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Year 2023

Team Villa Rana helped the City of Jyväskylä and the representatives of the resource wisdom team to communicate about Resource Wisdom to international residents.
Team Villa Rana and the City of Jyväskylä
Project

In Spring 2023, Team Villa Rana executed a project for the City of Jyväskylä and the representatives of the resource wisdom team, regarding the Resource-wise Jyväskylä 2040-program. The aim of the project was to identify effective communication channels that the city of Jyväskylä can use to connect with international residents.

The focus was to promote awareness about sustainable living and resource-wise services that are available for the city residents. The project also aimed to gain a better understanding of the challenges that international residents encountered in pursuing a sustainable lifestyle. Through this project, we helped the City of Jyväskylä to encourage international residents to engage in sustainable activities and to participate in the city's efforts to promote a greener and more sustainable way of life.

Our team conducted an online survey and face-to-face interviews. After conducting a survey, to know about the awareness of sustainable living among foreign residents living in Jyväskylä and to identify effective communication channels, the team presented the results visually to the client, along with recommendations for a communication plan. We also executed the backup plan to have in-depth information of the topic via interviews with 10 individuals. The interviewees had diverse backgrounds, including individuals from different cultures and life stages. In the end, we delivered the survey data, research report and communication plan to the client.
Team roles and responsibilities

   Choudhary Mujtaba (Project Manager)
   Yan Lin (Secretary)
   Tytti Laaksonen (Project member)
   Jukka Joutsalainen (Project member)
   Ashutosh Burman (Project member)

Team AquaPhoenix’s goal was to scope out the market potential of Weeefiner’s water filtering solution for metal recovery.
Team AquaPhoenix & Weeefiner
The client

The client for this project was a startup company called Weeefiner. Weeefiner provides state-of-the-art water treatment by recovering dissolved metals and nutrients from water. This ensures circulation of valuable materials and prevents harmful substances from entering the environment.
The project

Team AquaPhoenix, consisting of six multidisciplinary students from diverse backgrounds, was tasked with conducting market research for Weeefiner's solution that focuses on valuable metal recovery from different water bodies.

The team’s initial plan was to interview potential client companies for information on their waste waters, production waters, and sidestreams. Unfortunately the team faced issues due to a small amount of responses, and had to redirect their efforts. Team AquaPhoenix and Weeefiner agreed on dropping the interviews, instead focusing solely on market research.

In the end, Team AquaPhoenix created multiple deliverables that assist Weeefiner in recognizing their potential clients and competition. Team AquaPhoenix also provided marketing materials for increasing the awareness of companies regarding the metals Weeefiner focuses on recovering. Despite the challenges, the team was successful in providing Weeefiner with valuable insights and information to help them expand their business in the future.
The team

Akseli Kankaansivu - I was the project manager, responsible for overseeing the project, coordinating, instructing team members, and communicating with the client. I actively participated in market research and worked on all of the deliverables the project produced.

Sumaiya Rahman was the project researcher specialising in PGM market analysis. My work involved studying market trends and providing valuable insights to our client and course teacher. My expertise contributed to understanding the dynamics of the PGM market and shaping sustainable development strategies.

As part of the PGM market research project, specifically focused on liquid waste recovery, I-Vladimir Sharov played a crucial role in conducting research, creating documentation, and designing forms to gather data. My attention to detail and expertise in the research field made a significant contribution to the success of the project. I was driven by the desire to discover new insights that would drive the project forward, and I always went the extra mile to ensure that every detail was covered. "Discovering insights that drive progress" is not just a motto for me, but a personal mission that they embody in every aspect of my work.

Bhagya Collas conducts literature reviews to gather relevant information and identify existing research related to the project.I communicate findings and recommendations to the project team,others involved in the project.I work with the project team to define research questions and objectives that will guide the research process.monitor progress and evaluate the effectiveness of the project by gathering and analysing data throughout the project

Sanka De Silva, as a team planner I had to work closely with the project manager to develop and implement a project plan, ensuring that all project deliverables are completed on time and to the required quality standards. Apart from that I had to do occasional research about the market and competitors to help my team members.

Taha Lagnaoui My main task was time manager. I had to put a schedule for the team and divide the timetable into tasks and goals to make sure that we all meet the deadlines that I set. Also, from time to time, whenever we need to do some research about a specific subject, I work as a researcher along with my other teammates and report the finding to the project manager. For example I did some market research, competitors research, and PGM research for the group.

Year 2022 project teams focused on improving employment possibilities of international talents in Jyväskylä area. 

Team Brain Remain made studies for Jyväskylä Talent Boost -project. They provided the client with the data relating to services international students get from the city of Jyväskylä.
Team Brain Remain helping Talent Boost -project
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

In spring 2022, Team Brain Remain conducted a project for the Ģ��ֱ�� Talent Boost -project. Talent Boost-project intends to improve employment possibilities of international talents in Jyväskylä area. The aim of the project was to a conduct research on how to improve recruitment, integration, and retention of international talent in the Jyväskylä region.

Team conducted a survey and two focus group interviews. The survey based on five themes: attraction, availability and integration processes to the city of Jyväskylä, availability, visibility and accessibility of services provided by the city of Jyväskylä and Higher Educational Institutions (JYU and JAMK), areas of improvement, retention i.e. interest in staying in Jyväskylä and Integration i.e. the equality in studies and employment.

As an outcome and based on the analysis of the data collected, team drew up a research report and a development plan for recruiting, integrating and retention of international talent.

Team Lyhty provided Football Association of Finland a website and a related social media account for football recruitment.

In spring 2022, Team Lyhty, a team of five students from the Ģ��ֱ�� and JAMK University of Applied Sciences conducted a project for the Football Association of Finland. The client, Football Association of Finland, accounts for all football and futsal activities and related development in Finland. As the industry had been taking major leaps, recruiting staff to various positions from internships to full-time positions, had become difficult. There were no structures or clear processes to share information about the available positions. Furthermore, there were no processes on how to reach broad interest of people coming from various working backgrounds.

The aim of the project was to create a digital platform, where football clubs can inform job applicants about the job opportunities and publish their open positions. Furthermore, the aim was to increase the awareness and improve the talent pool in the industry.

As an outcome, the team created a website and a related social media account for the client. On the website, team created different sections, such as a Careers in Football – blog and a Career Stories – page where the visitors can easily read about the state of football in Finland. Furthermore, Team Lyhty built a section to the website, where job seekers can easily find information about the open positions in football clubs.
 

Designing a freelancer platform: fitting gigs for freelancers and clients getting their money’s worth.


Project

The aim of our project was to make a design for a freelancer platform which would address some of the issues regarding the hiring of freelancers on the web. Of particular concern was the many incidences of freelancers saying that they know how to do something, and then being unable to competently complete the tasks they were hired to do. Additionally, we decided to add a sub-task for our team to find someone qualified to help the team with the research related to the freelancer platforms.

We identified the best features of a selection of existing platforms and integrated them into the design of the new platform. Once we were happy with the composition of our work, we delivered a platform design for our client. Our researcher Viivi helped design the database for the platform and converted the required files to the json format for our client to work with, which were then implemented into NadaCode. Our linguist Niko helped the client with the front-end interface for the platform, optimizing its visual language and user experience. We also composed reports on the recruitment process, tracked some of the pitfalls of the existing platforms and drafted reports and guidelines for hiring freelancers. Our team leader Diana also put together a blog showcasing the various stages of the project and the roles of the team members. Overall our project was successful in helping the client realize his vision for the web environment he had set out to build.

Our client
Our client was Capacic Oy (using the name NadaCode on the product development side). The owner is a serial entrepreneur with a new startup who is an expert in coding. The client will continue with the project after our involvement, and he will try to hire freelancers to test the platform. The future goal for the client is to get NadaCode working efficiently as a platform and as a web environment.

The team

Diana Shah-Aga: Diana is a second-year business leadership & management student in Jyväskylä. Her role in the project included the responsibilities of the project manager. She also participated in drafting the platform design herself as well and wrote a blog for the platform for transparency and marketing purposes. Diana was able to accumulate a lot of useful experience from managing the project, and she was enthusiastic to take on the responsibility as project manager.

Niko Sollo: Niko’s responsibilities were split between secretary work and working directly with the client to come up with web design solutions for the front end of the platform, specifically with regards to the clarity of the visual language of the client’s website. Niko is an English major currently working on his master’s thesis. Niko and the client had several meetings and remote work sessions where he would work with the client to come up with menu designs, icon assignments, fonts, spacing solutions and also entire web pages based on ideas from the other team members. In addition to these two responsibilities he also proofread, edited, and translated various documents both for our team and the client.

Richard Nyandoro: Richard is a nursing student with a background in marketing studies, and his main roles were those of a researcher and a recruitment supervisor. The researcher position entailed conducting preliminary research on platform economies, their background, functionality, and areas that can be improved on by analyzing the existing platforms. As a recruitment supervisor Richard was responsible for all communications with the hired personnel and conducting the recruitment process. This included drafting job descriptions, reviewing applications and evaluating the work of the prospective hirees under the supervision of the team leader and with help from our team secretary. He also participated in the platform design together with the whole team.

Viivi Järvinen: Viivi studies mathematical information technology. Her role was to be a researcher. Viivi did research about hiring freelancers and no/low code platforms for the team and for the client. She also conducted some no/low code platform research to help Niko with the interface design. Additionally, she was often tasked to communicate with the client about the more IT-specific technical details of the project, with the client often giving her various tasks to help with the database design.

Team Gamma and Loikkakopla for Parkour Akatemia. Teams developed collaboration tools for an enterprise and citizenship and non-governmental organizations.

In 2021, our project was conducted fully online to help our client Parkour Akatemia improve the Parkour afternoon club product and reach municipalities in order to market the product.

Our client was Parkour Akatemia, specializing in as the name suggests, parkour. Client’s objective was to promote their services as an after-school activity to municipalities all over Finland. During this project time, we got our results by using email and questionnaires, as well as a webinar, that described the service to the clients.

For a sport-related activity in the pandemic time, we have reached some relatively good results.

Working closely with our client, we managed to suggest improvements for some of the Parkour Akatemia’s own ideas and collaborated with the vision of the client. We also helped to gather marketing material and some contact information of municipalities.

Team Gamma: Aleksanteri Strömberg, Elisa Lahtinen, Perttu Valtonen, Erika Maier and Yaroslav Averichev

Savox Communications Oy Ab. asked us to conduct a market research of available remote collaboration tools, focusing on AR/VR solutions. The project was completed fully remotely.

Project

In the heart of COVID virus pandemic, our brave adventurers took on the challenge of conducting market research for Savox Communications Oy Ab. The focus of the project was on identifying the best possible remote collaboration tool for the Client’s needs and implementing that solution into Savox’s workflow. We embarked on this project by understanding Client needs through interviews, researching solutions and contacting different companies. As a result, we came up with a potential solution that could solve our client’s problem. We hope that our work helped our client to learn about the variety of solutions present in the market and to critically evaluate them.

Results; our happily ever after was divided into 2 + 1 deliverables:

   Market Research Report and Overview of Solutions in which we compiled relevant information of solutions and gave our opinion on them.
   Implementation Suggestions that covered the main steps towards full integration of the solution into our client’s workflow.

The project objectives were to conduct research and find out practices that various NGOs implement in 3 different countries in order to support the migrants’ integration in those countries. In other words, we aimed at finding examples of activities, events and generating ideas from those practices that can be adapted to Finland. Our goal was to contribute to the facilitation of immigrants’ integration in Finland.

We started the project by assigning roles and responsibilities for each team member and defining the means of communication. After having a meeting with our Coach Teacher and with our Client, we had a clear idea about the client's requests. Based on this, our team worked on the project plan and adjusted it by cooperating with the client. During the project work, we chose NGOs of three countries (Greece, Russia, South Africa) that we wanted to interview as well as we prepared the questions which we wanted to ask them. At the same time, we prepared all the needed documentation regarding the privacy policy for the interviews. Afterwards, the interviews were implemented, and the action reports of different NGOs were researched.

Finally, the collected information was summarized, and our design researcher finalized this guide for our client. We were in constant communication with each other as well as with the client which is also a significant factor for succeeding in our project. Overall, it was a great experience as our team managed to successfully implement the project.
Our client: Paremmin Yhdessä ry

Paremmin Yhdessä ry is a non-governmental organization based in Jyväskylä. Their aim is to help migrants with integration and support their well-being. The NGO has various projects such as guiding immigrants and helping them towards active citizenship by supporting with the use of electric services, dealing with studies and authorities and practicing Finnish language. They also train both immigrant and Finnish volunteers. Organization’s name reflects their core ideology: paremmin yhdessä = “better together”. Their values include social responsibility, equity and communality.

We communicated with one designated contact person, Riitta Saastamoinen, who is the project manager in the OSANA-project. OSANA aims for increasing the independence of migrants. The project targets migrants who have already lived in Finland over three years and thus passed the official integration period. During the project volunteers are trained to help with Finnish service systems.
 

Team Rural Trio.  Conducted fully online, this project team explored new perspectives for rural tourism companies for their client, Keski-Suomen Uusyrityskeskus.

About project

Team had Keski-Suomen Uusyrityskeskus (KSUYK) as their client, an organization whose objective is to help creation of new, viable companies and workplaces in Central Finland. KSUYK provides pro bono consultation services for people who would like to become entrepreneurs and who live in one of the member municipalities, which Hankasalmi, Joutsa, Jyväskylä, Konnevesi, Laukaa, Muurame, Petäjävesi, Saarijärvi, Toivakka and Uurainen. (Keski-Suomen Uusyrityskeskus 2019)

Client needed this project because they wanted new insights from different perspectives so that they could provide even better services for their customers than they have done previously. The objectives in the project were to provide new ideas and practical tools for KSUYK and the local rural entrepreneurs and business idea owners to develop their ideas.

Results

Team participated in different workshops and visited one of the business idea owners’ premises. They also used this knowledge as background for conducting a small case study on potential target group: international students.
 

Conducted fully online, this project was the first student induced idea in Team&Client Multidisciplinary Business project. Helsinki Energy Challenge summer 2020.

About project

The aim was to find a carbon neutral energy solution to the City of Helsinki and participate to Helsinki Energy Challenge competition. The project included different activities, like ideation phase, writing the project plan and evaluation of the potential ideas. The length of the project was roughly 4 months and it was done completely remotely.

Results

We were able to write, edit, summarise and submit a comprehensive master plan for the Helsinki Energy. 

Challenge

The results of the competition are pending, a Jury selects those that get into the final phase. 

Team Internal. Conducted fully online because COVID-19 -pandemic, this team has Business Jyväskylä as their client. Team collected perspectives from students and companies on internships and jobs of international students.

About project

The client of the case was Business Jyväskylä. Business Jyväskylä was working in cooperation with the Central Finland Chamber of Commerce on a project to make the practical training periods and internships of educational institutions better applicable to the companies in the region. The goal of this team was to study the process of looking for a job/practical trainings as international students, also to study that also from companies’ point of view.

Results

Due to the virus pandemic situation, the team didn't get as many replies from companies and students as they initiated, but they got useful information both from companies and students point of view, related to their goals. Companies are interested in hiring both Finnish and international students to give work experience and get an employee for holiday periods. Companies need basic Finnish skills, because not everyone knows English.