and a co-worker I dedicate to work in open, inclusive, equal, respectful and supportive manner.
2. As a member of Inland team, I am committed to following the team’s principles, such as co-design principle: to collaboratively develop better services (both external and internal) together with co-workers, clients and other stakeholders.
3. As a change maker of organisation culture, I will give my own contribution to show a concrete example of executing experimental and action-oriented/ problem-solving working practises (via design thinking and service design methods).
4. As a human-centred-design representative, I will do my best to always keep the “human” in the centre. In the Migri context that is to say to keep the focus especially on the immigrants, who might easily be forgotten in a huge government context with a lot of practices that are guided via legislation and quite stiff policies.
4. How do you envision Inland in the future?
I envision that in a few years Inland Design is a settled and inseparable part of Migri. I imagine that the amount of service designers and an understanding of the importance of “design thinking” has increased not only in Migri but all over the Finnish government field due to the transformation of government culture. Inland is still one of the leading pioneers in the union of Finnish Design and Government phenomenon, but the frontier is crowded with new in-house teams and over and cross borders functioning networks.
5. What do you do when you’re not working in Inland?
Even though I am very happy, proud and honoured to work at Inland, I have also other life than work. ;) I have a daughter, two cats, a lot of houseplants, a basket full of half-made handcrafts, and I work quite actively as a volunteer in two different associations. If I have no voluntarily acquired obligations, the biggest joy for me is to spend quality time with my beloved daughter and awesome friends. The good second place is (quite often) guaranteed for the sofa and qualitatively varying audiovisual publications.
