Helsinki Design Award winner Reaktor focuses on human-centred design in times of change
Sitting on the sixth floor of the Reaktor office in Helsinki, designers Minttu Paukkunen and Panu Korhonen reflect on the times at hand––and the solutions offered by design.
Finnish Reaktor is a global, multidisciplinary technology consultancy with over 700 employees spread over nine countries and three continents. With clients such as pay television network HBO, Air France-KLM Group, ABB and Adidas, Reaktor now also possesses a brand new achievement. Namely, the Helsinki Design Week Award.
The Helsinki Design Award is a recognition of actions and for creators that make the city a better place to live. A collaboration between the City of Helsinki and Helsinki Design Week, this year the award focuses on business economics, and how design expertise is able to create conditions for successful, international business operations.
“Finland is seeking new growth outside of the traditional industrial sectors, and the creative industries may have a crucial impact on the national economy. To understand its potential, we need role models,” says Helsinki Design Week Founder and Director Kari Korkman.
The Helsinki Design Award recognizes and highlights the contributions of the business community to the field of design. It looks for entities that truly stand out through bold and international activities. The 2024 jury members include Helsinki’s Chief Design Officer Hanna Harris, City Design Manager Piritta Hannonen, CEO Minka Koukkunen, and start-up entrepreneur Mona Ismail. The jury is chaired by Korkman.
What makes Reaktor a worthy winner?
According to Chairman Korkman, “Reaktor has been both interdisciplinary and bold right from the start. The company has grown into an international entity with hundreds of employees, of which nearly 90 percent are also owners. The core values of its operations, the attitude of the working community and the company’s continuous ability to innovate are what undoubtedly makes for the well-founded decision in selecting Reaktor as the recipient of the Helsinki Design Award in 2024!”
In an ever-changing world, Reaktor is adamant to drive change by challenging the status quo while looking forward to shaping what is next. According to the company, “The world isn’t going to get better from a single piece of software––but from new ways of working, thinking outside the box, and constantly iterating. We are doing our part by making everything we work on a little bit better.”
While we all love a bit of design talk, what does this mean precisely?
According to Panu Korhonen, Designer at Reaktor, the work begins somewhere in strategy, moving through the way a service or product works, all the way to the design of the smallest of icons on the user interface. “A designer at Reaktor will move back and forth through the terrain of work at all times. It is demanding and asks for a lot of experience. At Reaktor we have over 130 designers that come from different backgrounds.”
Designer Minttu Paukkunen agrees, “The designers are all different from each other, and come with their own skill sets and strengths.”
In an industry that is quite immense and comes with a fast pace, challenges are constant. What are some of the questions that the designers are having to tackle everyday?
“One of the biggest challenges that we are faced with are the questions posed by the use of AI,” begins Korhonen, “we are only in the early stages of trying to figure out what the technology is good for and when we should steer away from using it.”
“This, in a sense, goes hand in hand with the task of designing today. Whether it be designing services for the occupational aspects of life or to private persons, we need to be designing the perspective of fitting. The solutions must fit people’s lives––and that calls for certain empathy. We need to be able to understand and immerse ourselves in people’s lives in order to be able to design. Design from a solution point of view, based only on pure needs, no longer works. Instead, we need to meet and design for people’s emotions. Their fears, worries and feelings of inspiration.”
When it comes to artificial intelligence, designers are met with similar responses. In the matter of technology solutions, excitement is real but so is the feeling of fear.
Paukkunen has a concrete example in mind, “In 2016, we began thinking about what makes people worry. What makes people worry is their health and in times of distress, their ability to find help and care. It took more than four years from that for people to start using remote doctor’s appointments and the associated applications and services.”
“Finding what works is the most important aspect of the design process. At Reaktor, we are indeed in charge of making the end product, but perhaps more importantly, also responsible for the design of the needed workflow. This refers to the steps, processes and tasks involved in completing the project. Creating change within the workflow is another set of issues to tackle,” says Korhonen.
This, according to Paukkunen, also refers to the use of AI because changing people’s behavior is hard––and in the end, design should also be a process of asking whether the behavior should change?
Something as complex as AI does not always come off as all that sexy either.
“For the multinational ABB Group we have created a solution where AI is in charge of reading, sorting and condensing the enormous amount of RFPs, or requests for proposals, sent to its Sales Team. So instead of a team member reading through giant documents boasting 50-100 pages, proposals can be sent based on shorter versions in a much more lenient way,” says Korhonen.
Referring here to a solution that is not necessarily as fun as asking ChatGPT a semi-precarious question while waiting for a dubious answer, but rather a lean B2B solution that makes the everyday easier for the business.
But does it come with its set of worries?
“Sure, with ABB the salesforce was quick to respond with ‘is AI going to take our jobs’. No it will not, what it will do however, is take away the dreadful bore of your daily tasks and leave you with the part that you actually like doing,” the designer laughs.
Paukkunen concurs, “In a way, we are finding ourselves in the business of making more effective and lenient business solutions for workflows. But the processes behind design are still very much manual, like handicraft–and the thinking is human-centered, not technology-focused.”
In an ever-changing world with its sets of challenges and the pace that makes most technology-solutions age in a very rapid way, how do the designers keep themselves from growing tired, or simply becoming cynical?
Korhonen is quick to answer, “In an industry where even the most thought through and developed solutions can be opted out incredibly fast, I still believe we as designers are able to change things. Because even when the artifact, or a service, is replaced, habits have been changed. The change in people’s behavior, induced by great design, is permanent and lasting. When we change people’s perception, while making feelings of fear disappear, we are in fact, changing the world.”
“When we change people’s perception, while making feelings of fear disappear, we are in fact, changing the world.” Designer Panu Korhonen
“To me, being able to show professionals these hand-drawn examples of user interfaces representing their workflows and seeing their eyes light up is phenomenal. It’s like a light bulb going off, ‘Could my work really be this easy?’” Paukkunen smiles.
“Or in the case of remote healthcare services: to believe that we are able to receive high quality care over the internet, without having to travel to places,” Korhonen agrees.
“Coming up with these exact and optimal solutions to specific situations and needs, that is my absolute reward,” Paukkunen says, “but I might just also be a bit of a perfectionist.”