public mission begins
2004WiFi.ee started by making secure public Wi-Fi visible across Estonia.
HAAM B2B · Public digital infrastructure
WiFi.ee
Estonia's public Wi-Fi map began as a way to make connected places visible. Two decades later, the deeper task is maintaining trust: helping people find a useful network, helping venues improve it, and helping a public standard remain alive through everyday operations.
WiFi.eeVisitorsVenuesCommunityOperators
One public recordDifferent needs · Shared responsibility
audiences in one service
4Visitors, venue operators, community contributors, and network maintainers need different views of the same place.
quality signals
5Security, upload speed, Wi-Fi generation, power access, and the work environment become one legible score.
living public record
1The map, directory, hotspot pages, operator tools, and mobile experiences all work from a shared source of truth.
The responsibility
Modernize the service without erasing its memory.
WiFi.ee is older than most products now called platforms. It grew alongside Estonia's public internet culture, collecting hotspots, promoting a national standard, and giving secure locations a recognizable orange sign.
Rebuilding something with that history is not mainly a visual redesign. The archive must survive. Old links must still lead somewhere meaningful. Records need to become structured enough for search, maps, statistics, mobile products, and future services. At the same time, the public experience has to become understandable to someone who only wants to know where they can safely connect.
HAAM's role is to hold those layers together: product direction, service design, data architecture, interface design, migration, operations, and the continuing work of making the platform useful after launch.
One platform, four perspectives
The product changes depending on who arrives.
The same hotspot is a destination, a responsibility, a contribution, and an operational record. The interface has to make each perspective clear without splitting the service into disconnected products.
01
People looking for a connection
A visitor needs to know where a network is, whether it is free, whether it is safe enough to trust, and whether the place is practical for the task at hand.
02
Venues responsible for the experience
A café, library, hotel, hospital, or public institution needs a way to claim its location, correct information, understand the standard, and improve the network.
03
A community keeping the map alive
Contributors need lightweight ways to add places, update details, measure performance, discuss problems, and see that their work matters.
04
The people maintaining public trust
Auditors and operators need structured records, history, evidence, and practical workflows that turn a public standard into ongoing maintenance.
Design decisions
Make maintenance part of the experience.
Public infrastructure becomes trustworthy when people can see what a record means, how it changes, and who can improve it.
01
Service model
Treat a hotspot as a maintained public place, not a pin on a map.
A useful record has identity, ownership, history, evidence, performance, and a relationship with the people who visit it. The redesign makes each Wi-Fi area a durable page that can improve over time.
- Every location can hold structured technical and visitor information
- Edit history and contributor activity make maintenance visible
- Venue claiming connects public records with responsible operators
02
Trust model
Turn an invisible technical condition into a signal people can act on.
Most people cannot inspect network isolation or configuration while entering a café. WiFi.ee translates several technical and environmental checks into a quality score, while keeping the underlying criteria visible.
- Security carries the largest share of the score
- Speed and Wi-Fi generation show practical network capability
- Power, quietness, comfort, and lighting acknowledge the real use context
03
Information architecture
Let the same data answer local, national, and operational questions.
A single hotspot page is useful in the moment. Country and city directories reveal patterns. Operator tools support maintenance. The product works because each layer is a different view of the same underlying record.
- Search and maps help people find nearby options
- City and country pages make coverage and quality comparable
- Admin and community tools feed improvements back into the public surface
04
Legacy modernization
Preserve the archive while rebuilding the system around present needs.
WiFi.ee carries more than two decades of public history. The work was therefore not a clean-slate redesign. Existing records, links, place identity, and public recognition had to survive a new data model and product architecture.
- Long-lived hotspot records remain discoverable
- Normalized data supports maps, statistics, search, and APIs
- The new stack can evolve without discarding the civic memory already collected
Connected architecture
A service that can keep growing after the redesign.
The architecture separates public delivery, data, operations, and media while keeping them connected through one product model.
Public experience
Next.js
Localized maps, directories, hotspot pages, statistics, community entry points, and a fast mobile-first browsing experience.
Shared data
Postgres + PostGIS
Structured hotspot records, geographic queries, relationships, scores, history, and the data needed to generate local directories.
Operations
Directus
A practical administrative layer for maintaining records, reviewing changes, managing media, and supporting venue and community workflows.
Media and delivery
Cloudflare R2
A durable home for hotspot imagery and public assets, separated from the application so the archive can grow without becoming fragile.
What the platform now connects
From a directory into an operating system for public Wi-Fi.
The redesign creates a base for discovery, accountability, contribution, and future services instead of treating launch as the end of the project.
01A searchable public map and database built around individual hotspot pages
02Country and city directories that expose coverage, speed, and quality patterns
03A quality score that connects network security with real working conditions
04Venue claiming and administrative workflows for the organisations responsible
05Community contributions, activity, favourites, check-ins, and discussion
06A shared platform direction across the website, operator tools, and mobile apps
The long view
Infrastructure is a relationship, not a finished screen.
WiFi.ee shows what HAAM B2B means in practice. The visible interface is only one part of the work. The real product includes old data, new standards, operator routines, contributor motivation, mobile use, security expectations, and the confidence of a person connecting in a public place.
The design challenge is to make that whole system understandable enough to use today and durable enough to keep serving people tomorrow.