As much of the research was taking place in Germany, we worked with our local partners in the Reach Network, Minds & Makers. Together we developed a methodology for the fieldwork, targeted around the kind of insights we needed. We involved a range of participants that covered a variety of social and geographical backgrounds, each of whom had different preferences and routines centred around mobility  and re-fueling. A series of probes, semi-structured interviews, and location visits gave us the data we needed for an internal analysis workshop at our Amsterdam office.

The end result was a series of clustered insights that could be used to inform and inspire the client’s design teams. To make these insights as accessible as possible to these teams, we visualised them on a large-scale poster, in addition to presenting them in a more traditional report format. Presenting results in this way is something we’ve had a lot of success with in the past; after all, even the most resonant of insights will achieve little if the right people never get to see them.

In a full-day internal workshop with people from many different departments in the client organisation we presented the insight from the research, and participated in discussions around a series of new service concepts they are currently working on. The posters with observations, quotes and insights were there to refer to and to ensure that the consumer perspective did not get lost during the sometimes passionate strategic discussions.

1. Stakeholder Research in Food & Retail for Ahold In collaboration with LBi Lost Boys, STBY recently conducted a...
2. Say yes to the mess! For ‘The week of Service Design’ on Molblog, the online...
3. Say yes to the mess! For 'The week of Service Design' on Molblog, the online...

Through a series of in-depth interviews with a mix of journalists, analysts, and NGOs in the US, UK and Netherlands we documented a large collection of recent and actual Customer Journeys. The recurring patterns in these stories, identified in the analysis, have been translated into a set of personas, each consisting of a rich profile description and a few typical aggregated customer journeys.

The conversations with the external stakeholders were complemented with interviews with key internal experts within Ahold. As professionals in Corporate Communication, Investor Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility they represent important ‘touch points’ for external stakeholders, either through face to face contact or phone and email. Their interaction can be one of the key aspects in the overall customer journey, just as the online platform can be. These individual touch points can all be ‘moments of truth’ that make or break the service experience.

The development of an online communication strategy cannot be done in isolation from these ‘offline’ touch points. They all need to fit together into a smooth and integrated service delivery. So one of the main research purposes was to develop a holistic vision on how the corporate website connects to the wider context of Ahold’s corporate communication.

By empathising with key external stakeholders, Ahold can look at their corporate service offering from an ‘outside-in’ perspective, validate their current communication strategy and innovate their future strategy. The insights from the stakeholders research provide a useful sounding board for this.

1. Customer Talk article on Service Design One of the editors of the online community for customer-focused...
2. Mobility, Cars and Refueling Experiences What do people care about in terms of mobility, and...
3. Are you being served? Collaborations to improve services for train travellers STBY have recently been working on a large-scale project in...

1. Say yes to the mess! For 'The week of Service Design' on Molblog, the online...
2. Mobility, Cars and Refueling Experiences What do people care about in terms of mobility, and...
3. Stakeholder Research in Food & Retail for Ahold In collaboration with LBi Lost Boys, STBY recently conducted a...

1. Say yes to the mess! For ‘The week of Service Design’ on Molblog, the online...
2. Mobility, Cars and Refueling Experiences What do people care about in terms of mobility, and...
3. Stakeholder Research in Food & Retail for Ahold In collaboration with LBi Lost Boys, STBY recently conducted a...

The article is Dutch, like the rest of the online content for this platform. It describes how services design offers an holistic approach to the innovation of services, working from the perspective of the customers. This approach can help to bridge the gap in the trust between organisations and their external stakeholders that has risen over the years due to relentless inside-out and push-oriented marketing and sales.

The article was written by Anne van den Berg. The PDF you can download through this link is a simple capture of the web page (so please ignore the surrounding and now redundant navigation items).

1. BNO picking up on Service Design The main association for designers in The Netherlands, BNO, published...
2. Say yes to the mess! For 'The week of Service Design' on Molblog, the online...
3. Design Research talk at Q Festival What makes Design Research different from most traditional qualitative research?...

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.

1. Creative Conversations: Returning to Heartlands to Inspire New Thinking STBY recently returned to Heartlands, reprising our role as inclusive...
2. Stakeholder Research in Food & Retail for Ahold In collaboration with LBi Lost Boys, STBY recently conducted a...
3. Living Sustainably: Exploring Ways Panasonic Can Support Green Living How can people in the U.S. live a sustainable lifestyle?...

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.

1. Stakeholder Research in Food & Retail for Ahold In collaboration with LBi Lost Boys, STBY recently conducted a...
2. Mobility, Cars and Refueling Experiences What do people care about in terms of mobility, and...
3. Defining ‘Smart’: Using Video to Explore Smartphone Usage   Do people in different countries have different ideas as...

1. Say yes to the mess! For ‘The week of Service Design’ on Molblog, the online...
2. Say yes to the mess! For 'The week of Service Design' on Molblog, the online...
3. Stakeholder Research in Food & Retail for Ahold In collaboration with LBi Lost Boys, STBY recently conducted a...

By spending time and interacting with potential users of new interactive services, we learn a lot about their habits, preferences, needs and concerns. This knowledge can be crucial for the successful development of innovative concepts for interactive services. Ethnographic studies offer rich data that allow empathic understanding of real-life consumer experiences. Contributing from the perspective of the consumer, our research is complementary to the perspectives of the design, enginering and marketing experts who are collaborating in concept and development teams.

1. Say yes to the mess! For ‘The week of Service Design’ on Molblog, the online...
2. Say yes to the mess! For 'The week of Service Design' on Molblog, the online...
3. Stakeholder Research in Food & Retail for Ahold In collaboration with LBi Lost Boys, STBY recently conducted a...

Learn from the leading edge of your customers where the most interesting opportunities to improve your service offering are. More and more companies ackowledge that the customer is becoming the dominant reference point for strategy and innovation. Where better to start than with the innovators among your customers? Based on ethnographic methodologies such as contextual inquiry we visit lead users at their work or their homes to find out what their needs are, and possibly what suggestions they might have for solutions to meet these needs.

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