Service Co-Design: Using Participatory Design methods to Empower Users NEASIS&T Conference 2017 Service Design: The Holistic Experience January 12th 2017

1. Jennifer Briselli
Managing Director, Experience Strategy & Design
@jbriselli
jbriselli@madpow.com
Service Co-Design
Using Participatory Design Methods to Empower Users

2. What is Service Design? What is Participatory Design? How do they intersect?
Why might you use this type of design in your own practice?
What are some methods and activities, and how do you choose them?
What does it look like? How do you do it?
What do you do with the results of these methods?
Q & A
Overview

3. What is Service Design?

4. One one hand:
“Performances. Choreographed interactions, manufactured at the point of
delivery, forming a process and co-producing value, utility, satisfaction, and
delight in response to human needs.”
One the other hand:
“Activities or events in a service process become a product, through interactions
with designed elements or resources, from representatives of the organization,
brand, customer, and mediating technology.”
What is Service Design?

5. Richard Buchanan:
The ultimate purpose of service design is to
give people the information and tools
needed to act, according to their own wishes
and needs.
What is Service Design?

6. (Stage)
Design Experience
(Seating/ Audience)
Target Users/Customers/Patients
(Ticket Office)
Marketing and
Awareness
(Back Stage)
Invisible
Supporting
elements

8. Journey Maps help us understand how customers’
needs, feelings, and activities vary over time, and
allow us to identify gaps, pain points, and
opportunities.
Experience Journey Maps & Blueprints

9. Traditional Journey Maps focus on the customer’s firsthand experience and often illustrate the
emotional highs and lows as well as behavioral triggers.
Example: Journey Map

10. Service Blueprints are a type of Journey Map that illustrate not only the customer’s firsthand
experience but also include information about interactions with an organization or brand, and
behind-the-scenes operational or technical support processes.
Example: Service Blueprint

11. What is Participatory Design?

12. What it is:
An approach to design that invites all stakeholders (e.g. ‘end users,’ employees,
partners, customers, citizens, consumers, patients, providers) into the design
process as a means of better understanding, meeting, and sometimes
preempting their needs.
What it is not:
• A way to “make your users do your job for you”
• A single prescriptive method or tool
• A rigidly defined process
• (see also: co-design, co-creation, co-production, collaborative design…)
• A holy grail
What is Participatory Design?

13. Involving the people we’re
serving through design as
participants in the process.
What is Participatory Design?

16. Design Process
DISCOVER
Adapted from “Double Diamond Model of Product Definition and Design” from UK Design Council

17. DISCOVER SYNTHESIZE
Design Process
Adapted from “Double Diamond Model of Product Definition and Design” from UK Design Council

18. DISCOVER SYNTHESIZE GENERATE
Design Process
Adapted from “Double Diamond Model of Product Definition and Design” from UK Design Council

19. DISCOVER SYNTHESIZE GENERATE FOCUS
Design Process
Adapted from “Double Diamond Model of Product Definition and Design” from UK Design Council

20. DISCOVER SYNTHESIZE GENERATE FOCUS
EVALUATE
Design Process
Adapted from “Double Diamond Model of Product Definition and Design” from UK Design Council

21. DISCOVER SYNTHESIZE GENERATE FOCUS
Adapted from “Double Diamond Model of Product Definition and Design” from UK Design Council
Generates design principles & direction
Generates viable solution concepts
Where does participatory design fit in?

22. “Participatory design methods, especially generative or
‘making’ activities, provide a design language for non
designers (future users) to imagine and express their own
ideas for how they want to live, work, and play in the future.”
- Liz Sanders
In other words:
It leads to better experiences & outcomes.
Service Co-Design: Why it’s useful

23. Generative methods uncover latent needs.
Image: Liz Sanders

24. Framing: Identifying goals, objectives, key questions, hypotheses
Planning: Planning activities that answer these questions
Facilitating: Ensuring & documenting productive participation
Analyzing: Making sense of it all to identify actionable insights
Service Co-Design: How to do it

26. Framing

27. Stakeholders, Co-creators, End Users
Challenges & Goals
Questions & Unknowns
Assumptions & Hypotheses
Choosing Activities
Framing

28. Three categories of activity
Narrate: Participants help us understand their needs via storytelling
Create: Participants generate ideas and create prototypes of products, services,
or experiences (these can be very realistic or completely unrealistic)
• Sometimes participants create viable solution concepts
• Sometimes participants create items that give designers insight & direction
Prioritize: Participants make connections and judgments that help us understand
the value of potential design solutions
Choosing activities & methods

29. Telling stories helps participants express more detailed and emotionally
resonant experiences. These activities are intended to elicit memories and
help build empathy and understanding.
Examples:
• Journey mapping
• Love letter/breakup letter
• Collaging
• Empathy mapping
• Knowledge hunt
• Reenactments
‘Narrate’ activities

32. Participants can provide a lot of insight when provided tools and opportunities
to design without constraints or expectations.
Examples:
• Magic screen/button/object
• Interface toolkit
• Physical/paper/rapid prototyping
• Fill in the blank
• Ideal workflow
• Ecosystem mapping
‘Create’ activities

39. These activities help participants and designers evaluate and understand the
value of existing experiences or potential future design solutions.
Examples:
• Card sorting
• Channel sorting
• Value ranking
• Storyboard/Concept speed dating
• Bodystorming/Gamestorming
• 2x2 grids
‘Prioritize’ activities

42. The design prompt sets the stage and ensures participants will focus their
contributions on the goals, questions, or hypotheses you’ve identified.
For example:
“Use the items provided to create a perfect remote control.”
“Draw an imaginary classroom that provides all your educational needs.”
“Create a script for the ideal interaction between a student and counselor.”
Design Prompts

43. 1. Identify a design goal or hypothesis to be explored
2. Create a design prompt for participants for each activity
We’ll “try” a few activities today:
• Collage
• Journey Map
• Magic Object
• 2x2
Framing: Let’s Try It

44. Activity 1: Collage
Ex: “Make a collage that represents what your library means to you.”
Activity 2: Journey Map
Ex: “Create a diagram that illustrates the process of finding and
checking out a book, including how you feel throughout the process.”
Activity 3: Magic Object
Ex: “Use the items provided to create a tool, service, or magic object
that would make the library experience better for you.”
Activity 3: 2x2
Ex: “Place the items where you feel they most belong in the grid.”
Framing: Let’s Try It

45. Planning

46. Where: office, school, home, outdoors, in context
Who & how many: large group, small group, individual
Observation methods: notes, video, photo, artifacts
Materials: construction kits, legos, playdoh
Logistics: recruiting (>2 weeks), honorarium, volunteers, observers
Planning

47. Let’s plan the activities…

48. Collage
This activity helps members’ express their experiences and needs in a way
words can sometimes fail to describe. Participants will also put themselves at
the center of the map, which allows us to understand how members’ conceive of
their own agency (or lack thereof).
How:
Participants are provided a prompt and asked to spend 30-45 minutes creating a
collage that describes their feelings about the prompt. Participants are then
asked to share and discuss their collage. Facilitators may ask participants to
elaborate to better elucidate examples and opportunities.
Materials:
paper, images, glue sticks or tape, writing utensils, post-its

50. Journey Map
This activity helps members’ express their experiences and needs in a way
words can sometimes fail to describe. Participants can be asked to express their
current experience, or design an ideal future experience, or to compare and
contrast both.
How:
Participants are provided a prompt and asked to spend 30-45 minutes creating a
map or flow that illustrates a typical series of steps or tasks. Participants are
then asked to share and discuss their journey map. Facilitators may ask
participants to elaborate to better elucidate examples and opportunities.
Materials:
paper, post-its, glue sticks or tape, writing utensils

52. Magic Object
Providing members with materials that allow them to engage in a making
process can provide insights about potential design solutions as well as
uncover latent needs.
How:
Participants are provided building materials and a prompt, and asked to
spend 30-45 minutes creating the objects.
Participants are then asked to share and briefly discuss their creations.
Facilitators may ask members to elaborate on aspects of their explanation
where appropriate to elucidate examples and opportunities.
Materials:
Paper, construction materials, glue sticks or tape

54. 2 x 2
This activity helps customers’ express priority and categorization; it’s a way to
understand their mental model and allow customers to design ideal content
structures, information architecture, or other experience structures at the same
time.
How:
Participants are provided a labeled 2 x 2 grid and a series of words or images,
and asked to spend 30-45 minutes placing the words or images within the grid
wherever they make sense to the participant. They are then asked to share and
discuss their creation.
Materials:
paper, labeled 2 x 2 grid, images or words printed on cards, glue sticks or tape,

56. Facilitating

57. Be prepared
Be yourself
Be flexible & adaptive
Be reflective
Be warm & friendly
Facilitating: Participation

58. Document Document Document
• Dedicated note taker(s)
• Photograph
• Record audio & visual when possible
• Keep artifacts when possible
Ask participants to tell you about what they create
• Show & tell
• Share a story
• Write a commercial
• Create a pitch
What they create is often less important than how they describe its value.
Facilitating: Capturing Value

59. Let’s Try it…
Participating:
Think about following the design prompt based on your own personal
experiences, and what you think and feel as you try the activity.
Facilitating:
Think about what you see, hear, and notice as you observe others participating
in the activities. If you were facilitating, what would you capture? What would
you ask?

60. Analyzing

61. Cull: Cut irrelevant or incomplete information
Normalize: get everything into a common format
• excel
• text documents
• grids
• post-its
Review: Follow your instinct… analysis is as much art as science
Expect to spend at least 2 hours of analysis for every hour facilitating.
Analyzing

62. Raw Data
• Notes
• Photos
• Videos
• Audio
• Artifacts
Normalized
Data
• Spreadsheets
• Post-its
• Transcripts
Participant
Clusters
Opportunity
Clusters
Theme/Affinity
Clusters
Identified
Patterns
Potential Output
• Focus Areas
• Design Characteristics
• Design Principles
• Solution Concepts
• Prototype Ideas

63. Participant 1
Notes & Photos
Participant 2
Participant 3
Opportunity 1 Opportunity 2
Pattern 1 Pattern 2
Opportunity 3

68. What are the most important takeaways for your organization?
What are the most important questions we left unanswered?
What are the aspects you are most and least confident about
implementing in your own practice?
Wrap Up / Q & A

69. Jennifer Briselli
Managing Director, Experience Strategy & Design
@jbriselli
jbriselli@madpow.com
Thanks!