Designing a smooth service experience: Finding the balance between online and offline service

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää, kuinka digitaalisen ja analogisen palvelun voi paremmin yhdistää kokonaispalveluksi niin, että asiakas saa mahdollisimman sujuvan palvelukokemuksen. Tutkimuksen aihe nousee Tunteesta arvoa palvelulle –hankkeesta, jossa toteutettiin palvelumuotoilun kehitysprojekteja yhdessä viiden yrityksen kanssa. Niistä useammassa konseptien osana oli digitaalinen palvelu, mutta haasteeksi nousi digitaalisen kanavan yhdistäminen analogiseen, eli fyysisessä tilassa tapahtuvaan palveluun. Nykypäivänä digitaalisten palveluiden yleisyys on kasvanut ja ihmiset ovat yhä tottuneempia käyttämään digitaalisia kanavia osana palvelukokonaisuutta. Toisaalta käyttäjät ovat myös tietoisia digitaalisten kanavien tarjoamista mahdollisuuksista ja siten heidän odotuksensa ja vaatimuksensa palvelua kohtaan kasvavat. Eri palvelukanavien välillä on kuitenkin havaittavissa eroavaisuuksia ja siten yhtenäisen ja sujuvan palvelukokemuksen syntyminen asiakkaalle on vaikeaa. Asiakkaan tarpeiden ja odotusten sekä yrityksen tavoitteiden huomioiden palvelupolun luomisessa mahdollistavat palvelun sujuvan etenemisen palvelukanavien välillä. Tässä on laadullisessa tutkimuksessa tutkimusaineisto on kerätty puolistrukturoituina teemahaastatteluina. Tutkimusaineisto on analysoitu teemoittelemalla ja tutkimuksen löydökset vastaavat kysymyksiin, miten sujuva palvelukokemus muotoillaan palvelumuotoilun menetelmin, ja miten digitaalisia ja analogisia palvelukanavia tasapainotetaan palvelupolussa. Tutkimuksen tuloksen muodostaa seitsemästä osasta koostuva työkalu, jonka tarkoituksena on toimia palvelun muotoilun ja kehittämisen tukena.While working as a research assistant in Value through Emotion research project at University of Lapland and doing service design projects with several companies, I noticed that there is a challenge in designing a service that combines online and offline service channels. Nowadays the trend is to have an online service, such as service application, as a part of the overall service path, but there is often a gap between the online and offline elements of the service in regards of the communication and the quality of service delivery. The customers are more and more used to digital service channels and they are aware of the possibilities that online channels can provide. Therefore the customers have high expectations about the service delivery. Designing a service that keeps the continuity throughout the service despite the form of delivery channel would be a solution for providing the customer a smooth service experience. In this research I study how a smooth service experience can be built using service design methods. I also study how the balance between online and offline service channels can be found in the overall service path. The research data of partly structured theme interviews are analysed by qualitative research methods. As a result for this case study I present a toolkit with seven templates that can be used as a guideline and support in the service design process when combining online and offline service elements as a smooth service experience

How the design of socio-technical experiments can enable radical changes for sustainability

Sustainability requires radical innovations, but their introduction and diffusion usually encounter the opposition of existing socio-technical regimes. An important challenge is, therefore, to understand how to catalyse and support the process of transitioning towards these innovations. Building upon insights from transition studies (in particular the concepts of Strategic Niche Management and Transition Management), and through an action research project (aimed at designing, introducing and diffusing a sustainable mobility system in the suburban areas of Cape Town), the paper investigates the role of design in triggering and orienting societal transformations. A key role is given to the implementation of socio-technical experiments. A new socio-technical system design role emerges: a role in which the ideation and development of sustainable innovation concepts is coupled with the designing of appropriate transition paths to gradually incubate, introduce and diffuse these concepts

Getting Better by Design: Evaluation of a programme to support the voluntary sector in Scotland

Better by Design was developed in 2013 by the Big Lottery Fund Scotland in response to the complex and changing landscape for voluntary sector organisations delivering services on the ground with people or communities. It aimed to support a process of change, and prioritised organisations focusing on social care, employability, health and housing where intervening earlier or preventing needs emerging could make a real difference. The programme encouraged sustainability in the widest sense to enable organisations to meet the needs of their beneficiaries better now and in the future.The chance to learn in this way and the challenge to habitual ways of thinking and doing, have made a significant change to mindsets in a number of organisations and at times, brought a new quality of engagement in partnership settings. This report shows that design-led approaches do have a great deal to contribute in creating the new organisational cultures of collaboration and mutual learning necessary for public service reform

The evaluation of educational service integration in integrated virtual courses

The effectiveness of an integrated virtual course is determined by factors such as the navigability of the system. We argue that in a virtual course, which offers different educational services for different learning activities, the integration of services is a good indicator for the effectiveness of a virtual course infrastructure. We develop a set of metrics to measure the degree of integration of a virtual course. We combine structural metrics and an analysis of the student usage of the system in order to measure integration

The societal embedding of sustainable Product-Service Systems: Looking for synergies between strategic design and transition studies

Copyright @ 2014 Greenleaf Publishing.Eco-efficient Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability, but their implementation and diffusion is hindered by several cultural, corporate and regulative barriers. Hence, an important challenge is not only to conceive sustainable PSS concepts, but also to understand how to manage, support and orient the introduction and diffusion of these concepts. Building upon recent advances in the innovation studies field (in particular the contributions from transition studies) this chapter puts forward a conceptual framework for the introduction and scaling-up of eco-efficient PSSs. A key role is given to the implementation of socio-technical experiments: protected spaces where radical innovations can be tested, become more mature, and potentially challenge and change dominant socio-technical practices, habits and institutions. Starting from these considerations this chapter investigates the potential contribution that a strategic design approach can make to stimulating and supporting the societal embedding of eco-efficient PSS innovations. A new strategic design role thus emerges, a role in which the ideation and development of sustainable PSS concepts is coupled with the designing of appropriate transition paths to gradually incubate, introduce and diffuse these concepts. Starting from these considerations the chapter outlines and discusses the new design approach and capabilities required by strategic designers

The role of socio-technical experiments in introducing sustainable Product-Service System innovations

This is the pre-print version of the chapter published in 2015 by Springer in the book “The Handbook of Service Innovation” (edited by Renu Agarwal, Willem Selen, Göran Roos and Roy Green). The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-6590-3_18Product-Service System (PSS) innovations represent a promising approach to sustainability, but their implementation and diffusion are hindered by several cultural, corporate, and regulative barriers. Hence, an important challenge is not only to conceive sustainable PSS concepts, but also to understand how to manage, support, and orient the introduction and diffusion of these concepts. Building upon insights from transition studies (in particular, the concepts of Strategic Niche Management and Transition Management), and through an action research project, the chapter investigates the role of design in introducing sustainable radical service innovations. A key role is given to the implementation of socio-technical experiments, partially protected spaces where innovations can be incubated and tested, become more mature, and potentially favor the implementation and scaling up process

Report of the user requirements and web based access for eResearch workshops

The User Requirements and Web Based Access for eResearch Workshop, organized jointly by NeSC and NCeSS, was held on 19 May 2006. The aim was to identify lessons learned from e-Science projects that would contribute to our capacity to make Grid infrastructures and tools usable and accessible for diverse user communities. Its focus was on providing an opportunity for a pragmatic discussion between e-Science end users and tool builders in order to understand usability challenges, technological options, community-specific content and needs, and methodologies for design and development. We invited members of six UK e-Science projects and one US project, trying as far as possible to pair a user and developer from each project in order to discuss their contrasting perspectives and experiences. Three breakout group sessions covered the topics of user-developer relations, commodification, and functionality. There was also extensive post-meeting discussion, summarized here. Additional information on the workshop, including the agenda, participant list, and talk slides, can be found online at http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/685/ Reference: NeSC report UKeS-2006-07 available from http://www.nesc.ac.uk/technical_papers/UKeS-2006-07.pd

Libraries in transition: evolving the information ecology of the Learning Commons: a sabbatical report

This sabbatical report studied various models in order to determine best practices for design, implementation and service of Leaning Commons, a library service model which functionally and spatially integrates library services, information technology services, and media services to provide a continuum of services to the user

Mobility is the Message: Experiments with Mobile Media Sharing

This thesis explores new mobile media sharing applications by building, deploying, and studying their use. While we share media in many different ways both on the web and on mobile phones, there are few ways of sharing media with people physically near us. Studied were three designed and built systems: Push!Music, Columbus, and Portrait Catalog, as well as a fourth commercially available system – Foursquare. This thesis offers four contributions: First, it explores the design space of co-present media sharing of four test systems. Second, through user studies of these systems it reports on how these come to be used. Third, it explores new ways of conducting trials as the technical mobile landscape has changed. Last, we look at how the technical solutions demonstrate different lines of thinking from how similar solutions might look today. Through a Human-Computer Interaction methodology of design, build, and study, we look at systems through the eyes of embodied interaction and examine how the systems come to be in use. Using Goffman’s understanding of social order, we see how these mobile media sharing systems allow people to actively present themselves through these media. In turn, using McLuhan’s way of understanding media, we reflect on how these new systems enable a new type of medium distinct from the web centric media, and how this relates directly to mobility. While media sharing is something that takes place everywhere in western society, it is still tied to the way media is shared through computers. Although often mobile, they do not consider the mobile settings. The systems in this thesis treat mobility as an opportunity for design. It is still left to see how this mobile media sharing will come to present itself in people’s everyday life, and when it does, how we will come to understand it and how it will transform society as a medium distinct from those before. This thesis gives a glimpse at what this future will look like

Implementation and design of a service-based framework to integrate personal and institutional learning environments

The landscape of teaching and learning has changed in recent years because of the application of Information and Communications technology. Among the most representative innovations in this regard are Learning Management Systems. Despite of their popularity in institutional contexts and the wide set of tools and services that they provide to learners and teachers, they present several issues. Learning Management Systems are linked to an institution and a period of time, and are not adapted to learners' needs. In order to address these problems Personal Learning Environments are defined, but it is clear that these will not replace Learning Management Systems and other institutional contexts. Both types of environment should therefore coexist and interact. This paper presents a service-based framework to facilitate such interoperability. It supports the export of functionalities from the institutional to the personal environment and also the integration within the institution of learning outcomes from personal activities. In order to achieve this in a flexible, extensible and open way, web services and interoperability specifications are used. In addition some interoperability scenarios are posed. The framework has been tested in real learning contexts and the results show that interoperability is possible, and that it benefits learners, teachers and institutions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft