Summary

The Mobiililuotsi app was designed to help migrants and new residents in the Vakka-Suomi region to adapt, integrate and settle down in their new living environment. The app gathers information from local public and private services, mostly using open data. It provides information on five different standard topics: Housing and Transport, Work and Study, Health, Leisure and Local Guide.

The project involved designing and implementing the app in cooperation with local stakeholders. It helps people access national, municipal and commercial services, which are usually scattered across multiple sources and difficult to access for people who do not speak Finnish.

Results

The app is available in Finnish, English and Ukrainian.

Since its launch in January 2022, the app has gathered over 1 500 users. It successfully targeted the key user group identified by the project, i.e. foreign-language migrants (57% of the users). The high average operating time - 3 minutes and 27 seconds - indicates the app’s usefulness.

A user survey among the participants in the Vakka-Suomi integration training confirmed that the app is useful (16 out of 19 respondents), easy and straightforward to use (rating: 4.32 on a scale of 1 to 5) and they found what they wanted and needed (rating: 4.37).

The project is still in progress and reports and final conclusions will be available shortly. However, the project beneficiaries report that this initiative taught them how to bring service providers together and to cooperate widely with different organisations. Building the application for wider use from the start was a clever idea. The application and its implementation process have proved attractive for users across the whole country.