1. How sticky research drives Service Design At the 2009 Service Design Network conference in Madeira, Bas...
2. Service Design workshop in Cambridge Geke participated in a workshop on Service Design at the...
3. STBY presents at SDN conference 2009 Together with Andreas Sommerwerk (Deutsche Telekom AG) Bas presented the...

For a consortium of public sector organisations in The Netherlands STBY is working on a user-driven innovation proces aiming to develop new remote services that support older people to live independently at home. Moving to a retirement home is not something most older people are looking forward to. Luckily nowadays, it is possible to get a lot of care and support at home. Remote services have a potential to offer people a maximum of flexibility and independence. In every stage of this project people from the target group, older people and their carers, have been involved in order make sure the team works with their perspective firmly in mind.

The consortium of client organisations include two primary care providers (Zuidzorg and PlusExtra), a local council (Gemeente Geldrop-Mierlo) and a building society. The agencies commisioned to facilitate the public engagement and concept development proces are STBY and Waag Society. The project has been ongoing since July 2009. First an early stage exploration, which was later followed by a service concept development, service blueprinting, prototype building and validation by the target group.

One of the starting points for the project was the observation that when older people become care dependent they often find it hard to get used to the range of support services available but new to them. Specifically remote services have a high entry barrier at this stage. The aim of this project is to develop new services that invite older people to familiarise themselves with remote support services before they become care dependent. The objective of the first step in the project was to discover what type of services people would welcome into their lives at this stage. Later in the project the ideas and prototypes of new services were discussed and validated with older people and their carers in a series of interviews and co-creation sessions.

From the point of view of the target group the main benefit of these new services would be that they offer an opportunity to connect more easily to organisations and other people from the comfort of their homes. The primary target group is people aged 75+ who live independently at home. They are still reasonably healthy, but less mobile than before. The secundary target group are the family, neighbours and close friends of these older people, who regularly help out with little tasks and generally keep an eye out for how things are going. The remote services aim to facilitate the day to day communications between these people, as well as enabling contact with care organisations.

From the feedback elicited from the target group seems to be clear that they expect to benefit from a service that will allow them to stay socially active and connected while they are getting less mobile. They can continue their participation in social networks and events, and while doing so familiarise themselves with the remote services that may one day become important for their contact with care organisations.

For the organisations in the client consortium the biggest change is that for these new services they no longer position themselves as the organisations that ‘solve peoples problems’. With WSG they now also position themselves as organisations that facilitate people to solve their own problems, while they still can. This is a new and appropriate way of addressing a target group that does not consider themselves as people who need help or care yet. They would otherwise be averse of any service offering in this context, which is currently the main barrier for the uptake of remote care services.

Another major achievement for the organisations in the client consortium is the learning process about user-driven innovation and co-creation. This way of working was fairly new to them. They were easger to learn more about this, as they genuinly want their organisation to be more customer oriented, but they had little experience with the appropriate methods for this. STBY and Waag Society, as experts in this field, have taken care to involve the client team in every step of the process. A full documentation of the the process is currently being produced in a booklet for internal use. The organisations aim to do more of these kind of projects in the future.

The co-creation process in this project involved the target group at every stage. The need assessment, concept development and prototyping were all validated with older people and their carers. These validations acted as key performance indicators during the design process. They focused on two aspects. First, does the target group understand the (intermediate) result? And second, how do they perceive and describe the value of the result, if any?

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The participants had all been asked to do some home work in the form of a diary assignment in advance of the workshop. This material was used to trigger the discussions on the concepts and ideas. Through group assignments and plenary discussions a wide range of aspects were explored and further elaborated.

The day after the Service Experience Lab all the documented materials were analysed by STBY and the client team. This is an excellent way to continue and further refine discussions that started during the research session. In the following days STBY completed a full report on the process and results of the Service Experience Lab.

1. Service Experience Lab Immerse yourself in the service experiences of your customers and...
2. User-Centered Design across development stages For the University of Amsterdam STBY facilitated a series of...
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After several hours of intense debate, meters of paper covered with post-its and photo-montages, about thirty ideas were presented, including… a Tour de France for the elected representatives, going in «residence» in other territories. A «trans-regional» passeport, reshaping citizenship and public involvement on a local (trans-regional) scale. A welcome kit for new habitants in rural areas…

The day was also the occasion to make a half way bilan of Territoire en résidence: a program of local experimentations, which the 27th region started in november 2008. So far, 7 residences have been realised, asking a pluri-disciplinary team (designers, ethnographers, architects, local stakehloders…) to work for 3 weeks in a place or an institution that represent a specific challenge for the region, and to propose several leads of action. The residences are constantly documented on a blog. And there is also video on You Tube about the event.

1. Spatial planning beyond the city We were invited to present the work we did for...

As the university aims to give the students in the new course an active role in shaping the actual projects they will be working on, it is of course important to put its foot where its mouth is from day one. The envisioned inter-disciplinary, practice-based collaborations with external organisations will be most successful if the students are fully engaged and involved in some of the crucial choices to be made. In the discussion sessions it was clear that the students were pleasantly surprised by this opportunity to co-create their education. To further develop the new master course, the university aims to continue this process of open discussions with students.

Aware that focus groups about future services may trigger general opinions rather than observations based on actual experiences, we prepared a structured process that elicited a mix of individual and group-based responses. Guided by an agenda that explored some of the central aspects of the course, we first triggered the students to individually reflect on a topic by making personal notes, before we opened it up for a lively and highly interactive group discussion.

To ensure clear and effective communication with the students, STBY involved two young journalists from Spunk as co-moderators. Over the past years we have worked with them on various research projects that focused on young people. An enjoyable and high-quality collaboration.

1. User-Centered Design across development stages For the University of Amsterdam STBY facilitated a series of...
2. Helping parents to advise and support Building on the results of a previous study, STBY were...
3. Creating design briefs on patient dignity The Design Council and the Department of Health in the...

Click here to view the embedded video.

The nice thing is, says David Byrne, that professional keyboard players will have no advantage over laymen. The experience of playing will be completely new to everyone. The installation suggests everybody can compose with their everyday surroundings, be it their apartment or their car. “I’m not advocating a kind of “Wiki” world of culture” says Byrne, “but I guess I am advocating less separation between the producers (writers, musicians, dancers, singers) and cultural consumers. (…) I like exploring the idea that pretty much anyone can be a writer, artis or musician if they want to. It’s essential to me that this piece is to be played by people of all ages and abilities. Artists, musicians, kids and grandmas.It’s not art or music that is presented to you, played by experts for you to simply consume.There’s nothing to consume – you have to make it yourself.”

This is a nice way of talking about co-discovery, co-creation, co-design and so on. In particular the idea that when you create a completely new way of playing, or creating in general, there is no longer an advantage for the expert over the layman. This resonates with the approaches we take when organising co-creation workshops, or when we involve clients in our fieldwork. Bringing people outside their ‘expert-zone’ lets them see things in a new way, similar to how the visitors of “Playing the Building” are learning to carefully listen to the sounds of the Roundhouse.

1. Design for Patient Dignity results The UK Department of Health and the Design Council presented...

Bigga Fish is a non-profit youth organisation dedicated at educating inner city youth through music and other creative activities. They aim to focus the energy of urban youth, by offering them knowledge and opportunities to achieve their goals. “‘Our mission is to provide opportunities to young people to fulfill their potential through the medium of their creativity and the creative industries.’”

BANG is also a non-profit organisation, dedicated to providing creative and media training for young people in London. Its aim is to provide an outlet for young people to enjoy themselves, increase their skills and improve their employment prospects. The radio station BANG Radio is one of the leading black and urban music radio stations in the UK.

Bigga Fish and BANG are working together closely on various projects. When they approached STBY for user research to inform the development of a new online platform to support young urban creatives, we suggested to set up an approach that would result in some useful work experience for a selection of young people in their target group. We trained a panel of 5 young researchers in conducting interviews, we coached them while they were out and about speaking to young urban creatives, we showed them how to effectively document the research materials through a blog and a series of templates, and we moderated a joint analysis workshop that drew out the main insights from the study. Throughout this process people from Bigga Fish and BANG were involved as well, in order to experience how user research contributes to the development of strategic thinking and creative concept development for future online services.

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2. Reach partners meeting up Our colleagues and friends from Apogee in Hong Kong, Jo...

We recently organised our last co-creative workshop for Heartlands, the regeneration project around an old tin mine in Pool, Cornwall. This time we had three aims. First we wanted to collect some stories that could be relevant to Heartlands, to inspire the architects, designers and artists that are involved in creating Heartlands. Second we wanted to explore with storytellers and architects, designers and artists together how Cornish stories could become an integral part of Heartlands, in the built environment and artworks but also the virtual presence of Heartlands, and how this could evolve over time. Finally, as with all our workshops we wanted to create connections between local creatives and others, and the design team.

We spent a full day at Cornwall College Library recording stories and working with stories. The result is a series of audio and video recordings that are now on a blog and podcast for the design team and all people involved. The recordings include many stories and also a wide range of ideas to built on in the future.

Our work at Heartlands has come to an end for now, after a full year of design research and workshops (12 activities all together). The site is starting to change from now on, as the builders have moved in. Opening is planned for Spring 2010. Early 2009 a new Heartlands website will be lounged where progress can be followed.

1. Service Design workshop in Cambridge Geke participated in a workshop on Service Design at the...
2. Spatial planning beyond the city We were invited to present the work we did for...
3. Co-creating education In the early stages of developing a new international master...