Hanae is the latest intern to join us in our Amsterdam office. Originally from Japan, she graduated with a degree in Aesthetics and Art History from Tokyo’s Gakushuin University in 2006. She’s subsequently spent 2 years studying Product, Interior and Architecture Design at Kidi Parsons in Kanazawa, before spending a further 3 years studying at Design Academy Eindhoven in The Netherlands (where she was a student of our own esteemed Dr Raijmakers, no less).

Hanae’s interested in learning from how different people live in different countries and cultures. She describes her motivation as “a wish to re-discover uniqueness, curiousness and the beauty of things which could be missed in mundane daily life”.

She also took her profile photo in front of a banana, which should always be encouraged, STBY moving as they are to an 85% fruit-themed website by Summer 2012.*

*may not be true

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Our Indian Reach partner, Quicksand, had some exciting news this week: the launch of their 2012 UnBox Fellowships.

UnBox is a festival celebrating interdisciplinary processes and experiences that shape contemporary thought and action. UnBox invites participants from all walks of life— practitioners, students, educators and institutions, who are redefining professional, social and cultural engagement in their contexts. Together, new forms and experiences emerge to challenge traditional notions of work, play and discourse. In 2012, the UnBox Festival will be held from Feb 2-5 in New Delhi.

UnBox Fellowships provide an opportunity for chosen fellows to travel and work across a diverse selection of projects hosted in different parts of India. Anchored and led by domain experts, selected projects for 2012 include understanding sustainable lifestyles in Auroville, collaborating with craft groups in Rajasthan, sourcing fashion inspirations in the local textile traditions of Kutcch and several other projects, each of which are at various intersections of design, development, technology and entrepreneurship.

It really is a fantastic opportunity. You can find out more by visiting the fellowship site – and don’t forget to let us know if you decide to take the plunge!

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The proposed program looks to be an interesting mix of theory and ‘real-world’ practice, and we’re really curious as to how popular the course wil prove to be. The deadline for applications isn’t until February 2012 if you’re interested in signing up, and you can find more details on the RCA website by clicking here.

Don’t forget to let us know how you get on if you decide to take the plunge!

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First of, videos of the keynote presentations can now be watched online. These videos also cover some of the smaller parallel sessions, and are definitely worth a look.

The above link also leads to a series of interviews with both speakers and attendees, and are a great commentary on the themes that were addressed.

There are also a series of photographs documenting the event available, that can be used as long as the photographers are credited. Anyone interested just drop us a line at mail@stby.eu and we can put you in touch.

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Maaike was born in the Hague, and has been studying at the Design Academy Eindhoven prior to her internship with STBY in our Amsterdam office. She already holds a degree in Graphic Design from the University of Rotterdam.

Maaike describes herself as “an empathic Designer, who is inpired by people”.She’s a firm believer in the notion that groups who don’t usually have contact with each other can learn from each other once connected, and also cites research as the reference point for all good design.

Hilariously, she thought her entire profile would make it onto the website with its professional tone intact, devoid of all references to tea and other long-running, painfully unfunny running-jokes. It’s that kind of naivety we like to stamp out of people here at STBY. Preferably within the first week.

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These are a couple of the questions at the heart of two ambitious programmes in The Netherlands aimed at exploring this new role designers can play in product-service innovation. STBY have been involved in both, working with both the ‘Creative Industries Scientific Programme’ (CRISP) and ‘Innovation In Design – Service Design in practice’ at various points over the last year.

Now we’re involved with bringing the two programmes together as part of a unique symposium during Dutch Design Week. This event, to be held on October 26th in Eindhoven, is intended to be a joint review of designers’ role in product-service innovation. It’s an opportunity to critically reflect on current practice, research and training in order to explore various directions for further improvement.

Our Strategy Director, Geke van Dijk, has joined the programming board of the symposium, and is also the chair of Service Design Network Netherlands – one of several organisations that are helping make this event a reality. Also involved are the Design Academy Eindhoven, where our Creative Director, Bas Raijmakers, is currently Associate Professor of Strategic Design.

We’re really excited to be involved in such an ambitious event, and are hopeful that the symposium will help open this discussion up to a wider community of designers and innovators. Two international keynote speakers will touch on the global context of product-service innovation, and this will be followed by three parallel interactive sessions on science, industry and education.

Registration is open now at www.designasservice.nl, costing just €35 (including an informal networking lunch). Everyone interested and working in the field is welcome – we hope to see some of you there!

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Massive thanks to all of you who in some way contributed to making The Great Outdoors of Design, our first conference with the Reach network, such a resounding success. A really diverse crowd made it down to Richmix on Friday 26 September in order to collaboratively explore some of the issues we deal with day-to-day when practicing global design research. The feedback we’ve had so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and it was great for us to be able to take a step back and reflect with some like-minds on the kind of work that we do.

The presentations put on by the speakers were all even better than we expected meanwhile, and it was fantastic to finally sit down with (nearly!) all of the partners in the Reach network in the same room. More and more of our projects are starting to take on a global focus via our work with Reach, and with each successful project we complete it seems like our collaborations become even stronger.
We’re still collecting together all of the materials from the event to share with those of you who couldn’t make it down on the day; keep following us on Twitter at @STBY and we’ll let you know as soon as these are available!

And we’ll keep you updated on the rumours about GOOD’12 – maybe we can all head to Hong Kong next time…

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As service design continues to develop as a discipline, people within the field are starting to work towards achieving higher-level, larger-scale integration with both public and private sector companies. This was the focus for a recent ‘public-private partnership’ in the Netherlands that saw STBY working with several service providers, government funded organisations and other service design agencies to develop a series of case studies showcasing what service design can achieve. This long-term project will take 3 years to complete, and is ultimately intended to help improve the visibility and applicability of service design in relation to the Dutch economy.

The project will involve several different case studies demonstrating the value of the approach – whilst also offering an opportunity to explore the processes it involves. In addition to this development and dissemination of in-depth knowledge about the field, the project also aims to strengthen the service design community in The Netherlands – the core group of organisations who originally founded the Service Design Network Nederland are all involved, with each agency working in the open-minded spirit of collaboration that is a key principle of the field.

Showcasing the Field by Studying Stations

The main focus for the case studies is Utrecht’s central train station. Currently undergoing a fundamental redevelopment, this represents an excellent opportunity for innovating the service experience of train passengers. In the true spirit of service design however, the case studies are not just looking at the use of the station, but at the complete customer journey: from preparing and anticipating a trip, to the moment people arrive at their destination.

In the past few months STBY has been working on the first case study together with Prorail, Edenspiekermann, Hogeschool Utrecht and TU Delft. We conducted in-depth ethnographic research on how the use of platforms at the station can be understood in the context of complete journeys; What kind of information and expectations do people have before arriving at the station? What kind of support is beneficial to them when on the platform? What works well for them, and what does not? What needs and preferences seem to be unfulfilled? What additional services could be offered to delight these intrepid travellers?

These questions were all addressed in an extensive ethnographic exploration incorporating observations, in-depth interviews, customer journey mapping, visualising insight clusters, and identifying opportunity areas in co-creation workshops – all classic techniques from the service design toolbox. The project is still ongoing, and will probably require a further series of internal workshops and presentations within the wider organisation of the main service provider, Prorail. We’ll try to update this article from time to time with the results that emerge from these, and will also detail the further case-studies that are still to come.

Spreading the Word

One of the final aims of the project is to generate materials that will be valuable for a wider group of stakeholders than just the participating organisations themselves. Various seminars and conferences will be organised therefore, and several articles published as well. This is one of the roles for the participating Technical University Delft and Hogeschool Utrecht who are actually studying how we, the service design agencies, approach the case studies and work with the stakeholders. So we, as observers, have researchers observing us… a bit surreal, but also fun and in a good collaborative spirit!

The parties involved in the project are: Prorail, Movares, Bureau H2O, STBY, EdenSpiekermann, DesignThinkers, 31Volts, Scope Design Strategy, Hogeschool Utrecht, Technische Universiteit Delft and Taskforce Innovation Regio Utrecht.

The project ‘Service Design – Are you Being Served?’ is co-funded through the Pieken in de Delta-program by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, the city of Utrecht and the province of Utrecht.

If you’d like to know more about STBY’s involvement, then just drop Geke a line at geke@stby.eu, or follow us on Twitter at @stby.

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As much of the research was taking place in Germany, we worked with our local partners in the Reach Network, Minds & Makers. Together we developed a methodology for the fieldwork, targeted around the kind of insights we needed. We involved a range of participants that covered a variety of social and geographical backgrounds, each of whom had different preferences and routines centred around mobility  and re-fueling. A series of probes, semi-structured interviews, and location visits gave us the data we needed for an internal analysis workshop at our Amsterdam office.

The end result was a series of clustered insights that could be used to inform and inspire the client’s design teams. To make these insights as accessible as possible to these teams, we visualised them on a large-scale poster, in addition to presenting them in a more traditional report format. Presenting results in this way is something we’ve had a lot of success with in the past; after all, even the most resonant of insights will achieve little if the right people never get to see them.

In a full-day internal workshop with people from many different departments in the client organisation we presented the insight from the research, and participated in discussions around a series of new service concepts they are currently working on. The posters with observations, quotes and insights were there to refer to and to ensure that the consumer perspective did not get lost during the sometimes passionate strategic discussions.

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Alessia joined STBY in the summer of 2011. Despite quickly realising that what passes for summer in London doesn’t quite match-up with her native Italy, she nevertheless agreed to stay with us for 6 months as our latest UK intern.

Having obtained a BA in Fine Arts from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, Alessia moved into Multimedia Production, spending some time as a Shooting and Editing Assistant at a film company. Having subsequently focused more on communications whilst working as a Creative Director at a PR agency, Alessia ultimately returned to full-time education in order to obtain an MA in Strategic Design from the Politecnico di Milano.

She joined STBY in order to learn more about how we use film here in order to create empathic and engaging materials in the form of design documentaries. She’s also a key member of the ’2011 Coffee Revolution’, who show a flagrant disregard for British customs by refusing to drink the mandatory 10 cups of tea a day. Shocking.

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