Digitalising Finnish tourism, a Visit Finland case study. A centralized platform for travel companies and destination marketing organizations. The challenge: To kick-start the digital evolution of the travel ecosystem within Finland. The preexisting system limited travel companies, only providing the ability to update product information twice annually, whilst forcing information to be updated manually across multiple channels. To create a communication channel between different stakeholders in the industry. Especially travel companies and destination marketing organisations — allowing small medium businesses the chance to easily acquire specialist support. To update current low quality data. The scattered information is an issue, particularly for media and international travel agencies. The basics: Client: My role: Duration of the project: Visit Finland UX Design, UI Design 3 months design & development Website: https://traveldatahub.com The method: Learn — Validate product hypothesis, eliminate risks. Insights Build — Identify product features that users actually need. — Iterate based on real feedback. MVP Measure Analytics The beginning: The start was all about learning. Firstly, defining and prioritising the goals of the project took centre stage, and the chosen medium were workshops. Working with Visit Finland, stakeholders were identified and prioristised to lay the foundation for future design decisions. The vision: A vision canvas was utilised to gain an understanding of product objectives and goals and create user epics & stories. Below are examples of the user stories created: — As a (travel) entrepreneur, I can enter in, remove and update my company and service details into the system so that I have the principal control on my own marketing message. — As a (travel) entrepreneur, if am I cooperating with my local DMO I will select them to curate my content. In a case where there is no local DMO or if for some reason I choose not to work with the local DMO I can choose Visit Finland to curate the content. — As a ‘Visit Finland’, the data can be enhanced by our third party partners. — As a curator I understand when and what to check so that I don’t need to spend a lot of time on individual changes. -As a (travel) entrepreneur or a curator, I understand how much any information is used so that I can understand which data has the most impact and shall be enhanced. User interviews: Validation questions were defined, created and woven into interview structures for all stakeholder groups. User interviews were directly undertaken with small entrepreneurs, travel companies, destination marketing organistions, online travel agencies and Visit Finland. Example validation questions 28 Small Entrepreneur Can you break down how you promote your business online? Can you walk me through how you create the content for your marketing activities? Can you describe step by step how you update and maintain the gathered information? How do you check your online visibility and marketing data? total interviews Travel Company Can you break down how you promote your business online? Can you walk me through how you create the content for your marketing activities? Can you describe step by step how you update and maintain product information? How do you go about making tailor made marketing messages for your different market segments? Can you explain the process of tracking the results of your marketing activities? Destination Marketing Organisation Can you walk me through how you gather the information regarding attractions, products and services? Can you describe step by step how you update and maintain the gathered information? Can you break down how you then use that information? Unexpected bonus feedback: To better understand the problem from different perspectives interviewees were given the opportunity to fill out a vision canvas, providing invaluable insights into the problem space. Vision canvas example from DMO: “Today, when small and medium-sized tourism companies want to have their products to be visible/promoted/sold in different channels they have to update their information to too many channels. This is unacceptable, because SMEs lack in time and this leads to not up to date/non-existing online information. We envision a world where destinations could easily manage their product offering and promote products according to target group preferences. We're bringing this about through using the VF national database.” Interview results: Key problems Two times a year update: A clear barrier & problem revolved around the existing MyStay portal opening just two times a year for a two-week period. Meaning if travel companies and small entrepreneurs missed the period they couldn’t update any product data until the next open time slot. It also created a huge pressure & backlog for destination marketing organisations, clogging up the process of updating data leading to a lack of quality datasets. Multiple data locations: Travel companies & small entrepeneurs had to source and input data from multiple different channels and locations, wasting time & resulting in a lower quality of data and lack of clear communication channels. Interview results: Key problems continued Quality of data: Numerous locations to update data, combined with different times of access and different data structures led to a lack of quality, accessible data especially for products of smaller entrepreneurs. Marketing Material: Bad data means bad marketing material, leading to destination marketing organisations such as Visit Finland & Visit Turku wasting precious resources updating and checking information, leaving little time for promotion of products. Industry communications: Industry communications operated around emails. MyStay allowed for submitting data twice annually, and if any data was incorrectly submitted, the communications ended up being consumed inside an email trail. ‘Just another system’: An interesting finding, and one of the most difficult to overcome lay with small entrepreneurs. Many had a distrust for existing systems, and suspected a new service would mean another login to remember, and more booking fees. Interview results: Key problems continued UX of existing product forms: The existing form for MyStay was difficult to navigate, which caused multiple problems, especially when only accessible for two times a year. Many travel companies and smaller entrepreneurs didn’t see the value compared to the effort required, therefore weren’t motivated to keep data up-to-date. Industry support: Due to industry communications having an inherently bad process key support was missed for those who required it, especially in relation to marketing and sharing expertise knowledge. “My problem is the lack of time, I manage 10 different language versions.” “When you have to collect the info — it's quite a process — it would be easier if we'd have an online forum — so that they [travel companies] would update their information, prices — instead of sending it back and forth by email.” Interview results: Prioritised features After synthesising the interviews and combining the knowledge with the stakeholder prioristisation, features were prioritised for the MVP. The build: With defined features user flows were made to have an overall picture of the information architecture. The UI: Onboarding & feedback The onboarding included information on how to directly send feedback anytime whilst using the datahub. This was important as acquiring feedback at the moment was a key part of the iteration strategy. The UI: MyStay import As part of the onboarding, travel companies and small entrepreneurs could import any number of preexisting products that already existed on MyStay with the purpose of easing the transition to a new service. The UI: TC’s & SME’s After loading MyStay products they can be seen as cards on the main view. The ability to edit and add new products is also available. The left-hand menu gives access to the dashboard, company information and channels. The UI: Curator dashboard The curator view allowed for destination marketing organisations to see products imported by the small entrepreneurs and travel companies. The data could them be edited, published and used to created marketing content such as digital catalogs. The UI: Product form One of the most crucial challenges was the product form as an improved visual look and user experience were critical in the attainment of quality data. Below you can see the old form vs. the re-designed version. The demos: Curator & Product Owner demos To see a more detailed look at both the destination marketing organisation and small entrepreneur & travel company flows, simply view the demos below: Data Hub Curator Information Name U A Touch of Paradise in the Midst of Lakeland Hiking & Camping hboard Lapland pany Information 200€ p/p Published Play Curator Demo Play SME & TC Demo ucts 39 Kayaking Tour and Picnic in the Archipelago al Attractions Kayaking Lapland Attraction title s 65€ p/p Published Kayaking Tour and Picnic in the Archipelago Search 164 Lake, Lapland, 00200 A Guided Hike in Finland's Deepest Gorge to Holy Baptism Waterfall US This outdoor trip in the Eastern Helsinki archipelago offers a great Hiking All (276) Lapalnd combination of exercise and relaxation: after a kayaking trip to a nearby Attraction segments island, a delicious and a plentiful picnic with local Finnish delicacies will New (190) 50€ p/p Not Published be enjoyed on one of the islands. The trip is suitable for everyone and Product Type Experience the paddling pace will be easygoing. The guides will be there for your Updated (11) Capacity 15 People comfort and safety. Pending changes (4) Snowmobile Safari to the Husky Farm! Suitable for Individual & Group Husky Safari Processed (71) Season Summer Lapland gories 300€ p/p Not Published External Link to Product ect... Glimpse of the Arctic - Huskies in Nuuksio National Park all attraction photos ation Husky Safari Lapland ect... 230€ p/p Not Published Contact Details Availability Iterating on the go: Learned features Product completeness score: The product completeness score was cricital for improving the quality of data, providing an easy prompt for travel companies whilst letting curators know at a glance which data was missing from the product form. Product status: Initially the products filtered into a mass list, however, it was quickly identified curators(DMO’s) needed a status for edited & updated products, making their workflow simpler. Activity log: In addition to the product status an activity log was provided for the curator workflow. The results: Impact By creating a functioning prototype to validate the concept and test ideas, Visit Finland did not need to take the initial risk of a long-term investment, whilst validating a hypothesis and defining user-driven features for future development. The end-result was a scalable product that validated initial assumptions at the fraction of the initial cost estimates, in a much shorter time. Essentially, the whole purpose of the prototype was to learn and see how potential users would react whilst defining the functionaity. Therefore, the inital impact not only served to improve the processes and lives of the travel companies, DMO’s & SME’s, but proved to directly effect the future of Visit Finland’s digital development through validated learnings. The results: Continued impact — The two time a year update barrier was removed by making the platform accessible 24/7. — The channel page helped to define which future integrations were needed by the users, defining the future scope of the project after the MVP. — Transfluent & Facebook Business were enabled. Transfluent specifically improved workflows, allowing TC’s & SME’s the ability to convert content into languages they required translations for. — Improved UX of the product form provided a higher standard of data, combined with a two-facing database allowing live updates to be seen by curators, resulting in improved marketing material. — A live communication channel was created between the product owners and the marketing curators. The results: In numbers As well as analysing the data I felt it was important to reach out via a survey to learn and understand about the impact the datahub was having on all end users. Below is a snippet of the satisfaction levels: 100 13 200 60+ total users DMO’s products feedback messages The results: Making a difference An important part of the results from a personal perspective was the fact that 29 travel companies and entrepreneurs who entered the system created products, compared to 9 who did not. This was important as during the interviews it was clear that TC’s and SME’s were losing faith and trust with the existing systems due to uncessesry complexity and the above validated the service providing the required motivation to enter high quality data. Messages such as the above made all the hard work worthwhile. Reflection: Any changes with hindsight? There are a few changes I’d make around the structure of the project, specifically with documentation of design materials. Due to the fast pace and short life-span of the project it was hard to keep track of insights, and in reflect I’d utilise a tool to help with this process. Another aspect of the project I feel needed more focus was the UX copywriting. With calls to value and specific tailored content the overall experience of the datahub could have been improved. Especially with a more personalised welcoming. The accessibility of the project wasn’t focused upon, and with hindsight I feel that was an oversight which can be improved. The pricing of products within the product form required more iterations, especially in relation to seasonal pricing. I feel this could have been improved in reflection. Finally, I believe the discussion of specific channels could have been taken further. The solution essentially showed the channels as potential connections for the future, without any detailed explanation of the true benefit. I feel this was a missed opportunity to convey the impact the connections would bring. Final words: Kaisa Kosonen, Head of Digital Development, Visit Finland: “I think working with the Perspektives team was very efficient, professional and at the same time easy going and open — nice bunch of people! The team worked very effectively and proceeded fast, the process from collecting insights to creating a prototype, to adjusting the prototype and adding new features based on user insights was all very smooth. The end results exceeded our expectations and put us in a very good place for the next steps of the development. It was a pleasure to work with the whole team and all the questions or concerns where answered quickly and on a very professional and detailed manner, so that as a buyer we felt confident that things are understood and work proceeds according to our goals.” P.S. The impact wasn’t lost in the ether. The prototype was used as the foundations for the next stage of the project after we handed off the insights with Visit Finland to Silli Solutions. Thanks for taking the time to read the case study! Fancy a chat over a coffee? Send me an email at: [email protected]
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