Nordkapp

Olet tässä (Helsinki), You Are Here (Helsinki) in English , is a creative book/online project about co-created urban experiences and contextual awareness. Nordkapp helped artist Meiju Niskala and publishing company Avain develop and implement the concept and the multichannel tools to realize the project.

Olet tässä gathers street level knowledge about the good life and alternative experiences into extraordinarily beautiful hand crafted books. Books guide people to experience their daily urban environment in altered ways and inspire them to take a break from their daily routines.

Previously, a similar book project was built for the city of Turku. Since Helsinki is much bigger and more multifaceted, new innovative ways of gathering and filtering the information used as source material for the book were needed. In order to uncover the best experiences in the city, the project was expanded widely into social networks (Facebook, Flickr) and an experimental community website, www.olettassa.fi.

The website

The core objective of the Olet tässä website was to build an online community to gather data, and use it as a source material for the actual book. On the website, users are able to send location based tips, stories and pictures about the city. Users can also read the tips sent by others and rate them on degree of interest to them.

While writing the book, authors gathered the information, "tested" the tips sent and eventually edited them into book format.  This data combined with the material gathered from other communities like Facebook provided the authors with a huge, unique database of urban experiences.

Recreating the artist's and book's organic style in the digital domain required some crafty HTML wizardry while building the website. The entire technical framework and all the tools running on the site were custom-made. When the book was published, users were also able to "extend" their book by downloading "extra material" from site to attach to their copy of the book.

The live element

As an addendum to the website, the same information was gathered on a huge printed map, which was displayed in various locations around Helsinki.

The results

The Olet tässä (Helsinki) book was published in 2008 and it contains over 160 pages of fun and exciting things you can experience in Helsinki. On the website, thousands of people have described their favorite places, extraordinary experiences and activities. Our work formed the base material for Meiju Niskala's consultancy company that organizes city adventure tours in Helsinki.