The Gothenburg-based bureau's journey began in Umeå where the company's founder and CEO studied at the Institute of Design. The company describes itself as an innovation company and it works today primarily on infotainment solutions for the automotive industry. It provides service within innovation consultancy, graphic design and interaction design and has advanced rapidly since its founding in 2007. Today it works with such customers as Volvo Cars, AB Volvo, Opel, Semcon and Bombardier. One of its latest assignments was work on infotainment solutions for Volvo's You Concept. "I have always been greatly attracted to the automotive industry and so the decision to begin working for the industry was a natural one for me to take. As many are aware, margins are not particularly high in the automotive industry.  But for us the automotive industry is still such an interesting one with such great potential that choosing to grow with it came naturally. And we also think it's great fun working in the industry; we're having a fantastic time, which is surely one of the reasons behind our great success these past few years," says Joel Sandström.

Important to be active in other industries too
Keeping the customer at the center of things when developing new products is an important philosophy for the bureau. The products that Joel and his staff help to design must be contemporary and create new possibilities. In order to achieve this the company feels it to be of the utmost importance to view assignments through fresh eyes and so their strategy is always to work in more than one industry. The company currently performs 30 percent of its work in other industries, some with greater connections than others to the automotive industry. "There is a danger in only working in a single industry and a risk of becoming isolated and losing valuable perspectives. A large part of our strength resides in our working for several industries in parallel. This means we are able to incorporate new findings and approaches from other industries and hit upon solutions different to those an individual working in the automotive industry on a daily basis might have done," informs Joel.

Working with Innovation
The Interaction Design bureau always seeks to work with innovations that add value to people's lives. To achieve this it is often necessary to test and evaluate products in new ways. "If you develop three different variants of a product and then ask the consumer which of them is best there is a risk that the response is merely a ranking of three different bad products. The customer may feel that product A is better than products B and C, while in actual fact none of the products are especially good. So sometimes it's necessary to stay one step ahead of customers and create something they hadn't thought of themselves. It's a matter of putting new technologies to use and staying sensitive to the consumer's demands while creating something that is economically viable. This can sometimes mean overturning old business models and starting from scratch in order to make use of new technology and advances. If you don't somebody else will pretty soon," says Joel.

Today the company is represented in two countries, has 18 employees and ambitions of growing larger. "We're always looking for new, capable employees, and they are in short supply these days. Our catchment area is not limited to Sweden and many of our employees come from different parts of Europe. But we don't want to become some gigantic organization; many of the best products were developed by small companies," concludes Joel Sandström.