Inland

Q&Alendar, an experiment

Status Complete

Duration 15 weeks

Started September 2018

Owner The Finnishn Immigration Service & TE Services Uusimaa

Inland's role Leading

At the end of 2018 happened something new and special: the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) and TE Services Uusimaa joined forces for executing a communication-related experiment. We have done this work in the context of Experimentation Accelerator (Kokeilukiihdyttämö), and a Christmas-like Q&Alendar was published in the first of December.

Starting point

The starting point for this collaboration relates to challenges in the information related to immigrants. Migri and TE Services receives both a lot of questions from immigrants that contain quite often assumptions or false information. The same challenge was noticed also when Inland Design did user research among immigrants. The findings of this research pointed that the circulation of rumours, so-called unofficial information, is a true problem. Joining forces was natural as we both have the same customers: immigrants.

Goals

to get information about what kind of Migri and TE Services related rumours or questions immigrants have
to answer to the most asked questions in a clear way,
to serve customers of both organisations in one common digital platform, and
to get experiences and learnings about the collaboration itself – what does it mean when two government agencies work together with a communication project.

Timetable of the experiment

In the picture you can see the detailed schedule. The green boxes at above are Experimentation Accelerator meetings, and others are process steps. All this experiment took place in 3 months, from its conception to its implementation.

Process & resourses

The collaboration between two government organisations was intensive. In the 15 weeks timeframe we collected data, formed the content (=questions and answers), designed and carried out webpage, executed a campaign and analysed the experiment.

There was no extra budget for this experiment. The resources we got could be described as human power.

“The core team” consisted of four people: one from TE Services and 3 from Migri. The project involved around 15 people assisting and consulting colleagues such as customer service experts and a UX-designer.

A visualisation of the resources invested from each organisation. Migri people marked as blue circles, and TE Services people with green.

The Q&Alendar campaign 1.-24.12.2018

We have built and published a digital Q&Alendar . The aim of the bilingual (English and Finnish) Q&A- calendar was to offer correct information in a clear and novel way. The questions came i.a. from social media forums, and emails we have received. The answers were written with the assistance of our experts from substance units and communication. The selection criteria for the questions was that they should be easy to answer in a short manner. A big effort was made to shape the text so it would be easy to read.

Question – answer format calendar was executed in 6 weeks time and it was published on the 1st of December 2018. A new window was opened each day of the month and a new questions was answered.

Reflection and learnings

The project was challenging not only because of the timeframe but also because of doing work in relation to communication that our team has not done before. In addition, we had limited human resources. We were very flexible and could accommodate well to the challenge at hand. For example, the service designer had to (among other things) act as a project owner, copywriter, concept and visual designer.

This could be improved next time:

more solid preplanning,
ownership given to the appropriate unit (communication experts)
more resources and suitable expertise to the core team
more time for the content design and marketing phase
customers/target group involved in the planning and testing phase

Calendar platform as a refreshing way to communicate with customers

Despite the challenges, the Q&Alendar was published on time, and it reached almost 1300 visitors during the campaign (1.-24.12.2018.). Based on the feedback that was received via immigrants and organisation personnel after the campaign, the digital calendar platform was considered as a new and refreshing way for government communication. Also, the idea of two government organisations joining forces in common communication service was received as positive and useful addition.

Next steps

The Q&Alendar experiment can scaled up in the future, as here is an annualready-made digital platform that can be easily adjusted with new content. If the immigrants that were interviewed by Inland could decide what would happen next, this Q&Alendar would be used also next Christmas. This time the content would be consistent because we would focus on one theme: as for example employment or studying. We could also invite other public agencies or a municipipality to take part.