Appointment to View: Behind the scenes of the remote-controlled café

Finnish advertising agency Hasan & Partners and creative studio Perfect Fools created the internet-controlled interactive café to show why good design is so important. It purposely included bad design to show what a difference this would make to customers.

The name of the cafe – Kauko – is Finnish for "remote control".

It is part of a wider campaign including PR, TV, print, outdoor and banners, to draw attention to the concept and importance of design within everyday environments, led by executive creative director Eka Ruola.

People all over the world can make real-time changes to the café’s interior, and adjust chair or table heights, as well as control the lighting and music, via a website, youdesign.fi.

Since 9 January, Kauko has been located in Helsinki's biggest shopping centre, Forum.

The actual physical café was produced in Denmark by GP Udstillings Design, and the production of the project started in October 2011.

The café was first put together in Stockholm at the Perfect Fools studio at the start of December, where a number of tests were performed to check the interactive elements worked.

It was then shipped to Helsinki at the beginning of January for the 'World Design Capital 2012' opening and opened to the public – both offline and online – on 9 January.

The World Design Capital is a city-promotion project held every two years, which celebrates the merits of design. It promotes cities that are using design in an effective way to improve their social, cultural and economic life, throughout a year-long programme of design-related events.

Other recent brand campaigns created by Perfect Fools include Swarovski, Heineken and Converse.