Our client is in the process of developing a new innovative service proposition in this area. They wanted to obtain feedback from consumers on their early concepts, as well as get a fresh outside perspective that could help them to further develop the concepts and progress them towards implementation.

To expose the concept to many different people in a short period of time, we invited four groups of six reasonably healthy people to our studio to take part in a series of half-day Service Experience Labs. We prepared a set of engaging materials to introduce the concept to the participants, and to engage them in an interactive exploration and discussion.

In contrast to traditional focus groups, the participants in these Service Experience Labs do not just sit around a table and respond to general questions. Through a series of individual and group assignments they were prompted to reflect in detail and in a highly personal way on the consequences that the use of the concept would have on their daily lives. They also compiled a rich personal profile of their current (healthy) lifestyle, indicated the aspects they would like to change, and reflected on the potential use for them of getting support in achieving this.

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To provide for informative as well as inspiring research outputs, we worked with a probe package (sent out to the participants in advance of the interviews) and with a large scale insight map annotating the stages of the decision making process from the perspectives of the various target audiences involved.

A broad range of useful insights have been derived from this first exploratory study – later in the development process more in-depth studies focusing on specific aspects may follow. The collaboration between the various parties involved has also been quite special. In the true spirit of iterative co-creation we regularly got together in workshops, where we exchanged our concurrent insights, ideas and early concepts. Apart from THNK and STBY, Lava is working on the brand identity and visual style, with LBi Lost Boys developing the next release of the online platform. All very experienced and knowledgable experts in their fields, and all a real pleasure to work with.

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Bespoke methodology for each project

We design a bespoke project for each situation and environment we’re asked to research. We use a wide range of tools that allow us to consistently deliver intimate and resonant insights. We might use film, making a series of short documentaries that explore and document the lives and interests of particular people. We might use a series of in-depth interviews as the basis for developing personas, clustering together the themes we uncover into easily recognisable groups. Or we might run a user-lab or workshop, inviting people to attend our studio in order to explore new service concepts via a range of interactive exercises.

What we don’t do is reduce people’s lives down to surveys or questionnaires. We prefer to deliver materials that are engaging, and present insights into people’s everyday lives that truly get to the heart of what defines an experience. We don’t think traditional market-research is capable of doing this, nor do we believe that research should take place in isolation of the overall design and implementation process.

Guidance on how to implement the insights and ideas

In fact, our projects often involve providing guidance to service providers and design teams who want to use the results to inform and inspire their innovation processes. We’ve established long-term relationships with a number of clients, and we’ve helped some of them reorientate their research activities around the service design principles we incorporate into our work. These partnerships have in many instances extended over multiple projects; we don’t just deliver results, we build relationships and provide expertise and support in the long-term.

We aim to deliver a holistic solution that generates insights, provokes innovation, and assists implementation. Each of these stages is crucial in ensuring that services are connected with the lives of the people using them.

Still not sure what we do? Try downloading one of the following articles:

Service Design – Visualising Future Solutions tells you a bit more about the field of service design,
Design Research – Inspiring Research with the Principles of Design explains a bit more about the design research methodologies we use in our work.

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One of the things we do here at STBY is provide long-term support for the development of new services. This often means conducting several projects for the same client, using our expertise in design research to help them ensure that what they develop is always in-tune with the people they’re developing for.

The latest project we conducted for Telekom (T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom) via their Creation Center is a great example of how this works. We’d previously worked with them to explore what new services people would like from their mobile phones. We designed a project in which people made their own video documentaries about what the parts of their social lives they wanted to share with their friends (you can read all about this one here). The end-result was a wealth of richly evocative research materials, around which Telekom could start developing new service concepts.

The latest project saw us again working together to ensure that concepts they were working on were properly aligned with the want and needs of the customers they were designing for. We put together a User Lab in which a range of different people examined some of Telekom’s latest service concepts. They gave us their thoughts on what worked, what didn’t, and what they really wanted when using the internet on their phone. The exercises we designed provided deep, insightful, and targeted feedback, which was subsequently analysed on Day 2 of the workshop.

This second day saw us working with a team drawn from several departments within Telekom to cluster and analyse the material that had been created. We identified those areas where the new concepts were both meeting and missing customer expectations, and also highlighted a number of ‘areas of opportunity’ where new directions could be incorporated. Matching the insights gathered against the service concept’s features in this manner provided it with the evidential foundation needed in order to move to the next stage of the development cycle.

We’ve now worked on several projects with the Creation Centre at Telekom, with the insights into people’s lives and routines that we generate serving to anchor their development around the people they’re developing for. Helping them incorporate design research into their development cycles ensures that the new concepts being developed are always in-tune with the world people will eventually be using them in.

If you’d like to learn more about this process, or have an informal chat about what these kinds of projects actually entail, simply drop Geke a line at geke@stby.eu.

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What should a router look like? That was the question STBY were recently asked by Cisco, who commissioned a project examining consumer attitudes towards the design and colour of their routers.

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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?

You can download an extended case-study of the Zuidzorg project here. Alternatively, you can learn more about STBY’s work in the care sector by contacting Bas at bas@stby.eu.

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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.

This project built upon the insights developed in a previous project STBY conducted for T-Mobile, which you can read about in-depth by clicking here. You can also find out more by speaking to the Project Manager, Geke, at geke@stby.eu.

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