Designing digital solutions for Haaga-Helia International Services
Salmi, Katri (2019)
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2019060615308
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2019060615308
Tiivistelmä
The objective of this thesis is to create a concept for new, digital service solutions for the services offered for students going abroad on student exchange for the time period of one or two semesters. The commissioning party of this thesis is the International Services team at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences (Haaga-Helia), located in Helsinki, Finland. Haaga-Helia offers education in the fields of business, hospitality and tourism, aviation, information technology, journalism, sales and sports and leisure.
This topic was chosen because of Haaga-Helia’s strategic goals of growing internationally and using digital solutions in services and operations. The strategic goals highlight the importance of this topic. Additionally, the service sector has changed because of the growing usage of digital technologies. Services, which earlier were offered only face-to-face, are now increasingly offered digitally. People’s desire for convenience has increased, which has made online shopping an interesting alternative.
Sometimes customers, in this case students, are unable to use the offered face-to-face services for various reasons. In order to be able to offer service equally for all customers, digital solutions must be designed. The main research question of this thesis is: How to serve students going abroad, when they are not on campus? And the followed research questions are: Which face-to-face services should be digitzed? How should the digitalization be done?
Service design approach was used when finding solutions for this real life problem. Its customer-centric feature felt suitable for this design project, since involving students in co-design projects is increasingly done at Haaga-Helia. The managerial suggestions for International Services were concluded from the research, namely encouraging it to embrace digitalization in all its operations, striving for paperless services and producing a set of videos to both replace and enhance the services already existing. The new digital solutions simplify the service blueprint and increase the customers’ perception of the service convenience.
This topic was chosen because of Haaga-Helia’s strategic goals of growing internationally and using digital solutions in services and operations. The strategic goals highlight the importance of this topic. Additionally, the service sector has changed because of the growing usage of digital technologies. Services, which earlier were offered only face-to-face, are now increasingly offered digitally. People’s desire for convenience has increased, which has made online shopping an interesting alternative.
Sometimes customers, in this case students, are unable to use the offered face-to-face services for various reasons. In order to be able to offer service equally for all customers, digital solutions must be designed. The main research question of this thesis is: How to serve students going abroad, when they are not on campus? And the followed research questions are: Which face-to-face services should be digitzed? How should the digitalization be done?
Service design approach was used when finding solutions for this real life problem. Its customer-centric feature felt suitable for this design project, since involving students in co-design projects is increasingly done at Haaga-Helia. The managerial suggestions for International Services were concluded from the research, namely encouraging it to embrace digitalization in all its operations, striving for paperless services and producing a set of videos to both replace and enhance the services already existing. The new digital solutions simplify the service blueprint and increase the customers’ perception of the service convenience.