STBY have recently completed a project with the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. We were asked to put a human face to four different types of patients with diabetes, all of whom cope with their disease in very different ways.  The company wanted to present their teams with materials that would guide and inspire development of future products and services, by synthesising and enriching user-research material from several previous studies into one cohesive whole.

In order to achieve this, it was essential that we collaborated very closely with the client team. This began with a collaborative workshop which was designed around the notion of consolidation; Novo Nordisk already had a great deal of research data, but the insights they’d generated were spread over a number of different projects and reports. Working with them to collate and synthesise this material allowed us to identify and elaborate on those insights that could be made more accessible to their designers and engineers.

We did this by developing a series of scripts for twelve design documentary films. Again working closely with the client team, we created a series of videos that vividly illustrated the behavioural insights upon which they were founded. A team made up of STBY and Novo Nordisk researchers travelled to the US to film these videos, which focused on the everyday lives of four people who were all coping with their diabetes in very different ways.

Working with Novo Nordisk’s existing research data had allowed us to prepare scripts for the films that effectively focused upon the insights that typified each persona. This meant that we were able to seamlessly integrate the films with the data generated from the company’s previous studies. Our focus wasn’t on providing vast amounts of new data, but on finding creative ways to make the existing material they had more accessible and ‘alive’ to the engineers and designers who would be using it. The videos were a key part of this, providing an empathic link to the patients at the heart of each persona.

The end-result consisted of a DVD with the films as well as a poster that summarises the results. As these materials are already being picked up and used within Novo Nordisk, they proved to us once again the value of using video to bring real people right into the heart of design processes.

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How can people in the U.S. live a sustainable lifestyle? That’s the question STBY recently tried to answer during a project with the Reach Network commissioned by Panasonic. Any company developing products for the ‘Eco Aware’ has to first gain an understanding of the lifestyles such consumers need. The plurality of approaches and attitudes that invariably exist towards sustainable living complicates the matter of how people react to green products. Exploring these differences allows companies to develop products that more effectively support people’s efforts to live their lives in an environmentally conscious way.

With this in mind, Panasonic asked STBY to design an ethnographic research project that would deliver inspiring insights into sustainable living in the U.S. The approach we took was to create a series of design documentaries, thus providing an empathic link to those people trying to live in a sustainable manner. By visiting a number of such people in their home, we were able to create videos that communicated a range of intimate insights into their lives and opinions, telling their stories in a way that could both inform and inspire.

To add structure to these stories, we worked with Panasonic to develop a number of cultural probes that could be used during our home visits. These prompted the participants into asking questions about what aspects of their lifestyle could be better supported by new products and services, thus throwing more light onto the areas of their lives where innovation was most needed.

A series of workshops held with Panasonic and the Stanford University Design Research Lab meanwhile allowed us to help the company integrate these insights into their concepting processes. One of the main goals for the project was to create research materials with long-term applications – to ensure that the insights we captured could be used and re-used, time and again. This understanding of consumers’ practices and motivations could in addition be applied to the work of a wide range of internal departments at Panasonic, from design teams to business model developers.

Working with our Reach partner, Portigal Consulting, allowed us to conduct this project in San Francisco at relatively short notice, and with no logistic difficulties. This project once again demonstrated the strengths of both the design documentary format, and the Reach network itself; combining the two allows us to quickly and effectively communicate empathic insights from almost anywhere in the world.

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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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STBY has developed a unique method to explore and communicate the elusive, inconsistent fabric of everyday life by using video and engaging in a dialogue with the participants in a research. Design documentaries investigate the opposites, paradoxes and ambiguities that are part of everyday life. They inform and inspire concept developers by offering rich insights into the often messy routines of consumers. We have found that this can be far more effective than the clean and simplified consumer profiles based on marketing statistics that are so often the basis for design briefs.

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STBY have worked with Nokia on a series of projects enabling them to gradually align their research and development processes around principles of design research. The latest of these saw STBY prepare and facilitate a collaborative alignment workshop focused on the consumer solutions videos produced by STBY for Nokia in early 2010. The purpose of the 3-day workshop was to help staff from various departments learn how the videos can be used to build empathy with consumers, and ‘road-test’ concepts and services currently in development.

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STBY recently produced a series of films for Nokia, documenting the ‘solutions’ people improvise to a range of situations in their everyday lives. These films are to be used in Nokia’s internal ideation and design processes, where they allow various departments to connect with the lives of consumers.

The personal stories captured by the videos provide a strong emotional link to the individuals involved. They show the hopes, dreams, and fears of a diverse range of people, and in particular focus on the routines and objects that allow them to ‘connect‘ – in both a social sense to their friends and family, but also in a cultural sense to their environment and surroundings. By displaying the solutions that people themselves have developed, STBY were able to provide insights into how Nokia could effectively tailor services around the aspirations of their consumers.

The films also provide an evidential basis for new concepts, by displaying how these would work in the lives of the people they are being developed for. This foundation represents a common ‘language‘ in which different development teams at Nokia can communicate with each other;  developing services in the language of everyday life is one way in which the consumers can be kept at the heart of design processes.

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The main objective of the project was to develop a better understanding of how consumers perceive their water consumption, and of their attitudes towards new ways to monitor this. Based on this understanding opportunities for new services and tools to support consumers in managing their water consumption were identified.

The analysis of the interview data revealed that people differ considerably in their understanding of water consumption, their sensitivity to the costs of it, and their sensitivity to the environmental impact of it. We investigated both their daily practices and the underlying motivations and concerns. The 4 personas identified and illustrated each call for specific tools and services that they would be happy to embrace.

Personas are a bespoke way of exploring customer typologies. They are not an off-the-shelf marketing segmentation, driven by demographics, such as age, gender, income etc. They are rather a qualitative typology,  driven by characteristics explaining customers’ relationships with specific products and services. Personas are focused on in-depth understanding of customers: Why do they use these products/services? And why do they care about these?

Personas are used to inform and inspire service innovation. They are not meant to pigeon hole every single customer an organisation encounters. They are rather used to strategically inform innovation management, and to inspire new propositions and communications. Personas specifically enable consumer-driven service innovation.

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