TravelLab, implemented in summer 2014, was selected as the best service design project in the Prototyping for organisational change category.
The service design award went to Hellon, which was responsible for the design and execution of TravelLab with Finavia. Based on over 200 ideas, a total of 11 service prototypes were developed in TravelLab, and their functionality was tested at the airport with the passengers.
Hellon’s service designers spent a total of 75 days at the airport working on service development tasks. During TravelLab, examples of activities at the airport included a restaurant day and the “Yoga Gate” yoga studio, which internationally garnered the attention of over 5 million Twitter users.
One of the criteria for the award was that the TravelLab provided a way to introduce a more flexible, experimental development process where service ideas are tested with passengers and airport stakeholders as early as possible.
The lessons learned from TravelLab are now being utilised in the ongoing concept work regarding the gate and waiting areas. The work is based on experimenting with ideas.
“Experimenting is low-threshold service design, a quick way of testing ideas. We can quickly see what works well and what does not”, says Johanna Metsälä, Finavia’s customer experience manager.
“During the TravelLab project, we used the Kainuu facility for different kinds of experimenting. The facility has been and remains an excellent place for customers to rest, and we intend to keep it that way. Hopefully, in the future, we can also introduce digital services in this area, which is located a bit off of the ‘highways’ in the airport”, says Metsälä.
The service design competition was organised by the Service Design Network, an internationally leading institution of service design organisations and companies.
The results of the competition were announced at the Service Design Global Conference on 3 October 2015.
