Client: City of Espoo
Dates: January - current 2018
My roles: Design Research; Workshop planning, Graphics and proposal making
Skills and tools: Field Research; Workshop planning (structure design; design games ); proposal making.
Group project with: Chiayu Chang, Saga Santala, Siiri Lepola, Tilda Jyräsalo
This Finnoo project is conducted as a part of the Designing for Services course in Aalto University, arranged in spring 2018. The project is arranged in collaboration with the City of Espoo aiming at applying service design thinking to maximum value added and provide a new solution of sustainable development through citizen engagement.
Brief
Finnoo is a new developing area in Espoo, aiming to be a seaside "living room" for all in the future.
- Finnoo has the nature and wildlife, metro and centrallocation, seashore and marine-life.
- 17 000 new inhabitants and rapidly growing neighbourhood needs various services to make the best out of their life and residence in Finnoo.
How to deliver this Finnoo identity to people and keep it up in the future? How to deliver this positive image along with a community feeling that attracts people? How to create an enduring community culture ?
Research & Findings
To get more information about the current situation of Finnoo, we started a cohesive research. For the field research, we did observation by site visit and interviewed more than 10 people nearby. We did benchmarking of similar waterfront areas and construction projects to have an idea of what kind of maritime districts there already exist in Finland and what kind of construction projects have the City of Helsinki and the City of Espoo been doing lately.
Finnoo Workshop
The key finding from the site visits and background research was that the construction happening in Finnoo area causes some conflicts of interests among different representatives. Hence, a workshop for Finnoo people was conducted to promote communication and mutual understanding.
Workshop topic: Engage people and paint a picture of the future of Finnoo together
Workshop aim: Verify the hypothesis about resident engagement and to co-design Finnoo vision together with the participants.
Insights Definition
The Finnoo workshop successfully promoted communication among different representatives, the result implied great demands and value in revolving the strong conflicts and thorny problems. We defined 6 vital insights which covered various aspects in Finnoo .
# 1: Plenty of potential for becoming a activity destination with beautiful outdoor areas.
# 2: Sustainability is playing a big part in the Finnoo plans, but doesn’t show in the area yet.
# 3: Espoo city and its services need to be visible and seen warm and approachable for its residents.
# 4:The history of the place should not be just ditched, but be present also in the future.
# 5: Areal plans affect many people’s life and can cause conflict of interests.
# 6: There is a need to improve communication and engage residents, the system should be flexible, listen to people and change.
Magic
Based on the research, we categorized factors related to making an area attractive into three parts, nature, easy daily life and magic. Since Finnoo has great conditions and plans to reach the goal of building a nature-friendly area providing easy living, the mission for our group was to focus on the third part - creating and building the Finnoo magic, which contained all the insights we gathered.
To illustrate, the city can nudge some everyday magic to the city planning to create a new area with a nice atmosphere. Keeping this in mind and enhancing these small details, the city will provide better functioning services and have that little extra in Finnoo, that will make people want to come to visit and move there.
Outcomes & Deliverables
Resident Types
The resident types were created as an important consideration for Finnoo development based on the research and insights we got in the project. They address the different kinds of residents that are represented in Finnoo and also in general in different city districts.
Vision and Principles
Roadmap and Concept Ideas
We suggest that the City of Espoo should not only concentrate on building the physical Finnoo but also the ‘magic’ and the culture. The culture of strong communities and innovativeness will not just pop up when the infrastructure is ready. Instead, it also needs to be started to built along with the infrastructure. The roadmap introduces five steps that will transform Finnoo into a sustainable city pioneer where the city and the citizens work hand in hand. It is a strategy for the City of Espoo to achieve the vision. In the beginning, the city holds most of the power but step by step the residents become more active and the city can stay in the background. The roadmap could also be used as a tool for the City of Espoo to evaluate its maturity when it comes to resident-centeredness. In addition, we see great potential in using the roadmap for other similar areas too or even scaling it up to consider the whole city.
This project was a mind-shifting experimentation for the clients and the Finnoo people. Our project client saw great value and possibilities in the deliverables of the new Finnoo vision and approach of building a better community. The project will continue to concrete planning and implementation in April 2018.
The outcome of our project is a strategy - or a mindset - to make Finnoo reach the magic, as a sustainable city pioneer that sets an example for a brave and engaging model of city and citizens working hand in hand.
