Figure 1. Service Design Breakfast, Idean 2012

How do emotions impact the design? How can design projects benefit from understanding the emotional rollercoaster? How can you become a better designer if you are aware of the changes in emotions throughout a project? How can you adjust your project plan based on that? In this blogpost you will find out how analyzing your emotions can help your project.

Figure 2. Service design from a different angle, Idean 2012

In order to design something, a service designer needs to be able to make decisions. In order to make decisions, each designer has to feel something, he goes through an “emotional rollercoaster”. Mikko-Pekka had been interviewing designers from Idean and shared the results with us during the second Service Design Breakfast. The designers were asked about their feelings during the service design process, what the emotions they go through are.

Figure 3. Design process, Idean 2012

During the service design process, a designer needs to make many decisions. During that process, a designer goes through many emotional stages. What are these stages?

Feelings of a designer during the project stages (or any other innovative process):

1. First crush – interest towards the project, desire to create something

2. Excitement – first enchantment

3. Frustration – a designer is not satisfied with what he is producing, clients are not always happy with his work (inside out). At the same time it is good to have anger moments, because you start generating new ideas after (outside in).

4. Magic moment – a moment when a designer understands that he finally got it, he knows how to proceed, he found out the design foundation

5. Boredom – a designer has to put all the pieces together, usually that’s the stage where a designer gets bored

6. Relief – a feeling that he has finally delivered something and can start a new project

Mikko-Pekka provides several suggestions on how to improve your productivity (survival guide):

1. Respect yourself – don’t over promise on things you can’t deliver, you should be able to say “no” if you cannot do what is required from you. No one knows your limits better than you.

2. Keep the blood sugar level high.

3. Redefined project plan – thinking about project plan from an emotional perspective.

4. Reflect on what has been done during the project, think about emotions you had, try to learn from your experience.

What can you do as a manager of a creative process?

• It helps to switch people from one project to another one, if you feel they are bored.
• Negative emotions spread very quickly, so you want to avoid them.
• Provoke the discussion with the client, if you understand that something is going wrong, try to make them understand problem, but be diplomatic.

You can find the full presentation from Mikko-Pekka here.

SID Laurea students reviews:

For me it was the shortest presentation I’ve seen so far. It took only 15 minutes. Another 15 min was for questions from the audience. You could see that Mikko-Pekka is not the type of the person who is giving a lot of presentations, but rather hands on ones. The whole message of the talk for me is: “how well you manage your emotions” and understanding your own weaknesses and strengths during the design process. He told a lot about spirit of service design and emotional approach to project. He really stress on first crush phase. He said that it can follows it’s own time and it’s really difficult when it comes to share the emotions during that phase. Every person express things differently and the most important is that designers creates experiences which makes memorable journeys full of emotions. I like the idea very much as for me the key to success is always coming from good designs. It’s always convert to the statement that “you make a good decision at the beginning, you feel more successful later”. He expressed that very first impression about the project is always a sign. If something goes well at the beginning then probably it will be OK at the end and vice versa. It just reminds me blog I read some time ago by Jared M. Spool, “Great Designs Should Be Experienced and Not Seen” (2009), where Jared pointing that: “when things are going well in a design, we don’t pay attention to them. We only pay attention to things that bother us” and the most important thing is to eliminate all of the frustration. When there is no issues with design people are more delightful from the service and they put more focus on how design integrates with other parts of their life. “The design itself is still invisible, but the experience comes to the surface”. For the designers the goal should be to improve the invisible part by discovering the new ways of delighting the users. That will bring focus to deliverables which creates memories full of emotions! Daniel Augustyn

It’s great to see how all of these steps in the process designing seem so familiar.  Ultimately it’s about designing with and through emotion. Perhaps that’s why we as designers have to embrace these feelings as part of the designing process. One could even say that if you didn’t go through at least some of those feelings it’s not a good design.  It was great that Mikko took the time in trying to understand this part of the process because it’s definitely something we wouldn’t be aware of otherwise. Hugo Molina

I agree with Mikko-Pekka that to improve the results of your project or any other creative work, it’s important to pay attention to your emotions and your habits. Our character is a collection of our habits, and habits have a powerful role in our lives. Make sure you know what your habits are, as they will affect the results of your project work. It’s been proven that people who regularly experience positive emotions show better functioning and experience better life outcomes, including physical and mental health. The discussion reminded me about the book of Stephen Covey “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. Covey emphasizes that if we want to make a change in our lives, we should first focus on our personal attitudes and behaviors. Making and keeping promises to ourselves comes before making and keeping promises to others. We see the world based on our perspectives, which have a huge impact on how we perceive things. The change always starts within oneself. Ekaterina Zhiteneva

In my opinion emotions are particularly analysed and they are always set in a context. Get some advices and recipes in how to handle your team emotions, get them more engaged, supportive and productive is always good, but doesn’t mean that everything will be solved, each case need a proper annalyse. People are different and normally teams include different disciplines, people experiences and backgrounds. The best chance to have good results is first to have a clever leader, project manager, specialized on the field needed and then this person will be responsible to find better solutions and methods to engage the team. Normally more experience professional have good understanding about their emotions, but even this isn’t a rule. New professionals are often happy to be part of the processes that you can also use this to create a nice mood in the team. Still about divine inspiration are related to good moods I would disagree, for instance there are some fields as Arts (poems, paintings, novels, etc.) where the beauty of it is sometimes inspired by pain and suffer. Jane Vita

by Juho Hyvärinen

Thursday 29 November Facebook alerted me that I had enrolled for the Service Design Breakfast at Otaniemi. So, it was time to print out the tickets and head for the Aalto University, formerly known as TKK campus at Espoo.

I arrived at Aalto University’s Start Up Sauna and after a freebie breakfast it was time to listen up the presentation of the day. This time it was Jouni Tuominiemi from HIQ discussing about Elearning and service design. The actual topic was “Service acceptance boosted by e-learning”, an hour long presentation and discussion about how Elearning can be utilized when implementing new services on market.

Hiq is an IT and management consultancy firm situated in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Russia. They have over 1200 professionals working for them and profess to follow mantra about their goals: Quality, Profitability and Growth – in this order.

What is Elearning?

Jouni started with the basics of Elearning and outlined how it has changed over the years. If once upon a time it could have been regarded as a form of self-study, this is not the case anymore. With the help of social media and other improved communications method teachers can keep tabs on student much more effectively that before.  Picture above is taken from Jouni’s presentation and is meant to visualize the Elearning of today.

According to Jouni Elearning is needed because not every service is simple and easily understandable. This is true especially when services have been intended to professional use. The amount of critical features and connections to other systems and processes inevitably means more complicated offering that takes time to master.

In this situation service design professionals are left with choice where to spend their money:  Either for oversimplification of the service or creation of comprehensive learning material for prospective users which will help them to master the service in more efficient way?  However it is also important not to get overboard with Elearning material. It must be understood that Elearning is just a cost effective tool which offers additional help for users, not an excuse to skip Service Design when planning for new services.

Jouni emphasized that especially in a launch phase of new services Elearning can be a valuable help. It is important to introduce the material well in advance so that users can get to understand the service and its most important features. If this is not done the situation can be difficult to remedy later on.  Jouni agreed with authors such as Moritz and Stickdorn & Schneider that no matter how good the material is it no substitute for exploiting company employees and stakeholders in design phase of new service to the fullest of their capacities. Only this way useful services that add value to all can be designed and implemented.

Jouni didn’t specially mention it but Elearning is also a perfect way to improve Technological Readiness (TR). When Elearning is extensively used before service launch and wide array of tools is also used afterwards this can only lead to an improved user experience and lowered threshold for more people to actually accept and start using a new service.

Something that has proved to be and still does from time to time is for HIQ and their customers to motivate end users to “Elearn”. This has been solved with many a different method over the years. Some people need a Diploma they can hang on the walls, others are after some sort of a prize. Other reasons for extra motivation can be as diverse as sneak preview, money and localization.

Conclusions

Jouni talked a lot about using Elearning as a tool in order to launch new services or help users with the existing ones. What I actually missed were his views on Elearning as an independent service. How does HIQ develop Elearning for certain services? What is the development path for them and what service design methods they actually use when designing Elearning material? For me this is a pretty unknown area of expertise so would have definitely wanted to hear more his views regarding this.

All in all this was a nice occasion, which gave much food for thought. My thesis discusses digital customer interfaces and one very important part of it is how to get more people to use it and what does it take to actually achieve this. Elearning is definitely one part of the answer although I completely approve with Jouni’s view that Elearning is not a substitute for a properly though of Service Design Process but a tool which complements it. If one of the greatest barriers for increased use of technology in services is the fear of new and complicated things then Elearning is definitely part on the answer.

Figure 1. How to Fail in Service Design, Palmu 2012

The last Service Design Breakfast was not about digital design, but more human-centric services. Reima Rönnholm started his presentation by asking everyone if they have already failed in anything this week or this day. Failing isn’t really fun, but what can we learn from failing? Reima quoted Steve Blank saying that no business plan survives first contact with a customer. Making mistakes is inevitable and the key is how to do it successfully.

The first successful example of designing a service was service design process of Helsinki Airport. Making the most painful points a pleasant experience and suggesting it to customers as a service, not something they are forced to use. What really make any service are processes, people and customers. Places and materials are always there, but the service is not unless there are people using it. You have to do lots of modeling to make an intangible service concrete. You have to try and make errors to see how to make things work.

Generating ideas with customers – the first step of any service design process, when you start realizing what is that you want to change. It’s important to identify the key elements that can make the desired change happen.

Figure 2. Generating ideas, Palmu 2012

The worse thing to do is spending time, money and efforts on solving the wrong problem. There are lots of examples of companies failing by doing that. When you find a real problem, usually the solution becomes obvious and you don’t need to spend time looking for it. Finding the right problem – learning by doing. Not trying to find 10 different things to change, but finding the core. With today’s complex design challenges the right problem is more important that the solution.

“If I had an hour to save the world I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute finding solutions”, Albert Einstein.

Reima advises that it is important to think about everyday lives and people’s goal. How can we help them with the service that we offer to solve their problems? Customer centric approach = you need to start by asking a question “why?” instead of asking “what?” and “how?”. At the end people don’t want to use services. We just want to live happy lives and do meaningful things. If a service can help, that’s great.

Figure 3. Service design process, Palmu 2012

According to Reima, organizations can’t do radical innovation because they have too much knowledge and experience on what they do. “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”, Albert Einstein. Instead of that we need more generalists with broader views, not experts in some particular field. Reima compares a service design process to a movie making process – one cannot work in silos to make it a success.

We need to learn to design for incomplete. Do a prototype, fail and be stupid in order to learn more. We learn while we go. We can’t learn without involving customers. With services co-design is the only kind of design there should be – from backstage to frontend. If you don’t measure people’s behavior, you won’t have the required information. Measuring is “an eye” for a designer.

Figure 4. Understanding the consumer behaviour, Palmu 2012

“Coming up with innovative services is easy. What’s hard is getting companies to adapt.”, Ben Reason, service designer. Get stuff done is what you need to succeed. Doing, not talking. Experimenting, not guessing.

You can find the full presentation from Reima on Slideshare here and the video on Youtube here.

SID students comments:

I really liked this SD breakfast. Reima pointed out the 3 most important factors I would take into consideration when designing new service: learn on your mistakes, real customer centricity and designing with/by the customer. I believe those are nowadays the most important things to have in mind. It is not enough that customer is just giving some inputs but it is important that customer is involved in the design as soon as possible. In addition, I have no doubts that trust is the most important things in relations with the customer. As you can find in one of the blogs from Entrepreneur.com, transparency, focus on doing job well and staying vigilant over the time is the way to succeed. Business is constantly changing and if you don’t deliver what you promised you might be out of the business really fast. Daniel Augustyn

Let’s forget the technicalities and theories for a minute and embrace the fact that service design is ultimately about humans. Reima decides to open up and send an honest transparent message from his learning experiences in service design; humans are diverse and vulnerable and as such are also force to fail at some point. Embracing the fact that failing is part of the learning experience of the process to become better designer rather than stand still and wait for a miracle to solve the problem.

I found this talk very inspiring, the best talk I’ve heard in the service design, so if you’re reading this it’s worth watching the video and get the message. Hugo Molina

This talk made me think about how were the first contacts with the clients I had in the past, the many manners I have received the brief, how was the freedom that I had when I looked for solutions and how was the choice of the best solutions. During the last decade designers started to participate more on the service development processes. They normally were coadjuvants and sometimes still are and I can’t blame companies or designer or companies or educational institutions completely, they are all part of this manner of thinking. Things like the clients come with the problem and we make a proposal in couple of days looks surreal after the knowledge we are getting from Design Thinking and Co-creation processes and methods.

My friend has a design company in Brazil and one month ago she asked me how to sell service design, because she was angry with a client who had the solution for the service she was asked to develope, she wanted to look a little deeper in the goal and test other solutions. Another day our teacher at Laurea said is revolutionary a discipline as Service Design be part of a Business Administration programme.

It is really hard to sell the idea of looking deep in the problem to find the solution, because the client brings a solution instead of bringing necessities and goals. Usually there is no freedom to interfere on the client briefing, except for rare cases of clients with open mind and long time relationship. Look on the “client’s backyard” is a dangerous field, but still needed. Jane Vita

I agree with Reima that finding the right problem and focusing on improving the core is crucial for any company. As Ajaz Ahmed and Stefan Olander mention in their book “Velocity”, the priority should be enhancing the core business, not creating more stuff.  Stefan Olander, the VP of Digital Sports at Nike, explains that while designing the Nike+, the company has been reducing all the superfluous features and functionalities and focusing on simple and lean experience with a clean, purposive-driven design. The main focus was on making sure the core service was stable, and that was the key to success.

Companies need to remove friction, not add it. The future is about making what we already do much easier, simplifying our lives and solving out everyday needs in a better more intelligent way. Ekaterina Zhiteneva

Read carefully the content below and check with your own eyes “Why you should participate in the next Global Service Jam” and  if you have participated before, please let’s us know your experience and/or comment what you think about my experience afterwards.

Global Service Jam

The idea of the Global Service Jam is to create in 48 hours a service that could change the world. The theme is secret and it is revealed during the first hour of the jam in each participating city. People are only able to share and talk in public about the theme after the last city has heard the theme. The service solutions are shared also when all cities around the world have completed the 48 hours of jamming. It is incredible how many amazing services are created, and I’m sure that someone really could revolutionize the world.

The first Global Service Jam was created by the initiative of Markus Hormess and Adam Lawrence and took place on March 2011, where more than 1200 participants in more than 50 cities created about 200 unique service designs around the Theme “(Super)HEROES”.

From 1st to 3rd of March 2013, almost 3000 participants were challenged to create a service around the theme “Grow^”, in over 120 cities, and they produced over 500 projects.

Helsinki Service Jam

The Helsinki Service Jam is a part of the Global Service Jam. The idea of the event follows the same idea of the Global Service Jam. It brings together creative, passionate people interested in creating brand-new real-world service designs, projects and initiatives which might make a difference.

Helsinki Jam gathered almost 40 jammers and created 7 projects. The topic of the projects were: Tiny Tippers, LiveMemories, FamilysnApp, Grow your inner child, CAN I BUY ?, Eat Right and Friday at 7.

The Memorable team and our project

Memorable team

I had the pleasure of working with engaged people with a lot of ideas: Hugo, Marit, Jussi, Jaakko and Gabriela.

During the First day we made a reflection about the theme and we ended up with ‘growing old’, we talked about problems related to it. We prepared our research and we tried to come up with a plan for the following days.

On the second day we went through the users interviews and we get a lot of inputs from it. We had a generating idea session where all of us presented some idea based on our findings. Two service design concepts were selected and we started to prototype and check with people what did they think about the idea and how useful was it. On the third day there was a short discussion and people tried to combine both concepts, horrible moment, but we kept improving our idea and we finally came up with a nice result.

The service idea ( LiveMemories app ):

LiveMemories’ logo

We idealized a mobile application called ‘LiveMemories’, where the aim is to keep life memories alive and don’t let them be forgotten.

The audience of our application is members of a family. Basically you create family members´ profiles and fill them with stories; which you remember and other members can connect to those same stories, sharing their point of view. Current memories are also saved. You can create videos, sound memories, pictures and short stories. In the end you have all the stories categorized by genres, as in storybooks, a funny way to search for life moments and a family tree easy to check. Even people who are not here any more could have a profile and the stories safe for the ones who would like to share what they know about them. Memories like: Hi Mom! How did you access the Internet before computers existed? – Could be shared with your closest member family or the ones are living far from you.

App Screenshots:

Receiving msg

Main page

Accessing the story

Reading the story

What was worth…

The experience of spending your time with others to think about a service that could help a lot of people to better live their life is incredible and do the concept in 48 hours is very interesting, because you experience in short time many things that can improve your work, as communication and focus, for example.

The organization of the event and all facilities provided from the sponsors made the Jam even more interesting, making possible to us really concentrated on the service. Laurea and SID students were well represented there.

The participation of the all open minds, creative and humored people, really focused in the goals of the event – having fun, collaborating and making good services in 48 hours that could change the world.

My group was patient and we were continuously working until the end, making possible the finalization of the service presentation.

What wasn’t so good…

We had a lot of interruptions during the work, quite  the opposite of  the concept of  “stop talking and start doing”. The time for create the service was short and the group members were unknown, we should spent mostly all time to dealing with each others and coming up with solutions for all the stages. Lessons learned should be included on the end of the event, not during.

The presentations were not prepared for explaining the concept to the world and absent people on the final presentations perhaps didn’t get the same idea as the ones that were there. Maybe explaining the purpose of the concept presentation on the beginning of the event could help the participants.

From my group side –  After we presented the service, someone said – Let’s make it real! and other said – I’m done with you guys! And on that moment I thought if the whole work done and time spent was valuable, but after some seconds… I remembered about the success of our presentation and the good feedbacks we have gotten. And I hope the work for that haven’t  stop on the last day of the Service Jam.

Preparing for the next Jams

Prepare your bag including – creativity, love, collaboration, joy, patience, open mind, respect, plaster, swab, glasses, paper, crayon, post-its and some snacks. Be prepared to have your ideas rejected and to collaborate with others ideas.

Below some tips from my previous experiences with Service Jams (Curitiba Service Jam 2010 and Helsinki Service Jam 2013):

During the first day:

• Reflect about the theme,
• Think about problems that are related to the theme, define at least a couple of them,
• Prepare how to validate the problems with design researches,
• Build your project plan for the next days,

On the second day:

• Do the researches, wear your glasses and open your mind,
• Highlight the better quotes and founds during the design research,
• Analise of your research with the group,
• Decide what problem to solve,
• Generate ideas of a service  based on the researches analysis,
• Service choice,
• Prototype,
• Test,
• Improve prototype and test again,

Third day:

• Last improvements on the service,
• Scope your service presentation in order to everyone understand it,
• Build a nice concept presentation.

Next Global Service Jam

The next global service jam are about services to the public sector, the GovJam and it will happen in June 2013. See you there!

References:

Global Service Jam: http://planet.globalservicejam.org/
Helsinki Service Jam: http://www.helsinkiservicejam.org/
GovJam: http://www.govjam.org/
Global Sustainability Jam : http://www.globalsustainabilityjam.org/
LiveMemories project: http://planet.globalservicejam.org/gsj13/jamsite/1676/project/7197

posted by Jane Vita

Author: Adeyanju Alade. Email: aladeyanju@yahoo.com

The background of this master’s degree thesis was from a Tekes funded project named “Service Innovation through Strategic Stakeholder Integration” (SISSI). SISSI is a joint project undertaken by Laurea University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with Hanken School of Economics, Finland.  In addition, there are two case companies as main partners in SISSI project.

The topic of this thesis was inspired by the definition of service design as presented by Selgelström. The definition says service design is “the use of designerly way of searching for solutions to problems in people-intensive service systems through the engagement of stakeholders” (Segelström 2010, 16). A rhetorical question of “how stakeholders can be engaged” came up on the mind of the author of this thesis. As a result, the academic journey on this thesis then began.

Stakeholder engagement can be defined as the effort or action an organisation undertakes towards understanding and involving stakeholders “and their concerns in its activities and decision making processes” (Partridge, Jackson, Wheeler & Zohar 2005, 6). A quality stakeholder engagement process has the potential to address complex problems in both private and public sector’s service design and delivery (REVIT, 2007).

The literature review of this thesis covered topics such as service, service dominant logic, service design processes and tools, value co-creation, stakeholders, and stakeholder engagements. Some relevant conclusions and speculations from the perspective of this author were also presented in the literature review. In addition, some gaps were identified in the reviewed literature (see thesis report).

The aim of this thesis was to contribute to the body of knowledge that explores the role of effective stakeholder engagement using service design as a context. Firstly, its contributions included the development of a process model which integrates a standard stakeholder engagement framework with service design process. This process model aimed to facilitate better insight towards engaging stakeholders in the designing of a service. Secondly, it aimed to introduce the stakeholder engagement framework to interested organization for the purpose of benchmarking in their other stakeholder engagement activities. Consequently, beyond service designing, businesses and organisations can as well use this process model as a guide to address other issues that entail stakeholder engagement. The possibility of using the process model for other stakeholder engagement purposes made it transferable and applicable for use in other contexts. Thirdly, the concept of co-creation was considered as one of the specific activities that can take place under the larger umbrella of stakeholder engagement. Co-creation implies collaboration towards value creation by sharing inventive ideas, design concepts and other relevant considerations (Ostrom et al. 2010). In considering the connection between co-creation and stakeholder engagement, an effort was made to assess the co-creation approach of the partner company that was studied. The partner company and five of its business-to-business customers were used as the case studies in this thesis. The research methods that were used in this study were interviews, observations and benchmarking. The service that was studied was waste management service.

The research methods that were used in this study are briefly explained as follows:

Interviews: the interviews were specifically used to collect data that were analysed to determine the current state of the co-creation approach of the partner company with its case companies. Three project members also helped with the collection of some interview data. On the other hand, some general background information concerning the needs of the partner company came from the interviews. The interview sessions also made it possible for the interviewees or stakeholders to contribute to the stakeholder map that was developed for the partner company.

Observation: the observation aspect of this study was helpful in the development of the service blueprint. Observation also provided additional background information on the service that was studied.

Benchmarking:  the benchmarking aspect of this study was useful in the identification of the standard stakeholder engagement framework that was explored and proposed as part of the process model.

The three research questions of the study and how they were addressed are as follow in brief:

RQ 1: How to identify stakeholders to be engaged in the design of a service and who are the stakeholders?

Answer: the first research question was addressed through the application of stakeholder map as provided in the stakeholder engagement framework.

RQ 2: What is the current state of the co-creation approach of the partner company with its case companies?

Answer: this was answered by testing and using a service design tool called co-creation tool.  The result revealed that the current co-creation approach of the partner company was average. It was found to be in the middle of the co-creation continuum. This result was presented as a co-creation tree (see thesis report). There were other co-creation tree results from the five case companies. The results of the five case companies were summarized by testing a new quantitative approach.  The study revealed that customer interactions & relationships were the most co-created activity between the partner company and its case companies. This was followed by strategic thinking and business model. Service design was found to be the least co-created activity in the approach of the partner company among the three themes of co-creation tool. Some suggestions towards improvement were also recommended to the case company from the result of the co-creation tool.

RQ 3: How to engage the stakeholders in designing a service?

Answer: I aimed to answer the third research question by describing and exploring the five stage stakeholder engagement framework using service design as the issue of engagement (see the figure below). The engagement framework included many useful tools and templates that can help in gaining deeper insights into stakeholders’ related matter, issues of engagements, engagement objectives etc. My plan was not to entirely carry out the process of stakeholder engagement in practical terms. I couldn’t have carried out the stakeholder engagement as an individual or a thesis student. This was impossible during the time of this study because of the requirements of stakeholder engagement and the limitation of the scope of this thesis. For instance, proper arrangement should be in place concerning the preparedness and cooperation of the engaging organisation and its stakeholders in order to carry out practical engagement. The idea was to explore the guidelines provided in the manuals of the engagement framework using service design as a context as much as possible. I was able to explore and acquaint myself with the processes and tools in the engagement framework in order to be able to share what I have learnt with others e.g. organisations and individuals. The key outputs under each of the five stages of the stakeholder engagement framework were the managerial implications of its application by interested businesses and organisations.

Service blueprint:

The service blueprint was used to explore the service touchpoints and customer journey of partner company’s energy waste management. This blueprint identified some flaws in the delivery of the service. The flaw or problem areas along the service path were highlighted in red colour boxes, and they required some improvement. In addition, the boxes highlighted in yellow colour indicated new ideas that could be applied to find a solution to or address these problem areas (see blueprint in thesis attachment). The recommendations I made to the partner company towards the improvement of their service were found interesting and useful to them (see thesis report).

The Process model that was proposed in this study

The figure below represented the proposed process model that was the goal of this study. The process model integrated and highlighted the relationship that existed between an organisation and its stakeholders. In the figure a “new or an existing service” represented the issue of engagement upon which an organisation and its stakeholders shared mutual interest. This process model also included the research methods that could help in getting deeper insight into the service, the concerned organisation and its stakeholders. Some of the relevant research methods in this process model were interviews, observation, and benchmarking. Service design process and tools were useful in the service design aspects. Service blueprint and co-creation tool were part of the useful service design tools in this process model. This did not suggest that these two tools were the only relevant service design tools in this context. The current state of the organisation with its stakeholders in terms of co-creation approaches could be analysed and determined with co-creation tool. The determination of the current state of an organisation’s co-creation approach with its stakeholder is more relevant with an existing service. The overall stakeholder engagement objectives of the organisation with respect to service design or other activities could be enhanced with the application of the stakeholder engagement framework. The engagement framework also included many useful tools and methodologies. The application of this framework in the engagement of stakeholders could be useful in five areas concerning stakeholder engagement. These areas are: (1) Strategic thinking (2) analysis and planning (3) strengthening of engagement capacity (4) process design & engagement activity (5) acting, reviewing and reporting (managerial implications).

                                                        Process Model

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the importance and usefulness of stakeholder engagement to businesses and organisations cannot be overemphasised. Stakeholder engagement has been discovered to have the capacity of engendering preventive ways of addressing organisational challenges beyond being a reactionary mechanism. Its preventive approach of addressing future problems includes systematic way of identifying and managing risks. A good understanding of an organisation’s stakeholders often generates a more progressive operating environment. Strategic and operational performances of organisations have been improved through stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder engagement also serves as a veritable source of remarkable innovations and partnerships (AccountAbility 2008, 8).

“Futures are about knowledge. We must be inspired about futures. Futures are also about storytelling. “ explained lecturers Minna Koskelo and Anu K. Nousiainen.

In the course Futures thinking and foresights methodologies we learned how futures thinking is linked to service design and how it can be applied in business. Through hands-on workshops lot of new things were learnt and here are some key learning points.

Decision-making boosted up with futures foresights

Futures foresight methods can help companies to make right decisions to captivate their own blue ocean strategies. When identifying preferable futures and setting trend indicators to follow, companies can improve decision-making. Futures insights offers companies more flexibility to the strategy, support their risk management and produce new business ideas.

There is not just one future, but a whole range of possibilities. Futures foresight is a process of observing current world, finding new curves of change and seeking for opportunities of tomorrow. It is not just about guessing and predicting, but it is systematic approach that combines multiple fields and methods in order to produce proposals of possible, probable and preferable futures, which organizations can use to make right decisions.

Futures research is a combination of intuition and documented information. It is a creative discipline. There are various frameworks of futures foresight process where one can choose the most suitable one and it can be applied in the innovation process together with service design methods.

Trends and signals: hints of new business opportunities

Many companies are too focused on the operational matters and they are unable to ride the waves of chance. Instead of investing on what is about to come, they invest on what is already visible and therefore possibly heavily competed. As Blue ocean strategy implies, higher profit margins are available when the focus is on uncharted waters.

To excel also in the future, companies must learn how to recognize these trends and signals, and to build their strategies based on them. Futures foresight methods are therefore part of the strategy process.

Mega-trends are dominant and important trends that will shape the future. Mega-trends are shaping the business environment, but are rarely that kind that companies can utilize to become a forerunner. Trends are something new or different, which has a significant impact on the culture, society or business sector. They can occur when least expected. Trends can also have different sizes of impacts.  Global trends are changes across the globe and cultural trends are changes in values and attitudes of people. Behavioral trends are changes in practices, patterns and models.

For the trends there can be first weak signals, which are something happening before it is clearly visible. Organizations can recognize emerging signals and react accordingly with specifically created monitoring system. For each possible futures scenario specific indicators are set, which help organizations to identify what is the following scenario. According to Hiltunen, one way to test weak signal is to test them with coffee table conversation. If the topic makes people laugh, make people opposite it, makes people wonder, no one has heard about it or if something is a taboo, it might be a weak signal.

Kone: futures thinking over the horizon

Course offered great opportunity to hear and learn from the Design Director Dr. Anne Stenros of  Kone who shared us how to apply futures foresight in order to create winning designs.

“Those who create maps, they have the power” – Dr. Anne Stenroos told us referring to the history of maps and navigation in her powerful and inspiring lecture.

With futures foresights Kone collects vast amount of information, which is used to find possible futures. She told us that biggest megatrend right now is urbanization. Growth possibilities are strongest in Asia.  In Kone they are constantly forecasting trends (for 1-5 years ahead), scenarios (for 5-15 years) and utopias (for 15-50 years).

“In global business we try to be always the first to cut the corner” she explained and told us that the aim of their futures thinking is to create tangible from the intangible, and to use the knowledge of trends to create new winning designs.

Aim of their company is not to be nice and good, but to be the best in the world. To do so there has to be strong strategy, focusing and persistence.

“Heavier the battle is, the better it is”.

“There are a lot of storms on the way to excellence.” she said using the metaphors from the marine racing. “Wisdom is not to think you know everything” she said and continued that to achieve excellence there has to be good team with right people in it: “You can be in a safe place, when you are with dedicated people who know what they do. Star designers are not the answer in windy places. You need competent people and core competences in the team.”

“You have to have passion and to be stubborn, and have your own insights” Dr. Anne Stenroos encouraged us.

The design team has to have shared vision, which is in line with the organization’s strategy. “There are so many unbelievable things on the way of your vision”. As innovation leader one has to take the role to make enough noise to create enough space for the team to operate and to have enough support from the directors.

15/30 Research: What does the youth think now and futures?

Researcher Pauli Komonen from 15/30 Research agency shared us various different business case of how trend research can be applied in practice. Their research agency is especially focused on the youth  research and they present  their offerings also online. These reports can help their customers to build solutions that meet tomorrow’s demand, such as their recent customer case where aim was to find what are next trends in chewing gum tastes.

At the end Pauli Komonen challenged us to keep our mind open for the field of futures thinking:

“Awareness of trends and futures makes you a more interesting person, because you have something new to tell every time.”

Trends from our futures foresight workshop

Our group works produced interesting futures foresight from various fields. First we had to collect signals, then to cluster and analyze them.

For government and politics one group found trend that pointed out increasing need for data security (See news). Also there is a trend of increasing power of inter-state companies over government power and also trend of citizen’s empowerment, which included focused on local issues rather than global issues. In retailing increasing trends are “one of a kind shopping”, self-service everywhere and brands shaped by people (See Brandalism). Also as trends were recognized  downshifting (or at least slowing down) and nomadism. With the development of technology there will be more capable of robotic machines (also possibly killer robots). In media and entertainment emerging trends were technologies as human extensions, living and creating virtual realities and exploring senses technology. Emerging trends in health and well-being were capturing dreams, having speed up exercises and plastic surgeries in third world countries. Also active seniors were spotted as one trend.

After words

The course opened up entirely new field, which I plan to study further. With the futures foresight methods companies can find competitive advantages and ride the waves of favorable futures.

Text by Laurea SID student Erkki Salo

This blog post was created as an assignment in SID course:Futures thinking and futures foresight methodologies.

Recommendable readings:

- Establishing Futures Thinking understanding in your own organization. http://virtual.vtt.fi/virtual/proj3/innorisk/ispim2007_30042007.pdf
- INNORISK: The Fountain of New Business Creation. Corporate Foresight Group CoFi/ Åbo Akademi University. Turku. http://virtual.vtt.fi/virtual/proj3/innorisk/Innorisk_final_report_2009.pdf

- Weak Signal Research, Part IV: Evolution and Growth of the Weak Signal to Maturity. Journal of Transition Management. Internet: http://mgtaylor.com/mgtaylor/jotm/winter97/wsrmatur.htm.

- Weak Signals in Organizational Futures Learning. Aalto University. http://epub.lib.aalto.fi/pdf/diss/a365.pdf

Interesting online tools:

- Visualize your professional network: http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/

- Visualize your online media consumption: https://www.scoopinion.com/

More about futures foresights from our lecturers:

- http://sidlaurea.com/2012/09/30/service-design-meets-futures-thinking/
- http://sidlaurea.com/2012/10/29/service-design-meets-futures-thinking-2/
- http://sidlaurea.com/2012/12/07/service-design-meets-futures-thinking-3/

In today’s organization’s strategic or service development projects you hardly hear a word about foresight or futures research. If you do, you are probably dealing with professionals of the field. Typical scene in developing services or company strategies is that we tend to make our decisions based on current normative knowledge – and perhaps worse, with consensus driven mindset. We use too often “I know/I feel” -tool in critical points where instead we should useresearch material and insights about the topic in question. Organizations seem to lack knowledge on how to use foresight as part of development process. It is a powerful tool when used systematically, and when used efficiently it can give you the possibility to spot and develop new business innovations before competitors.

Foresight vs. Service Design process

Service design is all about seeing the big picture: Service design encourages companies to see the service in a customer centric way and increases understanding on how all stakeholders – direct or indirect – are connected to the service development and excellence.  Service designers use various methods and techniques to gain “deep understanding” but one thing which is often missing is the knowledge of how to create futures material and how to apply it. In the end, futures thinking is needed in order to innovate and create new value offerings. It is one of the key ingredients, which definitely should be part of service design process or any development process where something novel is aimed at. But how to learn to use it?

How to use trends as a tool to see business opportunities

We had a course about Futures thinking and foresight, and as a part of the course we studied and practiced how to select a topic, collect data, see possible connections between the data and analyze it so that it can be formalized as a Trend card (trend description). Our group’s topic was Government and Politics. Other groups had topics like Health and Wellbeing and Retail and Media. Trend cards are tools to manifest the trend and with the categorized information it holds, it can be comparable to other trends. It is important to understand that trends are directions of change which are happening right now. Global, local or niche, they are still notable facts that are formed by monitoring (weak) signals of change.

In our last contact session we presented each group’s trend cards and with all collected trends information we created business implications and business opportunities to a selected familiar company. The purpose was to practice in groups how to use trend cards as part of business development process.

Group work example

In our group we chose F-Secure to be our case company to reflect the trend cards information and ultimately to find business implications and opportunities. We had altogether 20 Trend cards from different topics. We selected three trends which we noted to be suitable and interesting for F-Secure. The selected trends were eHealth, Data Security and One-of-a-kind Shopping. After short discussion about the chosen trends we started ideating using 10 min silent thinking with post-its and shared our individual ideas with the group. From this ideation we chose five most interesting implications or opportunities to do with for example data mining for possible data threads, secured online fitting room and doctors sharing patients information between different locations; countries etc. We prioritized implications based on their desirability from the customer point of view and from business capability point of view.

Note

I have witnessed a situation where representatives from public sector organization refused to see the possibilities in using foresight in their field of services and decision-making. In this case the reluctance to see alternatives was so strong that even provided case example from other country but with the same situation was not enough to convince the power of effective foresight. I think the hardest part in using these given methods and tools are the fear of unknown and thus, the change from something old to new. However, we need to learn new ways of how we manage the needs now and understanding how rapidly those needs are changing especially in the public sector where innovation is truly required. The hardest part in change isn’t changing the world – it is us, humans.

I encourage organizations to get to know more about futures thinking and foresight by looking up the professionals in the field. It might be so that you can find professionals of futures research right next door. Use your senses, understand and create!

Text by

Annaliisa Salmelin

Service Innovation and Design Master student

Descriptions:

Trend: Direction of change in the near past or from this moment, which is identifiable and likely to continue. Hiltunen, Elina. Matkaopas Tulevaisuuteen. Talentum, Helsinki 2012.

Weak Signals: Today’s information and phenomena that can be signals of change of the future. Hiltunen, Elina. Article: Good Sources of Weak Signals: A Global Study of Where Futurists Look For Weak Signals. Journal of Futures Studies, May 2008, 12(4): 21 – 44.

Look at more info about the same issue in this blog:

http://sidlaurea.com/2012/09/30/service-design-meets-futures-thinking/

http://sidlaurea.com/2013/05/06/cut-the-corners-first-harness-the-power-of-futures-thinking/

by Melanie Wendland, melanie.wendland@gmail.com

Here is a little wrap up of my thesis I just delivered.

Background & Research objective

There is an increased discussion in the news worldwide that people today suffer from health consequences that can be traced back to wrong food consumption. The food consumption many people are used to is on one hand adapted to fit our busy lives and on the other hand promoted by a food industry that tries to maximize profits and increase sales. Especially in Finland, the grocery trade business is organized around making people buy processed, ready made meals.

In contrast to this there is a rising trend of slow living, meaning that people try to decrease speed of life and put more attention to the lifestyle we used to have before life got optimized for efficiency: home grown food, hand prepared and consumed with enjoyment and time. Customers start demanding more transparency, variety and focus on health in the food they consume. Against this backdrop the question arises whether supermarkets in the future should play an active role in educating their customers in a healthy nutrition and take responsibility for their customer’s wellbeing with regards to food consumption.

This gap between changing customer needs and the lack of health supporting services in the grocery trade represents the opportunity for this thesis. The aim of the thesis was to develop a new service concept for the Finnish grocery trade, which encourages supermarket customers to choose healthier and sustainable food.

 Approach & Theory

There are three main theoretical discussions that build the relevant base for the context of the report. The thesis first looks at what a service concept is and how service concept is has been discussed in the academe. The thesis shows that there is no unified accepted definition of the term but the reviewed literature suggests a few common characteristics. The service concept communicates the customer benefit or value of a service idea to stakeholders, employees or customers and should include information about brand and marketing, highlight the strategic intent of the organization, specify the experience the customer receives and describe operational tasks and activities. To make the service concept definition tangible and usable for the context of service design, I mapped service design tools to the characteristics of the service concept. These tools make up the service concept developed in the empirical part of the thesis.

Thesis Structure Melanie Wendland

In ‘Designing for the grocery trade’ the thesis explores what kind of aspects are relevant when developing new services that deal with food and consumption behavior in supermarket environments. Influencing people’s behavior towards positive change is a challenging task and research suggests that within the context of nutrition supermarket interventions and games have been successful approaches. There are many trends that suggest that changes in customer behavior is changing the way supermarket will function in the future and that business need to react to these in order to stay on the market.

Finally ‘Transformative Services’ as the third theoretical base looks at the concept of services that intent to change the behavior of individuals or groups in order to foster wellbeing among them. Even though research in this area is still limited and recent, there seems to be a common notion that transformative services are considered a way for service business to survive in challenging times of market saturation and lack of differentiation. In order to make the theory of transformative services tangible for the use of developing a service concept, I point out eight ingredients that add transformative character to services.

Methodology

The common approach and methodology used which connects the three topics is service design. The process used to design a service concept included the phases of insights, ideation and concept. Customer insights have been collected using online survey and cultural probes. An expert interview, desk research and trends have been used to gather insights about the market. Service ideas have been generated using the ideation technique of opportunity brainstorm and customer value constellation. The service concept was then concretized with the tools mapped in the chapter about the service concept. The tools used were Service World, Service Canvas, Moodboard, Service Poster, Service Blueprint and Customer Journey. In addition to these I developed Product Criteria and Core Components that influence the supermarket experience.

The concept in a nutshell

Based on the theory, the insights collected and the ideation exercises, I developed a service concept called Green key.

The value proposition for the service idea describes the customer benefit and the main elements of the service:

Green key is a set of food-related and technology-enhanced services that inspire people to discover healthy meals, accelerate grocery shopping and preparation on busy days, guide people with choosing the right products for a balanced nutrition and reward them with bonuses such as discounts, home delivery and customer voting for favourite and new products. 

Service Poster Melanie Wendland

The service contains several services and different touchpoints that evolve around a little chip, the green key. The green key chip is technology-enhanced token that allows the customer to identify herself in the supermarket by plugging the key into the shopping cart or basket. The chip can be attached to a key chain and carried along. A shopping cart with a touch display shows customer generated or supermarket provided shopping lists, store orientation, location of products, recipes and the items added to the shopping cart with nutritional information, alternative product recommendations and pricings. The customer can install the green key app, which gives an overview over spendings and nutritional values, shopping lists, recommended recipes and savings. With the app the customer can order groceries easily online, apply earned discounts at check out or check out through mobile payment in the shop. In the web touchpoint, the customer can suggest new products to the shop or use votes to vote on which products should be on offer.

Service World Melanie Wendland

The service comes with it own product line, which is a collection of products with strict product criteria according to organic principles. The product line carries the green key label to help customer recognize the products easily. The social media channel Facebook is used for the meal of the week campaign, where customers can vote recipes posted by other customers. With this people empowered campaign customers can choose ready packed meal bags for a special price to the supermarket. Additionally the supermarket will offer a small range of ready packed meal bags with ingredients and a recipe that are easy to cook and of high nutritional value. The customer only picks up the bag, pays and can prepare the meal at home. The meal chosen through the Facebook campaign will have a special offer price and feature the customer who has submitted the recipe.

Conclusions

The thesis has highlighted the need and relevance for developing transformative services that create value for both the customer and the business by encouraging customers to live a healthier life through the consumption of healthier and sustainable food. The service concept developed suggests a set of services that can be considered a new business opportunity for the grocery trade. The service opportunities presented have a strong link with the trends outlined in the theoretical part of the thesis and translate the concept of transformation through services into a tangible service concept. The customer insights have shown that there is a need to develop services that support busy people in the purchase and preparation of food products which is in contrast with the current activities of the Finnish grocery trade business, which is focusing on product innovation rather than service innovation. The thesis has contributed to the discussion on transformative service as well as created a new discussion of how to translate the theoretical  discussion of a service concept into service design tools. Finally the use of digital technologies in the development of the service concept have highlighted the opportunities that these technologies offer to service innovation.

A research based series of posts discussing the statement “Futures Research supports the Service Design process in multiple ways and throughout the whole process” by Minna Koskelo (LinkedIn) and Anu K. Nousiainen (Linkedin).

Part #4: We are in the Service Innovation business!

Our three (and a half) previous blog entries have been summarizing the purpose of our study initiated in 2012 and the main findings from the study including the synergies between (Service) Design Thinking and Futures Thinking, and our illustration for Futures Research enhanced Service Design process. After some more investigation (selection of 150 books and articles) and integrating the strategic business thinking into the model with Katri Ojasalo (Linkedin), (our Head of Master’s Degree Programme in Service Innovation and Design here at Laurea University of Applied Sciences) we are proud to announce our forthcoming chapter in an international Handbook of Service Innovation (to be published by Springer in early 2014). Indeed, we have came into a realization:

What we’ve done so far is not only about Futures enhanced Service Design – instead, this is the next chapter in building unique, synergistic and dynamic capabilities for Service Innovation.

Take a novel path to create new business opportunities and new value

 It has been clear from the beginning of our study that Design Thinking and Futures Thinking share a strong synergy in their principles and targets. Now it is crystal clear that by combining their unique approaches in innovation process results in bright and viable business opportunities (see process framework A. below). While Futures Thinking concentrates on driving forces in complex evolving systems and alternative contexts, Design Thinking embraces the viewpoint of system constraints and people oriented solutions. Not only this powerful combination gives you options for decision making in strategic and offering creation level but it tackles the two critical challenges in today’s (and tomorrow’s) business: Uncertainty and timing in creating Value Roadmaps in the interconnected and changing world. Here, Futures Thinking helps to make uncertainty easier to approach through providing alternatives for decision making and therefore improving organization’s readiness to act. Design Thinking improves the organization’s agility to seize the change with emphatic, adaptive and deep research approach and through iterative co-designing with customers to provide desirable, feasible and viable options for solutions.

Based on our discussions, workshops and encounters with experts from different fields in seminars, meetings and conferences, we have seen and experienced together that Design Thinking and Futures Thinking truly enrich company’s strategy building and the novel approach can be utilized especially in visioning, risk management and in competence development. That is, in addition to innovating new services and transforming businesses towards desirable and sustainable futures you should consider applying the combined Design Thinking and Futures Thinking in different context throughout the organization: Bringing Design and Futures into the organizational culture and practices.

LaFutura 2012 process framework (Koskelo M. & Nousiainen A.K. 2012)

Do you have the most simple and effective tools in your innovation process?

Our second recommendation (and where you could start from) is to check your innovation process and related methods (we could call this “a futures sanity check”). In order to transform your business or to innovate new offerings you need to understand critical placeholders for Futures insights (see process illustration below and related blog post). We warmly recommend to take Futures Research, Trends and Foresight methods into the process especially when 1) you are increasing your understanding of the business opportunity area, market area or customer group – or trying to identify those, 2) you are generating ideas for potential solutions, and 3) you are prioritizing promising solutions for further prototyping, modeling, roadmapping or implementation purposes. We also recommend to utilize same tools (if applicable) in more than one phase of the innovation process and reflect back to previous phases in order to iterate and possibly improve tools simultaneously with creating results.

Futures enhanced service design process (Moritz 2005; Koskelo M. & Nousiainen A.K. 2012)

Be candid – test and combine methods!

In LaFutura 2012 event last November in Helsinki, Finland, we had a brilliant opportunity to discuss and explore different methods for visioning the future and to create solutions for the futures. With that in mind, international LaFutura 2012 participants (almost 80 professionals, trends and futures enthusiasts, innovators and opinion leaders) spent 16 hours by sharing experiences, ideating, brainstorming and free-flowing (cause that is what effective and creative thinking requires). We examined, developed and created tools, methods and modes of thinking in six teams based on our proposal (process framework illustrated below) and as an outcome the teams created recipes of desirable futures for Europe in terms of solutions, ideas, or practical ways to tackle arising issues that have an impact in Europe in the future.

What we learnt especially in LaFutura 2012 event was that we need to be candid and fearless with the plenty of tools we have for innovation purposes. To follow Design Thinking research approach, we need to be adaptive with the tools and thus, combine and cultivate them to fit the purpose and target we are aiming at. For instance, the essential methods of “persona” (fictional user profiles based on design research data) and “scenarios” (anticipated stories of the alternative futures) can be nourished with each other. In LaFutura we created so called “immersed future persona” where the created user profile was placed into the selected worldview (scenario) of the future and the persona and the story got more ingredients as well as evidence to support the future solutions and future direction. In the same way, personas can walk through the scenarios and both test and enrich the stories with what the persona experiences. Not only Design and Futures tools but also the tools of Strategic management e.g. Blue Ocean Strategy methods are supportive from the business point of view for the Futures enhanced (service) innovation process.

Check our learnings from LaFutura 2012: http://futureshelsinki.com/2013/05/19/lafutura-2012-post-everything-reflections-from-the-team-work-sessions/#more-80

Do you have the most professional and creative human capital engaged?

Future is not created by external forces but us, people. In order to leap from reacting to changes in the external environment to seizing trends and finally to creating own desired futures organizations need to make sure they have the right people on board. Key words with the “right” are ATTITUDE and TOOLKIT. We need to work with people who have an open attitude, who are not afraid of complexity and change, and who can inspire, engage and influence people to share the similar attitude. Toolkit needs to be a professional yet creative one: make sure you work with a team in which there is a true understanding of the service dominant logic of the business (professional service designers) and of the driving forces in the operational environment (professional futurists). We need to have thinkers, storytellers, synthesizers, doers, facilitators, divergence and (niche) expertise in the team (and throughout the organization) to reach the flow and desirable outcome in innovating and transforming the business.

The next step: A novel Service Innovation process will be introduced early 2014 when The Handbook of Service Innovation will be published by Springer!

BIG THANK YOU for already joining the conversation and your support in bringing together these two unique disciplines of Design and Futures. We are eager to continue with our work and welcome further discussion around our findings and suggestions.

MEANWHILE, we share our learnings in different conferences, projects and as Futures Thinking lecturers at Laurea University of Applied Sciences.

SEE OUR LATEST CONFERENCE PRESENTATION IN SLIDESHARE: http://www.slideshare.net/anuknousiainen/m-koskelo-aknousiainen-dt-meets-ft030613

SEE OUR PREVIOUS POSTS:

http://sidlaurea.com/2012/09/30/service-design-meets-futures-thinking/

http://sidlaurea.com/2012/10/29/service-design-meets-futures-thinking-2/

http://sidlaurea.com/2012/12/07/service-design-meets-futures-thinking-3/

http://sidlaurea.com/2012/10/22/service-design-meets-futures-thinking-lafutura2012/

SEE POSTS BY OUR Futures Thinking STUDENTS who reflect their learnings from our Spring 2012 class:

http://sidlaurea.com/2013/05/20/foresight-is-part-of-service-innovations/

http://sidlaurea.com/2013/05/06/cut-the-corners-first-harness-the-power-of-futures-thinking/

Authors of this blog post:

Minna Koskelo (LinkedIn)  Experienced in marketing and branding. Specialized in customer insights and futures thinking. Approach is multidisciplinary applying various of methods  including service design, futures research, marketing and branding. ”My mission is simple: to help people and organizations with my knowledge and expertise. ”  The past 9 years worked with brands from various fields both focused on b2c and b2b. Driven by meaning and purpose. ”To understand the world I live in is my passion. The quest starts always with why, not how.”

Anu K. Nousiainen (Linkedin) A practitioner combining and harnessing various toolkits for the purpose of better business, for the sake of better life – and always for and with people. “I’m exploring business opportunities and concepting meaningful solutions for both the existing and future contexts, from strategy to implementation orchestration, and always value(s) in mind.”

I participated in the first Global Governmental Jam that was held in the fancy ICT House (pics in the end of post) in Turku on the 5^th and 6^th of June. The idea of the service jams was familiar to me: we were supposed to create as many prototypes of new (public) services as possible in 48 hours. The jams abroad had been started already the evening before. However, the “common theme” was to be released only on the 5^th, at 9 a.m.

Theme

We had to decipher the text (left) in order to reveal the theme. It couldn’t be anything as square as an anagram, so our team depicted funnels (cones) representing a new kind of customer service process - and a symbolic drag queen (transfering customer identity).

Then we were told to create a prototype of a service around whatever we had come up with the text. So basically there was no common theme, unless the biggest common nominator “public service” counts as one.

Only later we were explained the phrase “Here be dragons” that is a medieval metaphor for dangerous or unexplored territories.

Apparently, the purpose was to make public services less frightening and more approachable. Our service was to transform the employment office into an office of opportunities, where customers wouldn’t have to feel ashamed of visiting.

The prototype, the pilot, was a one year opportunity to change one’s status from unemployed into “a status of choice”; the ultimate goal being getting rid of the term “unemployed” altogether. See Prezi here

Team Work

On the first day we went through the ideation phase and defined the customer journey. The day ended well; the organizers offered some insights and guidance, and there was a clear vision of what to do next.

The team dynamics and the composition of the team caused discrepancy on the second day. The team lacked leadership and groupthink affected the decision-making. We were unable to move on to a more focused presentation of the service. Instead, we reversed to the mood board and added new dimensions to our concept. Suddenly, the focus had shifted from a prototype of the service to a motivational video for downshifters.

A team’s success requires commitment to a common goal. Our objectives were not aligned. Three were there for the experience; one was learning how to compile a video. I was the only one with a genuine interest in using service design methods to create a (simple) prototype of something feasible. I got cornered in my attempt to reason.

The product of our team’s two days’ work on the subject of unemployment was a video that contained a unicorn, hint of Alice in a Wonderland and self-recorded “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. It was too big a file to be uploaded on The Global Gov Jam 2013 server for everyone to see (by 3 p.m. on the 6^th).

The jams are based on peer review, but some structure and leadership is required when people come together for a serious cause. It is trendy to try to act aligned as community, but people still need structure to process information and to behave appropriately in a group. Hence, in addition to theories, guidelines and good practices, there are countless books on service design methods and tools, one cooler than the other.

Nevertheless, I can see why doing is emphasized in service design, and in the jams. It is a successful and efficient way to work, when all the team members have ownership of the goal and mostly know what they are doing. Orientation and talking is required, where the less devoted people are concerned.

I’ve been reading a brand new book on service design which explains this issue rather perfectly:

The point of difference for any specific service is how it is delivered. We think of this as the performance of the service. — If we use a musical metaphor to compare the service to an orchestra or a rock band, we can think of quality of performance in terms of how well all the musicians came together to deliver the music. Music is an interesting metaphor in this regard, because — each musician must play to the best of his or her abilities, yet at the same time play in harmony and keep time with the others. Things can quickly go awry if each musician simultaneously tries to play as a soloist. (Polaine, Loevlie & Reason 2013, 32.)

Example: 

Jamming requires even more concentration than a concert, since the participants are expected to improvise AND keep up with the others at the same time. It gets chaotic instantly, when the harmony is lost.

Feedback

I was left with two questions. Are the jam organizers also facilitators in the jam? Why isn’t the global dimension of the jam better highlighted? There could be more interaction between people in different locations, since technology already enables international live presentations.

On the other hand, the technology shouldn’t have too big a role in the jam, because it tends to steal the attention from the more important things. I would even go so far as to recommend the team work to be unplugged and the facilitators the only ones allowed to document the jam produce online. At the moment there is such hype around service design in general, that the content is easily suppressed by the form.

This blog post was created as an assignment of the course “Current Topics in Service Design” by a SID Master Program student Tiia-Marina Silva (BBA in IT and Bachelor in Social Services). Pictures on the courtesy of Michael Diedrichs and Annaliisa Salmelin.

References

See all the videos (BSSS – digital buss stopping system , ServiceStar – digital doctor’s appointment system and “Drag On”) and more in You Tube:  http://www.youtube.com/user/ServiceJamTurku

Polaine, Andrew; Lavrans, Loevlie & Reason, Ben 2013. SERVICE DESIGN. From Insight to Implementation.

Pictures of ICT House

- DO YOUR MATH!

“Service Design: From Insight to Implementation” by Andy Polaine, Lavrans Loevlie and Ben Reason (2013 Rosenfeld Media) is a positively different service design book, whereas this – rather loose – book review is written as an extra assignment of the course New Service Development by Tiia-Marina Tuominen de Sousa e Silva from SID Master Program ’12.

I must say, when I got the task to read yet another book on service design and write about it to this blog, I sighed. As a student of the subject I feel I have already covered all the angles the books can present. Service Design books seem to appear like mushrooms in the rain. However, the authors of this book think there are only a few of them – and they are right.

The books that I have come across are either about the (superb) philosophy and thinking behind service design, or listings of its various (trendy) methods. The merit of this book is that it aims at being the first real textbook on the subject, connecting the philosophy with the practicalities on grass root level. I can picture this book being learned in management studies everywhere.

“You will do yourself and the field of service design a great favour if you always include the definition of performance indicators in your proposals.”

Contents

The book is divided into nine chapters in addition to the intro that explains its existence. First, the basic difference between product and service is explained in the chapters 1-2. The following chapters 3-4 are about people, understanding their relationships, and how to capture the insights of the people’s everyday life into the design. Chapters 5-6 cover the defining and mapping of the service ecology and describe how service blueprint is used to view the service through the eyes of customers and users.

Chapter 7 explains the importance of prototyping the service experiences among the people on the field before any development costs are incurred. Prototypes need criteria and chapter 8 is about measuring the success or failure of the design. Measuring is not done only to monitor a service’s performance for management, but to empower the employees to understand their impact to the overall quality of the service. Chapter 9 speculates on where service design is heading on the basis of trends the authors’ are seeing in the field.

People in the Heart of Services – Employees as service users

The authors prefer to use the word user instead of customer, since it encompasses all the parties that have stake in the service. When the needs of the customers and the company are defined, the company often stands for management, whose puppets the employees are. Yet the management is seldom co-producing the service with the customers. After the service designers have gathered insights by observing and studying the employees’ procedures, the outcomes of the research are likely to be overruled by ideas of the management – that eventually is the customer of the service design agency.

Measuring the impact that service design has on business has not been researched too much. I think this is due to the subject being quite flammable in many organizations experiencing changes. “Service Design: From Insight to Implementation” is the first book that introduces measuring services (at least to me). Unlike many seem to believe, measuring services is very important from the employees’ point of view, because it gives them a broader view on their own work, the efficiency of their own performance, and its value to the organization.

It is a common mistake to retain the top-down view of measurement. It has proven to be valuable to share the customer satisfaction data with staff on an on-going basis. It helps staff to highlight system problems that prevent them from providing good service, and provides a basis for an organization wide discussion about improving the customer experience.

Service Experience = How (well) the service is being performed?

Service experiences are rooted in the company culture. There still are many service organizations, especially in the public services, where the organization is divided into silos (correlating the business units) that communicate with each other badly. This industrial mindset deteriorates the service experience that consists of all the customer’s experiences in interaction with the company. Service design is likely to change the company culture.

It is vital that the top management is fully behind the idea of design, as well as measuring it. The act of measuring is as important as what is being measured, since what is measured is likely to improve. Therefore, what is measured should be driven by what is most likely to create a shared culture of improvement within the organization. Thus, create valuable, long-term relationships with customers and enable sustainable growth. But if leaders don’t agree with the strategic reasoning of measurement, they will not take the results seriously and act on them.

“The point of difference to any specific service is how it is delivered”. The authors consider this as the performance of the service. Performance on the other hand can have two meanings: performance as experience and performance as value. The experience aspect of performance describes the way the service is delivered to the service user on the front stage. The overall experience of the service, that is what matters, is comprised out of the complexity of touch points the service consists of. Hence, the service designers are needed.

The value aspect of performance is the backstage measure of the service and tells the company how well the service is performing. Depending on the interest, it is examined, how well the service is achieving the results promised to the service users, or how cost effectively the service is performing for the organization. The latter is the way the companies usually consider performance. It is challenging to the service designers to measure the hard metrics of business, measuring the soft aspects of people’s experiences at the same time.

Guidelines for Measurement

The authors claim, that service designers and service providers both need to prove that design provides a return on investment. Results can be measured in profits made or costs saved; in an improved customer/user experience; value created to society or reduced drain on the environment. There are some typical findings in service design projects that can be translated to results on the bottom line: new sales, longer use, more use, more sales, more self-service, better delivery processes and better quality.

To focus the work and make everyone involved more accountable, define what you want to measure before you start the design work. You also need the before numbers to prove the success of after. It is smart to establish the key goals right away and assign concrete targets to them. In this way you will be measured against WHAT YOU INTEND to influence, not what someone else decided they should measure. Next you will need to figure out the right way to measure in order to get results that help everyone continue to learn and improve in the future as well.

To base measurement on the problems and successes people have using a service allows streamlining delivery while improving customer experience. Nowadays data is available for everyone through customer ratings and purchasing patterns. The purpose of measuring is shifting away from simply being a management tool to a way to engage managers, frontline staff and customers in collaborative service improvement. Good feedback channels enable customers to tell service providers about problems and opportunities. The same measures set standards for both managers and staff.

The most common mistake, when measuring service experience, is to speak with customers or users only once. It is crucial to measure people’s experience in different stages of service, whether a service meets people’s expectations over time. That will help companies to both acquire and retain customers. Increased revenue and higher margins should follow naturally. The second common mistake is to speak to customers who have used only one service channel. That will not give any valuable data about the quality of the service as a whole.

In my opinion we, the SID students, should concentrate more on learning how to make a case for ROI. This could be accomplished by planning and carrying out concrete SD learning projects for real companies.

Research shows that customer satisfaction scores have a direct relation to a customer’s tendency to buy a service and to remain loyal to a provider.

Professor and researcher Katja Tschimmel and ideation facilitator Gijs van Wulfen showed us where the Rabbit Hole of Design Thinking is. So I also jumped in it, dug together with fellows hands on for two full days – and we are still digging. The more we explore, the more we find. This post is about what I have perceived here for so far.

See how far the rabbit hole goes and what Design Thinking and innovating can be in practice (PDF)

Everyone can be a Design Thinker

We all have the gift of creative thinking. We just need to find it and start thinking mind open. Children do this all the time while playing, so we all have already once been creative thinkers. We just forgot and lose skills that we don’t use or practice.

Explore the challenge

We also know what it’s like to perform our daily tasks in hurry. People are expected to been efficient to make decisions when challenges are met and needed to get over them quickly. But quite often we meet the same challenges again – one after another and day after day.

To make a difference we need to stop for a moment, change how we act and learn to understand the true nature of the challenge. Look at them together with your collaborators from different point of views. Smell the challenge. Taste and listen to it, shake, turn it around, feel and live it, observe and learn. After we know the challenge throughout, we can start changing it.

Think outside-the-box…

This is where we need to take a few steps backwards. We have to see the big picture and give space to emotions and feelings. Because if we don’t follow our hearts and base the later coming solution on feelings we won’t be able to solve the challenge in a creative way. Why? Because then we wouldn’t like the solution we would create.

“And be visual. Because ideas can’t be seen. They need to be shown.”

So, together, start creating ideas – a lot of fun, beautiful and even strange ideas - related to everything around the challenge. Like Gijs said: “Water best upcoming ideas and avoid to trample ones you don’t like”. This takes the teamwork in to a next level. And be visual. Because ideas can’t be seen. They need to be shown.

…and put ideas back to the box

Look at the fresh new generated ideas peacefully together – take your time and let your senses start connecting the dots. Converge ideas and start telling stories how challenges could be turned into opportunities. When you think you have found together the right pieces that could form several solutions, start creating draft concepts.

This is where you start thinking more with sense by safely improving drafted solutions and testing them without afraid of ‘the big bad mistake‘ or fear of hurting yourself. Failures are normal and part of the process. Drafted solution ideas of your team are like crash test cars. You drive them against the wall many times, fix them, make them better, and smash them again a bit faster. Until one of them lasts and shines brighter than others. Then you really have found a true solution and the challenge has been turned into a new unique opportunity.

Design Thinking models and what I learned of FORTH Innovation Method

Design Thinking and creative problem solving isn’t strict process as Katja Tschimmel explained on her article “Design Thinking as an effective Toolkit for Innovation“. She presents several models like IDEO’s 3 I Model, IDEO’s HCD Model and The Model of the Hasso-Plattner Institute but the key is not to stick only in one of them. Common with all these models together are Design Thinking tools like drawing, sketching, mind mapping and prototyping – and iterative processes of course.

But tools and processes often require guides and easy approaches. Together with Katja, Gijs van Wulfen guided us in the two day workshop through his FORTH Innovation Method which equips and encourages teams to consider starting their own exploration journey. The method – and The Innovation Expedition: A visual toolkit to start innovation book – explains well if an innovation journey is needed, how to prepare for it, who to take with, where to head at what pace and when to start the journey. FORTH is an easy, hands on approach to start innovating.

Written by Antti Kytö
LinkedIn

The writer has begun his MBA studies and expedition in Service Innovation and Design in Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Sept. 2013.

I participated in the Reaktor’s first Design day on 3^rd of October in Helsinki and it took place in event center Telakka. Reaktor is a Finnish design & software house. Design day was great opportunity for me to learn and to share ideas with other participants. The whole event was very inspirational and energetic and I have to say that the arrangements for the day were excellent. Here are the speeches which I picked from the program.

The day started with Ryan Singer’s speech about “How to focus your product design”. Ryan is a leader at 37signals which has made for example a project management tool Basecamp. Next speaker was Henrik Rydberg from Shapeways . He talked about “Failceed”, that it is OK to fail when you’re creating something new and it is necessary when creating something new. Creativity needs safe place for play and find out was it good idea.

Before lunch we heard about “Content world domination” from Ilona Hiila. Ilona is one of the founders and Creative Director at content agency Vapa Media. This subject was very interesting for me. She talked about how we can dominate with our content. First we should find shared interest with our customers and speak with them more than just about our products. Second we should create and own the moments with them and be the person you want to be with, without selling. Third the content should be more important than the product or service. It is not bowling anymore where you just try to hit your target but you should play ping pong with your customers and create content with them. You give something for them and they hit it back to you and you response to that and so on.

After lunch, Karen Holzblatt from InContext, took the stage with the topic “What makes things cool?” and Jonathan Moore from Style Hatch with the topic “Beyond Pixels”. After that, graphic designers, data visualization specialists and educators Juuso Koponen and Jonatan Hildén talked about ”What every designer can learn from data visualization?”

Design day ended with very energetic show “Design renegade” from James White who is a visual artist, designer and speaker from Canada. He has his own Signalnoise Studio  and I think his show was perfect way to end that great day with design and designers.

This blog post is a part of SID course The Current Topics and it’s written by SID student Minna Myyryläinen.

If you have never attended the MindTrek Festival I do advice you to do so. This year they promised this:

”International three-day forum about the future of tech, knowledge and media. Expand your mind, step into the conversation and share the experience with like-minded”.

Sounds pretty cool don’t you think! This was my third time. I was really looking forward to the few days at Tampere being surrounded by innovators, movers and shakers of digital media and business.

This fall MindTrek teamed up with Technology Entrepreneurship Days so there was plenty of great sessions  to attend. I had the luxury to pick whatever I considered interesting. Here are the best take-aways:

1. Cyber security will change our sense of security and create great opportunities for innovative services
 Jarno Limnéll  gave a lot to think about. He talked about cyber security and well…things that make him angry. Cyber threats will change our overall understanding of security in few years. The thing is that dangerously cyber security is hardly ever a strategic issue. It’s something IT guys and gals should mind about. But Jarno Limnéll wasn’t all angry. Cyber security will create opportunities for new services. Ville Oksanen   even argued that Finland could become the Switzerland of personal data. Finland has a great brand for that. It is the least corrupted nation in the world or close, not a NATO-member (so the big brother won’t be listening that much) and has the only non-US based mobile operating system, Sailfish . Finns should just seize the opportunity and create more services like F-Secures YouNited.

2. Design and user interfaces: make it simple and maybe make it change shape…
Niilo Alftan the Senior Design Manager of Nokia smartphones said it well. Great design is something that makes you envious; why didn’t I think of that. Great design is about making things appear simple and obvious. Of course it takes tons of work to make things appear simple and easy. And what about shape changing interfaces then? Would it be super fun to sit on a bench that would start to move and change shape? Majken Kirkegaard Rasmussen presented some exciting stuff how physical interfaces can change shape and communicate with users.

3. The age of mass-disruption is transforming media but there is a point in looking back
Service design is a must becauce it’s all about the experience. It’s about creating moments people will love Tommi Pelkonen  Head of Media Solutions at Google Finland stated. Good news for service designers! There is work cause we are living the age of mass-disruption. Current structures are not so valid. Things we thought would never happen will happen. Media is 24/7 everywhere and more visual. We have second screens, but it’s not the personal device that is the second one. It’s primary. But despite all this disruption in the end it’s about people, good stories and relationships. David Cohen gave us an impressive walkthrough in the history of media and entertainment. Sometimes you can start innovating by looking back for things that were innovative but didn’t succeed in their time for some reason. Maybe now it would be a break through.

4. Robotics and robots will be a true game changer. Prepare yourself!
You think internet was a huge thing? Well, robots and robotics will be even a bigger game changer. Cristina Andersson is among other things the curator of Robotics week Finland and she knows about this stuff. She claims that everything that can be robotized will be robotized. Industrial robots are not the growing sector, the service robots are! The legend himself Steve Wozniak hoped that in the future every child could have a personal robot teacher. Woz wasn’t there in flesh but had an inspiring talk over Skype.

5. Vision, talent, culture and leadership is everything
Ever heard of Jolla ? Marc Dillon Head of Software Development gave an inspiring presentation in COSS Open Mind forum focusing mainly on Jolla company culture and leadership. In Jolla there is no space for command and control but plenty of room for meritocracy, openness, transparency, love and passion. The Jolla values are not goals to be achieved somewhere in the future, they are the current practice. And yes, we did see the Jolla phone in action too.

Post by Mervi Rauhala
Aspiring service designer and storyteller who started her SID journey this fall

https://twitter.com/MerviRauhala
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mervirauhala

When you have an organization with 11 faculties with 24 departments, 8500 employees, 35000 students, 137 IT-systems and a very long history of academic independence, what do you do when they ask you to make them simple?

Service design agency Palmu faced this assignment and shared their story of a service design project with the University of Helsinki over a cup of coffee at Service Design Breakfast.

It was great to hear that the University of Helsinki acknowledges the obstacles of it’s highly complex organization and sees a need to transform the fragmented landscape of its services into a holistic view. But anyone familiar with the university world knows that the task is vast, to say the least.

Palmu started from within. Their aim was not so much to design the services for the organization but to help service professionals in University of Helsinki to adapt their service design model. This is without doubt the most efficient way to conduct such an enormous change, but probably also the most challenging one.

The world of academia is known for its ability to create new pieces of information and new metrics and emphasize the importance of specialization and training, whereas design thinking is all about holistic approach, simplicity, co-creation, learning by doing and sharing real-time information.

As Heikki Savonen, service designer at Palmu, noted, design thinking means changing individuals. Setting their initial focus on services for researchers needed during the research projects, Palmu team had already conducted several workshops and managed to infect over 100 university employees with design thinking mentality. But I couldn’t help wondering how do you involve the rest of them, the remaining 8400 employees? Even broadly conducted processes don’t meet the needs of change communication.

University and Palmu used a blog as their primary communication method. As Head of Development at Administrative Services Kari Huittinen explained to me after the presentation, they used a variety of other communication pathways, too, such as employee magazine, news at intranet, bulletins via e-mail and presentations of the project in several events. But the gospel of co-creation competed with many other issues an organization that big would have to communicate. It certainly didn’t reach the level of communication: the blog had only a few comments, most of the – positive and encouraging –feedback coming via email straight to the members of the project team.

It became clear to the participants of this project already at an early stage that changing the course of such a large cruise ship takes times and patience. The job will not be done overnight, probably not even in a year. However, the seed of change has been cultivated. Maybe a well-thought communication strategy is the fertilizer the simplification project needs to grow into its full bloom?

The slides and video of this Service Design Breakfast are here.

Written by Ida Rainio, content designer and first-year SID student.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/idarainio

In the second Service Design Breakfast event this fall organized by Aalto University and Startup Sauna on October 16, Reaktor presented the case where they integrated service design with lean software development.

The project, done for Barona, was about creating software that would find best match between jobs and job applicants. Starting point was construction sector where Barona had to do a lot of short term contracts but didn’t have IT support in place. Paper form that was used for the contracts had 200 fields! Unsurprisingly, success rate in finding the best match was not at adequate level.

Karri-Pekka Laakso from Reaktor talks about how Reactor integrates  service design with lean software development

Project was done following Kanban method. Initial hassle involved producing a lot of UI design and heavy discussion what were the most important features that would actually be developed. The main challenge was how to define minimum viable product (MVP) to be able to launch early and enter the loop of learning. Getting early to production appears so crucial that the Reaktor’s learning suggests that is better to go early with minimum product (M_P) even if it doesn’t do much useful things, then to do too much with viable product (_VP) and waste time and money.

Reaktor’s team decided not to have Product Owner, as it was very difficult to get a good one in the past. Instead, they asked customers directly what the value would be. They selected key stakeholders from customer side – real people with whom they develop good relationship. They brought them together to discuss and prioritize features. Their input helped in defining MVP. After the launch, in addition to regular users’ feedback which was about “what” worked, what didn’t and what is missing, those stakeholders were able to answer important question “why”. Such understanding enabled team to start fixing the product remarkably fast releasing the most valuable changes to production within four days!

As the product continued shaping, “great ideas” started popping up from customer’s side. Traditionally, team would say “we will put it in the Backlog”, in other words “forget it”. In the spirit of design thinking (combining empathy, creativity and rationality) Reaktor’s team has found simple solution how to deal with those initiatives. Every new idea was written on a red post-it note and discussed with the customer in front of the Kanban board that already had red post-its containing proposals from others. This introduced transparency and enabled discussion about real value of new ideas in comparison with other ideas and features being developed. Interestingly, none of these ideas ended up implemented in their original form.

Service design applied in pre-launch phase enabled early launch with MVP and later on value delivery through the iteration loop, resulting altogether in much leaner development. Very much because of this approach, Barona project ended up as one of the most successful projects done in Reaktor and showcase of effective service design integration with lean software development.

The video of this Service Design Breakfast presentation is here.

Me and 27 other students were privileged to start the Service Innovation and Design Master’s program last September in Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Our first course was about Design Thinking held by Katja Tschimmel a Design professor and an entrepreneur, and Gijs van Wulfen the writer of the excellent book “The Innovation Expedition”.

How many things can you come up doing with a pencil? Be creative!

“The understanding and acceptance that failure and mistakes are important elements of Design Thinking, differentiates Design Thinking from the traditional way of thinking in business. Dealing with incomplete information, with the unpredictable, and with ambiguous situations, requires designers to feel comfortable with uncertainty (Pombo & Tschimmel, 2005).” writes Katja Tshimmel in her paper “Design Thinking as an effective Toolkit for Innovation”. This is where my journey to become a professional in Service Innovation and Design starts.

Quantity is better than quality! Have at least seven ideas because in average one out of seven ideas will succeed.

Immediately after reading Katja Tshimmels paper I felt relieved. In Design Thinking (DT) it is allowed to make mistakes, how great is that! The main purpose of Design Thinking is to offer effective different kinds of toolkits for any innovation processes, you just need to find the perfect tools for you. In her paper Tshimmel introduces five different Design Thinking models that help implementing the structure of Design Thinking. The models have a lot in common and their main goal is to offer tools for finding solutions to existing problems.

Be brave!

In addition to the models Tshimmel wrote about in her paper an interesting model is Gijs van Wulfen’s FORTH Innovation method (www.forth-innovation.com). I adopted this method to be the most suitable for me partly because, like Gijs, I like travel books but I also love travelling. FORTH innovation method is easy to remember because it looks like actual map that consist of five main islands: Full steam ahead, Observe and learn, Raise ideas, Test ideas and Homecoming. Visualizing (like the map here below) is one very important part of Design Thinking that really helps perceiving and remembering the case.

Be patient, every step is as important as the others.

As there is quite many different tools for implementing Design Thinking it is important to find out the best tools for you and to observe yourself the way you learn the best. Some people are visual, some auditory and some kinaesthetic and in DT you can find perfect ways to learn in each way.

Other central characteristics of DT are its human-centered approach in a collaborative way. Like Gijs van Wulfen wrote in The Innovation Expedition “You can not innovate alone!”. It is also important to co-create with the customers to get the best possible results. In other words when beginning your innovation process remember to involve people with diverse backgrounds. This helps to get wider understanding of the service and to improve it by combining the different opinions of the people involved.

People with diverse backgrounds.

Last but certainly not least, in Design Thinking you need patience. In most cases you will find yourself taking steps backwards as the process goes on. Observation and understanding the real problem to be solved takes time. Failures will take place but in each failure lies a possibility and next time you will be better!

Think outside of the box! Break the boundaries! Make mistakes!

Written by Maija Larmo

A Service Innovation and Design student from Laurea University of Applied Sciences

Global Service Jams are these incredible and really fun events related to service design that are celebrated all over the globe. Twice a year, a bunch of experienced jammers and hosts meet to make them wilder, more fun and even more productive. Its the JamJam. Last time, it happened in Barcelona, on September 27th-29th. And, happily, I was there!

But, what  is a jam?

A jam is a 48 hours event that gathers people for designing and prototyping new services inspired by a shared theme in hundreds of cities simultaneously and… while they have a great time!

This video from the London Sustainability Jam shows the jam experience very accurately. Curious? Play it now!

So, what is jamming about?

Prototyping a video to explain the value of sharing

• Doing (not talking). You complete the whole development process of concrete ideas that have the potential to become real.
• Learning. You pick new ideas and working practices, you can try approaches you haven’t tested before in a cool safe environment and you get peer feedback.
• Meeting people. You get to know pretty deeply —working side by side— a lot of people who share your interest in service design.
• Sharing. You share the experience and you working methods with your team and the end results with the world.

Humm, doesn’t this sound pretty similar to a SID Laurea contact session? Indeed, but less structured and without grades or homework

Which jams are there?

It’s jam o’clock!

There are three jams per year:

• The Global Service Jam, initiated in March 2011, which was celebrated in 130 cities in 2013.
• The Global Sustainability Jam, initiated in October 2011, with already 70 cities announced and to be celebrated soon, in November 22nd-24th. Feel like trying it? These are the four venues in Finland:
  • Helsinki.
  • Kuovola.
  • Rovaniemi.
  • Turku.
• The Global GovJam, prototyped in June 2012 and celebrated for the first time in 2013, in 36 cities.

Since 2011, more that 1,200 projects have been created and shared under a creative commons licence. Browse the latest here:

• Global Sustainability Jam 2012.
• Global Service Jam 2013.
• Global GovJam 2013.

What is the JamJam, anyway?

It’s an internal event meant for hosts and experienced jammers from around the globe. We meet during 48 hours —what else?— in one location to create the tools and processes that will push the jam idea forward and to improve the jam experience, both for jammers and hosts.

JamJam 2013 in Barcelona

Some cross-cultural issues at the JamJam…

The JamJam 2013 was led by Adam St. John Lawrence and Markus Horness from Work Play Experience, who are the initiators of the global jams and the Global Jam HQ. It was hosted by Claro Partners, the Barcelona Service Jam organisers, and held in Bau School of Design.

Apart from all other jam hosts in Barcelona, there were more than 40 participants from Austria, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, other cities in Spain and United Kingdom.

Before you go on reading, check this video by Claro where you can see some of the atmosphere.

Structure of the event

Working on a new page for the jam website during the first mini-jam

Usually jams follow a structure very similar to our first contact session in SID Laurea. That is, we use the 48 hours to develop one project per team.

The JamJam, instead, was divided into four shorter mini-jams. During each mini-jam you worked with a team on a very quick iteration of a project and presented it to the rest of the participants for feedback. After that, you were free to remain working on the same project or change team and topic.

For example, I worked on three different topics: how to extend the impact of the jam after the event, how to make tools for hosts easier to use and how to use the jam network also for professional matters.

Facilitating and documenting

A warm-up proposed by a Finn

Besides —and that is probably the most special about the JamJam—, each mini-jam was facilitated by a team of participants. This allowed us to see many different facilitation styles and share games for warming-up, giving feedback, or making teams and decisions.

And another much more invisible team —also of participants—, was in charge of documenting each mini-jam and presenting what had happened at the end. This allowed us to recall and reflect on what we had done, and also come up with ideas on how to document design sessions.

I was part of the documentation team of the last mini-jam. We tried to measure the level of energy at different phases of jamming and with different types of activity.

Both facilitation and documentation teams also received feedback from the rest.

Documenting the 1st mini-jam

Documenting the 3rd mini-jam

Documenting 2nd mini-jam

Documenting emotions at the 2nd mini-jam

Documenting the 4th mini-jam

Some really cool learnings

• Let people self-organise: this very agile approach worked really well and enriched the event so much by empowering participants and creating a space for sharing.
• Retrospectives: constant peer feedback on projects, facilitation and documentation does not disrupt the process, but deepens the opportunity of learning from it.
• Energising: using games for warming-up is a must and very usual, but I had never seen or used energisers at the end of the event. And it works amazingly! You’re no longer exhausted, but high and can concentrate on the great experiences you’ve just lived.

Jammimg is tiring

Jam tools

#thisiswhywejam

At global jams we use this hashtag to share good experiences about jamming. Here you can see four tweets related to the Barcelona JamJam.

What a fantastic #gsJamjam in BCN! Learned and built so much. A privilege to Jam alongside such a passionate, giving group! #thisiswhywejam—
Adam StJohn Lawrence (@adamstjohn) September 29, 2013

#thisiswhywejam Thanks to the Global Service Jam i met my current business partners and i am so thankful for that!!! http://t.co/guxUGTGB5G—
LARRIPASTUDIO (@LarripaStudio) September 27, 2013

After the last #gsjam, the winning group started a company and two members quit their job. Both part of the orgteam now. #thisiswhywejam—
Ingvild Sundby (@Ingvild_S) September 27, 2013

Jamming was an shared experience that created amazing friendships that have not happen otherwise #GSJamJam #thisiswhywejam—
Mikko Väätäinen (@MikkoVaatainen) September 27, 2013

Check #thisiswhywejam for many other experiences!

Post by Itziar Pobes, first-year SID student and Barcelona GovJam host 

In yesterday’s Service Design Breakfast event at Startup Sauna, Janne Lohvansuu from User Intelligence has presented the case of live UX design in YLE’s Eurovision ambiance. User Intelligence have prototyped and tested new event page for YLE during the Eurovision 2013. Prototype was interactive, connected to live content during the events and tested by Eurovision enthusiasts. That way they have obtained crucial insights for the new service concept that intend to change the way we are watching TV.

“We, user experience professionals have an awesome power to change user’s behavior with the help of technology” Janne said. Research shows that 86% of mobile internet users are using their devices while watching TV. This brings an opportunity to introduce second screen on mobile devices and engage users with the content related to TV program. YLE and User Intelligence got engaged to explore that opportunity. That’s how it all began.

User Intelligence – Ding dong! – Live UX design in YLE Eurovision ambiance

Applying service design, User Intelligence started from understanding the big picture – customer journey. It was about creating event hype stamina, from initial competitions through different events, culminating in Eurovision finals. After the big picture, they moved to details of the customer journey – what happens before, during and after each event.

Having in mind different screen sizes of mobile devices, User Intelligence came up with event page concept. That was based on mapping of event’s time dimension (before, during, after) on different type of devices. Event page concept helped them to understand the change and to enter the cycle of rapid prototyping. For example, “before” page contained down counting ticking clock. “During” page had 2 tabs – one to watch TV show and another to watch next to TV content, like current ranking of songs. Depending on device, one or both tabs were present.

In-event testing was not done with ordinary, but extreme users – Eurovision fans. Their needs are quite the same as ordinary people have, just amplified and therefore easier to identify. Separate room was decorated to resemble home atmosphere, with sofa and multiple mobile devices scattered around – phones, tablets, and laptops. Users were freely using and changing device. For example, when following live content if they noticed their favorite is moving up, that produced more interest and made them change device looking for video content. Most useful were video clips. If they missed something they were able to find it.

Design process – the wheel of UX with key additions.

Interactive co-creation went on through multiple iterations, finally producing pages that scale both time vise and device vise. The result has met YLE’s expectation – meaningful concept of second screen and user engagement. As such, the outcome is seen as a significant step towards changing a paradigm how people are watching a TV.

How to change paradigms, or key learning from live UX design in YLE’s Eurovision ambiance case:

• Have enthusiasm and energy – go out and interact with users
• Engage extreme users – get into their mind set
• Make the process lively – engage users with fun and excitement

Written by Predrag Miskeljin.

In the Service Design Breakfast event at Startup Sauna on November 13^th, Laura Invenius from ABB Drivers and Lotta Buss rom N2 Nolla have presented the case of strategy creation using the service design as a tool.

ABB and N2 Nolla – Service design as a tool for strategy creation

ABB Drivers, who produce devices that are used for speed control of electrical motors, needed to develop a new strategy in order to create better customer experiences in digital touch points. N2 Nolla was chosen because of their service design approach in strategy creation.

Believing that co-creation is the most powerful way to build internal commitment, they started with putting together right team for the job. From ABB, team joined people from sales, product management, and marketing coms. From N2 Nolla came service designers, market researcher and digital strategist.

Strategy development process started with creation of clear brief. Next phase was about obtaining insights, both internal and external. Regarding external stakeholders, early decision was made to focus on customers, while investors and those looking for jobs were left aside. Internal insights were obtained from the factory tour and discussions with sales and product management. External insights were collected from 8 countries in discussions with end-customers, partners and OEMs.

Strategy development process

Additionally, they have collected business and project goals, brand guidelines, and a lot of background information like: competitor analysis and benchmarking, customer research, NPS, and market outlook.

Co-creation workshops were the most important events. First one was dedicated to current state analysis; second one was two days co-creation workshop with country organizations, and the last one with the core team was done to finalize the work.

Tools:

• Personas used to cluster information about customers and partners
• Buyer’s journeys and gap analysis used to identify problems and challenges in interactions.

Design driver was “reduced customer effort is the most significant value creator“.

Outcome was ABB Drives Digital Strategy depicting Contents and Channels. Contents had 12 topics spread across three levels: 1) must have info, 2) educational and additional info and 3) forward looking info. Channels were mapped across digital ecosystem (social, desktop, mobile) and grouped to paid, owned and earned.

Utilizing input from contents and channels, they have created 11 prototypes of tools and services. Digital roadmap was also created that included both content topics and tools. Web site and internal newsletter for ABB Drives were renewed. Change process followed building on latent need that had already existed in the organization.

The outcome was, as ABB concluded “We now know who our customers are, we have hard facts about them (personas), we know what they are looking for, we understand buyer’s journey, we have different channels identified and content plans created for those. Most importantly, we are all now talking about the same things, based on the facts we have learned directly from our customers.”

Key learnings:

• Co-creative nature of the project has resulted in very little internal change resistance.
• Customer centricity enabled common ground and clear direction to internal stakeholders.
• Solution design was successful by focusing on customers’ image of the brand, instead thinking from organizational silos perspective
• Minor changes and redesigns can also lead to important improvements that add customer value.

The main message from this case, as both Lotta and Laura agreed, is that learning and co-creating together with customer focus is the way to work.

The video and slides of the presentation are here.

Written by Predrag Miskeljin