Time well spent - the Finnish style

An airport is the gate to a country and we aim HEL to provide a Finnish experience in transit and invite for returns.

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Inspiration

Finnish culture, nature, people, and diversity. Helsinki Vantaa Airport is the gateway to Finland. It is also the major hub connecting Europe and Asia, as transit passengers frequently use the airport only for connection. There is a margin not only for improving the transit experience, but also potentially creating new businesses. We aim it to be a teaser for experiencing the country and culture for these transit passengers, and invite them to return for a longer stay.

What it does

We designed the experience around spending time close to the nature (the Finnish style), experiencing immersive northern lights, getting warm in Finnish sauna, nourishing with clean water and good natural food and feeling at home with Finnish hospitality. We aim at making them feel comfortable, safe, welcomed, and special.

How I built it

We first brainstormed our personal experiences both good and bad with transport that we have had in the past. After listing them out, we collectively went through the documents provided by Finavia to define our problem. We then decided to focus on providing a unique Finnish experience for transit customers. As we validated our points with the mentors from Finavia, we constructed journey maps, prototyped our solution with physical space and actors, and rendered basic images for the space.

Challenges I ran into

Too many ideas, and also too many data in advance so it was challenging to find an angle of focus - all of the aforementioned topics seem very important for good customer experience.

Accomplishments that I'm proud

Finding a new interesting approach of cultural lenses we can look at booth Finavia customer service but also visiting nations, like Asian passengers, who might prefer a personal contact instead of digital and automatized systems. It takes an extra step to honor other cultures and to not be too proud of own culture but share interests and understanding of others. It takes diversity to grow and Finavia might encounter more cultural diversity within the company and certainly among the visitors.

What I learned

Before I worked on this challenge, I did not know about the company Finavia, and that they were responsible for making a great customer experience. I also did not know that they had been putting in so much effort.Helsinki Vantaa is a hub airport to-and-from Asia and the USA

What's next for "Time well spent - the Finnish style"

Finavia is extending terminal spaces and we would be happy to advice on making our proposed solution happen. For this challenge we focused on unique experience but we would also like to look into taking AR/VR technology into enhancing the “smooth experience” of the airport as well as an app to arrange and plan the experience in advance. We also would like for this to not be a single experience so we would like to expand it with potential business partners.

To make this project viable we thought of potential business collaborations that might bring extra money to it:

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