Helsinki BookmarksFinal Report

IDBM Project 2011−2012

Executive SummaryProject ObjectivesThe ProcessThe OutcomesThe Recommendations

Project Background and Objectives

The ProcessUnderstanding the technology and its applicationsBenchmarking – Insights from around the worldField Trip to ChinaSocializing findings and ideasPrototyping the bookmarks in a private gallery

The OutcomesDrawing Inspiration: The Best ideas are stolen!Key Insights and Principles of the Ecosystem

‘Tags’ provide digital identities to objects and ‘Tapping’ is a new interaction paradigm promising simplicityLocal and Contextual Content and ServicesInteractive and Transactional ServicesConsistent Experience across Public and Private SpacesCreating a ‘Brand Identity’ for the City-TagsOpen and Extensible Platform

Ecosystem MapUser Scenarios and Service Concepts

SymbolsColorsOther Metaphors / Navigational Tips

Key Ecosystem Actors and their Business ModelsPromoters / FacilitatorsInfrastructure and Platform ProvidersService and Content ProvidersStart-ups, Amateur Platform, Service and Content Developers

Limitations & Areas for Further Exploration and DevelopmentHeterogeneous Nature of the Ecosystem: Different User- Segments, User Interfaces & Competing Technologies and Media ChannelsIntroduction of NFC Payment Services

Recommended Next Steps for Forum ViriumPartner with Device Manufacturers to bring more NFC enabled devices to marketPilots and Trials involving the various actors suggested in the reportUser EducationContinuous dialog between the various potential actors and a roadmap for rolling out services

Appendices

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Contents

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Helsinki BookmarksFinal ReportIDBM Industry Project 2011−2012with Forum Virium

Tushar Malhotra, Hannamari Vahtikari, Anna Vavilova and Zhou LuInternational Design Business ManagementAalto University2012

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Project Objectives

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a technology that can be used to provide digital identities to phys-ical objects. NFC tags are like QR codes (or barcodes) with better capabilities and simplified way of interacting with them and can be used to trigger various services using NFC enabled mobile phones. Forum Virium, Helsinki believes that NFC tags placed at key locations around the city, can be used “to provide a new dimension to the cityscape” by offering new services and content to the users.

“ The purpose of the IDBM project was to develop the concept of ‘city-tags’ by proposing and visualizing compelling service concepts and suitable business models for creation of a digital service ecosystem in Helsinki around NFC tag based access points. While the main goal was to identify the various potential actors (stakeholders) and their roles, incentives and relationships (business models) in such an ecosystem, it was mutually agreed that the best way to approach this was by also developing representative service concepts and user scenarios.”The Process

The “process” followed by the team during the project was multifaceted and iterative. The team used a variety of tools and working methods (analytical, visual and social) and undertook various activities in line with the project scope to achieve the objectives in a holistic manner. While the early iterations were focused more on learning and analysis, the later iterations were increasingly generative in nature. Following were the major activities undertaken by the team.

Background Research and BenchmarkingAs part of the background research, the team strove to understand the global NFC landscape from various perspectives. The team benchmarked NFC ecosystems, both established as well as those under development, and other interesting projects and trials across the globe in Asia (Japan, Korea, Singapore, China and India), USA and Europe (UK, France etc.). A variety of tools and techniques were used to analyze the trends and patterns including Timeline analysis and a tool developed by the team for a holistic analysis of ecosystems.

Field trip to ChinaBased on the team’s benchmarking, China emerged as a very interesting destination due to the emerging services and business models which were quite different from most other cases stud-ied. Hence, the team decided to visit Beijing and Shanghai for a field trip to take a closer look at the developments taking place there.

Executive Summary

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Socializing the Findings and IdeasFostering an ongoing dialogue and interacting with the various potential partners and actors in the ecosystem in order to get their opinions and perspectives as well as to share the teams’ findings and ideas was a very important part of the project. With the help of the client (Forum Virium), the team managed to find several opportunities to do this through one on one meetings, group presentations and presentation in the open forum event.

Prototyping ConceptsThe team was fortunate to stumble upon and opportunity to test some of their ideas by working on a prototype for a real case of a private art gallery in Helsinki. Though this was not originally in the project scope, it proved to be a great learning and validation experience for the team.

The Outcomes

In line with the stated objectives, the project outcomes consist of a set of visual and textual ar-tifacts that together describe the team’s proposed ecosystem, the actors therein and their roles, incentives and inter-relationships (business models).

Key Insights and PrinciplesAlso captured as part of outcomes are the extracted insights gained by the team during the entire course of the project (activities mentioned above) which, we believe, form the ‘first principles’ on which the entire premise of the proposed ecosystem is built. In short, these key insights and principles are:

NFC tags provide digital identities to physical objects and introduce a new, intuitive way of •interacting with them using the mobile phones. Simplicity is the most important promise of the technology and this should be borne in mind by all actors in the ecosystem.The services and content offered must be local, contextual, interactive and dynamic. Static •information is only of limited use.There is a need for creating a unique ‘brand identity’ for the city-tags and for ensuring a •consistent and seamless user experience across public and private spacesIn order for it to stay vibrant and for new, innovative service concepts to see the light of the •day, the ecosystem and the platform need to be open and extensible and easily accessible to smaller players, start-ups and even amateur content and service providers.

Ecosystem and Ecosystem ActorsThe name ‘Helsinki Bookmarks’ used for the proposed ecosystem (and the city-tags) is derived from a concept where the city (Helsinki area) is thought of as a book whose interesting and im-portant locations have been punctuated using bookmarks. Thus, the bookmarks allow the read-ers (city dwellers) to find interesting stuff in the book (city) easily.

The Ecosystem Map (figure-3) provides a visual overview of the proposed ecosystem. In short, the ‘bookmarks’ are NFC touchpoints located at important places all around the city. They provide access to a variety of useful content and services to the users through mobile phones. Behind these access points is an open ecosystem promoted by the City of Helsinki. The city works with various partners like IT platform providers, Mobile Network Operators, and Device & Tag Manufacturers, who develop and run the platform. The city also licenses the ‘Helsinki Bookmark’ brand to various commercial (e.g. outdoor advertisers like Clear Channel) and non-commercial (e.g. Tourist Information department) access-point providers. These providers then work with different service and content providers to deliver services to the users.

The various categories of actors in the proposed ecosystem are as follows.

Promoters / FacilitatorsThese actors have an interest in bringing the ecosystem into existence and thus play a driving role. These include the City of Helsinki which develops and licenses the ‘Helsinki Bookmarks’ brand and Forum Virium which acts a facilitator and also helps in user-education and on piloting of new service concepts and ideas.

Infrastructure ProvidersThese are the actors who provide the core infrastructure for the ecosystem on top of which other providers offer content and services. These include the roles IT /Tag Management Providers, Mobile Network Operators, Device and Tag Manufacturers and various commercial and non-commercial Access Point Providers.

Content and Service ProvidersThese are the actors who offer a variety of commercial or non-commercial content and services in the ecosystem. An important sub-role in this category is that of the ‘Aggregators’ who act as intermediaries between small, less savvy content and service providers and the access point providers.

Start-ups, Individuals and Amateur ProvidersAn important facet of the proposed ecosystem is its open nature which allows new players (in-cluding amateur providers and even users) to participate in the ecosystem and offer innovative content and services.

The Recommendations

Based on the research and proposed outcomes, the team has the following actionable recom-mendations for the client:

To partner with device manufacturers to bring more NFC enabled handsets to market•To conduct pilots and trials on order to develop, examine, test and validate the proposals •in this reportTo undertake user education and promotional campaigns•To foster a continuous dialog between the various stakeholders and evolve a roadmap for •the proposed ecosystem

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Forum Virium Helsinki develops new digital services in collaboration with companies, the City of Helsinki and other public sector organizations. Helsinki residents participate in the development and testing of the services. The aim is to create better services and new business, plus to open up contacts for the international markets. (Quoted from the Forum Virium website).

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a technology that can be used to provide digital iden-tities to physical objects. NFC tags are like QR codes (or barcodes) with better capabilities and simplified way of interacting with them and can be used to trigger various services using NFC enabled mobile phones. As part of their ‘Smart Urban Spaces’ project, Forum Virium was working on an idea that digital (NFC) tags could be used to provide a new ‘dimension’ to the cityscape navigable using mobile phones. The premise was that once an NFC tag infrastructure is put in place in the city, a variety of useful content and services could be offered through the touchpoints. A few pilots had been done in this context before the project began, the main one being a pilot for guiding tourists arriving at the Hernesaari harbor along a visually marked and digitally tagged ‘test’ path.

“ The purpose of the IDBM project was to develop the concept of ‘city-tags’ by proposing and visualizing compelling service concepts and suitable business models for creation of a digital service ecosystem in Helsinki around NFC tag based access points. While the main goal was to identify the various potential actors (stakeholders) and their roles, incentives and relationships (business models) in such an ecosystem, it was mutually agreed that the best way to approach this was by also developing representative service concepts and user scenarios.”

The process followed during the project was multifaceted and iterative. While the early iterations were focused more on learning and analysis, the later iterations were increasingly generative in nature. This section details the various tools and methods employed and the activities under-taken by the team during the course of the project.

Understanding the technology and its applications

The team started by acquiring a thorough understanding of the state of the art of the technology involved and its prevalent and potential applications, and future outlook. The team studied and analyzed relevant articles, reports and research papers to this end. An important deliberation point during this phase was to compare and contrast NFC with other similar and / or related technologies (like QR codes, GPS, Bluetooth etc.) in order to understand the subtleties.

Benchmarking — Insights from around the world

Another important activity, especially during the analysis phase, was to benchmark similar or related efforts, trials and projects around the world aimed at fostering NFC ecosystems in those places. Forum Virium already had insights from projects done in Oulu in Finland and in Nice in France. The team augmented this knowledgebase by studying interesting cases from other parts of the world including Europe (e.g. London), Japan and South Korea (The pioneers in the devel-opment and deployment of NFC / RFID enabled services and the only countries with a history of commercially successful applications), Singapore (In the process of implementing an NFC eco-system promoted by the government), India (pilot project undertaken by Citibank) and China.

The team used various tools for analysis during this phase – (1) Timeline analysis done by plotting the various cases studied on a timeline to identify trends and patterns therein and (2) the 4-Perspectives tool, developed by the team, to holistically understand the studied ecosystems from four different perspectives, namely those of (a) Users, (b) Services and Applications, (c) Partners and Stakeholders and (d) Technology and Platforms.

NoteThe background research and benchmarking phase have been only briefly outlined here for the sake of completeness. Findings and insights from the same have been extensively documented separately. Appendix-1 provides a link to the detailed document.

Project Background and Objectives The Process

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Field Trip to China

During the benchmarking, the team discovered interesting developments taking place in China. Several companies, like Jiepang, Velo, Q-Card etc., were taking a unique approach to the space as compared to most other examples studied elsewhere. While in most other cases, the focus was primarily on NFC payments (involving big investments by Banks, Payment Gateways and Mobile Network Operators) and on Public Transportation, the team noticed the emergence of a different kind of location-based services / applications and business models in China. Hence, it was decid-ed to undertake a field trip to Beijing and Shanghai in order to get a first-hand experience of these services and to meet with the companies behind them. During the trip, the team also managed to conduct a hands-on workshop to generate service concepts at the Aalto-Tongji Design Factory in Shanghai and visit several other interesting organizations like the Shanghai Social Security Card company and a business incubator called ‘Innovation Works’ in Beijing.

Velo, with a company tagline that says “Info around You” has a long term vision that is strikingly similar to the objectives of this project: to create an ‘object network’ in the city using NFC tags. As a starting point, it has pioneered a very successful location-based service concept and a business model around the same. Velo sells content space to various brands and retailers on its terminals, located at key public locations in the cities (like Metro stations). The merchants can offer content and services (e.g. discount offers, free sample offers) through these terminals to the Velo users, who can access these terminals (content) using either their NFC enabled mo-bile phones or, more often, through the special NFC tags issued to them by Velo. These tags effectively serve to NFC-enable the users (non-NFC) phones since each tag is uniquely linked to a mobile phone number. Though the tags were initially meant to be a temporary solution to overcome a lack of NFC enabled devices, they have become a collectible fashion accessory in

their own right and the company now brings out various ‘special edition’ tags in partnership with popular brands like Disney and Angry Birds. Q-Card (a subsidiary of Focus Media) has essentially replicated Velo’s business model though for a different user-segment —that of white collar work-ers. The major difference from Velo in case of Q-Card is that most of their locations are inside upmarket office or business spaces and have display screens (which are used for advertising, Focus Media’s original business).

Further details about Velo and Q-Card (including business model and some numbers) are available in the presentation listed in the Appendix-3.

Socializing findings and ideas

Given the nature of the project and the ultimate objective of mobilizing an ecosystem; socializing our findings, ideas and concepts with the potential actors was imperative for the team at various stages of the project. With the help of our partner, Forum Virium, the team managed to meet and present to and get valuable feedback from important potential partners / ecosystem actors in different forums including one on one meetings (Elisa, Clear Channel, 4D Space), ‘Open Forum’ event hosted by Forum Virium (many important actors were represented in the event) and group presentations to an audience consisting of key potential actors (TagAge, VTT, Hansa Print etc.). A positive side effect of these social encounters was that it started a dialogue between the different players and partners in the ecosystem.

Figure 1 Locations Benchmarked Trip to China: Beijing and Shanghai

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Prototyping the bookmarks in a private gallery

While it wasn’t originally planned as part of the project, the team came across an opportunity to prototype their ideas related to one of the user scenarios at a private art gallery exhibiting Timo Saarpaneva’s glass art. This prototype, now near completion, though does not exactly mimic the proposal, proved to be a great learning as well as validation exercise for the team.

The prototype consists of bookmarks (NFC tags) placed inside a private space (the gallery) that provide an enhanced audio-visual experience to the gallery visitors and bring the glass exhib-its on display to life by ‘tagging’ related video content onto them. At outdoor (public) prototypical bookmark is also planned to be placed at a prominent location near the gallery which will provide information about the gallery and the exhibition to the users. While these bookmarks will not have any other public or commercial services and / or content at this point, they, nevertheless, serve as a proof of concept. The prototype relates to one of the (more extensive) user scenarios presented later in the Outcomes section and can be easily extrapolated to other, larger contexts (like public museums) as mentioned in the scenario.

Figure 2 Discussions on the prototype underway in the private gallery

Drawing Inspiration: The best ideas are stolen!

During the background research as well as during the field trip, the team studied various eco-systems, business models and concepts, including those which were not directly related to the city-tags ecosystem in any obvious manner but which were, nevertheless, interesting for the team for certain attributes. In coming up with the proposal for the design on the ‘Helsinki Bookmarks’ ecosystem and the various business models for the different actors within it, the team has liber-ally borrowed and reinterpreted concepts and ideas from a number of these well-proven bench-marks.

Apple’s AppStore is a shining example of how to build an open platform and a ‘market-place’ for services and content that is beneficial for both the platform provider (Apple) as well as the content and service providers. Elements of the ‘AppStore’ (like easy discoverability, cus-tomization, shared revenues, and advertising supported free services) have been incorporated in the open platform envisaged here. Google changed the online Advertising world by provid-ing non-intrusive, in-content and contextual advertisements (as opposed to the screen grabbing banner ads). In-content and contextual advertising is a model that fits the ‘Helsinki Bookmark’ ecosystem really well, and can be exploited by the access point providers (like traditional outdoor advertisers) especially for free services and content. The shared Infrastructure model followed by the telecom industry (towers) and banks ATM’s has proven to be the extremely cost-efficient and scalable for the providers and well as convenient for the consumers who have relatively seamless and uninterrupted access to services from access points owned by multiple parties / entities / providers. We believe that this shared / distributed model is best suited for deploying and maintaining the tags infrastructure – the access point providers are responsible for owning and maintaining the locations they own while the common platform and brand ensures that the users can have a consistent and seamless (though differentiated) experience while accessing the services and content.

Finally, the lessons learnt from examining the successful business models of Velo and Q-Card from China have been incorporated and adapted in the model(s) proposed for the various service and content providers in the ecosystem. Also a core realization from China is part of the basic tenets - that in order to have a sustainable and viable ecosystem, it is necessary to have commercial services and content along with free, public information services.

The Outcomes

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Key Insights and Principles of the Ecosystem

Based on the learning acquired from the background research, benchmarking, field trip, inter-actions with key actors and other activities noted above, the team has managed to extract and formulate what it believes are the ‘Key Tenets’ or ‘Principles’ that are essential for the success of the proposed ecosystem. The team strongly recommends that these be used as guidelines by the various ecosystem actors and especially the ‘promoters’ of the ecosystems.

‘Tags’ provide digital identities to objects and ‘Tapping’ is a new interaction paradigm promising simplicityNFC tags can provide digital identities to the objects they are tagged on. This allows non-digital objects (like historical monuments, pieces of furniture, museum showcases etc.) to participate in the digital web. Also, NFC introduces ‘Tapping’ as a new, intuitive way of interacting for users (like the mouse introduced the ‘point and click’ paradigm). The key promise of NFC technology for the users is its simplicity. The challenge is to ensure that this basic tenet is not compromised even as more and more services and content are made available on the platform through the ac-cess points.

Local and Contextual Content and ServicesAs evident from a lot of research as well as successful examples abroad, providing local and contextual content and services is the key to the success of the ecosystem. From a users’ point of view, the bookmarks platform is essentially a network that offers location based services and content at major locations in the metropolitan area.

Interactive and Transactional ServicesFor scalable adoption and repeat users, the services need to be engaging, interactive (and / or transactional) and dynamic. While ‘informational’ services may work for specific user segments (e.g. tourists), they are not sufficient on their own for a sustainable ecosystem.

Consistent Experience across Public and Private SpacesMost typical user scenarios span across multiple public (e.g. a Bus Stop, Library) and private spaces (e.g. Inside a retail store or home). Hence seamless experience needs to be ensured across public and private spaces.

Creating a ‘Brand Identity’ for the City-TagsBuilding a ‘Brand Promise’ and providing seamless and consistent (though possible differenti-ated) experience to the consumers / users across all access points, including those in public and private spaces.

Open and Extensible PlatformThe platform must accommodate multiple and possibly competing actors and business models (e.g. free vs. Paid vs. Advertising supported content). Further, there must be room for future en-hancements to the platform itself by various actors. The ecosystem must ensure a low barrier of entry for new players and start-ups (service / content providers as well as ‘platform enhancers’) in order to stay vibrant and dynamic.

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User Scenarios and Service Concepts

The team developed several user-scenarios in the form of visual storyboards which demonstrate potential service concepts that could be realized in the proposed ecosystem for different user segments. The user segments touched by the scenarios include both, the residents of the city (e.g. students, elderly people) as well as tourists and visitors in Helsinki. Due to size constraints, the scenario storyboards have been included in Appendix-2.

Ecosystem Map

The “Ecosystem Map” developed by the team provides an audio-visual overview of the proposed ecosystem. In the video version a user story (“A day in the life of Alex”) is employed to help navigate through the map and explain the concepts. Since that navigation is not available in the picture version, here is a note on the visual language used.

SymbolsThe ‘Helsinki Bookmarks’ logo indicates a location for the bookmark or service accessible through the same. The arrows indicate the direction of flow of information and content unless otherwise indicated. The icons used are indicative of services and applications and are mostly self-explanatory.

ColorsBlue is used to denote the platform and the ecosystem actors who are essentially the ‘promot-ers’ of the ecosystem (e.g. City of Helsinki, Forum Virium etc.) Red is used to indicate ecosystem actors with commercial interests and /c or commercial services. The actors in Red can belong to any category viz. infrastructure providers, access point providers, service and / or content providers etc. (e.g. commercial Access Point Providers like Clear Channel). Green is used for non-commercial / non-profit services and actors. (e.g. Public Transportation, Tourist Information etc.). Purple is used to indicate actors and services that add vibrancy and dynamism to the eco-system. It emphasizes the open nature of the platform and the ecosystem. This category includes user generated content, start-ups and other organizations and individuals that offer new, even experimental service concepts and/or platform enhancements to the ecosystem.

Other Metaphors / Navigational TipsThe big logo in the middle indicates the interconnected, open platform that is at the heart of the ecosystem. The fact that there are multiple ‘bookmarks’ in the picture with a set of actors and services surrounding each of them is a metaphor to reiterate the local and contextual nature of the services and the diverse variety of content accessible through the bookmarks.

Figure 3 “Helsinki Bookmarks” Ecosystem Map

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Key Ecosystem Actors and their Business Models

This section details the key ecosystem actors, their roles, incentives and inter-relationships. Note that the roles are meant to categorize and symbolize the various opportunities and responsibili-ties in the ecosystem - they are not meant to be prescriptive or exclusive. For example, a single organization (or individual) can be both a platform provider as well as a service provider.

Promoters / FacilitatorsThese actors have an interest in bringing the ecosystem into existence and thus play a driving role.

City of HelsinkiCity of Helsinki’s vested interests in the ecosystem are twofold. One is providing a new, conve-nient and accessible way of providing services and information to the residents (and visitors). Second, on B2B front, is promoting the ecosystem as a medium for economic activity. To meet these objectives, in our view, the city should own and enforce the ‘Helsinki Bookmarks’ brand promise for the users as well as the openness of the platform for the partners.

The city, thus, creates and owns the ‘Helsinki Bookmark’. It licenses out this brand to the ac-cess point providers, generating licensing revenues in the process. The license agreement should mandate that a basic set of public services will always be provided at every bookmark. This will ensure consistency of experience for the user and a validation of the brand promise. Beyond this minimum set, the providers should have ample flexibility to customize and monetize the other content and services in accordance with the brand guidelines. As a start, to bootstrap the eco-system, the city can setup its own bookmarks in partnership with various public organizations (like HSL, Tourist Information, and Parking etc.). Also, the licenses can be tied to the outdoor advertising space leased out by various government agencies.

On the platform front, the city needs to establish design guidelines and requirements for the common, open platform. The team believes that this can be a part of the city’s ‘Open Data’ initiative already under development. Next, the city needs to select competent partner(s) for de-veloping and managing this platform.

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Forum ViriumWe see Forum Virium playing the role of a facilitator on the B2B side - acting as the glue between partners, promoting platform adoption and removing roadblocks. We also see it as a source of new inspiring service concepts and platform extensions, which it pilots in the ecosystem in collaboration with various partners including students and start-ups.On the B2C front, we see Forum Virium taking up a role in encouraging platform adoption among the city dwellers, tourists and other user segments through targeted campaigns and user-educa-tion initiatives and drives (probably in partnership with other ecosystem players).

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Infrastructure and Platform ProvidersThese are the actors who provide the core infrastructure for the ecosystem on top of which other providers offer content and services. These include the roles IT /Tag Management Providers, Mobile Network Operators, Device and Tag Manufacturers and various commercial and non-commercial Access Point Providers

Tag Management Platform / IT Platform ProviderThe platform provider(s) develops and provides the bookmarks platform in accordance with the prescribed design and functional guidelines. At the very core, the platform needs to provide a mapping for the various access points and the services published at each and also manage the publication of new services and content by the partners. The platform also needs to support customizations by the access point providers and shared workflows for publishing new services. Besides the basic features, the platform provider(s) should have the opportunity to offer value added services to the access point providers (and service providers) like usage analytics and monetize the same.

The platform provider also works with other key infrastructure providers (like tag manufac-turers, device manufacturers and Mobile Network Operators) in order to develop and run the platform.

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Access Point ProvidersAs noted earlier, the Access Point Providers play a major role in the proposed ecosystem. They license the ‘Helsinki Bookmark’ brand from the city and work with the platform providers on one hand - to customize the access point as per their needs and business models (e.g. ordering of services, advertising based content, free services, publication workflows) – and with the various service and content providers on the other hand.

The proposed ecosystem will accommodate multiple business models for the access point providers. They can be commercially oriented offering paid services (i.e. either the service pro-vider or the customer or both pay for services and content), in-content, contextual advertising based services (free for service providers as well as customers), a mixture of these or other busi-ness models that can evolve over time. There can also be non-profit access points (e.g. those owned by the city itself, universities, TEKES etc.) for providing public / civil services and / or free and experimental services (e.g. for start-ups, students etc.)Access points (bookmarks) can also be setup under a ‘private space’ license where the licensee controls completely the content and services offered (the common, minimum public services must still be provided) and is under no obligation to list the access point publicly (for other ser-vice providers). This kind of license is suitable for use in spaces like private art galleries, stores and outlets etc.

The access point providers can also offer and monetize additional, value added services to their business customers and partners (that is, content and service providers) e.g. user analytics and statistics, loyalty programs (B2C or B2B) etc.

Mobile Network OperatorsMNOs are a key infrastructure as well as services player. On the infrastructure side, they provide the network – the channel over which most of the communication at and between access points takes place. They can also provide targeted services and content in partnership with platform and access point providers. MNOs have an even larger role to play in the next phase of the ecosystem (described later) when mobile NFC payments become mainstream.

Device Manufacturers & Tag ManufacturersDevice and tag manufacturers are the other key ecosystem actors in the infrastructure space. Their roles are more or less on the traditional, well understood lines. However, opportunities can be explored for innovative partnerships between them and various other actors to offer new kinds of services and / or simplified experiences for the users (e.g. pre-loaded apps for the bookmarks platform).

Service and Content ProvidersThese are the actors who offer a variety of commercial or non-commercial content and services in the ecosystem.

Public / Civil Services ProvidersIt is expected that a number of public and civil service providers will be on boarded in the eco-system. Services like public transportation, tourist information, parking etc. have already been successfully piloted at various places in Europe and rest of the world. While most of these ser-vices are expected to be non-commercial / free, there’s a possibility to offer some premium, paid services and / or use in-content contextual advertising for support.

The city is expected to work closely with these services to include some or all of them as part of the branding license issued to the access point providers.

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Commercial Service and Content Providers

Large EnterprisesLarge commercial enterprises like retail chains, fast food joints, cafés etc. can work directly with the access point providers or through the aggregators to offer relevant content and services to their customers (E.g. Daily discounts, deals of the day, loyalty points etc.) They can also choose to run promotional, location based campaigns easily (e.g. to promote new stores, build new customer-bases etc.)

Through the value-added services offered by the access point providers, they can also get valuable insights into customer behavior and demographics etc.

SMB’s and Small MerchantsSMB’s and small “mom and pop” shop / store owners can also benefit immensely from this platform especially because of the fact that it encourages local, contextual services. A small pizza outlet owner near Kamppi can thus get good ROI by choosing to advertise and / or provide offers and discounts at the bookmark(s) in its vicinity. These small businesses are also equally important for the ecosystem since they provide the richness, diversity of local content and services.However, one key challenge here is the fact that most of these businesses are low on re-sources and / or are not technology savvy enough to be able to deal directly with the access providers. This is where the ‘service and content aggregators’ come in.

AggregatorsThe content and service aggregators act as the ‘Yellow Pages’ providers in the ecosystem and hence play a crucial role in ensuring the quality, richness and diversity of content and services being offered through the access points. On one hand, they simplify content and service ac-quisition for the access point providers because of their local knowledge and database and by being the single point of contact for a large number of small businesses. For the SMBs and small merchants, as mentioned above, the aggregators provide a way to participate in the ecosystem by providing them technology and marketing assistance, as needed. The aggregators also serve to channel the useful analytics about consumer behavior back to their customers either as part of the deal or as an additional service.

Start-ups, Amateur Platform, Service and Content DevelopersWhile this category is not a separate ecosystem role in itself, we believe it is important enough to deserve a separate section! The real benefit and purpose of building an open platform and ecosystem are realized only when communities and groups like these help in evolving the platform and in introducing new service concepts and business models in the ecosystem. These could be extensions or value additions on the platform itself (e.g. a new way of analyz-ing and presenting user statistics using the platform APIs) or new ideas for services, novel business models etc. Hence, they are vital for ensuring the vibrancy of the ecosystem. The team also believes that Forum Virium should partner more closely with these groups to grow and evolve the ecosystem further.

Heterogeneous Nature of the Ecosystem: Different User-Segments,

User Interfaces & Competing Technologies and Media Channels

In the interest of clarity and in order to focus on the objectives, the team has made some simpli-fications and assumptions in context of the proposed ecosystem. The most important one that needs to be acknowledged is that the proposal assumes that the tag-ecosystem will be ubiquitous and pervasive. The more likely reality, however, is that the landscape will continue to be heteroge-neous in various ways. The city-tags will necessarily compete with other competing technologies and media that are capable of offering similar content and services. Also, different user-segments are likely to have different requirements and preferences for the touch-point interfaces. For in-stance, tourists might prefer using information display screens and service integrated ‘Tourist City Cards’ (that provide access to various services like public transport, historical monuments, museums etc.) rather than mobile phones for consuming the content and services offered by the platform due to various reasons (e.g. high data-roaming charges).

These factors need to be considered and incorporated in the implementation plans.

Introduction of NFC Payment Services

While NFC based mobile payments have not become mainstream yet, with players like Google, VISA and MasterCard jumping in the game, there are strong indicators that they will do so in the near future. With the advent of NFC payments, there will be opportunities for new actors or for existing actors to assume enhanced roles and offer new kinds of services in the ecosystem. While the team believes that there is ample space and flexibility in the proposal for accommodat-ing these changes and evolving the ecosystem over time, we have not focused much attention specifically to NFC payment services in the current proposal.

Limitations & Areas for Further Exploration and Development

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Based on the team’s research and proposal(s) for the ecosystem (including business models, service concepts and scenarios etc.) presented in the previous sections, we recommend the fol-lowing concrete action items as the first steps towards establishing the proposed ecosystem.

Partner with Device Manufacturers to bring more NFC enabled devices to market

One of the key concerns the team encountered from various quarters on numerous occasions was around the lack of availability of NFC enabled devices (mobile phones). While major manu-facturers like Nokia and Samsung have come out with a few NFC enabled models, the penetra-tion is still far too low for a service ecosystem like the one proposed to be viable. Since previous estimates around the profusion of such devices in the market have proven wrong, it would be prudent to discuss and partner with the device manufacturers and draw up roadmaps for device availability that align with the overall roadmap for the ecosystem (mentioned later).

Pilots and Trials involving the various actors suggested in the report

The scenarios, service concepts, platform features and business models suggested in the report are only a basic first step. They need to be developed further, examined, tested and validated (or invalidated). For this, it is necessary to conduct a large number of small-scale pilots and trials (‘Walk and Feel Helsinki’ last summer and the private gallery pilot undertaken by the team are good examples). Besides serving as testing grounds, these pilots and trials can also go a long way in generating interest among both, the partners as well as the users.

User Education

User education and visibility and promotion of the promise of ‘Helsinki Bookmarks’ (or any other chosen identity for the access points) are critical requirements for ensuring interest from the resi-dents and visitors and thus for the success and sustainability of the proposed ecosystem. This needs to go hand in hand along with the pilots and trials suggested above.

Recommended Next Steps for Forum Virium

Continuous dialog between the various potential actors and a roadmap for

rolling out services

As suggested in the proposal, Forum Virium needs to act as glue between the various potential actors and lead the dialog around evolving a feasible and viable roadmap for rolling out the platform and services in the ecosystem. For this, it is necessary to maintain an ongoing dialog between the various stakeholders.

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Appendix 1Background Research Document

Appendix 2User Scenario Storyboards

Appendix 3China Field Trip Details

Appendices