STBY » education

User-Centered Design across development stages

Geke — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:11:43 +0000

For the University of Amsterdam STBY facilitated a series of workshops with students, lecturers and system operators to inform the iterative development of its new Electronic Learning System (ELO).

The Information Centre of the university, who are developing the ELO based on Blackboard software, wanted to have in-depth conversations with their wide range user groups throughout the development process of the new ELO. STBY prepared a series of 3 workshops were the participants explored and discussed the various options and iterative prototypes for the new ELO.

To keep everyone active and focused, the programmes for the sessions were based on a fast paced cycle of group assignments, plenary discussions and individual feedback. The participants had access to the ELO in progress, so they could follow the development in various stages.

Over the course of 6 months 3 workshops took place. The timing of the workshops also helped the development team to stay on their toes and make sure they had something new to show the participants for every session. Both sides were eager to reflect on the progress and discuss further improvements.

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Guest lectures at Business Schools

Geke — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 10:15:12 +0000

Geke van Dijk has been invited to give guest lectures at executive seminars in two different Business Schools. On 8 February she spoke at the Tias Nimbas Business School (University of Tilburg, NL) in the executive master course on Marketing Management. On 3 March she will speak at Cranfield University (UK) as part of the Industry Day on Product Services Systems Research. On both occassions the topic is to show and discuss how customer insights can inform service innovation strategy and multichannel management.

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Service Experience Lab

Geke — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:01:48 +0000

Immerse yourself in the service experiences of your customers and identify new opportunities for innovation. In a bespoke one-day programme we facilitate an lively encounter between your team and some consumers from your target group. Through a series of well-prepared interactive assignments the participants explore the day to day service experiences of your customers. Your team will be able to closely observe these experiences and build up a deeper understanding of motivations, barriers and unmet needs by engaging in empathic conversations with your customers.

Our studios in central London and central Amsterdam are perfectly situated to host these Service Experience Labs. In London we are close to Liverpool Street station, so easy to reach. And in the immediate surrounding of both an upmarket business environment and a buzzing creative area. In Amsterdam we are at Vijzelstraat in the canal area,easy to reach from Centraal Station, with many buzzing streets and venues around. In particular for consumer related services this gives plenty of opportunities for service safaris with telling real-life service experiences! Of course we can also talk to and work with your customers in our studios or at your location.

The Service Experience Labs are very suitable for teams that wish to familiarise themselves with the service design approach of engaging with customers in an early stage of innovation projects. In a full-day programme we facilitate an exploration of the essential stages of immersion, insight creation and idea generation. The programme will be customised to fit the objectives and prior knowledge of your team members.

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Urban Creatives: young and switched on

Geke — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:18:08 +0000

For Bigga Fish and BANG Radio we set up and managed a youth study in London with an experimental approach. We first trained and coached a panel of 5 young researchers in conducting interviews with inner city urban creatives, and then facilitated them in drawing out the main insights and conclusions. Both the researchers and the interviewees were aged between 17 to 25. They talked in-depth about their creative activities, the ways they share their creations with others, the ways they promote their work, and the ways they stay on top of what other people are doing. The energy and drive of these amazing young creatives is fantastic. They are very switched on and use various online social networking tools in combination with their face to face networking at events to create a buzz around their work and get ahead in the field. The aim of the study was to identify the most important needs for online support services to be offered by Bigga Fish and BANG.

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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Design Research at the Design Academy

Geke — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:30:29 +0000

Design Academy

STBY was asked by the Design Academy in Eindhoven to prepare and facilitate a workshop on Design Research. There are several excellent examples of work in this area within the Design Academy, but there seems to be no coherent overview of these activities nor a framework of facilities to support and nurture them. The aim of this workshop was to enable the management team of the Design Academy to develop a strategic vision on what Design Research is and what the position and ambition of the Design Academy is in this area is or should be.

To clarify the definiton, historic background and the current international environment of Design Research, we brought a pile of example publications and summarised some of the key references on Design Research (e.g. Christopher Frayling 1993 and 2007, and Peter Lunenfeld 2003). We then facilitated a discussion among the management team about the current and future ambitions of the Design Academy in this field.

An interesting aspect about Design Research is that it occupies an area between the traditional silos of Science on the one hand and Art & Design on the other. Peter Lunenfeld describes Design Research as “the demilitarised zone” between science and art. Working in this zone offers exciting opportunities to make new connections and develop new discourses. This cross-over also seems to confuse people however, and this regularly forces design researchers to justify their work against more traditional clichés of scientific research and/or autonomous art & design.

The international discussion on Design Research so far has ascertained three main strands of Design Research:
1. Research into design (e.g. historical and aesthetic
studies of art and design).
2. Research through design (e.g. project-based design research, including materials research and development).
3. Research for design / Design as research (e.g. creation of object and systems that display the results of the research and prove its worth).

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Training in Design Documentaries

Geke — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 07:15:14 +0000

As part of the Executive Master Course in Information Management at the University of Amsterdam, Bas Raijmakers coordinated a series of lectures and workshops on Design Documentaries. After an inital introduction and a briefing session, 12 students from both industry and government organisations worked in groups on developing their own Design Documentary.

Each documentary focused on ways to improve the existing service offering by their organisation. Using video as a their research tool, the students addressed the issue by representing the existing situation and reflecting on potential opportunities for improvement. They used both interviews and performance for this.

The editing of the design documentaries was completed and coached during a 2-day workshop. At the end of this workshop the final results were evaluated by a panel of external examinors, as part of the final course assessment.

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Education & training

STBY — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:01:29 +0000

We always enjoy passing our knowledge on to others and engaging in lively discussions. We often speak at conferences, seminars and company training days. We have also been invited to teach at the Design Academy (Eindhoven, NL), The Royal College of Art (London, UK), the University of Glasgow (Scotland) and the University of Amsterdam (NL). We are happy to be invited as guest lecturers at other universities, academies, companies or institutes.

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Smart Street paper

STBY — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:59:43 +0000

Paper on experimental design research methods in a street in London, published by the Design Research Society and presented at their annual conference in 2008: Undisciplined!. The project was done with students from the Royal College of Art Design Interactions department. Co-authored by Wendy March (Intel) and Bas Raijmakers.¬†(PDF, 732 kb)

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Smart Street presentation

STBY — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:58:46 +0000

The presentation Bas did at the Design Research Society conference Undisciplined! (2008) on the above mentioned paper. (PDF, 4.2 Mb)

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