How Service Design Can Help International Students Reshape “The Nearby” with the City

Author:
Li Jingwen
Supervisor:
Youxin Wu, Jörn Frenzel
University:
EKA

Each year, large numbers of international students arrive in Tallinn for study and daily life. The city's efficient digital services, together with university support on arrival, help students cross the early survival barriers. However, the same convenience narrows their daily life into a small set of functional nodes. Although these students live inside the city in a physical sense, they often remain outsiders in cultural and emotional terms. This thesis applies a service design approach to address this gap. Drawing on the concept of "Nearby" developed by the anthropologist Xiang Biao, the project investigates how the cultural meaning of everyday urban space can become accessible to newcomers. Following the Double Diamond framework, the research combines a survey, semi-structured interviews, and a co-design workshop. Based on these findings, the project proposes a multi-touchpoint service system that helps international students gradually build a sense of "Nearby" in Tallinn.

Link to full thesis