Client: Vahanen Oy
Dates: September - November 2017
Dates: September - November 2017
My roles: Research; Workshop, Proposal Making
Skills and tools: Field Research (Interviews, observations, pop-up event); Storyboards; Workshop Assistant (Photograph); Proposals (Concept development & visualization).
Group project with: Lara Jasim, Jukka Jokinen, Anna-sofia Juntunen
Poppari is a User Inspired Design Project. In this project we collaborated with Vahanen Oy. Vahanen offers residential-based property management and total renovation services. Our main brief from Vahanen was to find new ways to motivate and engage the residents and encourage them to vitalize their own neighbourhood. Our task was to introduce them solutions and provide the needed tools for that. We used user inspired design methods like ethnography, co-design and co-creation to collect data and also to plan and facilitate workshops. Our main goal was to be able to engage the residents with the process and to have them navigate us to the desirable outcome.
Research & Findings
Kalasatama is one of the newest neighbourhoods in Helsinki and there are many projects and innovations being tested in the area. The whole area is now under construction and will be ready by 2040. A field research by observation and interviews were arranged to get valuable insights. Some interesting and strong findings were:
EMPTY STREETS /
PARKING SPACE EVERYWHERE! /
25,000 INHABITANTS (currently 3000) /
ONLY PRIVATE BACKYARDS /
NO NEARBY SERVICES YET /
NO SUBURB GREENERY “YET”
'NOT YET’ was what we defined as the key insight of Kalasatama. As a new area under construction, there are people already living in, while the services and many infrastructures are not ready. Overmuch empty parking space but no services or greenery. Can we do something with those empty parking lots? This was where we started to involving the existing inhabitants to think about what they are expecting, and what can be changed.
To first inspired residents' curious , we decided to organize an event named POP-UP PARKKIRUUTU, which would be easily approached, accessible and invited the residents to join and to share their thoughts. Before the event, some noises should be made to get people’s attractiveness. We did a gallup on the streets by asking what are the residents' favourite areas, what do they like about their neighbourhood and what they are currently missing from the area. The answers were collected to make a video invitation for our “POP-UP PARKKIRUUTU” event, which was then posted on Kalasatama Facebook group.
POP-UP PARKKIRUUTU
The POP-UP PARKKIRUUTU event was held on September 23rd on the Isoisänsilta bridge nearby Mustikkamaa. We made an area of 2*6 meters with chalk drawing which is the same size as a normal parking space. By having the accurate measurement, it’s easier for people to imagine the size of a small area.
To create a relaxing and warm community feeling, also as an event boosting trick, we prepared Kalasatama reflector buttons as gifts in the event. The nicknames were gathered from Kalasatama residents by asking the people in the official Facebook group.
Story
The story we made was illustrated as one method to emphasize the insights. From the event, we got information that many residents were missing services like coffee shops or a place to hang around and socialize with friends and neighbors in Kalasatama.
Workshop
Having got enough curious and attention from residents, we moved to organize a workshop for resident co-creation. In this stage, we aimed at inspiring them to think big and also realistically what services they can make with those parking spaces.
We had three tasks: Brainiator (brainstorming), Swotland (SWOT), Legomania (Lego building).Brainiator task was an individual warm-up task and the main point was to start the brainstorming for the ideas. In the Swotland task we took the material collected in the brainstorming to next level and made the residents think about the actual functions and the operating models for every solution theme. The participants were supposed to think about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of every solution if they were brought to the neighbourhood. This task was meant to be done in the table groups at first and then asked the two tables to share their thoughts and ideas with each other. Legomania task was also designed to be an individual work. The lego task was meant to generate wild ideas about how their desired solutions would actually look like and what elements would they like to have in each solution theme concept. We had a layout with simplified Sörnäistenniemi map in the middle.
Outcome & Solution
One of the key findings in our research was that people of Kalasatama generally tend to think that the area is missing some services and livelihood on the streets and they are expecting to have them now.
From the event and the workshop, Kalasatama residents actively showed great interests in applying some empty spaces to offer pop-up services, also as a way to vitalize the neighborhood. So we generated a service structure to elaborate how it could work with Vahanen housing company.
The core idea behind the Poppari-service is that residents have their own right to choose and design what service they want to have. The choosing, designing and voting for best ideas are completed through online services. Housing company will receive the final decision and implement the Poppari-service.
The chart below explains Poppari -service from the viewpoint of the housing company and service provider which in this case is Vahanen, it can be applied to other housing company as well.
