Sami Surakka

Hi, I'm Sami. I turn design into practical leverage: clearer workflows, fewer errors, faster decisions, and products that actually ship.

I work on complex and high-stakes systems, from discovery through shipped product, with executives as readily as with engineering, product, and go-to-market.

Currently AI Product Manager and Designer @ Kaiku.

Writing

Notes on product, design, and making complex systems usable.

Producing code was never the bottleneck

Across hundreds of organisations the throughput gain is single digits to low teens. The decisions around the code, and the machine that can absorb it, are still the work.

13 Oct 2026

Taking developers on UX field trips

A ticket can list the requirement. Sitting with operators is how developers remember why the extra second costs.

10 Sept 2026

Design systems used to take months

Scaffolding a Storybook can take an hour now. Adoption, governance, and a system that survives you still take the rest.

10 Sept 2026

Part 1: Deployment is not a release

Deploy gets bits into production. Release is when the product, the org, and the users are ready for what those bits do.

8 Sept 2026

Part 2: AI made deploys faster. It didn’t make releases happen

Continuous delivery is still right. AI raised the cost of skipping the product half of release — ownership, exposure, and a story the org can tell.

8 Sept 2026