Sami Surakka

Context

When I joined the Groke Pro team, the interface was functionally decent but didn’t convey the level of polish and trustworthiness the client wanted for a mission‑critical navigation system. They wanted the UI to feel “premium” in a way that matched the sophistication of the underlying technology. At the same time, the design process itself needed to be better systematized so the team could move quickly without sacrificing clarity and safety.

Solution

I started by synthesizing insights from in‑depth UX research that had been conducted by a previous partner, to avoid re‑learning what the team already knew about operators’ needs and constraints. Before touching layouts, I built a moodboard to explore how “premium” should look and feel in the specific context of a maritime bridge. From there, I created a Figma design library and worked closely with the rest of the UI team to iterate on layouts, hierarchy, and interaction patterns until we reached a level of quality we were confident to ship. In addition to design work, I implemented parts of the interface directly in Unity, which went into production.

The speed improvement came largely from how we worked, not just what we designed. I was embedded directly in the UI team rather than operating as an external handoff point. We ran lightweight asynchronous critiques on Slack, iterated in rapid cycles, and comfortably stepped outside the bounds of our formal roles when it made sense. Under the previous agency model, design decisions often missed critical technical constraints, which caused expensive back-and-forth before anything could move forward. Our tighter loop eliminated that bottleneck. Beyond the core product, I also contributed to marketing materials and collaborated with the data science team to improve their annotation pipeline process and UI.

Impact

The client was very happy with both the speed and the quality we achieved. In practice, I stepped into responsibilities that had previously been shared by a team of two to three designers, while also helping to establish a design language that carried over into Groke Fleet and other touchpoints. The Groke UI has received a lot of positive attention in the industry, and my work on Groke Pro directly led to being invited to work with Zeabuz on their autonomous navigation UI. I also contributed to the visual direction of Groke's internal product and brand touchpoints, including merchandise and presentation materials.

Role

I worked as the UI designer on Groke Pro, responsible for screen design, workflow design, asset delivery, and implementing selected UI elements in Unity. Mikko led the team and encouraged a highly collaborative, iterative way of working; I partnered with Asko and Samu on the implementation side to ensure the designs translated cleanly into the product.

Reflection

Together with Groke Fleet, this is one of my favorite projects. The collaboration within the UI team was seamless, and we were able to ship a large volume of high‑quality work under real‑world constraints. It also reinforced how much leverage there is in pairing a strong design system with a close, day‑to‑day partnership between design and engineering. We leaned heavily into taste being the determining factor of whether something should ship or not, while relying on solid UX research conducted earlier.