ÄKTA is the culmination of 15 years of digital entrepreneurship - yes, that takes John (our 'Head Wizard' / CEO) back to middle school. He learned HTML in the 6th grade, made the website for his middle school back in Michigan and since then hasn't considered looking back. After starting half a dozen digital companies - a couple failed, a couple fizzled and morphed into other things, a couple resulted in successful exits - ÄKTA is by far his most exciting venture. The opportunity to work with so many innovative thought leaders and companies has allowed John to bring together a phenomenal team and exceptional process to keep the theories behind user experience and user interface design a monumental part of building applications.

Since inception, ÄKTA has become a boutique powerhouse of top-tier thinkers, from: psychologists to product strategists, technologists and artists, who came together from all over the United States (and some from overseas) to create a fun, energetic and passionate team! Based in the heart of Chicago, we find the city to be an exciting place for a company like ours today and are taking advantage of it. Thanks to a number of progressive digital companies and the combined efforts of start-up enabling groups, the city is buzzing with digital entrepreneurship and we have the opportunity to work with many of them.

Experience design is one of the most interesting, and most fragmented, industries in the world today. Chicago is booming with so many different and ingenious companies and we strive to get our expertise to reach as many of them as we can. So many people can be graphic designers, but so few understand the importance of product strategy and user experiences for their applications. We came to bridge the gap between a flawless design and a flawless design that is completely intuitive.

Fortunately, our passion for design has been complimented with our passion for the deepest levels of user experience, which allow for an unobtrusive and cohesive understanding of what the elements are for truly high quality application interface design.

We are a new company like so many in Chicago, but the core of our team has been working together on projects since 2003 - MGM, Nokia, Playboy, Nintendo, Sony, Alienware, etc. - which has given us familiarity and allowed us to grow in the right way. We love to bring our team together to work on projects for startup companies because we get the challenge that we are always seeking.

We can assure you that working with ÄKTA will be a different experience than other firms. We don’t play games, sell snake oil, hide behind smoke & mirrors, sugar coat, nickel & dime or overuse metaphors...

We get it. We live and breathe this stuff and possess an artistic and technical understanding of the web that we believe truly sets us apart. Our clients think so too: we just turned three years old and in that time, we have become one of the fastest growing independent service companies in Chicago, generated millions of dollars in revenue, scaled the core team to 15 people and have successfully completed over 100 projects for about 40 unique clients. We have about 56,396 years of expertise between us (nearly) and we aren't afraid to use it.