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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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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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.

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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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Thoughout the development of the new portal there are many aspects that benefit from empathic conversations with students about their needs and preferences. The University of Amsterdam asked STBY to facilitate these conversations.

In a series of meetings over the course of a few months we prepared and moderated interactive sessions where students from various departments responded to the concepts an ideas for the new portal. Based on their current use of the existing portal these students are well informed on what works best for them, and what not. On top of that most of them have extensive experience with relevant other online services. Being highly opinionated and committed users of the internet, they were keen to express the things they love, hate, miss or can do without. The feedback sessions led to abundant food for thought for the project staff, which is exactly what they wished for!

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For the IB-Groep (the national Dutch body that handles all studentships, student loans and university registrations) we organised a half day workshop to explore and discuss new ideas and concepts for financial services for young students.

In their last year at high school and in their first year at university, many of these students are trying to figure out how to manage their personal finance. They have a high need for information and guidance, and they prefer the services of the IB-Groep to be available to them in an integrated way through multiple channels. Their actual usage of these channels may appear to be quite eratic, but our in-depth research into their experiences and motivations revealed that they are often quite intensly involved in learning how things work and developing their understanding further by discussing their situation with their social environment.

With a group of managers from various departments within IB-Groep we immersed ourselves in the personal experiences and perspectives of the participants in the research. We developed insights into the most important difficulties, wishes and concerns. Focusing on relevant strategic challenges and opportunities for the IB-Groep in this area, we generated ideas for potential new financial services the IB-Groep can offer these students, both on a short and a longer term.

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For research specifically focused on issues regarding young people in The Netherlands, STBY has initiated a joint venture with Spunk (www.spunk.nl). This group of young, dynamic and highly talented journalists (16-19 years old) is perfectly suited to engage with other young people and explore their perspectives on various issues. STBY is intensively involved in the preparations for the in-depth data collection and in the analysis of the qualitative results. In shared creative workshop sessions the findings from the interviews are processed into high level consumer insights. To  optimize the communication and understanding of the results, clients are invited to be present in these analytic workshop sessions.

See the website of Spunk//STBY for more detail on how we work and some examples of projects we have done.

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To prepare a successful open day event for future students, the University of Leiden wanted to explore the expectations and information needs of high school students. Together with three young researchers from Spunk//STBY we interviewed 15 students in depth about the way they orientate themselves on their future studies and careers. In a workshop with the interviewers and the client we analysed the insights from the interviews and brainstormed on possible ways to organise the open day events.

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

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The Dutch national body for studentships and other financial services for students, IB-groep, commissioned STBY to investigate how their youngest clients (students in their first year at college) manage their finances. With a team of young interviewers from Spunk//STBY, we visited 20 young students at their homes throughout The Netherlands for an interview. They told us many interesting stories about how they are gradually finding out what taking care of their personal finances exactly means. We found that these young students rely heavily on their social network as a source for advise and rumours, and often get tangled up in confusions and misunderstandings and they frequently switch between online and offline modes of interactions with the IB-Groep. An innovation workshop with IB-Groep will explore the opportunities for services to better support this client group. (NL, 2008)

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