Laurea students developed an app that makes life easier for people who have moved to Finland

An international group of students from Laurea created a mobile app called HelpMe! It brings together information for foreigners living in Finland from different websites. The students based the project on an interview survey to find out what issues caused the most problems for those who had moved to Finland. The app was developed in collaboration with IT students from Mount St. Joseph University in the US.

Finland's aim is to attract more foreign talent to the country. In practice, many people who move to Finland or study here leave because they do not feel they are integrating. Finland has dozens of websites offering advice on how to move here, but finding the right addresses is difficult even for Finns. Now the links have been brought together in one place.

Students from an American university help to implement the app

The development of the HelpMe! app is related to the marketing of municipalities of Uusimaa region around Helsinki capital region in southern Finland. The client in the project was TechVilla, a development company owned by the City of Hyvinkää, where one of Laurea’s campuses is also located.

The student team started the project in September by interviewing foreigners living in Finland. The aim was to find out which issues in their everyday life are challenging.

- Finland is not an easy country to come to from abroad. There are many basic issues that come up immediately and we wanted to help with these, says Siiri Tick, a member of the student team.

The most common questions that emerged from the interviews were related to banking and other financial matters, Finnish language and healthcare.

Collaboration with Mount St. Joseph University's computer science department, cITen, began once the interviews had been analysed. cITen has created an easy-to-use chatbot platform that was further developed during the project. The HelpMe! app was created collaboratively by the student teams, so the project provided valuable international experience in cross-cultural collaboration.

"A project that matters"

The HelpMe! project was implemented by an international team of Laurea business students from Hyvinkää campus. The team included exchange students from the Czech Republic and China who had came to Laurea as well as one student from Ukraine who came to Finland.

Tereza Malíková, a Czech exchange student who arrived at Laurea last January, was the project manager of the student team that implemented the application, so she also has first-hand experience of arriving in Finland.

- I had the great advantage of having Laurea and my tutor to help me in the early stages. The lifestyle in Finland is different, and when I arrived here in January, I also had to get used to the weather, Tereza recalls.

Assignments with real-life partners play an important role in business studies at Laurea. The practical approach to learning is praised by both the Finnish HelpMe! team and international students:

- This kind of learning teaches exactly the skills needed in working life, Siiri Tick and Tereza Malíková summarise.

- We are particularly excited about the results of the HelpMe! project. It's great that we have created something that really matters to people and that we can help people.