Activities

Service 2.0

The goal of an M11 semester is to explore research techniques, and to get more depth into the research one does in a design process, which is different from the design projects I did so far. I did reach more depth within the results of my research, with more elaborated analysis. First of all, I did trend analysis about the banking world to get more insight into the design context. Secondly, with my research I generated input for a design process. It’s related to Designing Research Processes. Although being a research process, I can still see how valuable research can be in while designing. It’s about generating input on explorative basis, generating knowledge about the subject for more grounded design decisions and for validation purposes. It is related to Analyzing, Abstracting. Using both quantitative input as qualitative input, I had to synthesize the right information from the results of the research, of which the activities are also quite related to Descriptive and Mathematical Modeling. I learned about the repertory grid (together with the personal construct theory), and I included an affinity diagram into the analysis. This way, I generated more input for designing than I was able to do before.

It’s also related to Self-directed and Continuous Learning. The client didn’t collaborate throughout the process, which I did not experience before. It meant working independently from the client. Having no access to the design context (ING Retail stores), I had to approach the design context in a different way, just by observing, and extending the context of my research to big banks in general. I had to deal with numerous stakeholders (also for the project internally), which was quite a struggle at times. These stakeholders included amongst others:

• Myself and my coach (my own plans and learning goals)
• The organizing coach (who was connected with ING, not being my own coach)
• The other students working for ING (being coached by the organizing coach)
• ING (has shown to be reluctant)

At some point in the process, there were conflicting interests: I had my own plan, but the organizing coach and the other students expected me to collaborate (which was a hard task, since each had their own goals). My own plans got confused, and I was constantly adapting plans, which made it look like I was struggling. I couldn’t give it a place back then, but now it seems I was influenced too easily by criticism and advice, whereas sometimes it did only make matters worse. The point is that I shouldn’t let others influence me so much as what happened this semester. In the end, everyone worked separately, since there was no interest from ING. Drawing my own plan was a good step, which I should have held on to much earlier. This is a learning point for me: being in charge of my own design process.

I used scenarios for discussion and generating constructs. The research method that I used gave me a tool to integrate a user perspective in a conceptual phase of a design process. Furthermore, I analyzed the customer journey of several age groups with several needs. This is all related to User Focus and Perspective. I learned that research goes beyond answering research questions, it can be part of creating more awareness over the design context, which contributes Socio-cultural Awareness. The results of the research sketched a design context for developing a service design concept for big banks. This relates to Exploring, Validating in Context, as I explored the context through confronting potential end users in discussions. Involving a competitive, more personal bank enabled me to validate the concepts I designed with employees, being stakeholders with experience from the context.

Although not generating business concepts, the trend analysis did show me what the world of banking will look like in the future. To some extent, it relates to Designing Business Processes. I added the trend analysis as well as the viewpoint of a more personal bank to the results of the research. Comparing these results with the current situation gave me insight into what a customer service should look like, in order to be a bank of the future. It is mostly Envisioning and Transforming Society, as I not only defined a design landscape, but also defined how this landscape will change in the future. It involves finding out how the customer wants to be helped, how society is changing.

Reading “This is service design thinking”

As an introduction to service design, I read the book “This is service design thinking”. It gave me insight into how various design disciplines approach service design, and how I can position myself between these disciplines. It contributed to elaborating my vision on design.

• From a graphic design perspective, a holistic view over the context is important. Everything should have a single appearance, or corporate identity. It should contribute to a uniform experience. I recognize it in various activities of mine: for Integrand and for my own web design business.
• From an industrial design perspective, it involves co-creating with stakeholders, validating in context and collaborating towards a conceptual solution. The stakeholders are users, companies and the actors of the service (employees). Each of them introduces a different view on the context you design for. An industrial designer should design a concept which takes all of these into account. It shows to me that Service Design is a crossroads of Socio-cultural Awareness, User Focus and Perspective, Designing Business Processes, Exploring-Validating in Context.
• From an interaction design perspective, one designs the sequence of steps. Every touchpoint should be integrated in a logical sequence, a consistent story, with a uniform and representative experience. It should not only reflect the corporate identity, but also achieve the feeling you want the user to feel. This comes back in my study so far: I design quality interaction, with concepts that are logical, pleasurable and effective in use. This comes back in my web design activities as well.

Following the five principles, it is important to work user-centered to co-create solutions which consider the whole touchpoint sequence, provide evidences, and create holistic concepts.

This results in a combination of disciplines that I think are important: graphic design and interaction design for designing the experience and the holistic consistency, and industrial design as a connecting factor for each of the stakeholders, taking into account different perspectives.

Ideating in Skills

This module was about designing based on the skills that are required for an interaction. Next to that, it’s emphasis laid on abstracting the essence of the experience that an interaction evokes. These aspects are abstracted from the interaction by acting out and analyzing the experience you want to evoke. In an explorative way, this is generating insights from a usage perspective, which relates to User Focus and Perspective. The context was sketched by an activity which had to evoke an experience. By trying various methods of exploring like acting out, graphical mapping of physical qualities and scrap prototyping amongst others, various interactions were validated and iterated on. So this relates to Exploring, Validating in Context.

With this module, we generated ideas through experiencing. The generated concepts were concretizations of abstractions. So first, the experience was acted out, from which subtleties were analyzed and abstracted. This was combined into a tangible object with which could be interacted with, to make it more concrete. Along this way, ideas and concepts were generated in various steps. So it relates to Ideas and Concepts, and makes use of process activities within Synthesizing-Concretizing and Analyzing-Abstracting. All this was done while scrap prototyping over the various steps. Over the course of the module, I started to use scrap prototyping for material exploration, rather than building objects. The materials were chosen for their physical properties, the way they supported an interaction and how it contributes to an experience. This contributed to Form and Senses. By integrating lo-fi technology to the prototypes, the experience was captured better, which I have never done before in such early stage. This means I got a new experience in Integrating Technology, and I can see how integrating lo-fi technology can help in enhancing the experience of a concept in an early stage.

The setup of the module was vague: the goals were vague and adjusted every day of the module. This meant we had to deal with uncertainty, more than I ever had to in a design context. It was quite outside of my comfort zone, just like some activities in this module, but it shows to me that stepping out of it increases my flexibility. I just had to adjust my goals for the module and interpret everything differently. It is about Self-directed and Continuous Learning. It was a setup of introducing an explorative attitude in ideation, creation and validation, which I didn’t do so actively before. Concerning Design and Research Processes, this is a point where I learned as well, besides what stepping out of a comfort zone does.

Actuating Movement in Refined Wearables

This was a one-week module with a rather practical setup. We had to reflect and create in a very short time span, which required dividing the effort. We explored through making rather than envisioning and visualizing, which was required early in the process in order to create a hi-fi deliverable. This is related to Design and Research Processes, in a way that making took a more prominent role than thinking in the design process. It enabled me to explore the semantics of form-giving, as we chose to stick to a certain context (running exercise). Constructing patterns for creating wearables was a new experience for me, it proved to be challenging. It is related to Form and Senses as well as Synthesizing-Concretizing, since the module involved making, based on the semantics that come from the context of running exercise: light-weight, fast lines, sporty colors.

Throughout the design cycle, some iterations on building the mechanism for movement were done. It proved to be hard to make a wearable actuate. Reinforcements had to be applied, weights to be added (or distributed), and mechanisms for applying force to the fabric had to be constructed. Being responsible for the technology, I had to build the technical part of the prototype (servo, battery, voltage regulator, and partly the mechanism). By pulling it over mannequins after each iteration, or by wearing it, both the shape and the mechanism were validated in term of usefulness for exercise, as well as to validate if the construction worked well. It concerns User Focus and Perspective for validating as well as Exploring, Validating in Context.

Designing for Peripheral Interaction

This is the most relevant choice from the start on. I think this connects interaction design with service design (designing the entire journey). Many things are in the periphery of attention when going through a customer journey. Scrap prototyping was part of the routine, for quickly exploring the possibilities for designing interactions. This is related to Ideas and Concepts. Next to that, I learned about the attention theory, and how to design for the periphery of attention. This relates to User Focus and Perspective. The desired experience based on material properties was explored as well as analogies for creating understandable interactions. This relates to Form and Senses. Designing a solution for controlling smart lighting in the periphery required making a tangible interaction which is in line with the attention theory and elaborates on the shared vision on peripheral interaction. It’s a continuous iterative process with making and discussing, which relates to Synthesizing, Concretizing.

I designed the interactive part of the prototype. It consisted of coding, connecting a Processing sketch with a Philips Hue light. Because it was Wizard-of-Oz, it required some coordination for the presentation in order to be convincing. The presentational prototype was not fully functional, but Integrating Technology makes the presentation more interactive, even though it is not fully functional. This goes for the video we made as well; we were able to reflect iteratively on the usage scenario of our concept. This relates to Exploring, Validating in Context. Though we did not get in touch with a realistic context, we got a small workshop on how to perform contextual validation. It covered topics like lab-testing versus in-the-wild-testing. Lab-testing enables quick iterations, and can be used to test specific aspects, rather than validating the entirety when testing in-the-wild. Lab-testing is suitable for early stages of the design process, where in-the-wild-testing is conducted later on in the process, requiring more realistic mockups and contexts. The results will vary in what extent they will be close to reality.

I worked in a team of three where I faced two very different individuals. One was in favor of a more straightforward solution, whereas the other wanted to push the boundaries of what was possible. While I was in favor of the latter, I experienced that the former was too stubborn to give in entirely. So instead, I had to act as an intermediary, to make sure we came to a solution. This involves Teamwork, and I had to act as a manager to make sure everything worked out.

Red-n-Red

The web design company I referred to before, is called Red-n-Red. Under this name, my brother and I make websites. Besides the websites we are making, there is some planning and strategy-building involved at the moment. We yet have to invest in a good corporate identity, and the CMS that we are planning to build has to be made yet. For now, we set up a platform for gaining audience by creating a Facebook page, to report about our activities and results along the process. Audience is building, but I learned that networking is important. The more you talk about your company, the more people get aware and get interested. In addition, involving my clients within the stories for the audience is a nice addition. It’s an interesting story for me, but also nice publicity for the client, as I also describe a bit of a background story about them. This relates to Communication, but also to Designing Business Processes, as it is about envisioning a business plan.

Because my brother is also part of the company, we need to find a way to spread the effort. Since my brother is far more capable in programming, I can take the design part upon me, whereas he can take the more technical part of building websites. This involves Teamwork, as we need to find out not only how the effort is divided, but also how the effort is rewarded. We need to figure out what kind of activities we need to integrate into the process: ideation, designing (technical and visual), feedback sessions (adjusting plans wherever needed), aftercare (fixing bugs, publicity, instructions on moderating the website). Creating a process for this is vital as we need to be able to stick to a plan, which relates to Design and Research Processes.

Integrand

Integrand is a student organization that connects the students with the corporate world. That means they organize career events, in-house days at companies, and they mediate for student internships at large companies. To gain audience they regularly place posters, hand out flyers and post digital images on publicity screens. They were looking for a designer who could create a more uniform language, as the staff made the designs by themselves so far.

This activity introduced some responsibility for me, as they relied on me for publicity. It requires a professional attitude with regular contact, which relates to Communication. I tried to align the corporate identity on various media, and to appeal the student target group. As it involves visual design, it is related to Form and Senses. So far, various media did not seem to appeal students, so I had to introduce gradual changes the identity. In an iterative process, I explored the corporate identity, the suitable form language and the requirements for each media. Over time, there is a pattern as it became more of an actual identity. I found it was easier to concretize once I got more experience with designing for Integrand. It became easier to integrate all the synthesized information into a graphic design that looks good. So it relates to Synthesizing, Concretizing as well.