The Digismart project is a joint project of three Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences: Laurea (ENoLL Effective Member), Haaga-Helia (Innovation Partner of ENoLL) and Metropolia. The aim of the project is to enhance citizen active participation in public administration and to promote democratic values. The project is researching how digital services are part of the everyday life of the vulnerable target groups: the young, the immigrants, and the elderly. How they use digital services and what kind of public and private digital services they miss. Objective of the project is to find out what kind of services these target groups the most need and build a network to plan, apply money and implement a project to build the service. 

Research questions are:

1) What kind of information and services the young, the immigrants and the elderly need in their everyday life?

2) What kind of information and services the target groups need to participate in public decision making?

3) What kind of problems do the target groups face using digital services and retrieving information?

4 What information the target groups want to share and how to disseminate the information?

There are two kinds of research data: Firstly, project partners have interviewed 331 people in the autumn 2016 of which were 105 immigrants, 114 under 25-year old, and 125 over 65-year old. The skills, capabilities, and devices to use digital services varied according to target group. Almost 80 used smart phones to use digital services but in the target group of the elderly the percentage was below 50.

In the spring of 2017 three workshop with target groups and companies planning and producing digital services will be organised. 

If you interested in planning digital services to target groups (immigrants, young and elderly) contact project leaders Minttu.raty(at)laurea.fi, at Haaga-Helia Merja.drake(at)haaga-helia.fi and at Metropolia sami.huohvanainen(at)metropolia.fi.