“What if we looked at the world like a design project – how might we begin to make it better?”
Bruce Mau
LECTURE AND RESEARCH
How can design bring about change for good?
Service design is a relatively new field starting in a round 1991 as a method for improving the quality of services for their users.
The five integral parts of service design are:
1- It must be user-centred – real people at the centre of everything, it must be seen through the customers eyes
2- Co-creative – the design should include other people, for example any stakeholders.
3- Sequencing– It is helpful to visual the service through the key moments in the customer journey
4- Evidencing– makes this tangible
5- Holistic – the entire customer experience should be considered.
The focus should be as much on the person using the service as the technologies behind them.
Arren Roberts – senior design officer at Shropshire council – Telehealth
He is trying to create usable, effective and desirable services that people want to use.
There is a massive healthcare inequality in Liverpool that this project is trying to address. They need to empower people to take control of their health and support them to do this.
If you think about the user from the beginning you are much more likely to create a sustainable service that people want to use and that works.
Artist as Activist
Artists and designers have long been fighting social and political injustice in their work.
They want to spread this message to a wide audience, and imagery is the best way to do this as it spans languages and combats illiteracy.
The beginnings of activist art were in the Roman era, where protest graffiti covered the walls of Pompeii.
The industrial revolution and invention of printing press gave this another push as protest art could now reach much wider audiences. Activists could cheaply create mass produced work that rebelled against he pulling classes, war, church etc.
Political satire was a popular way of doing this in 1700’s. William Hogarth is one of the most famous examples of this, combining message and humour to reach a wide audience. His “Gin Lane’ print contributed to the Gin Act in 1751 which reduced the availability fo cheap liquor.
The 20th Century brought with it a lot of change and reaction again the established order. This saw the launch of many modernist art movement such as futurism, who used among much else, music and noise to break barriers and share their message. Vorticism, dadaism and constructivism are other examples of this.
Constructivism in Russia believed art should reflect modern industrial world. They created work that provoked working classes using images and symbols in political propaganda posters.
With WWII and the rise of fascism, political propaganda was very widespread. Some artists still made work hat criticised fascism despite the great personal danger. Photo montage was a popular medium for this, used to expose dangers of nazi’s. It is a very accessible form of design.
“It brings the reality into the picture”
Peter Kennard
‘And babies’ is a very powerful example of the use of real life photography alongside text to create a message.
This activist art, wether professional or outsider art, lives as a record of the people who have struggled and tried to change the world.
This bring about ideas as to wether protests are worth anything anymore, and if art and design can be a more powerful way to solicit change?
This weeks lecture has got me thinking about the activist art around me. Bristol is a city that features a lot of activism and powerful art. A lot of buildings are covered with powerful images that have a message to spread about how the world needs to change.
As with the political murals created in the 1910 Mexico revolution, these pieces of street art are painted onto public property making them belong to everyone.
These pieces of artwork that are pushing for social change are placed in front of you while you are going about your day, forcing the ideas into your mind and making it harder for you to ignore the social, political and environmental issues they are fighting against.
Carol Wells believes posters work in a similar way, when you are going about your daily life they catch your eye. Their bold colours and graphics draw you into their message, it makes you question and then you are forever changed as a person.
These posters have to break through the noise of adverting that bombards us and a good way of doing this is taking a popular brand or image and subverting it. (TedX and Wells 2015)
Giving activism campaigns a strong visual identity or creating throughout provoking graphics can allow the message to have a much stronger impact.
The power of activism design can be seen with Harry Pearce’s witness burma poster which became a visual symbol for the protests in Burma.
“I always felt like even if I don’t do anything else in my life again, at least I have done this”
Harry Pearce (Yates and Price 2015)
All goods and services are designed. The urge to design— to consider a situation, imagine a better situation, and act to create that improved situation— goes back to our prehuman ancestors. Making tools helped us to become what we are— design helped to make us human.
The problem is that although design capability is a widespread human capacity, to be usable it must be cultivated. This does not usually happen, or it happens in an inadequate way. (Manzini and Coad 2015)
WORKSHOP CHALLENGE
Task 1: Research User-Centred Design Processes or Tools
Customer Journey Map
This tool is a process that maps out the step by step way that a user interacts with the service. To do it you have to look from the users perspective and work through the entire experience, noting down what happens, what touchpoint are involved and what problems or obstacles they face. You can also integrate emotions into this to visualise how integrating with the service affects the user emotionally.
“Remember to cover what happens before and after the core experience, even when it includes the interaction with other services and providers.”
(Service Design Tools 2017)
https://servicedesigntools.org/tools/journey-map
Customers and service users go on a journey while using a product or service. A customer journey map illustrates the path they need to take to get their desired outcome.
It helps designers to empathise with the user. It allows problem or sticking points to be identified. It allows opportunity for the product or service to be improved.
“Most customer journey maps attempt to track the customer’s potential emotions during the experience: curiosity, confusion, anxiety, frustration, relief, etc.”
(Chapin 2021)
The map can look at a targeted part of the experience, or the entire interaction a user has with the service/product. (Chapin 2021)
Synthesis wall
A Synthesis wall is a visual and collaborative way of finding issues or insights from a collection of data.
All revenant data and findings are written on post-it notes (or similar) and put up on a wall under headings that can categories them. This should show patterns, links and themes that were not obvious in the raw findings.
“The wall could be set in a structured way, listing all the notes under each interviewee (helpful to identify personas and transversal patterns), or under each step of the journey (helpful to analyse an experience and its pain points).”
(Service Design Tools 2009)
This process can inform the design process, help to build a better picture of service users and identify common issues. It also pushes teams to work collaboratively.
https://servicedesigntools.org/tools/synthesis-wall
Persona
A persona aims to identity the different types of user grouped together by specific behaviours or needs.
The personas become realistic
“fully expressing the needs, desires, habits and cultural backgrounds of specific groups of users.”
(Service Design Tools 2021)
It is a good way of making sure you are designing for the right people and trying to address their specific life and challenges. (Service Design Tools 2021)
https://servicedesigntools.org/tools/personas
You should aim to create between 3 and 7 personas to capture all segments of your audience. Choose shared interests, common behaviours over other demographic information to avoid stereotypes.
You can add names, images and backgrounds to your personas to make them more real and relatable. (This is Service Design Doing 2021)
https://www.thisisservicedesigndoing.com/methods/creating-personas-2
Select one process and write a short 100-word description to illustrate how it can be used to discover an insight or challenge.
Personas are a really interesting way to ensure your service or product is directly aimed at your target audience. When you look at shared interests and common behaviours to create your selection of personas you become invested in the lives of these fictional characters, what is important to them and how they would interact with your service. This allows you to also become invested in the real lives of the people using your service. This in turn means that insights into what needs each persona has will come to light and you may need to design different approaches to allow all personas to successfully use your service.
Task 2: Research Existing Campaign or Service Design Project
There are so many examples on interesting and innovative service design, some that are still an idea such as this project created by Matter Design studio. Their aim is to engage more women in getting a cervical smear to check for HPV by putting there experience first and designing a product and brand that is welcoming, accessible and created to break down the current barriers that stop women from getting tested. (Matter 2021)
https://www.ideo.com/case-study/designing-waste-out-of-the-food-system
https://www.ideo.com/case-study/a-hospital-centered-on-the-patient-experience
SAP Leonardo collaborated with DK&A to inspire 15 of their enterprise clients to use the platform collaboratively to tackle a key global challenge of our time: single-use plastic pollution. (DK&A 2018)
The project started with ethnographic research, by creating video diaries from real consumers to work out their interaction with plastic and the issues they faced when interacting with it. Focusing on what they do and why. The used a digital app on their phone as a ‘dairy’ to capture their experiences with images, emotions etc.
“A diverse demographic group of 24 citizen-consumers was recruited to participate in the research about awareness, use and disposal of plastics. Its focus was how people interact with plastic, from purchase, through to use and disposal.” (SAP Leonardo and Design Thinkers Academy 2018)
They were then questioned around their experiences and reflected on them to allow researchers a greater understanding.
This consumer-citizen research aimed to find out what customers aspire to do, and what they actually do in their daily lives.
I think this point really shows the necessity of ethnographic research as opposed to interviews. There is often a gap between what people want to be doing and what the actually do. It is this gap which is so important as if you can bridge it, you can create real change.
These experiences helped them to identity opportunities and insights into what needed to be changed. This generate data was then grouped into themes to find patterns, an example of where they may have used a synthesis wall or similar.
They then created personas from this information based on the themes that emerged.
Then they launched a 3 day design sprint with 15 major companies to use this information to see what they could create that would use these customer insights to create something to help.
Each group had a persona to focus on and created a customer journey map to show how this persona might interact with plastic.
They also used the double diamond method to keep on track with their design process.
“Throughout the project we focused on real users to ensure that ideas were grounded in reality and that they meet user needs.” (SAP Leonardo and Design Thinkers Academy 2018)
Each of the 5 groups created a product that they believed fit the needs of their persona, before these were then given to a jury who picked the best ones to take forward into further testing and development.
This project shows the power of working from a consumer centred perspective. They combined a lot of service design techniques to work through a carefully planned process that allowed each group of designers and experts to gain a really deep and valuable understanding of their given persona and design with them completely in mind. The project allowed a giant issue such as single use plastics to be approached in a manageable way, creating multiple possible services that are very usable, consumer focused and could start to make a difference.
(SAP Leonardo and Design Thinkers Academy 2018)
It is hard to see how successful this was as the products have not been continued into production as far as I can find, but it still shows an interesting insight into how sticking to service design tools can create great ideas.
The idea of a design sprint is really interesting, especially when in this case it has been used to try and tackle such a giant problem that is single use plastics.
“The big idea with the Design Sprint is to build and test a prototype in just five days. You’ll take a small team, clear the schedule for a week, and rapidly progress from problem to tested solution using a proven step-by-step checklist. It’s like fast-forwarding into the future so you can see how customers react before you invest all the time and expense of building a real product.” (How it Works — The Design Sprint 2014)
I think sometimes when a problem seems so huge and unanswerable this could be a really valuable method as it allows a few days or really focused and dedicated work that focuses the mind and ideas, moving away from the overwhelming nature of a giant issue.
Matter Studio and the Sukha project.
I came back to this project that looks at the issues surrounding cervical screening. Cervical cancer is an incredibly dangerous disease and early diagnosis is key. However, in 2019, one in four UK women did not attend their cervical screening appointment. There is a lot of fear and barriers around attending a cervical smear test, so Matter tried to create a product that would break down those barriers and instead create something that is familiar and empowering.
To gain more information about the project I arranged a meeting with Lottie King who ran the project. She told me that the studio looks at customer futures and future casting.
This is a self initiated project. They got the team to think about issues around future health and wellness and the idea of cervical screening came up.
Write a 300 – 400 word description with screen grabs to illustrate your research findings.
The project started by talking to consumers, to gain ideas and insight as well as a lot of research into secondary data and reports, such as the ones seen here: https://www.sukhaspace.uk/resources.
After that they spoke to women in focus groups to discuss their personal experience of cervical screening, as well as talking to younger women who have not yet had one about their expectation, fears and the stigma attached to it. From this lots of common barriers came up, including embarrassment about bodies, fear and confusion around the process and the inconvenience of going to the doctors.
Instead of testing for usual cervical cells, doctors have recently started to look for the hpv virus first and only test for unusual cell growth if the hpv virus is present. To test for hpv, only a low vaginal swab is needed, making this a process that women could technically do at home.
The group decided to go down this avenue as it would break down the common barriers such as embarrassment about bodies and convenience that they had found from their focus groups.
The aim was to make the product familiar to women and empowering. To do this they researched outside the direct field. They looked at other testing products available on the market. They looked into current period care, which is a more approachable subject and something women are already familiar with. They also looked at the sexual pleasure category, as a way women feel empowered and explore their bodies.
They ran focus groups on these things, to find where people were comfortable and found all women are different in what they felt comfortable with so more than one option was needed.
They created around 20 concepts as sketches and simple 3d models to give to women to gauge their reaction. This taught them a lot as some went down badly and others really well.
From this they created 3 options to try and cover a large range of women.
A testing kit that is very similar in design to a tampon.
A vaginal health kit that you use from first period onwards to help you understand your body’s cycles throughout your life, feeling in control and empowered by your body.
Lastly, they created a finger cover for testing for hpv. A product aimed at people who are more comfortable with their bodies to feel for their cervix and take a sample that way.
They then pieced together the concepts to create a whole concept with welcoming packaging and delivery. In this case the website is the final product. It is an example to show to the medical profession and women – to spark conversation around the issue and the possibility that this product could be picked up for medical testing and become a reality.
Write a 300 – 400 word description with screen grabs to illustrate your research findings.
https://www.ideo.com/case-study/improving-quality-of-life-for-young-adults-with-schizophrenia
PRIME is an app developed to help young people with schizophrenia. Treatment for schizophrenia currently involves medication and therapy for the most visible symptoms.
“The disease can also cause debilitating symptoms that medication can’t easily treat, such as social anxiety and isolation, lack of motivation, and memory deficits.”
(IDEO 2013)
The smaller symptoms are often left unsupported leaving people with schizophrenia to often become withdrawn from society and facing isolation. The idea of the app was thought up by a digital health research group at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and they approached IDEO to ensure it was developed with the user in mind.
The idea was to create a welcoming online place people could encourage each other and become a supportive community of young people who can understand and help each other.
“The PRIME platform is an example of how the human-centered design process can lead to first-of-its-kind innovations in the field of mental health care.”
(IDEO 2013)
Ensuring the user was well thought about and put first in this design was so important. To go about this, they conducted comprehensive interviews with people who experience schizophrenia, “that led to a deep understanding of patients as whole people, not just conditions or sets of symptoms.” (IDEO 2013)
This person-centered design thinking approach to research let them know they needed the space to be a safe and supportive community. They found that people with schizophrenia often find traditional social media to be too visually overwhelming, and that they felt different to other people so felt it didn’t reflect or accept them. This showed the designers that the app would need a clear and simple look, while building a community where users will feel accepted.
They combined this person-centered research with clinical knowledge to create a powerful and easy to use tool.
They also used real people to test the app and measure its efficiency so they could make updates and improvement they used Patient Health Questionnaire’s and collected data on the time users spent in the app. They also looked at user centred research here, studying the uploaded pictures of things that made users happy before and while using the app, and measured the frequency, depth, and quality of the patients’ social interactions by looking at things such as word choice and punctuation. This is like a real time diary study.
The app has proved to be more successful than had been expected in motivating, supporting and engaging young people with schizophrenia. It is interesting to think whether the app would have been so successful if the user hadn’t been central to the design from the start?
Reference list
CHAPIN, Bree. 2021. “Customer Journey Maps – What They Are and How to Build One.” Toptal Design Blog [online]. Available at: https://www.toptal.com/designers/product-design/customer-journey-maps.
DK&A. 2018. “Empowering SAP to Lead the Revolution against Plastic.” DK&A [online]. Available at: https://kesterassociates.co.uk/projects/empowering-sap-to-lead-the-revolution-against-plastic/ [accessed 26 Mar 2021].
HOW IT WORKS — THE DESIGN SPRINT. 2014. “The Design Sprint.” The Design Sprint [online]. Available at: https://www.thesprintbook.com/how.
IDEO. 2013. “Improving Quality of Life for Young Adults with Schizophrenia.” http://www.ideo.com [online]. Available at: https://www.ideo.com/case-study/improving-quality-of-life-for-young-adults-with-schizophrenia [accessed 26 Mar 2021].
MANZINI, Ezio and Rachel COAD. 2015. Design, When Everybody Designs : An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. Cambridge (Mass.) ; London: Mit Press, Cop.
MATTER. 2021. “Engaging More Women in HPV | Matter.” http://www.matter.co.uk [online]. Available at: https://www.matter.co.uk/work/engaging-more-women-in-hpv/ [accessed 26 Mar 2021].
SAP LEONARDO and DESIGN THINKERS ACADEMY. 2018. Plastics Challenge: Designing Plastics out of the Supply Chain. Design Thinkers Academy. Available at: https://www.designthinkersacademy.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/SAPLEO_PC_Project-Report_04.22_LN_72dpi.pdf [accessed 26 Mar 2021].
SERVICE DESIGN TOOLS. 2009. “Synthesis Wall | Service Design Tools.” Servicedesigntools.org [online]. Available at: https://servicedesigntools.org/tools/synthesis-wall.
SERVICE DESIGN TOOLS. 2017. “Journey Map | Service Design Tools.” Servicedesigntools.org [online]. Available at: https://servicedesigntools.org/tools/journey-map.
SERVICE DESIGN TOOLS. 2021. “Personas | Service Design Tools.” servicedesigntools.org [online]. Available at: https://servicedesigntools.org/tools/personas.
TEDX and Carol A. WELLS. 2015. “Can Art Stop a War and Save the Planet? | Carol A. Wells | TEDxLoyolaMarymountU.” YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQKNkmuZ7V8.
THIS IS SERVICE DESIGN DOING. 2021. “#TiSDD Method: Creating Personas.” http://www.thisisservicedesigndoing.com [online]. Available at: https://www.thisisservicedesigndoing.com/methods/creating-personas-2 [accessed 26 Mar 2021].
YATES, Derek and Jessie PRICE. 2015. Communication Design. New York: Fairchild Books Ava.
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