Yle Areena is the most popular and valued media service of its kind in Finland, as well as being a global pioneer. It has the most extensive and varied online selection of television and radio programmes in the country. In 2019, Yle reaches 96% of people in Finland every week with a Turnover in 2018 was EUR 471.6 million.

So how to make Yle Areena internationalized more open to foreign audiences. How to be more inclusive?

Through our USER RESEARCH we conducted INTERVIEWS and ONLINE SURVEYS of foreigners target: all ages / both sexes / different levels of Finnish language knowledge.

Key Points

- Majority of the foreigners wish that Yle Areena could provide foreigner-friendly content that could help them to integrate into Finnish society better. Many of them are not aware of the English subtitle feature that is only available on very limited programs and not easily noticeable.

- Additionally, many of them wish to have a specific page that gathers all the foreigner-friendly content.

Our interviewers revealed that Yle Areena could help them also to improve their Finnish language skills, not only through Language TV Shows but by watching local news, finnish movies, local documentaries, variety TV shows and reality shows.

Our conclusion is that Yle Areena is not inclusive enough and still has room for improvement.

Quotes

“I dislike the fact that I cannot watch it. I haven’t had the real opportunity to use the platform because of the lack of translation feature.”

“I would love to have a English website...knowing that there is content for people like me, foreigners who came to live, study or work in Finland but don’t know or can’t speak the language.”

“Yes, I use the Finnish subtitles on the kids show to learn the language. However, for the films and other programs it would be great to have the English subtitle option as well, especially when the content is originally in Finnish.”

Yle Areena English

The solution we found was to introduce a new menu option, presenting Yle English with 100% content subtitled or produced in English. The content takes benefit of existing database and introduces to the UX of Yle the presence of TAGS and SUBMENU, with those the audience could navigate through the existing content divided by interest (SUBMENU) and specific content (TAGS), the buttom on the right when pressed keeps showing more tv shows filtered, or not.




Studycase project together with designer Shi Pey Wong