Challenge
In recent years, Helsinki has become an increasingly popular travel destination for individual Chinese travelers who seek authentic Scandinavian experiences. In 2017, the city of Helsinki partnered with the Chinese tech giant to build a smart city tourism model. As the design partner of the city, the team and I began the journey of creating the best digital travel services for Chinese tourists.
Outcome
A one-stop WeChat Mini Program that enables Chinese visitors to easily discover activities and sights in Helsinki, find a route there, and pay for the trip with just one click. All within one Mini Program.
Impact
Shortly after the successful launch of the Helsinki mini-program, Finnair started collaborating with the team to integrate flight travel experience into the on-stop service. Several tourist destinations in Finland have begun building their own mini-apps and connecting together.
This project made a strong case of Helsinki as the pioneer in smart tourism globally. and It was awarded as the most innovative digital service, Grand One 2019, and Silver price of Vuodenhuiput 2019 Finland.
Understand target users with a Cultural Probe and interviews
The journey started by building a deep understanding of the customer journey, especially what are the needs and the pain points of the Chinese travelers visiting Helsinki. To tackle the challenge in recruiting Chinese travelers in Helsinki and receiving reliable data, “Pop-up Interview” plus“Culture Probe” was selected as the qualitative research method. For the culture probe, a toolkit was created and given to the research participants to enable them easily capture and document their experiences in Helsinki in a fun way. It also gave the team inspiring first-hand insights.
Create the value proposition based on innovation triangle
To supplement the qualitative insights about user behavior, an in-depth dest study on the competing domestic tourism-related services was conducted, and followed by an analysis of the Helsinki city strategy, the existing open API sources, and Tencent's technology capabilities. Through the synergy of human, business, technology aspects, the team crystallized the value proposition as City as the Experience -- offering Chinese tourists with in-depth and up-to-date content, practical transportation freedom to easily get around, and native payment experiences.
Design the best digital experience
The design aimed at achieving a seamless all-in-one digital experience of the entire customer journey which covers discovering, finding info, getting around, and paying.
It also intended to strike the balance between the App interaction pattern that Chinese users are used to, with the Helsinki brand and the Scandinavian minimalism philosophy.
