Tallinn City Card Guide – your digital city companion

Results

Awards

Background

The Tallinn Strategic Management Office initiated a project to enhance the experience of tourists visiting the city of Tallinn with a vision to create a truly user-centered mobile application.

The main objectives were to:

Research indicated that providing more information about different areas would motivate visitors to explore more widely, thus reducing congestion in the old town during peak seasons. Additionally, increasing digital TCC sales would help lower ticket costs and enable higher payments to museums and attractions.

Some important Tallinn Card usage features:

The client expected the app to be modern, easy to understand, and used by Tallinn visitors from over 100 different countries, aiming for high adoption rates and a rating of at least 4.5 out of 5 in Google Play and App Store. Additionally, our goal was to increase the sale of digital Tallinn Cards to 70% of total sales within three years – it is important to note that 60% was reached 6 months after the launch.

It was our task to create an intuitive, user-friendly native app design that could cater to a diverse international audience, fulfilling all the mentioned strategic goals. Together with the developers from FOB Solutions, we’ve already exceeded the expectations. 

Process

Our collaboration with the Tallinn Strategic Management Office was notably smooth and productive. Our app design process began with extensive user research, conducting several workshops and meetings to understand the needs of potential users.

We then created detailed personas representing different tourist types and built user journeys based on these personas. The UX design focused on the user journey, particularly emphasizing a smooth onboarding process, as most users download the app upon arriving in Tallinn. The purchase process needed to be simple, the value of the card had to be immediately understandable, and users needed to easily find attractions of interest. Offline mode was also extremely important as a traveller might not want to use their mobile data for navigating the city.

For the UI design, we adhered to the Tallinn City Card’s brand guidelines while introducing new elements to enhance readability and usability. The Tallinn City Card had a very thin brand book, so we introduced some new, contrasting, and complementary colors. For example, since TCC’s main brand color is bright red, but bright red backgrounds make text notoriously difficult to read, we solved it with blue buttons instead. We also collected and incorporated illustrations from the client, previously used in various channels, within the app, like on loading screens. By animating these illustrations we managed to introduce some playfulness to the app design. 

We strictly adhered to WCAG requirements, as it was another requirement. Additionally, we added accessibility options as a separate filter, so if a user was in a wheelchair, for example, they would only receive recommendations for wheelchair-accessible places. We tested prototypes continuously, refining the app design based on feedback from various user groups. The app’s interface was tailored for both iOS and Android platforms, ensuring it was visually appealing and easy to navigate, despite the different visual design standards of each operating system.

Challenges

Throughout the project, we encountered several challenges. For example, we had to constantly keep in mind that the app’s users are likely not native English speakers. This required us to use clear and simple English to ensure the app was understandable even to users with limited language skills. 

We also faced some technical constraints, particularly in designing the bottom sheet logic for the iOS version. This involved determining what information could be displayed there and whether certain information needed a separate screen. This was the biggest challenge in the UI phase, but we quickly figured it out with the developers. Additionally, the development team aimed to make the app as native as possible, meaning the iOS and Android versions had to be visually distinct.

Visual consistency across different screen sizes was another challenge, especially given the poor quality of some images we were able to get. We addressed this by using Visit Tallinn’s image bank instead. Moreover, we had to ensure that the app complied with Google’s and Apple’s guidelines, as non-compliance could have significant repercussions.

Both a challenge and a learning point was the importance of maintaining a close eye on the UI design and its elements during development to ensure everything is developed exactly as the designer intended. Every text placement, font size, line spacing, color nuance, and element format was essential to achieve a truly beautiful result. The most challenging aspect during the prototype phase was cracking the user group-targeted screens, which involved adjusting icons and text to find the best approach.

Despite these challenges, we maintained high design standards and focused on creating an award-winning app that met the client’s expectations. The final product not only achieved the desired goals but also received positive feedback from users, reflecting its smooth and enjoyable user experience.

We highly value our cooperation with NOPE, not only because of the excellent results but also because of the process. Thanks to NOPE taking the time at the beginning of the process to thoroughly analyze the personas with us, we were able to create a product suitable for such a wide target audience, achieving high user satisfaction.

 

The UX design of the app created by NOPE is so intuitive that despite having a very diverse user base, we have not received any questions regarding app usage. We also appreciate that NOPE’s team always thought along with us, and sometimes even ahead, offering great solutions. All our questions and doubts were always addressed and resolved. The design created is very beautiful in its simplicity and clarity, while also containing small playful elements. It is also significant that we were provided with a design toolkit that allows us to further develop the app.

Kersti Paap, Head of Cultural Tourism Tallinn Strategic Management Office

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