Tunturikonttori
Service Design
Overview:
Tunturikonttori is an occupational healthcare service concept that offers employees the possibility to increase productivity while working remotely close to nature. The team aimed to provide innovative solutions to enhance holistic wellbeing and flexible ways to achieve work-life balance. The emphasis lies in utilizing the healing powers of Lapland’s nature and outdoor activities.
Year:
2017 - 2018
Team:
Catharina Ehrnrooth, Hong Park, Xueqin Gu
My Responsibilities:
Qualitative research (interview & observation), Generative research (co-creative workshop), Concept ideation, Strategy planning, Visual design
Client:
Aava Medical Center
Project background
Aava medical center and Lappish Ski Resort Pyhä are planning a joint venture combining the healthcare business and tourism business.
Our team’s mission is to explore this business opportunity and provide critical insights for Aava medical center to develop their business. We aimed to find out the influence mechanisms between occupation well-being and natural environments of Lapland. Therefore, this project focuses on producing intellectual materials as well as building an interactive prototype at the latest and testing out the usability of the prototype on several pilot groups.
How might we provide innovative solutions for preventative occupational healthcare by using the healing power of Lapland nature?
The world’s 3.2 billion workers are increasingly unwell, and chronic diseases and stress levels are skyrocketing. (Global Wellness Institute, 2016). Employee unwellness is incredibly costly from any company’s perspective, and the biggest damage from here is employee disengagement.
On the other hand, the natural environment in Lapland has been proven to have positive side effects on preventive healthcare that can be scientifically measured. However, there is no integrated solution of holistic occupational wellbeing programs tailored in the natural environment for both companies' and employees’ needs.
Breaking down the process
The process follows the 5-step Design Thinking process - Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and test. This human-centered design process helped us to delve into preventative healthcare and come up with a service concept that can positively affect employee’s wellbeing.
1. Empathize
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Conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with potential end-users from the Finnish and Chinese market (12 interviews with end-users 11 interviews with HR and mid-level managers).
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Conducted 2 participatory observations in 2 co-working places.
2. Define
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Mapped the target market profile.
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Planed a market entry strategy.
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Identified 3 customers for Finnish market development.
3. Ideate
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Organized internal ideation and brainstorming sessions to create a service concept.
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Organized 1 co-creation workshop with industry experts from diverse backgrounds – doctors, psychologists, ecotherapy experts, nutritionists, and representatives from Aava and Pyhä Ski Resort.
4. Prototype
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Designed 3 interactive customer journey maps, which contains 3 user scenarios for the service concept.
5. Test
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Tested the service concept on the pilot group of the Finnish company Elisa.
Aava medical center
Lappish Ski Resort Pyhä
Research
Understanding the potential customers
Our team conducted extensive quantitative research on the Finnish and Chinese market: semi-structured interviews with HR managers and employees as well as participatory observations in two co-working spaces in Helsinki.
The purpose of the interviews is to understand the landscape of the current Finnish and Chinese employee wellness program and employee incentive program from both the managers’ and employees’ perspectives. The collected data helps us to capture the needs and pain points of the wellbeing program and thus to propose an alternative solution.
In addition, we conducted participatory observations in the most popular co-working spaces in Helsinki (Microsoft Flux & Mothership of work) to investigate co-workers’ wellbeing regarding remote working, productivity, and the working environment.
Interviewee mapping
Key insights from managers and employees
After understanding the two different angles, we summarized 6 primary topics that represent the pain points and needs on holistic wellbeing at work:
Employee wellbeing
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Companies, in general, do not have enough mental healthcare programs for employees and there is a high demand from employees. The demand is especially strong in China.
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HR managers and companies are now trying to improve and enhance employees' proactive health, especially for mental health.
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Self-learning is one critical element for employee wellbeing enhancement for employees who are self-motivated.
Incentive travel &
incentive program
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Tailored incentive travels/programs for companies is necessary because the incentive program varies in different industries and scale of the company.
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Incentive travel/program businesses are thriving in China, and Chinese companies have become aware of the benefits of providing positive employee wellbeing.
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Group incentive travel has the merit of cultivating team spirit and atmosphere within employees and managers, which can then create stronger team bonding.
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Most of the Chinese companies are heavily relying on travel agencies for planning the incentive travel, and so do the multinational companies.
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Cost, distance to destination, seasons, and activities are the four primary indexes for Chinese companies to select the incentive travel program.
Remote working
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Remote working has become a common employee welfare in Finland because of the advanced communication technology and globalization, but not in Taiwan and China.
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Finnish companies are likely to trust their employees when they work remotely and even encourage them to do more.
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Remote working could be annoying to some employees because their lives will easily overlap with their work due to a lack of management skills.
Work-life balance
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Holiday and work day have not had a clear boundary, and HR managers in the creative industries often want to prevent their employees from working overtime on holidays.
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People who are in higher position such as managers and entrepreneurs are easier to manage their work-life balance. On the other hand, workers in lower position in a company are more difficult to manage it.
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Most of the employees in Finnish companies think that companies should be responsible for helping employees balance their work and life.
Workplace environment
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Although Finnish companies often put effort into improving workplace environment, employees still think they should refresh themselves by constantly changing their working environment.
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The scale of the company has a direct impact on how a company supports workplace wellbeing.
Employee engagement
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It’s different to measure employee engagement in general, but HR managers show a strong interest in improving employee engagement and seeking high-level employee participation.
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Employee engagement is relatively easier to be measured on a small scale, and it is difficult to be evaluated across different departments.
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Self-learning, calming environment, remote work, incentive tourism, wellbeing of employee’s families can all contribute to employee engagement.
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Company culture and leadership skills from managers are two factors that affects employee engagement.
Key insights from co-working space users
The followings are the 6 needs of frequent co-working space users in Helsinki:
Ergonomic & health benefits
Co-working spaces should pick up on the trend of adding value by offering additional benefits to co-workers and companies. The value placed on health, both mental and physical should especially be taken into account: Offering Yoga, meditation, connection to nature, or having standing tables/ shelves that would be more ergonomically healthier.
Spatial design & layout
Co-working spaces should pay more attention to people's sensitivity (noise and light): One solution would be to have more quiet rooms (work in teams or individually), also use the benefits of daylight and having big windows or tables next to the window.
Requirements for
quiet and peace
Some people work more efficiently in quiet and peace: Co-working spaces could offer more variety and have more smaller meeting rooms or "booths" where one could meditate or work without disruption.
Networking & collaboration
Co-working has become a symbol of community, connectivity, and networking. Not to mention it’s a cheaper alternative than leasing in a traditional office space.
Work-life balance and nature
Having a better work-life balance is on many people's resolutions list, and there should be a clear boundary between work and free time. Working in a healthier working environment (close to nature), doing shorter working days and also having time for other activities, family and friends could increase your productivity and creativity.
Co-working community
There could still be more collaboration between companies/employees and students that extend from the co-working community.
Design Strategy
Target market profile mapping
Based on the market and user research, we mapped out the Finnish and Chinese markets in terms of different user and business requirements. In Finnish markets, individual travelers have several requirements. We categorized them in solving burn out, pursuing professional growth and self-actualization, baycation, and freelancer. As for group travelers, they have two main expectations which are employee team building & bonding, and leadership training for managers.
As for Chinese markets, individual travelers are mainly looking forward to experiencing a different culture in Lapland. Similar to domestic markets, group people in China expect manager team bonding training for travel. Furthermore, they also have requirements for conferences and seminars during travel abroad.
Market entry strategy
We suggested that the first go-to-market should be the Finnish market. The research revealed that there are market opportunities in both domestic and international. The visitors to the national park vary from domestic visitors to international visitors and it is true that especially the number of Chinese visitors is increasing year by year.
However, attracting these international visitors from outside Finland to visit the national park for the occupational wellbeing experience requires numerous preparations and complicated processes. Besides, we didn’t have a strong Proof-of-Concept or any reference points that we can benchmark, it was not realistic for us to attract the international market. Therefore, we think it is important is to create a strong Proof-of-Concept that validates our assumptions, and to do so, the domestic market is suitable to test out the product first.
Timeline of the market entry
3 target customers for the Finnish market
We divided these domestic groups into individuals or groups. The profiles of individuals can be someone who is overworked and looking for unwinding and self-discovering time in nature. In total, we identified 3 segments of customer profiles: overworked individuals, individuals who want to combine work and vacation, and groups seeking team bonding.
Overworking individual
Teemu
My colleagues told me that I’m nearly burnout and I might need some help to find a work-life balance in order to achieve my goals at work.
Leadership training &
team bonding
Laura and her team
I’ve noticed that my team members have been disengaged lately and are lacking team motivation. I have to make sure that all team members stay healthy and engaged.
Workcation
Anna and her family
I need a place for remote working where I can also take care of my family during the winter holidays in Pyhä Ski Resort.
Ideation
Brainstorming session
The primary problems we want to solve are 1) physical and mental health problems derived from overworking and 2) employee disengagement at the workplace.
A glance at our ideation process
Concept solution: Tunturikonttori & value proposition
“Tunturikonttori” is a new service concept that offers employees the possibility to work remotely close to nature.
It provides innovative solutions to enhance holistic wellbeing and flexible ways to achieve work-life balance. The emphasis lies in utilizing the healing powers of Lapland’s nature and outdoor activities. The combination of beautiful scenery, clean air, magical light, and pure nature is what we call positive side effects and the ”Spirit of Pyhä”.
Potential partnerships for the pilot study:
Transportation service
Nutritious service
Nature tourism service
Employee pilot group
Mood board of the service concept "Tunturikonttori"
Co-creation workshop
We invited 12 experts from diverse backgrounds to refine our concept. And these experts include doctors, psychologists, ecotherapy experts, nutritionists, and representatives from Aava and Pyhä Ski Resort. With these 12 participants, we divided them into 3 teams and generated as many ideas as possible for 3 different segments. In each group, we first introduced the persona and information on the environment of Pyhä Ski Resort.
After participants fully understood the context, we provided the customer journey map canvas with post-its and pens for each group to ideate. To provoke participants, the team also prepared inspiration cards that have relevant images on it. As a result, we ended up collecting 10 insights for the "overworking individual" segment, 8 insights for the "leadership training and team bonding" segment, and 7 insights for the "workcation" segment.
Pictures of the co-creation workshop
Result
Final delivery: Interactive customer journey map
The final deliverable is an interactive customer journey map that demonstrates the touchpoints for the three customer segments: 1) overworking individuals, 2) leadership training & team bonding, and 3) workcation are provided in an interactive format. Each journey map was divided into three periods which are before, during, and after, including several steps such as initial check-up, tailored nature activities and services, and follow-up, etc. To elaborate on these steps further, there are buttons that viewers could click on to get more information in detail.
The framework of the interactive customer journey map
Due to the limited time frame, our team couldn't test the proposed wellbeing service and iterate it. Later in the autumn of 2018, a pilot test with the end-users of Elisa's employees was conducted in order to receive customer feedback before implementation. And this interactive customer journey map was served as the blueprint for Aava medical center to develop their joint venture with Pyhä ski resort.
IDBM Impact event 2018
This project and the interactive customer journey map were presented at Valkoinen Sali, Helsinki, in May 2018, where we gathered in-depth feedbacks from potential partners, industry experts, alumni & faculty.
Pictures of the 2018 IDBM Impact event
Learnings
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Using design methods to clarify the business context for the service is impactful, including the design thinking process per se, human-centered research, and co-creative workshop. This helped us to investigate the value proposition and value creation of the “Tunturikonttori” business concept since we didn’t have any reference point to benchmark.
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The ability to gather potential partners and assemble business activities in the business ecosystem is crucial to service development. In order to develop a solid service concept, we had to think about how to reach out and involve a variety of stakeholders and potential partners.
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Compassion and communication are the key success factors in multi-disciplinary collaboration. I’ve realized that cross-field collaboration requires empathy and the ability to speak others’ languages. Sometimes everyone is talking about the same thing but just expresses it differently.