living library_project

Service Design in Digital Context: The Living Library

In this course, our group designed a digital services for new kind of library usage. Our service aimed to gather freelancers and start-ups

to utilize libraries’ facilities and evolve them into living knowledge hubs.

The course gave a good introduction to service design in digital context. Also, it provided good examples of efficient service design.

The focus was very professional and thus kept the customer in the centre of the design, not forgetting business models, revenue streams

and the need of selling your idea. to the customer.

Our project changed quite a bit during our service design journey, from very idealistic idea of “keeping everyone on board” to more

practical concept.

Minna Myyryläinen, Emma Dahl, Antti Kytö & Teija Hakaoja


O ur journey started before our first

meeting with the pre task where we

compared digital and physical offer-

ings from the same service and with

that we got to think about what kind of experiences

we can create digitally and physically.

On our first contact session, we got introduced into

digital service design, why we need that and what

that means. We also went through our course con-

struction, and we got some overview of what we are

going to do along our way. We were divided into

small groups for to create new digital service dur-

ing our course one piece at a time, and the idea was

to learn by doing.

Concerning Libraries

Before we started to work on group assignment we

continued comparing physical and digital services,

and we explored different kind of touch points to-

gether. We started our ideation part by choosing

the industry to work with from the pre tasks what

we had done. Each of us presented shortly what was

the industry on our tasks. We decided to do this

service for library. We chose the library because

two of us had made the pre task from that industry.

Library was also interesting for all of us because

they really need to change a lot in the future and

create new services for their customers to keep

them active and to get new customers, as well.

After that, we started ideation, and we got some

trend cards for to basis of our new service. Our

group chose trend card Co-creation Slow living

with description "People are becoming more con-

scious of the role that time plays in shaping life

quality. They are prioritizing experiences, connec-

tion with others, health, holistic well-being and cre-

ativity in place of speed and pace of life."

The ideation begins

Then was time to start brainstorming and we start-

ed to think what kind of needs people have. We got

ideas that our service could help people to find

other people who share the same interest than

they. We also talked a lot of how we could help

senior citizens active part of the society and to help

them to find new friends for prevent them to be-

come lonely. Addition to seniors we thought about

unemployed and how library could activate them

too.

Other view was that how we could create library

more interesting place for citizens and help them to

keep their customers on board and also to get new

visitors. We knew that libraries have changed their

environment quite much lately, and they have add-

ed more services in some places and we tried to

SESSION 1 Sep 13 2013 A well designed start


invent something new. This would be something

which would combine both physical and digital

touchpoints.

Keep everyone on board @library

In the end of the day, we end up with the new con-

cept idea named "Keep everyone on board

@library" and we draw a picture which looked like a

Noah's ark. Our poster was like a notice board

where we had different types of notices where peo-

ple were looking for help or providing help to each

other. That picture was presenting our idea to give

something for the whole community.

SESSION 1 Sep 13 2013 A well designed start

LESSONS LEART:

LOOKING AT TRENDS CAN EASE YOUR DESIGN PROCESS BY GIVING LONG-TERM PERSPECTIVE

USING A TIMER HELPS RAPID IDEATION, CREA-TING MORE IDEAS, AND LESS CRITISISM

HAVING AN IDEALISTIC CONCEPT DOESN’T HURT


D uring this second session, we went fur-

ther with our plans for the new kind of

Library. We talked about designing

the service but also about founding a

relationship with the customer. During this evening,

we had many sketches to fill out so our group didn’t

have time to complete them all during the evening,

but we continued the work after class. Please see

the attached images for a summary of our work.

The crucial touchpoints that deliver the service

The service touchpoints are all the little interac-

tions that happen between the service provider and

the customer experiencing the service. The service

touchpoints are crucial interactions, where many

things can go wrong. Your task as a service provider

is to lead your customer through the touchpoints in

a successful way.

To start with, someone in class put it nicely:

“Tell your mother”. This refers to the skill of ex-

plaining something complex in an easy manner.

Your offering should be easy to understand and you

should focus on designing a “hook”, and doing that

hook really well. Touchpoint strategy is all about

when you present which kind of information or re-

quirements. Your service should be easy to get

started with so therefore it is of value that you think

about which kind of information is crucial to start

with. Gaming dynamics are an easy way of making a

service easily approachable.

SESSION 2 Nov 8 2013 Service Touchpoints and Touchpoint strategy


What’s your relationship status?

We also discussed building customer relationships

during class. Melanie presented Fjord´s nice com-

parison of customer relationships to how real rela-

tionships develop. Melanie showed three different

stages for this: matchmaking, dating and truelove.

The matchmaking is really about discovery, you

stumble into something interesting and you want to

learn more. The dating phase is about trial and ex-

periencing some kind of wow-effect when you real-

ly start to deepen the relationship. The truelove sig-

nifies loyalty to a service – this is the time when you

realize just how important that service is and you

experience a sense of “of course” when you think

about the service.

The templates given by Melanie during this session

were really useful. We also liked the comparison of

a customer relationship to a real-life relationship.

As mentioned earlier, this session was a lot to take

in and we had to continue the work after our ses-

sion. We met again before the third session to go

through the material and at this point our original

concept evolved quite much.



Changes on the way

We started to think more about who could be our

early adopters and we end up to freelancers and in

that way to small start-ups who would need space

to work and networks around them. The library

could help them by providing premises and devices

for them and freelancers could help each others by

cooperating and co-creating. The library would also

be the information provider naturally and share the

knowledge. The library would get free marketing

when freelancers would spread the word about this

service in social media.


LESSONS LEART: YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN YOUR

IDEA VERY SIMMPLY, THINK ABOUT EX-PLAINING IT TI YOUR MOM OR GRANDFA-THER

TO START USING THE SERVICE SHOULD BE DESIGNED SUPER EASY

DESIGN YOUR TOUCHPOINT S TO EN-FORDE THE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP


T he evening began by short review and

pitching the concepts. We crystalized the

message of the concept in few minutes

and received feedback about digital ser-

vice concepts from others. This was essential to get

perceptivity on how to improve service concepts.

Different revenue models

We began our meeting by discussing about differ-

ent pricing models and business revenue streams:

freemium and premium, on-demand service, ad

based model, exchange of ownership, subscription

based purchasing and crowdsourcing.

Freemium business model can be used to reach cus-

tomers, grow clienteles and engage users on ser-

vice. This model can be used to give basic and core

service features for free. To get full access on ser-

vice, freemium users can upgrade to premium level;

full access on service and pay as subscription.

On-demand service is a revenue model where cus-

tomer buy a service when needed and pay once per

service delivery. Sometimes this revenue model can

be combined on with freemium and premium sub-

scription revenue models. E.g. premium subscribers

may get on demand service a bit cheaper than free-

mium users.

Subscription based pricing model is an option to

traditional goods dominant logic and value ex-

change: exchange of ownership. Like already dis-

cussed subscription can be like freemium and pre-

mium. Of course some different variations between

these can be used.

Crowdsourcing is a revenue model where company

can collect fees from “business angels”. These busi-

ness angels receive access on service and make the

service possible. This is common for start-up com-

panies.

SESSION 3 Dec 13 2013 Converging concepts on Business Models


Business model In the end of day we combined all combined

ideas on Lean Canvas (see Figure 1). We chose

the Lean Canvas because it was proper tool to

make sure we have thought the business model as

a new service from all needed perspectives. Lean

Canvas focuses more on recognized problem than

on final invalidated solution like Business Model

Canvas tend to present.

SESSION 3 Dec 13 2013 Converging concepts on Business Models

LESSONS LEARNT: YOUR DESIGN NEEDS REVENUES, THINK CAREFULLY A SUITABLE MODEL (S) FOR YOUR CONCEPT


T his session Melanie was unable to attend

so we started the lesson with a Skype ses-

sion with her. Valtteri took over after that

and we got to work since we had a lot to

produce and very limited time, since Valtteri need-

ed to be somewhere else by seven PM. The struc-

ture of that session was quite unclear to us to start

with, and this was quite noticeable now when trying

to write about it, we had difficulties remembering

what we actually did during that class and in which

order. The below is an account for how two of us

remember the lesson.

Designing the Customer Journey

We got to work quickly presenting our concepts to

others since it had been a while back since we last

saw each other and the groups had worked on their

concepts during the break. We continued by de-

signing the customer journeys for our projects. The

guidelines were a bit confusing during the lesson

and therefore some of the time from our group

went to our wondering whether we were doing the

right matters. The numbering on the papers given

was especially confusing for us. We designed the

customer journey and the post-it notes were trans-

ferred many times during the

session since we thought

both about the start of the

customer journey and the

place of different touch

points during the journey.

After the customer journey we very naturally moved

on to working with the wireframes for the registra-

tion part of our service. We have a lot of images to

show our work on this part. We were able to pro-

ceed very quickly with the wireframes since we had

Antti in our group, who is working with these mat-

ters on a daily basis. Without him, our work would

not have proceeded that quickly since we were able

to skip some of the testing of different menus and

navigations and head straight for the chosen op-

tion.

SESSION 4 Jan 17 2014 Presentations, Customer Journey & Wireframes


SESSION 4 Jan 17 2014 Service Touchpoints and Touchpoint strategy


SESSION 4 Jan 17 2014 Service Touchpoints and Touchpoint strategy

LESSONS LEARNT:

DESIGNING INTERFACES CAN BE EASILY DONE BY DIVIDING DIFFERENT FEATURES TO INDIVIDUAL STICKY NOTES; IDEAS TEND TO CHANGE AND FIND NEW PLACES

ASK SOMEONE TO TRY YOUR DIGITAL SERVICE TO TEST IT’S USABILITY


M elanie offered an opportunity for us

to visit Fjord’s offices and have our

last session there. She gave us a

very efficient presentation about

selling your idea with some very fun and concrete

examples. Actually, the whole presentation was a

great example how to communicate your message

clearly using storytelling different kinds of visual

aids. It had several surprising examples, for instance

a sales pitch excerpt from Mad Men. The video clip

was very illustrative of the fact that you need to tell

your story so the listener/customer finds him or her-

self in it. We found the presentation very helpful

for designing our own later.

Once upon a time...

It is really not enough to have a great idea unless

you can sell it, and for that putting up a little show

goes a long way. To start storytelling, Melanie told

as to think fairy tales and their dramatic structure.

To create an interesting structure for your selling

pitch, you can illustrate it by some drama, for exam-

ple with a story of a quest or overcoming a monster.

An interesting storyline makes your idea more re-

latable for the customer. Being relatable means the

customer can find him or herself as a part of the

story, which in the best case scenario supports their

own individual goals.

Our wireframes go mobile, with a mobile

After Melanie’s presentation we developed our dig-

ital service path further and made a wireframe of

our mobile user interface. Using an application de-

signed for wireframing made this really fun and al-

lowed us to concentrate on the actual service path.

Selling our design prepared

Wireframing was continued by preparing for our

sales presentation. We got acquainted with our

customer persona Fabienne’s, information and cus-

tomized our presentation according to this. For ex-

ample we added statistics and more details, as the

persona was interested in those.

SESSION 5 Feb 7 2014 Selling it!


After quickly sketching our manual slides, we de-

cided who would present what in which order. We

also discussed how to make the presentation still

interesting and story like.

Our customer persona was a manager from the li-

brary services, with a passion for knowing every de-

tail and controlling things. We discussed within our

group what these kinds of characteristics could

mean in practice, coming to a conclusion that we

needed to convince the person of fortifying her sta-

tus, having control over the project and making her

library the most innovative one. Considering the

customer’s hidden needs and values was very help-

ful for creating the sales presentation.

We started our presentation by introducing very

shortly our service, and showing the statistics of li-

brary usage. We also stated that library funding

went hand in hand with the users. We thought this

part as convincing the need of the service, a threat

or a fairy tale monster that needed actions to pre-

vent bad things happening.

Secondly we introduced another statistic of start-

ups, giving an idea of growing number of a poten-

tial new segment that would mean early adapters

for the new library concept. We continued by step-

ping back a bit, by going through what kind of ser-

vices the libraries already had and how to utilize

them better. We then introduced very detailed

plan of our digital service, including wireframes of

both web and mobile applications.



How to make it even better?

After We got very nice critique from our audience.

What was missing in our presentation was a clearer

picture of the overall service. We could have maybe

either shortly introduce the general idea of our ser-

vice first or maybe after telling about the statistics

of potential freelance users.

We also received some complements how we ad-

justed our presentation according to our customer

persona, also our introduction was seen strong.


LESSONS LEARNT: TRY TO FIND OUT SOME PERSONAL THINGS OF YOUR CUSTOMER, ADJUST YOUR PRESENTATION TO MATCH THEIR NEEDS AND VALUES PRODUCE RELEVANT MATERIAL THAT SUPPORTS YOUR CASE GET CRITISISM BEFORE YOUR ACTUAL PRESENTATION, FIRSTLY TO TRY IT OUT, AND SECONDLY TO IMPROVE IT REMEMBER TO GO THROUGH YOUR CONCEPT IN GENERAL LEVEL TOO, YOU MIGHT TAKE SOMETHING GRANTED YOURSELF TELL A STORY, AND MAKE IT RELATABLE FOR YOUR AUDIENCE