DUO/IB-Groep is the national body responsible for studentships, student loans and university registrations. They had previously asked STBY to examine how young students accessed their services, and this study found a great number relied extensively on parental support in this regard. This insight triggered DUO/IB-Groep to categorise parents as a secondary target group for their services; they had identified that an effective service provider responds to the needs of the social environment of their client – and in this case, this meant addressing parents.

STBY were asked to explore ways in which DUO/IB-Groep could achieve this. Initially focusing on the relationship between parents and students, it was established via a series of interviews that a huge number of parents wanted both advice and support from IB. Once this initial support had been provided however, the needs of parents could be split into two broad categories:

The first group wished to remain in the background of their children’s interactions with DUO/IB-Groep, and only deal with problems once they have occurred. In those instances this group would need to be quickly brought up to date with the current situation – a clear service opportunity for DUO/IB-Groep, and one that is currently neglected.

The second group meanwhile stated they would rather remain at the forefront of interactions. Many in this group were attempting to handle their children’s financial affairs, and were encountering problems when doing so; for legal reasons DUO/IB-Groep could only provide access to certain services directly to the students themselves, whilst having both parents and students attempting to implement solutions to certain problems was creating conflict problems.

STBY developed these research findings into a series of service concepts via an analysis workshop with the DUO/IB-Groep client team, an in-depth report on the research insights, and a day long co-creation workshop with people from various departments.

The result was the potential for DUO/IB-Groep to begin offering a far more holistic service, intimately in-tune with the environment its clients inhabit.

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The field research for this project was done in close collaboration with four design students from University College Falmouth. From the data analysis and the workshop, it emerged quite clearly that a decentralised approach – one that would support the various organisations, initiatives and practices already existing in relation to sustainable living – would be far more useful than building a new centre.

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2. Remote services for older people For a consortium of public sector organisations in The Netherlands...

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.

1. Remote services for older people For a consortium of public sector organisations in The Netherlands...
2. Personas to inform and inspire service innovation In a follow-up project to the early explorations in 2009,...
3. Lovely video! We went to the BFI this weekend for the onedotzero...

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 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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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.

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