Copyright GENIUS

Applying the game to the real world

Content:

1. Introduction to service design with tips for studying topic further
    1.1 Service design
    1.2 Value creation
    1.3 Methods: Persona, journey map, story board/rapid prototype
2. Workshop instructions
    - Create a user persona
    - Create a visual prototype of user journey, a service prototype

1. Introduction to service design with tips for studying topic further

In order to design great software or contextual games, you need to understand who your user is and what is the context where the software is used and what is the value your software creates for the user. These are some key elements for connecting your software to real world and to markets. This material provides you with some service design background and practical approach with participatory methods for innovative and interdisciplinary development process.

This study module consists of two parts. First part is introduction to service design and methods to be studied before the event. Second part is instructions for a workshop during the event. It is for early innovation and research phase when participants are creating the first ideas for the contextual game, before first presentations.

1.1 Service design approach to user experience for creating software

What is service design? Watch a short introductory
Service design has background in industrial design, it has evolved over time from user centric service development to also developing systemic levels as organizations and strategies.
Service design creates services that are useful, usable and desirable from the customers perspective and efficient, effective and different from a provider perspective. - Birgit Mager 2004
Service design choreographs processes, tehnologies and interactions within complex systems in order to co-create value for relevant stakeholders. - Birgit Mager 2010
Service design approach is about challenging people to find new perspectives and to co-create in a multidisciplinary way. All the stakeholders of a service have relevant information and expertise of the different stages, these views are needed in a development process. Main thing is to understand who and how to participate, and in what stages of the development process. Too often in the development focus is in internal processes or coding and the customer and user perspective come along in a late stage. Especially in big organizations or complex ecosystems, this has led to fragmented service offering or services that don’t work for all stakeholders. Business Model Canvas (presented in Business Plan –didactic material module) is a useful tool used side by side with service design methods to form an overall view of the service production process and it’s stakeholders.
With service design approach the aim is to:

Service design process can be viewed according the purpose:

Tips for studying the field further:

1.2.Value creation

Understanding the value creation process is a way for understanding user needs and how your product or service will meet them. Traditionally value of a product has been tied to the cost of materials and manufacturing. The new value creation process takes a broader outlook on the subject:
Value = product + service + interaction between service provider and customer
The product, in this case contextual game or software, is a means for achieving something to both customer and service provider. An example of airlines demonstrates how value creation affects to whole business model and company strategy. Different types of customers can have very different needs. We have customers who want to travel as cheap as possible from one place to another as other type of customers want to have a luxury experience while travelling and individual service. The value creation process is very different in both cases, different airlines often target on different types of customers, while they still both have a same core purpose to transport people. In these cases, service and interaction with customer and what kind of planes are used to support the value creation make the strategies and business plans totally different.
For understand the value creation process you need to know:

You need to understand your customer, define what the value you are proposing is and match it to your customer’s needs. Then start making design decisions accordingly. Your contextual game or software needs stakeholders, platforms, other operators etc. to function, this can be described as an ecosystem. Your value creation may need support or interaction with partners or an ecosystem to operate, so map these out in an early phase. In an ecosystem organization can offer customers more complete solutions with co-operation.
A perspective to value creation: Fjord Trends 2019: The search for value https://vimeo.com/305497529
Value proposition is also an element it the Business Model Canvas tool (presented in Business Plan – didactic material module)

1.3.Methods

Personas

Personas are representations of different kinds of customer groups, segments, stakeholders or employees etc.. They usually consist of pictures and information that is relevant for the development case, to give a background story of the person. Persona is a way to visualize and sum up for example a user research results, it will help a team to form shared understanding on the case and to present findings to others. In development process, the purpose is also to give design team a story to build the service idea on and test ideas.
A persona can consist of:



Creating personas. Picture: Johanna Hautamäki
When creating a persona, it is always important to reflect the development process at hand, the purpose of creating the persona. What information is relevant to this case and how detailed research will it be based on. A persona is a way to connect with everyday life situations of the user, including a story it gives more information for the development process than mere list of facts. Persona can be used as means to attempt reaching empathic perspective of the user, to understand the user needs. Empathic perspective is about trying to understand how the other person is experiencing things, trying to see the world through their eyes and how they feel.

More about the method:

Journey map

Journey map is a visualization of customer or stakeholder experience over period of time, for example the whole experience of using a service, before, during and after. It shows all the key steps of the service, as well as how and when customer and service provider interact. A journey map can help to see where there might be gaps or inconsistencies. The journey can describe an existing service experience or be a tool for innovating a new one. You can get creative with how you make it, it can be visual like a cartoon, made with post-it notes or even with Excel. You can choose a method best suited for your team’s talents, working habits or needs for presentation.


An example of a customer journey created in a workshop. Picture: Johanna Hautamäki

More information about the method

Storyboard and rapid prototyping

Storyboards and rapid prototyping are used, in the following workshop material, for visualizing the ideas at early stages in order to get feedback from pears, mentors or users. Idea is to be able to do quick iterative development. When you get feedback fast and early, you can develop your idea further before making decisions that limit your choices later on in the development process, for example when you have already started coding. With storyboard you can describe the whole user or employee journey.
Rapid paper prototype can be used for getting feedback of the user interface, or the functionality of an app. Both storyboard and prototype can be as simple as rough paper sketch or Powerpoint, on the other hand if needed even a digital mock-up, depending on how much time you have to spend on it or what is the phase of your development process. Usually the earlier the stage, the rougher and faster the sketch.

A rapid paper prototype of an app for children to use in library. This prototype was used for getting feedback about the app idea by talking with children and parents, to get ideas and guidelines for design and development choices. Picture: Johanna Hautamäki

More information about the methods:

2. Workshop

Workshop intro:

Benefits for this kind of working:

Aims:

Timetable for a Workshop

It is for the organiser to ultimately decide on how long and how in-depth a workshop should be. The timing given below is as a guide only

Hours 1 and 2: Briefing the assignment and creating personas

Hours 3 and 4: Create the customer journey and a story board of it

  • Create a post-it timeline of customer journey of your software
    1. 5min. silent writing. Start with everyone taking the time to write down all the first ideas you have about the customer experience. How does the need rise? What happens before, during and after using the software? What is the value for the user? This way you get everyone’s ideas down and you don’t just start to follow the first ideas. You can also write down questions that need to be answered.
    2. Share with each other’s what you have written. Don’t shut down anybody’s ideas at this point. You can write down more based on discussing the ideas.
    3. Start forming timeline of the post-it notes, group together the notes that are similar or about the same phase. Start making choices, what is relevant and what is not. Fill in missing parts of the timeline to form a journey of the post-it notes.
    4. Form the key moments of the journey, if you would tell the journey as a cartoon, what frames would you need to tell the whole story?
  • Create the storyboard by visualizing the frames or a paper prototype.
  • You can use any method suited for your teams skills, only your imagination, (budjet) and time at hand are your limitations.

    • Hour 5: Presenting the results and get feedback

    After workshop: Results are your prototype of the software idea. Go get some more feedback from someone in your actual target group, develop your idea further

    Materials you can use in workshop:

    Included materials: