Sami Surakka

Context

ERICA is Finland's national emergency response system, handling approximately 3 million emergency calls per year and dispatching police, rescue, prehospital emergency care, and social services across the country. I initially joined to cover for the existing usability expert during her maternity leave, which meant picking up ongoing work, understanding the domain quickly, and delivering without much ramp‑up time. Once I had my bearings, it became clear that while we were on a decent track, there was significant room to mature UX: I was the only dedicated designer, user research had lapsed, and low‑fidelity mockups were often treated as if they were final designs.

Solution

To re‑anchor the product in real user needs, I kicked off with a guerrilla UX survey and presented the findings to our VP to build support for deeper research. We then organized on‑site visits where entire teams met users in their context, observing and interviewing them as they worked. I coached non‑UX colleagues on how to conduct contextual interviews and capture insights. I compiled the research into findings and concrete next steps for our roadmap. In parallel, I introduced design sprints to give large features clearer momentum. First as an internal practice, then as a consulting service we could offer to clients. Finally, building on my thesis work on style guides, I created a living design library in Adobe XD (Figma wasn't allowed for security reasons) to bring more consistency and speed to our UI work. The design library became the de facto UI standard for the product family, giving teams a single source of truth for components and patterns.

To scale UX influence beyond what one person could review, I introduced "UX ambassadors": developers in each team who volunteered to champion usability within their squads. I trained them in usability heuristics, contextual interview techniques, and UI design practices, and invited them to contribute directly to UI decisions with a UX review loop. Each of the five to six development teams had at least one ambassador. The model was effective but contingent on individual enthusiasm. To ensure more consistent quality, I paired ongoing mentoring with structured reviews, and the growing UX team helped absorb the review load over time.

Impact

I designed operator workflows for risk analysis, caller guidance, and response dispatching — the core interaction loop that determines how quickly and accurately each call is handled.

During and after my tenure, one the key KPIs, the percentage of emergency calls answered within 30 seconds, improved from 92–94% (2015–2016, pre-rollout) to 97–99% (2018–2022), based on publicly available data from the Emergency Response Centre Agency. End-user satisfaction, measured in a national survey, has consistently rated above 4.3 out of 5 across all service dimensions.

These outcomes reflect the work of a large, cross-disciplinary team across the Emergency Response Centre Agency, Insta, and multiple cooperating authorities. My contribution was to the UX layer: ensuring that the tools operators use every day support speed, accuracy, and clarity under pressure.

Beyond direct product impact, these changes helped raise the UX maturity of the organization: research became a visible and tangible part of how we made decisions, and the UX team grew from one person to three. Design sprints not only improved how we tackled complex features but also generated direct revenue when we used them as a structured offering for clients. Our then CTO, Miia Onkalo, later noted that our organisation had the highest UX maturity across Insta at the time.

Role

I was hired as a trainee, but practically immediately became the de facto UX lead working across five to six development teams, testing, client delivery, and product management in an organization that grew to around 100 people at its peak. I owned UX research, workflow design, facilitation of sprints, and the creation and maintenance of the style guide and design library, while also mentoring new UX hires as they joined.

Reflection

It was a demanding place to be early in my career, and I'm proud of what I managed to put in place. Looking back, though, I would be more intentional about honoring the good work that was happening before I arrived. Early on, I focused heavily on what needed improving and less on recognizing existing strengths. Since then, I've tried to carry forward a more balanced approach: combine a drive to improve things with genuine respect for what teams have already built.