The title and astract for the workshop are:

Creative Research for Service Design
Case studies of successful Service Design and Innovation show that they have been informed and inspired by empathic conversations with the people the services are ultimately catering for. These conversations take place throughout the service design process and make use of co-creative, qualitative research methods. In contrast to traditional market or user research, this form of research is firmly embedded in the creative process. As one of the leading specialists in creative research for service design and innovation, STBY will share its experiences with a particularly succesful method: design documentaries.

1. Service Design workshop in Cambridge Geke participated in a workshop on Service Design at the...
2. STBY presents at SDN conference 2009 Together with Andreas Sommerwerk (Deutsche Telekom AG) Bas presented the...
3. Keynote and workshop at Co-Design Live Bas has been invited to speak at the Co-Design Live...

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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3. Co-creating education In the early stages of developing a new international master...

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.

1. Helping parents to advise and support Building on the results of a previous study, STBY were...
2. Remote services for older people For a consortium of public sector organisations in The Netherlands...

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.

1. Service Experience Lab Immerse yourself in the service experiences of your customers and...
2. User-Centered Design across development stages For the University of Amsterdam STBY facilitated a series of...
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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.

1. Service Experience Lab on mobile internet Together with the Creation Centre of T-Labs (part of Deutsche...
2. Launch AMSI – Amsterdam Centre for Service Innovation On 3 September an ambitious new centre for Service Innovation...
3. User-led service opportunities for Sony In close collaboration with Radarstation, STBY conducted a qualitative consumer...

As the university aims to give the students in the new course an active role in shaping the actual projects they will be working on, it is of course important to put its foot where its mouth is from day one. The envisioned inter-disciplinary, practice-based collaborations with external organisations will be most successful if the students are fully engaged and involved in some of the crucial choices to be made. In the discussion sessions it was clear that the students were pleasantly surprised by this opportunity to co-create their education. To further develop the new master course, the university aims to continue this process of open discussions with students.

Aware that focus groups about future services may trigger general opinions rather than observations based on actual experiences, we prepared a structured process that elicited a mix of individual and group-based responses. Guided by an agenda that explored some of the central aspects of the course, we first triggered the students to individually reflect on a topic by making personal notes, before we opened it up for a lively and highly interactive group discussion.

To ensure clear and effective communication with the students, STBY involved two young journalists from Spunk as co-moderators. Over the past years we have worked with them on various research projects that focused on young people. An enjoyable and high-quality collaboration.

1. User-Centered Design across development stages For the University of Amsterdam STBY facilitated a series of...
2. Helping parents to advise and support Building on the results of a previous study, STBY were...
3. Creating design briefs on patient dignity The Design Council and the Department of Health in the...

(The conference and website are in Dutch only, sorry!)

1. Workshop at Creative Company Conference STBY will facilitate a workshop at the upcoming Creative Company...
2. Service Design workshop in Cambridge Geke participated in a workshop on Service Design at the...
3. STBY presents at SDN conference 2009 Together with Andreas Sommerwerk (Deutsche Telekom AG) Bas presented the...

Following on a previous study for T-Mobile in April, we worked with the client team again in June to test the ideas for new mobile internet services that were developed in response to the results of the first exploratory research. The aim of the second, follow-up research project was to explore if the service concepts are indeed attractive and relevant to the lives of a new group of research participants, and also to further elaborate on the service concepts together with the participants.

To visualise and explain the service concepts, a set of experience prototypes was produced by the client team in collaboration with us. During the research sessions in Berlin and London these prototypes were used to discuss the use of the services with the participants, and to invite them to add new elements to the prototypes eleborating on aspects such as context of use, special requirements and potential concerns.

A multi-disciplinary team from T-Mobile was present during the research sessions. This enabled them to hear participants’ responses to the services and to engage with them in conversation, guided by the research team. During analysis the data from both research sessions in Berlin and London was synthesised into an integrated report.

Throughout the project there has been a continuous and close collaboration with the client team. Every step in the research preparations, data collection, analysis and reporting was conducted in as a joint effort. Apart from being very pleasant, this also has had a positive effect on the quality of the process and the final results. We are in the process of writing a joint white paper on the methodology used in the various stages of this research project, with a focus on how films by participants were particularly beneficial as ’sticky information’ that was present from the initial immersion research right into concept development.

The previous exploratory study in April was conducted in collaboration with Spur, our German/Japanese partner in the Reach network. Details about this study can be found on the Reach website. Spur also worked with the client team in Berlin for the development of the new services concepts.

1. Service Experience Lab on mobile internet Together with the Creation Centre of T-Labs (part of Deutsche...
2. User-led service opportunities for Sony In close collaboration with Radarstation, STBY conducted a qualitative consumer...
3. Remote services for older people For a consortium of public sector organisations in The Netherlands...

Workshop Woonservice Gemeente Geldrop-Mierlo

For a consortium of organisations in the South of the Netherlands (primary health care, housing associations and local government) STBY and Waag Society conducted a study to identify the needs among older people for new services supporting independent living at home.

During an intense week of house visits we met with both older people living in single households, and some of their close friends or relatives who offer support if needed. The conversations about potential needs for more formal support by third parties were guided and facilitated by visual probes we prepared with the design team of Waag Society.

We used both a Social Map and a Home Environment Map to elicit information about participants’ social support network and their favourite locations and objects in their home environment. Any future support services will need to blend in successfully with these existing conditions, otherwise they are not very likely to succeed. And since the social lives and households of the older people and their helpers are quite different, the future services may need to have different appearances/interfaces on both ends.

The maps, together with various photographs and of course our consolidated research notes, were used as input for a workshop with the client team to discuss the insights from the research and to identify the opportunities for new support services. During this workshop an extended client team from several departments took part. For the home visits a core team of two people took turns in being present to observe and learn from the participants first hand.

To enable the client team to communicate the results from the study to other people in their organisations, a small book was made. This book explains and illustrates the process and the results of the study. Together with Waag Society we are currently preparing a workshop to develop concepts, inspired by the home-visits and in response to the opportunities we uncovered. Co-creation wil be our main approach in a second workshop where we will put concepts to older people and their supporters, and ask them to elaborate and give detail. Finally, the most promising concepts will be developed into prototypes as a last step before implementation.

1. Remote services for older people For a consortium of public sector organisations in The Netherlands...
2. Helping parents to advise and support Building on the results of a previous study, STBY were...
3. Living Well in Cornwall STBY were asked by Dott Cornwall - a Design Council...

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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