Title image: Sebastian Sotavalta
Top row from the left: Sebastian, Emil, Berit. Bottom row from left: Riina, Tea, Laura
1. Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at Frantic.
Emil Makkonen: I do NB sales, which includes prospecting, contacting, client meetings etc. I also take part in some HR related tasks, like recruitment.
Tea Dickman: I’m Tea, a digital service designer. My tasks include designing services, accessibility audits, usability and user experience design, and visual design. You’ll recognize me from my fluffy, blonde hair that’s out of control.
Laura Ahola: I work as a project coordinator, and my main job is to support project managers and team leads in their client projects. I collaborate closely with developers and designers daily.
Berit Lindpere: I work as Team & Client Lead looking after clients and their respective project portfolios, manage projects and agile development, and lead an internal cross-functional team of professionals.
Sebastian Sotavalta: I'm Sebastian, a designer! I have a background in graphic design, so I naturally gravitate towards the visual side of UI design.
Riina Granö: I develop web services. Currently, I'm responsible for a WooCommerce-based eCommerce solution for a B2B client of ours.
2. What made you choose Frantic?
Tea: Frantic’s design-oriented work culture, pleasant, cozy work environment, where people have a finger on the pulse. I’ve always been interested in Frantic because it’s a credible player in the field for its highly skilled design work.
Laura: A youthful and humorous work community, and a flexible, reputable, and genuinely caring employer.
Berit: Second time ‘round, I’m returning “home” to Frantic after 10 years. Great workplace culture and great people, interesting clients and versatile projects, a hands-on role, and being able to make a difference.
Sebastian: During the first interview it became clear that people at Frantic share my values - accessibility, inclusivity, sustainability... And whereas most places I had been interviewed at made me feel very self-conscious, I felt like Frantic was courting me - it was all very flattering. 😂
3. Best part of your job? Most challenging part of your job?
Emil: The best part is definitely the awesome colleagues and a good onboarding process. Perhaps the most challenging part of sales is reaching customers at just the right time.
Tea: The best parts are the freedom, the work community, and the fact that I can really do work that looks like me, that is, drawing and designing. I think it has always been a challenge in design to be able to ask the right questions and get to the core of the problem you have to solve.
Laura: The best thing is the flexibility and versatility of the work and the fact that the work is almost never time or location-based. The challenge is sometimes the unpredictability of work; a fire can occur suddenly.
Riina: The best part of my job is keeping up with changes and improvements to technologies. The most challenging part is working with aging technologies.
4. What’s different about Frantic compared to your previous workplaces?
Tea: A strong design angle in all work offered to the client. The famous Design Thinking and user-centricity are strongly present in our company culture. It’s great that its need or importance doesn’t need to be negotiated each time we start a new project - it’s always part of the package.
Laura: The work culture is very relaxed and open, employees seem like they genuinely enjoy themselves in the workplace and spending time with each other.
Sebastian: The amount of support. As a former, lonely freelancer I've really loved being able to collaborate with other designers. And working with developers has never been as smooth as it's been here at Frantic.
5. What inspires you outside of work?
Emil: I like to watch and also play a lot of different sports myself.
Tea: Currently, I am passionate about visual arts and painting, as well as drawing with traditional methods. Exercise is also part of my free time: I do ballet, street dance, and weight training once a week.
Laura: Enjoying the outdoors, exercising, plants, and friends.
Berit: Family and friends, sports, traveling and languages, good food, and great Riesling.
Sebastian: I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. Sometimes I've been known to moonlight as a comic artist or as an illustrator. I'm also very active within local lgbt+ organisations, which is time-consuming but very empowering.
Riina: Visiting museums, playing computer games, and enjoying the outdoors.
6. The most interesting trend in your field right now?
Emil: Social selling challenges traditional cold calling and nowadays a lot of leads come through social media, such as LinkedIn. This is also a matter that has been taken into account at Frantic.
Tea: Accessibility, inclusive design, and considering the carbon footprint in the design of digital services will be trending topics now and in the future. Internally, we have task forces formed around these themes, which is very cool.
Laura: Continuous self-development and studying; on top of project management skills, it’s beneficial to gain skills e.g. in design or other substance.
Sebastian: Sustainability, whether it comes to social sustainability or green design. Design reflects the world around us, so it's up to us to keep ourselves informed and be ready for change.
Riina: I’m particularly fond of a few past trends that have become mainstream. The maturation of front-end technologies, particularly the development of JavaScript frameworks, such as React and Vue, and the move towards component-based implementations such as the WordPress Gutenberg block editor.
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