This past week I have been in Finland attending the Experience Service Design conference and workshop in Kuopio Finland. I’d like to take this opportunity straight off the bat to thank Satu Miettinen and all those at Savonia University of Applied Sciences who helped organise this hugely enjoyable week. It was also fantastic to meet Twitter friends Lauren Currie, Arne Van Oosterom and Marc Stickdorn as well as numerous other new friends and faces – thank you all!
Lauren has in typical fashion done an excellent job of summarising the workshop she was running on Tuesday and Wednesday in the following video:
Experience Service Design from Lauren Currie on Vimeo.
Lauren’s Flickr photos also give you an insight into the week. Whilst thoughts on the week, particularly the conference on Monday, from one of the keynote presenters Nico Morelli can also be found here.
I’m going to elaborate some of my own thoughts from the presentations on Monday in subsequent posts, particularly the presentations of Arne and Marc and that of Renato Troncon on the role of aesthetics and philosophy in Service Design. However, in the rest of this post I want to share some pictures and a brief summary of the workshop I was participating in.
The workshop was run by Arne, Marc and Mikko Koivisto co-editor of the book Designing Services With Innovative Methods. Whilst the primary aim of the workshop was to empower attendees in their understanding and use of service design methods, the chosen context in which to do so was a local health care clinic in the town of Kuopio where the workshop was being held.
Patients at the Viretori Clinic
This clinic known as the Viretori, provides elderly people the opportunity to come and receive basic health care checks, administered by students at the University thus serving as a training and educational service for students as well as providing a medical one for elderly members of the community.
Educational and Healthcare Services All in a Oner!!
The identified problem was with a lack of engagement in services offered by the clinic to the elderly people of the town. This of course was having a knock on effect on the students education and motivation to participate in the initiative.
One of the exciting features of the workshop was the opportunity to explore Marc Stickdorn and his colleagues at MCI’s new mobile based tool for logging customer journeys. This Android based software allows you to log and rate touch points as you walk through the journey, then download them and catalogue them when you are back in the studio – really innovative and exciting stuff!
Using MCI's ServiceFellow Mobile Service Touchpoint Logging Software
It wasn’t all hi-tech though, with traditional methods and collaboration very much the point of the exercise. These were a great opportunity to get to know our Finnish hosts better as well as get to know the meriad of nationalities attending the conference courtesy of the Nokia Only Planet project.
Plotting User Journeys the old fashioned post-it note way!
The one and half day workshop culminated with the presentation of the group’s concept, which following interviews and observation of the users and service environment suggested empowering the elderly users with more ownership of the clinic, it’s presentation and activities. Our recommendations and reflections on the process were presented to all the conference participants on the final day and will also be put to the management of the clinic in the near future.
Presenting the Results (courtesy of Marc Stickdorn)
Altogether the week was an immensly enjoyable one, both for the networking opportunities it presented and new friends made, but also for the chance to explore service design within a hugely diverse group and learn from the results. Thanks again to all those involved.
Certified... (Again courtesy Marc Stickdorn)
I’ll be posting some further thoughts from the Kuopio experience in due course.
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Tags: Design Research, Design Thinking, Human Centred Design, Motivation, Self Efficacy, Service Design, the difference between novice and expert behaviour, User Empowerment