Nahal Tavangar_M.A. Thesis: "Designing Holistic Feedback" by Nahal Tavangar

Nahal Tavangar KĂśln International School of Design MA Integrated Design Final Master Thesis January 2017

cover D esigning H olistic F eedback a typology of methods and proposed framework

for s Â oliciting more comprehensive ,Â qualitative user input

Designing Holistic ÂFeedback: Creating a typology of methods and Â

proposing a framework for soliciting

more comprehensive, qualitative user input

Nahal Tavangar KĂśln International School of Design MA Integrated Design Final Master Thesis January 2017

Nahal Tavangar MA Integrated Design Matriculation Number: 11108875 Köln International School of Design (KISD) Technische Hochschule Köln (TH Köln) – Cologne University of Applied Sciences Faculty of Cultural Sciences Final Master Thesis Submitted: January 26, 2017 Cologne, Germany Supervisors: Prof. Birgit Mager (Area: Service Design) President, Service Design Network (SDN) Head, sedes|research – Center for Service Design Research Paul Hughes (Area: Design Theories) Consultant, Strategist, Speaker Author: Branded Growth

Layout Template Design: Janina Rösch Cover Image: Wookseob Jeong I hereby declare that I independently carried out this Master thesis and used no other means or unauthorized tools other than those sources cited. I have marked these sources respectively. ______________________________ Nahal Tavangar Köln, 26th of January 2017

If I don't know I don't know I think I know If I don't know I know I think I don't know

/ R. D. Laing

// Abstract

ABSTRACT Primary Research Question: How might companies collect more comprehensive, qualitative feedback from users on their products or services throughout the creation process in order to stay agile and competitive in an ever-changing, and complex world? Feedback is one of the most commonly used terms in our society but is rarely discussed in-depth or examined in terms of how one carries it out to get valuable insight. With generic tools such as surveys, the feedback solicited yields similar results – a limited range of extremely negative or extremely positive experiences offered up by more or less the same type (personality) of people. This inadvertently monopolizes opinions and leaves a great portion of the population unaccounted for and without a voice. As designers, we believe that feedback during the creative process drives good design. The term ‘co-creation’ is often used to describe our understanding of how to interact with our users, but there is still a need for a more in-depth analysis: how might participatory design methods and tools add value to existing feedback soliciting tactics? On a contextual level in business, what is the benefit of incorporating a combination of these tools into the feedback process for companies evaluating a product or service? This Master thesis is a design-driven theoretical exploration into the methods and tools that companies use when soliciting feedback from customers on existing products or services. It provides a suggested typology of these methods based on identified functional traits and is used to then suggest a framework for collecting more Holistic Feedback – that is, proposing the combination of at least one tool from each of the types of methods in order to ensure that there is adequate diversity in the way feedback is solicited (input) and the medium through which the feedback is received (output).

Keywords: Feedback, Holistic Feedback, Holism, Co-Creation, Participatory Design, Prototyping, Design Thinking, Service Design, Customer Testing, Market Research, Surveys, Design Research, Design Management

CONTENTS Preface Introduction

13 17

Part I / SENSING Chapter 01 – Exploring the Problem Chapter 02 – Key Definitions: Feedback and Holism Chapter 03 – Framing the Thesis Exploration

20 23 35 45

Part II / CONTEXTUALIZING Chapter 04 – Global Context Chapter 05 – Organizational Context Chapter 06 – Design Context

54 57 65 73

Part III / CLASSIFYING Chapter 07 – On Feedback Chapter 08 – Typology of Feedback Methods

90 93 131

Part IV / APPLYING Chapter 09 – Action Research Experiment Chapter 10 – Exploring Alternative Tools for Collecting Feedback

150 153 165

Conclusion Appendices Bibliography Acknowledgements

177 181 196 211

“As for the idea of a beginning – I mean an absolute beginning – it is necessarily a myth. Every beginning is a coincidence: we must imagine it as some sort of contact between all and nothing. In trying to think of it, we find that every beginning is a consequence – every beginning ends something.”

/ Paul Valéry

//Preface

PREFACE

The beginning of my thesis spans back quite a few years, as all of my personal and professional experiences thus far have been slowly leading me to this point. When starting my Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree at KISD in March 2015, I had a B.A. in International Relations, work experience in a few different professional areas and an insatiable interest in Design Thinking, which I had learned about only 3 years prior and had practiced on-the-side while working full-time in a global public relations firm in Washington, D.C.

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

I had virtually no knowledge of hard design skills or what it was exactly that drew me to take this gigantic leap of faith and launch a new career. What I did have was intuition and a strong desire to make my passion into a fulfilling career. Fast forward almost two years, when it came the time to make the decision of what I wanted my Master’s thesis to focus on, I found myself still in a place of exploration and learning. I had such a wide array of interests – I couldn’t narrow it down! I was inexplicably drawn to organizations and the role of strategic designers within them, and I was fascinated by the process of organizational change, culture and employee engagement. I created iterations of various keywords that I wanted to focus on but it didn’t help to narrow my focus.

My epiphany occurred (like most great ideas, apparently), while I was in the shower. I was reflecting on a recent experience where I was providing feedback and remarking how satisfying it felt that a channel existed where I could voice my thoughts and feel ‘heard.’ I realized that I had, in fact, my entire professional/adult life, been drawn to the topic of feedback and had strong opinions about it. Everything that one creates and the way in which one carries it out, involves some sort of thought around the topic of collecting feedback. Everything that I had been researching thus far had pointed me in this direction – I just hadn’t realized it!

//Preface

As soon as I decided that feedback would be the focus of my Master thesis, I have been infinitely guided to enlightened people and conversations on this topic, wonderful mentors to guide me through the process, and immensely positive feedback along the way – reinforcing for me that research on this topic is very much needed. Feedback, to me, is almost ‘sacred’ – it’s a human need to be heard and understood, and yet in a way, it is a luxury that one is afforded. “One of humanity’s prime drives is to understand and be understood….Man seems unique [from all other living creatures] as the comprehensive comprehender.” –R. Buckminster Fuller We take it for granted that companies want to know nowadays if our experience with their product or service was satisfactory. Soliciting feedback is a process that needs to be designed, just like anything else. Depending on how asking for feedback is carried out, it can either simply fulfill the requirement of ‘checking-a-box’ to provide statistics to m anagement, be the cause of the loss of customers and revenue for a brand, or, when done right, can act as the catalyst for improving bonds of trust and cooperation within any given community. Feedback is, at its core, a communication process and fundamental in our human interactions. I am fully cognizant that I am approaching this subject with my own biases and assumptions. When reflecting, I realized that I would be considered the “ideal” customer to give feedback: I am usually very observant when using a product or service, I am self-aware, I have strong verbal and written communication skills (conducive to most commonly-used feedback tools), I have no problem expressing how I feel, and I have a near-obsession with helping to make systems or processes ‘better.’ When I am asked for feedback, I give it – no further coaxing needed. I realize, however, that this is not the norm and that it is generally hard for companies to solicit accurate, substantial feedback. How could one tap into the quiet, shy users? How about the users who aren’t as articulate in their thoughts and feelings? How about the

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

elderly users who have no access to a smartphone to scan a QR code? The list goes on and on. I started to think: how might one evaluate a product or service in a more well-rounded, ‘holistic’ way by reaching and allowing all of your users to provide input? And where does design fit into all of this?? I decided to study in a design school, not business school, after all. In the end, I have more questions than answers, but this is what excites me the most – the potential of this work to spark dialogue and open doors for new research on this topic, particularly from a design perspective. It is my hope that this thesis be viewed as an exploration on this topic – an initial posing of questions and a proposed approach – and that others will pick up where I left off, build upon what I have offered up, and continue the study of working towards Holistic Feedback.

Nahal Tavangar Cologne, Germany January 2017

//Introduction

INTRODUCTION

On a hot summer day, a few months ago at a multinational corporation, employees sat around a conference room table and dialed into a corporate tele-conference hosted by an Executive Vice President. The call began with a formal greeting and moved quickly onto announcing the impending corporate change, one of a few that happened that year. The atmosphere was tense. Unknown change was coming and the feeling of dreaded anticipation was palpable. Occasionally, people would look up at each other and smirk at what the executive said or make a comment – the conference call was, naturally, on mute. At the end of the announcement, the call was “open” for the various departments to unmute their line and ask questions or provide comments. Essentially, the executive was openly asking for feedback on the announcement that he had just made – at least, that was his advertised intention. Despite the apparent transparency and the channel provided to offer up in-person (via telephone) feedback, no one spoke up. Afterwards, I pondered over this seemingly ‘normal’ situation in a large company and began to see it from a new perspective: why didn’t anyone provide feedback when there was a clear conduit to do so? 17

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

I realized that one may either make assumptions and try to answer this question in a logical way, or one may use this scenario as an example to explore an even greater problem: why many feedback mechanisms currently fail. In the situation above, the “providers” of the feedback were company employees – a common context when the topic of feedback is discussed; however, when narrowing my focus and approaching it with a design lens, I decided, for the purposes of this thesis, to focus on feedback methods and tools used by companies to collect feedback from customers on existing products or services. The intention of this Master thesis work is to explore this topic from a design perspective and propose a framework for how to approach collecting more ‘holistic’ feedback from customers. To do so, I present three existing feedback models and draw parallels between them and the points in the design process that designers interface with customers to collect user input. I ultimately assert that companies should bolster their current, traditional feedback tactics by combining them with design methods/tools in order to have adequate diversity in the type of methods used (input) and type of feedback received (output), thus ensuring that a more varied, wider range of customers are included in the feedback process.

//Introduction

Part I (SENSING) provides an overview of the problem, defines the key terminology as it is used in this work, investigates feedback as it is currently conducted, and frames the thesis exploration; Part II (CONTEXTUALIZING) presents the theory upon which this thesis is based and explores the overall context that makes gathering more ‘holistic’ feedback especially relevant in our current landscape – globally, as it relates to organizations, and from a design perspective; Part III (CLASSIFYING) discusses the general qualities of feedback, introduces some new methods of collecting it, analyzes various methods and tools, and offers up a typology of feedback; and, Part IV (APPLYING) uses an action research experiment to bolster the claim that different types of tools yield different types of feedback responses, and suggests a framework for collecting more Holistic Feedback based on the typology in Part III, discussing possibilities for future use.

PART I SENSING // Exploring the Problem // Key Definitions: Feedback and Holism // Framing the Thesis Exploration

“Insight appears when you look for meaning rather than facts.”

/ John Hunt

“The Art of the Idea”

// Chapter 01 – Exploring the Problem

CHAPTER 01

E xploring the P roblem

“S urvey F atigue ” – W here F eedback F ails Take a moment and imagine that you attend a conference and on the last day you are handed a piece of paper from the organizers, kindly asking for your ‘feedback’ on the event.

Would you provide your feedback?

Perhaps you had a fantastic time and you’ve always been keen on telling people who do a good job that you appreciate it, so you take a few minutes to fill it out, writing an enthusiastic “Thank You!” at the end.

What would prompt you to do so?

Perhaps you had a bad experience – bad enough that you really wanted them to know about it – or you have a particularly strong suggestion, something you think you could offer up to the organizers, so you take 5-10 minutes, hunched in a corner using your lap as a hard surface to fill it out, telling yourself: “it’s worth it as long as I get to be heard!”

If you wouldn’t provide your input, what are the reasons?

Perhaps you don’t have strong feelings either way and you are, quite frankly, tired of being handed pieces of paper to fill out at the end

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of everything you attend these days…OR you’re simply in a rush to leave and can’t be bothered…OR you figure there are other people with stronger (“more worthwhile”) opinions who will provide feedback…so you crumple it up and throw it away. The above three archetypal responses to being asked to provide feedback via a paper survey are universally relatable as they speak to us on a human-centered level. Why This Matters – The Experience Economy Today, being asked for one’s feedback is commonplace, as more and more businesses and brands realize that the customer (i.e. the user) is ultimately what keeps their business afloat. It is no longer sufficient to produce a good product, people expect a good experience from beginning to end. As such, we are living in the age of the Experience Economy, where superior services are what attracts, converts and retains customers. People’s needs are now at the forefront of industry, but the business realm is still “playing catch-up” in finding effective, non-evasive ways of asking customers for their thoughts (Gilmore and Pine, 1998). Experience Economy, defined: One stage past the Service Economy, the Experience Economy is a term created to describe the phenomena of our changing economic value from products to services to creating memorable experiences (Brown, 2009).

In order to maintain a brand with superior service, companies must get a sense for how they are doing and what areas to improve. When the goal of collecting feedback is to get an overall sense of the opinions (positive, negative, neutral, and everything in-between) of a representative amount of people, one may ask the question, “are the methods primarily used today sufficient?”

// Chapter 01 – Exploring the Problem

Survey Participation Rates are Dropping It is becoming increasingly accepted that surveys, as they are carried out today, are not a sufficient way to collect accurate customer feedback. The Pew Research Center reported that statistically, it is becoming more and more difficult to convince people to respond and participate in opinion surveys (“Assessing the Representativeness of Public Opinion Surveys,” 2012). A New York Times article explains that the level of enthusiasm we have for taking the time out of our busy day to fill out (yet) another questionnaire for a service is waning: “Businesses of all sizes, desperate to lock in customer loyalty, see surveys as a window into the emotional world of their customers and a database that will offer guidance on how to please them….Consumer patience may be fraying under the onslaught. The constant nagging has led to a condition known as survey fatigue and declining response rates over the last decade” (Grimes, 2012, p.1). 72% of customers say that online pop-up surveys interfere with their website browsing experience; 66% of customers prefer to give feedback by actively reaching out; 80% of customers say that they abort a survey halfway through; 52% of customers say that three minutes is the maximum time they will take to fill out a survey; Only 9% of households in 2012 responded to telephone surveys, dropping from 36% in 1997; and Survey response rates have dropped over the past 20 years from 20% to 2%.

(Data from the The Pew Research Center and OpinionLab)

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Surveys Don’t Take Human Needs Into Account There are a several key reasons why surveys are insufficient for collecting accurate, substantial feedback: they do not take human behavior and needs into consideration; and they are unknowingly designed with flaws. The following are four main points that surveys consistently fail to take into account: Lack of intrinsic motivation In the digital age, where information is omnipresent and information is valuable, if people aren’t intrinsically motivated to provide feedback, they just won’t (Dishman, 2014). Research shows that it is no longer sufficient to convince customers to participate by promising that their feedback will help to improve the brand (“The Looming Online Survey Crisis,” 2015). While extrinsic (i.e. monetary) incentives are a trend for attempting to convince people to provide their feedback – gift cards, cash prizes, etc. – it does not attract more people to take part, and can actually have the opposite effect in only attracting customers interested in the perks, thus offering up rushed, insincere customer input (Dishman, 2014). Oversaturation of the market According to global survey company SurveyMonkey, more than 3 million survey responses are collected every day – approximately 497,500 surveys deployed every month (“SurveyMonkey Brand Assets,” 2017). Surveys are ubiquitous and people are experiencing “feedback fatigue” (The Looming, 2015). Chief Marketing Officer of OpinionLab, Jonathan Levitt, clearly explains that the public’s negative reaction to surveys is due to the fact that they no longer fit the need of our times. “Surveys emerged in a world of information scarcity….We are now in a world where information is plentiful” (qtd. in Dishman, 2014, p.1).

// Chapter 01 – Exploring the Problem

Marketer-centric Approach Surveys tend to be impersonal and market research driven, with a focus on quantitative analysis rather than a human-centric purpose (Dishman, 2014). Furthermore, completing and submitting surveys is a one-way communication channel that does not provide the opportunity for response or insight into how your input will be valued (Reed, 2016). Scott Miller, the CEO of Vision Critical, a marketing company that claims it provides “authentic customer intelligence,” explains that surveys as we see them today can be, for the most part, classified as ‘spam’ (Reed, 2016). According to Miller, spam-like surveys are “uninvited, impersonal and generic,” and “often overly long, not respecting the time and effort required of the customer” (Reed, 2016). The author of the article that interviewed Miller, Jon Reed, ascertains that 99% of the surveys he receives easily qualify as spam, according to Miller’s definition (Reed, 2016). General reduction in attention spans The increased frequency of surveys and the growth of brands using them (from toothpaste companies to local coffee shops), the people who actually enjoy participating in giving user feedback have less capacity to focus when they are “in-survey” (“Online Surveys Are Not Enough,” 2016). Respondents tend to rush through the questions too quickly without providing much thought into their answers, which only provides less accurate results (“Online Surveys,” 2016).

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

The four main failures of surveys listed above, from a design perspective, could be considered a serious lapse in User Experience (UX) design. It incites the following questions that marketing research companies and in-house marketing departments are now asking themselves: How often should one ask for feedback? i.e. thinking through time and effort on the part of the user What channel and/or method should one use? i.e. thinking through convenience-of-use and user preference What is most likely to make people participate? i.e. thinking through alternative incentives and user needs

Thinking through the human experience and designing feedback mechanisms with the same care and consideration that one would afford one’s own family is crucial. According to Donald Norman (1988), one of the ‘grandfathers’ of human-centered design, feedback is a way to ‘communicate’ with the user, instructing them instinctively on how to use the object (e.g. haptic feedback of smartphones). In this definition, ‘good user feedback’ thought through a human-centric way can directly cause someone to decide to revisit a platform or service or make the decision to never to use it again. 28

// Chapter 01 – Exploring the Problem

Surveys Solicit Limited Opinions With the heavy decline in survey participation over the past few decades, market researchers are finding that the respondents who are engaged in the process tend to be on the extreme spectrum of opinions – either extremely positive or extremely negative (Wheeler, 2015). This is problematic since survey data relies on numbers to increase accuracy. One could argue that there is still a value in collecting the extremely negative and positive feedback if the company is dedicated to use them to improve their product or service; however, it makes one wonder how many other voices – with valuable, thoughtful opinions – are being lost in the process. The other risk is that with limited and most often negative input (for example), it provides the company or brand with a very skewed idea of what their customers think – it could cause companies to put too much weight on one extremely negative experience rather than all of the other more-or-less neutral spectrum of experiences who chose not to respond to the survey: “If only those who truly love or dislike your brand are sharing their viewpoints, logically it’s going to hinder survey data” (“The Looming Online Survey,” 2015).

Encouraging Participation: A Better Survey? It is human nature to (consciously or subconsciously) weigh the effort needed to take an action with the benefits received in return. The same can be applied with giving feedback. How might we encourage more people to participate in giving their input? To begin, we must explore the various reasons why someone would be motivated to give feedback. This is by no means an exhaustive list of reasons, just an attempt to think through the psychology of providing feedback.

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

People Participate in Giving Feedback… …If there’s personalization It is much harder to say “no” to someone you know or if you feel that you are doing them a personal favor. In a similar way, if the survey was tailored to the customer by honoring their preferred style of giving feedback and respectful/ cognizant of the time they have available to provide feedback, people would be more likely to take action. …If there’s monetary (or otherwise) perks A debated issue, it is true that there is a group of people who participate in surveys if they feel that the offered “perk” is worth it to them. The risk here is that people may provide their feedback for the ‘wrong’ reasons and thus skew the results depending on how much time and effort they put into it. With this being the only method for encouraging participation, it tends to attract the same type of people/personalities and is not representative of the entire customer base. …If there’s minimal effort required Frequently discussed today, market research companies are exploring how to make giving feedback more convenient and, more importantly, with opt-in features. Rather than spamming customers by email, less invasive approaches are being explored, such as emotive buttons that can now be found in many airports worldwide, asking customers how their experience going through security or with the bathroom cleanliness was. The benefits of this type of feedback system is that not only is it easy-to-use with little thought involved and on an opt-in basis, but it is also real-time so that data can be pulled by the hour to better service customers. …If one wants to be ‘heard’ and consoled One of the main reasons for giving customer feedback is if one has had an extremely negative experience. Why is this? As humans, we have an inherent need to feel ‘heard’ and to feel some sort of remorse on the part of the compa30

// Chapter 01 – Exploring the Problem

ny/service provider. If there is a channel to offer the feedback, preferably in a human-to-human context, one feels as if one’s experience was documented and will be further discussed in order to prevent it from happening again. …If one wants to encourage good behavior: In some circumstances, positive feedback is offered up if a customer wants the company to know about their “morethan-they-expected” experience using a product or service. As superior services become increasingly commonplace, positive feedback may decline as people come to expect seamless service and begin to view it as the norm. Similar to those who provide feedback only if there are ‘perks,’ individuals who offer up positive feedback consistently are self-aware, and understand the complexity of services. Often they use their unpleasant experiences as a means of comparison to better evaluate the quality of service provided. In other words, feedback can also function as an indicator and means of engaging authentically with “super users” (people who heavily use a product/service).

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

Where Market Research Ends and Design Research Begins The market research field has started to realize the inherent flaws in the way surveys are traditionally offered and are focusing on ways to improve them. Interestingly, however, these improvements are merely an echo of what the human-centered design community has been practicing all along: /

Personalization (humanizing the process);

Convenience/ease of use (i.e. UX/UI design); and

Adaptability/flexibility to changes

(i.e. rapid iteration techniques)

(adapted from “Online Surveys are Not Enough, Part I & II, 2016” and Reed, 2016)

Where I see great potential for design research, and what most market researchers are not talking about, are alternative ways of interacting with customers other than the use of tools that predominantly only make use of customers’ writing and/or speaking skills. It is evident that the way surveys are carried out today and that many companies use them as their only form of feedback, is not sufficient in truly capturing the customer’s voice. As a result, there is a huge gap in the breadth of information companies could solicit if they experimented with other methods and tools to collect feedback.

// Chapter 01 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Exploring the Problem

What might customer actions tell us?

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have no right to isolated acts of any kind: [...] Rather do our ideas, our values, our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts, grow out of us with the necessity with which a tree bears fruit â&#x20AC;&#x201C; related and each with an affinity to each, and evidence of one will, one health, one soil, one sun." / Friedrich Nietzsche

// Chapter 02 – Key Definitions: Feedback and Holism

CHAPTER 02

K ey D efinitions : F eedback and H olism F eedback , D efined When introducing people to the topic of ‘feedback,’ initial responses vary drastically depending on context or their understanding of the term feedback. Therefore, before launching into the ‘meat’ of this thesis, it is important to clearly define the terms that will be commonly used. Below are a few definitions based on my research and the way in which I choose to use them for the purposes of this Master thesis work. Feedback has multiple meanings, and is context dependent. One of the earliest forms of the word can be traced to cybernetics (the study of regulatory systems), or electronics. In this context, feedback is defined as “the process of returning part of the output of a circuit, system, or device to the input, either to oppose the input (negative feedback) or to aid the input (positive feedback)” (Feedback, Dictionary.com, 2017). Feedback is also considered a method of communicating (Kio, 2015), due to the fact that it is a process which involves a ‘sender’ and a ‘receiver’ of some sort of message (Kio, 2015).

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

The T.O.T.E. Process – a model for improvement through feedback The origins of a feedback model as it relates to behavioral science can be traced to Miller, Galanter, and Pribram (1960), who created a model for a problem solving process, building off of Norbert Wiener’s (1948) theory on cybernetics and the “Feedback Loop” (Miller, et. al. 1960). This process, the “TOTE unit,” was introduced as a means of explaining human behavior as it related to “reflex action” – in other words, the process of stimulus and response (Miller, et. al. 1960). Adapted from Miller et. al. (1960)

// Chapter 02 – Key Definitions: Feedback and Holism

The steps in the T.O.T.E. (Test – Operate – Test – Exit) feedback loop process include: / Test – generate an output and get a sense of the result it produces; / Operate – intervene based on the input received; /

Test, again – generate another output with attemp ted improvements. If problem has not been solved, the process loops back to the Operate stage; If it is solved,

/ Exit – the loop is complete and the action is ended. One fundamental aspect of the TOTE unit is that once the process is completed, the overall entity is considered to be in a more “desirable state” (Miller, et. al., 1060). That is to say, the goal of the feedback loop is to cause repeated improvement. Feedback is the mechanism that makes the improvement possible since it identifies the problem and acts as the impetus to start the repair process.

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

‘Feedback,’ as used in this thesis As explained previously, the definition of feedback is very broad, depending on the context. While the topic at large is extremely interesting and has many facets which can be expanded upon, for the purposes of this Master thesis, I have chosen to limit my definition of feedback to the following: The interaction between a person (or people) with a product/service and the resulting information that is passed on to an ‘active receiver’ (company), who then interprets and uses that input to alter/ improve the product/service.

In this way, I am able to make a clear analysis of the type of interaction as well as the desired outcome of that interaction for its context. I believe that examining feedback in the context of exploring, building and testing a product or service is a concrete scenario that is relevant for companies, and there exists a great opportunity in this space for further study.

// Chapter 02 – Key Definitions: Feedback and Holism

H olism , D efined The term ‘holistic,’ as used in this thesis, is also important to clearly define. The holism movement is not yet mainstream, but the topic of adopting a ‘holistic approach’ to something is becoming increasingly relevant. Today, one can find a number of practitioners from various fields such as psychotherapy, education, anthropology, agriculture, medicine and business, who value their work an interconnected, through a multi-dimensional lens – relative both to their own fields as well as others. Holistic Approach to Agriculture and Soil Management – Mini Case Study There is a growing movement of farmers who are adopting a ‘Holistic Management’ approach to their work. Defined as a “value-based decision-making framework that integrates all aspects of planning for social, economic, and environmental considerations,” this approach has been helping small farms in the United States develop successful businesses, while maintaining the health of their land (Why Holistic Management, 2017). Using this approach, farmers have begun to rely on the natural ecosystem of the soil, and to recognize that one must work with, not against, the bacteria and other elements that naturally exist within healthy soil. In addition to profit, farmers who are implementing a holistic approach to agriculture are interested in preserving their wildlife habitat and taking into consideration all other aspects that are connected, but not directly related to their business (“Why Holistic Management,” 2017). As a result, they are able to adopt a more sustainable, realistic view of their livelihood – recognizing that everything is interconnected.

Origins of the term ‘Holistic’ The term ‘holistic’ is used to describe an overall way of viewing the relationship between entities. More specifically, as defined in the dictionary, it is the idea that “the whole is more than merely the sum of its parts, in theory or practice” (“Holistic,” Dictionary.com, 2017).

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The term ‘Holism’ was originally coined by J.C. Smuts (1927) in his book, Holism and Evolution. Serving as one of the early examples of multidisciplinary scholarly work, Smuts clearly proclaims in the preface of the first edition of his book, that his theory falls in-between the defined fields of science and philosophy. This is its strength: “It is a book neither of Science nor of Philosophy, but of some points of contact between the two….[and] it is the surface of contact between the two that will prove fruitful and creative for future progress in both (Smuts, 1927, p. ix). He argued that the principle of Holism, this “holistic tendency,” that everything in the world has, is “fundamental in nature” and that it “underlies the synthetic tendency in the universe” (Smuts, 1927, p. ix). Interestingly, Smuts wrote at the end of his preface in 1927 that he hopes that this concept would be researched and developed further by “more competent hands”

Holistic Approach to Business and Leadership According to Boas Transformational Leadership, a global consulting firm that specializes in business leadership, utilizing a holistic viewpoint demands that one is “interested in engaging and developing the whole person….physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.” It’s the notion that “the human being is multi-dimensional” (What do you mean by a holistic approach?, 2012). If this viewpoint seems unoriginal or self-explanatory, it is due to the fact that as a society we are functioning in a paradigm where industry borders are fading – and yet approaching issues in a multi-dimensional, multidisciplinary way is well-accepted. “We need to develop and disseminate an entirely new paradigm and practice of collaboration that supersedes the traditional silos that have divided governments, philanthropies and private enterprises for decades and replace it with networks of partnerships working together to create a globally prosperous society.” –Simon Mainwaring

// Chapter 02 – Key Definitions: Feedback and Holism

“Holistic Feedback,” As Used in this Thesis The growing holism movement is reflective of the fact that society is beginning to recognize the interconnectivity of all things. It represents an ideal – a desire for betterment and a willingness to let go of the ego of silos in pursuit of more meaningful existence. The term ‘holistic’ used in this thesis in conjunction with the term ‘feedback’ is used to describe an approach to collecting customer input that is more comprehensive – that is, it considers all human aspects (physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual) in how it is collected (i.e. what tools are used to collect the feedback) and in terms of what type of feedback these tools solicit (i.e. verbal, written or physical artifact). The term ‘Holistic Feedback’ ultimately represents the following three things: /

A recognition on the part of companies that their customers are well-rounded, complex, emotional, multidimensional human beings with important insights;

A real willingness and desire for companies to ask themselves how they can best engage and encourage their customers to provide more honest, qualitative, two-way, real-time, emotional, feedback on their products and services; and,

That companies acknowledge and believe that finding better ways to solicit feedback from customers is the key to thriving in this complex, ever-changing global environment.

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

A search for ‘Holistic Feedback’ online surprisingly yields no valuable results; however, it is a term that I feel intuitively passionate about and use wholeheartedly in this Master thesis with the knowledge that the concept it evokes to the reader can be oddly familiar and at the same time unfamiliar in its full meaning. Throughout this work, I invite readers in turn to think about the concept and come up with their own definition.

"Everything we see 足h ides another thing, we 足a lways want to see what is h 足 idden by what we see. 足T here is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us." / Rene Magritte surrealist painter

// Chapter 03 – Framing the Thesis Exploration

CHAPTER 03

F raming the T hesis E xploration

K ey Q uestions & A ssumptions To gain a sense of the topic of this Master thesis, below are a list of key questions that inspired this exploration, the main research question, and my underlying assumptions, which acknowledge the fact that this thesis exploration is based on certain established principles in which I believe, and upon which I base my work.

Key Questions /

Is collecting the opinions of a few willing people considered ‘accurate’ feedback? Is it sufficient enough to sen se how the majority of users feel?

Along those lines, is it important, even, to gauge everyone’s input (even if neutral) or is it necessary to solicit only strong opinions in order to figure out areas of improvement?

What are existing tools for collecting feedback and when would one best use them?

What contribution does the field of design provide? In other words, what added value do participatory design tools have when companies collect user feedback?

Finally, how might we go about collecting ‘holistic’ feedback in order to solicit more comprehensive, qualitative insights? 45

// Master Thesis â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Towards Holistic Feedback

Research Question How might companies collect more comprehensive, qualitative feedback from users on their products or services throughout the creation process in order to stay agile and competitive in an ever-changing, and complex world?

Underlying Assumptions

Commonly used feedback tools, such as surveys, are designed to solicit targeted, generic feedback from peole;

As such, they usually yield only the strong opinions from a group of people, more specifically, the extremely positive or extremely negative experiences, which isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t an accurate representation of all of the users;

People are diverse in personalities and emotional maturity and thus prefer different methods of giving their input to companies;

It is important for companies to also obtain feedback from those who normally do not give their opinion freely in order to create products and services that will differentiate them from competitors.

// Chapter 03 – Framing the Thesis Exploration

T hesis C ontext & S tructure The topic of feedback in general is vast and interconnected. One can explore it from various angles and write multitudes on the way it is carried out, why it is carried out, what one does with feedback when one has it and launch in-depth into other topics relating to human behavior and psychology. In order to narrow the scope for this thesis and use a fixed context for consistency of research, I have decided to focus on feedback carried out by companies who wish to improve already-existing products and services, or who wish to co-create something new with users at the start. In a way, this thesis is written for that audience, as it will also explain the design methodology and the benefit of design tools in the solicitation of feedback mechanisms. This thesis work is approached from a design perspective. As such, an established framework for the design process was used to go about this exploration – the Double Diamond Design Process. Coined the Design Council, this process was established in a 2005 research study as an amalgamated representation of the design process used by a number of companies (“Eleven Lessons,” 2017). The Double Diamond Design Process is broken up into four main parts: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. Each phase of the process in this visual model represents the divergent (expanding) and convergent (narrowing) quality of that particular step – echoing the type of thinking that the designer uses at that point (“Eleven Lessons,” 2017). Discover This stage marks the beginning of the project in which an initial idea or observation/source of interest is presented and user needs are explored. Define This stage marks the definition of the problem wherein the parameters are established and the project is clarified.

// Master Thesis â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Towards Holistic Feedback

Develop This stage marks when the design-led solution is first developed, improved through an iterative process, and initially tested internally for initial feedback. Deliver This stage marks the final part of the process when the final solution (product or service) is introduced and launched publicly. This is not the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;endâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; of the design process, however, as input is continuously collected and improved upon.

// Chapter 03 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Framing the Thesis Exploration

M ethodology & A pproach This thesis exploration used a combination of qualitative research and design research methodologies. In addition to extensive theoretical desk research, a mixed method approach of informal exploratory interviews, action research and an interdisciplinary qualitative survey were carried out.

// Master Thesis â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Towards Holistic Feedback

// Chapter 03 – Framing the Thesis Exploration

G aps

C urrent R esearch

‘Feedback’ is a term that everyone has an opinion or thought about, but the topic remains very much under examined from a practical perspective. It is more-or-less a “give-in” that companies will ask for feedback on a product or service but one has to wonder how comprehensive and effective their means for soliciting this input is, in the end. When conducting a preliminary search on the topic, one can easily find literature from the business or marketing field explaining how to create a customer or satisfaction survey; there is a community of educators interested in the topic as it relates to the student and professor/teacher relationship; and, probably the largest source of information, comes from the Human Resources field – discussing 360 Feedback and other means to internally rate employee and manager performance. If one expands the search, there are resources in the psychological, anthropological and sociological fields that have theories relating to the science behind human behavior as it pertains to communication, etc., but nothing specifically, that I found, that discusses feedback tools, classifies their use and provides a recommendation for when and how to use them. Similarly, the search on the term “Holistic Feedback” yields very little—mostly irrelevant results. This is intriguing as there is a growing number of practitioners from various disciplines who are increasingly curious about how to approach their fields in a more ‘holistic’ way (e.g. Holistic Medicine and Contemplative Psychotherapy) As designers, we talk a great deal about “user research” and “customer feedback” as steps in the creation process, and the recent buzzword of “co-creation” is tossed around quite a bit. Surprisingly, however, I found nothing substantive that points to the merging of these ideas in a way that outlines the process of collecting comprehensive feedback, and doing so in a novel way that invites the participation of those who are not naturally inclined to give their opinion.

// Master Thesis â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Towards Holistic Feedback

// Chapter 03 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Framing the Thesis Exploration

PART II CONTEXTUALIZING // Global Context // Organizational Context // Design Context

“Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.”

/ Victor Hugo

// Chapter 04 – Global Context

CHAPTER 04 G lobal C ontext

F eedback

in a

G lobal C ontext

Feedback is an age-old concept that can probably be traced back to the first signs of human collaboration. Over the centuries, the idea of feedback on its most basic level – providing someone with which you are in contact, with your opinion about something – has remained relatively the same, although one could argue that the mediums with which to give that input and the level of importance placed on feedback has shifted tremendously. In order to examine the importance of feedback today, one must first understand the environment in which we exist and the challenges that society faces moving forward.

C omplex P roblems It is apparent that our world is becoming increasingly complex and is in the midst of a societal transformation (Robb, 2000). There is a growing sense that the solutions of yesterday are not sufficient enough for the problems of today. In fact, globally, we are faced with seemingly unprecedented complex, or “wicked” problems: religious fundamentalism, environmental destruction, extremes between poverty and wealth, refugee migration crisis, educational disparities and a failing finan57

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

cial system, to name just a few (Esbjorn-Hargens, 2009; Buchanan, 1992). Originally coined by Horst Rittel in the 1960’s, “wicked problems” were described as a “class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing” (Rittel, qtd. in Buchanan, 1992).

Ten Properties of Wicked Problems: 1. Wicked problems have no definitive formulation, but every formulation of a wicked problem corresponds to the formulation of a solution; 2. Wicked problems have no stopping rules; 3. Solutions to wicked problems cannot be true or false, only good or bad; 4. In solving wicked problems there is no exhaustive list of admissible operations; 5. For every wicked problem there is always more than one possible explanation, with explanations depending on the Weltanschauung [worldview] of the designer; 6. Every wicked problem is a symptom of another, “higher level,” problem; 7. No formulation and solution of a wicked problem has a definitive test; 8. Solving a wicked problem is a “one shot” operation, with no room for trial and error; 9. Every wicked problem is unique; and, 10. The wicked problem solver has no right to be wrong – they are fully responsible for their actions. (Rittel, 1972 as qtd. directly in Buchanan, 1992).

// Chapter 04 – Global Context

In order to cope with the complexity of our modern age, one must adopt an integrated approach. This requires us to work in a multidimensional way and make connections where they weren’t before. This has opened up an interesting niche for interdisciplinary studies and a more ‘holistic’ approach to various subject matters. According to design management scholar Richard Buchanan, “the search for new integrative disciplines to complement the arts and sciences has become one of the central themes of intellectual and practical life in the twentieth century” (Buchanan, 1992). Attempting to approach solutions to any of today’s complex problems requires using theories such as Integral Theory or General System Theory because they find value in, and bring together, insights from all of the major human disciplines of knowledge, including the social sciences, natural science, humanities and the arts (Esbjorn-Hargens, 2009). Unidisciplinary, linear solutions no longer solve our problems and we are increasingly looking for new approaches that fit to multidimensional challenges.

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

I ntegrated T heoretical F rameworks “When we approach our problems on a universal, general systems basis and progressively eliminate the irrelevancies, somewhat as we peel petals from an artichoke, at each move we leave in full visibility the next most important layer of factors with which we must deal. We gradually uncover you and me in the heart of now. But evolution requires that we comprehend each layer in order to unpeel it.” -R. Buckminster Fuller

Integral Theory Ken Wilber, a well-known American scholar and philosopher, wrote extensively in the late 1970’s on what he coined Integral Theory in his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness. His overarching theory of drawing insights from different fields and applying them to a general context is refreshing, intuitive and is a large part of what this thesis work is based upon. The term ‘integral’ is difficult to clearly define as it is all-encompassing in its meaning, literally. It is better viewed as a general moralistic (not in the religious sense) approach to humanity and its challenges. Ken Wilber himself defines the concept as follows:” “The word integral means comprehensive, inclusive, nonmarginalizing, embracing. Integral approaches to any field attempt to be exactly that – they include as many perspectives, styles, and methodologies as possible within a coherent view of the topic. In a certain sense, integral approaches are “meta-paradigms,” or ways to draw together an already existing number of separate paradigms into a network of interrelated, mutually enriching perspectives.” (Wilber, from Frank Visser’s book, Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion, pp. xii-xiii, qtd. in Esbjorn-Hargens, 2009)

// Chapter 04 – Global Context

General System Theory Around the same time, in the book, General Systems Theory, Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy wrote about General System Theory (or System Theory), which built upon what German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel developed originally in the 19th century, and elaborated on its multidisciplinary applications (“System Theory,” 2016). System Theory is defined as “the transdisciplinary study of the abstract organizational phenomena, independent of their substance, type, or spatial or temporal scale of existence (“System Theory,” 2016).” In other words, it places emphasis on viewing the whole as a sum of its parts and studying systems in their natural environment. It acknowledges that systems are multifaceted and attempts to investigate and categorize all of the commonalities in “complex entities” (“System Theory,” 2016). A ‘system’ according to this theory is said to consist of the following four things: /

“Objects,” or elements of the system;

“Attributes,” or qualities;

“Internal relationships among its objects;” and,

/ “Environment”

(“System Theory,” 2016).

Structures in nature are made up of parts that interact and affect one another – they are able to, and are in fact built to, react to changing environments and develop accordingly. Their very survival depends on the balance between the elements and the ability to adjust and self-regulate. This requires an “open system” in order to allow for interaction with its environment (“System Theory,” 2016).

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

Drawing Parallels with Organizations Viewing systems from this lens leads us to draw parallels between the qualities of structures in nature and the qualities of man-made structures, such as organizations. Just as in nature, it is crucial in an organizational context to create a system that fluidly assesses information, processes it and transforms according to its environment. Organizations are in “continual stages of input, ‘throughput’ (processing), and output” (“System Theory,” 2016). Before coming full circle and making the clear link between tackling today’s “wicked problems” with an integrated approach and the role of design, it is necessary to establish another theoretical lens with which to view this thesis work: that is, that organizations are undergoing a massive paradigm shift which has potential to alter the way that business is conducted and the modus operandi of companies in the future.

// Chapter 04 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Global Context

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The most exciting breakthroughs of the twenty-first century will not occur because of technology, but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human.â&#x20AC;? / John Naisbitt

// Chapter 05 – Organizational Context

CHAPTER 05

O rganizational C ontext

F eedback C ontext

in an

O rganizational

Feedback, as a communication process, is at the core of organizational structures. It is the glue that binds the parts together and allows the organization to move forward in continual pursuit for improvement – both internally (in regards to employees) as well as externally (in regards to customers). In this ever-changing global landscape, faced with complex, “wicked problems,” it is increasingly apparent that we must re-evaluate how we structure our organizations in order to subsist: “Thriving or even surviving in this context requires a fundamental re-thinking of the meaning and application of our most basic assumptions about leading, and managing, business growth and survival…. Every element of business must continuously change in response to ever-changing demands (Robb, 2000).”

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

N ew O rganizational P aradigm Stages of Human Development According to Frederic Laloux, one of the leading scholars studying the history of organizational paradigms, we are in the midst of a societal transformation, or a new “stage” of human development (Laloux, 2014). Wilber argues that unlike “states,” stages of consciousness are permanent: “States represent the actual milestones of growth and development. Once you are at a stage, it is an enduring acquisition” (Wilber, 2006, p. 6). Laloux explains in his seminal work, Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next State of Human Consciousness, that these periods of intense societal growth are, however, not new. In fact, humanity has been evolving in this way dating back to the earliest forms of human interaction and collaboration (Laloux, 2014). These stages in human growth have an effect on every aspect of society (Laloux, 2014). In the forward to Laloux’s book, Integral Theorist Ken Wilber explains that “[many researchers have] found consistently that humanity evolves in stages,” and that these stages have a remarkable effect on all areas of human development: “Each of these general [developmental] stages has a different set of values, needs, motivations, morals, worldviews, ego structures, societal types, cultural networks, and other fundamental characteristics (Laloux, 2014, p.x).” One of the outcomes of these developmental stages are a plethora of new, bold ideas and the emergence of a radically different state of consciousness, or large-scale societal ‘Zeitgeist.’ In order to adapt to the times, society has to organically come up with new ways of collaboration that fit with the needs of the times (Laloux, 2014). “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.” –Peter Drucker

// Chapter 05 – Organizational Context

Teal Organizations and Self-Management We live in a new age – the age of an emerging organizational paradigm – one that is reflective of our shifting state of awareness as a society in what is needed to move forward collaboratively and productively. Since organizations are ultimately made up of people and ideals, it is natural that they are, in a way, a mirror of us as we are currently: “Organizations as we know them today are simply the expression of our current world-view, our current stage of development. There have been other models before, and all evidence indicates there are more to come (Laloux, 2014, p.15).” The focus of Laloux’s work is around researching companies that operate under this new paradigm, or what he calls “Teal” Organizations. According to Laloux, Teal Organizations have three main differentiating qualities from past organizational models: self-management, a prevailing sense of ‘wholeness,’ and evolutionary purpose (Laloux, 2014). Self-management Teal organizations function, even on a large scale, without hierarchy – they feed off of peer relationships and a general culture of trust (Laloux, 2014). Wholeness Whereas in previous organizational paradigms employees were expected to show up to work with their “professional” self at the forefront, leaving behind all else personal or emotional, Teal Organizations thrive on employees coming to work as their authentic selves (Laloux, 2014). This means, on a very basic level, that people are encouraged to “reclaim [their] inner wholeness and bring all of who [they] are to work (Laloux, 2014, p.56).” Evolutionary Purpose Rather than having a leader or group of leaders dictate the direction of a company, as in previous models, Teal Organizations grow and develop organically (Laloux, 2014). Everyone in the company has a right to voice their concerns and 67

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

participate in creating the vision of the future of the organization (Laloux, 2014). While this at first sounds lofty and unattainable, in his book, Laloux studies 11 companies that are currently operating under this new organizational paradigm and who have concretely implemented day-to-day, practical applications of the principles stated above, as well as one organizational model, known as Holocracy.

“Self-organization is not a startling new feature of the world. It is the way the world has created itself for billions of years. In all of human activity, self-organization is how we begin. It is what we do until we interfere with the process and try to control one another.” -Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers Holocracy, defined Holocracy, as defined by Holocracy.org, is “a complete, packaged system for self-management in organizations” where “traditional management hierarchy” is replaced with “a new peer-to-peer ‘operating system’ that increases transparency, accountability, and organizational agility” (“How it Works,” Holocracy.org, 2017).

Organizations as Autopoietic, Living Systems Going a bit further in-depth into the concept of self-management, it is clear that organizations are made up of parts and those parts play a crucial role in the functioning of the entity. The way that the parts interact, in fact, dictate the whole. In order to better conceptualize the way that organizations function, culturally, it is helpful to think of metaphors to describe the various organizational paradigms. According to Laloux, the so-called “Orange Organizations” are likened to machines in the way that they operate and “Green Organizations” are likened to families (Laloux, 2014). Going one step further in the metaphors, organizations that operate under the emerging paradigm of today – Teal Organizations – are likened to living systems (Laloux 2014).

// Chapter 05 – Organizational Context

“Life, in all its evolutionary wisdom, manages ecosystems of unfathomable beauty, ever evolving toward more wholeness, complexity, and consciousness.” –Frederic Laloux Humberto Maturana, a biologist and scholar on the behavior of living systems, presented his groundbreaking research on this topic, asserting that living systems operate in autonomy by “re-creating” or “re-generating” themselves (Maturana, 1974). In order for organizations to undergo this regeneration process, having an integrated approach to communication between the parts of the system (or organization) is paramount (“System Theory,” 2016). Any input creates an output and adjusts, using feedback, in a loop-like cycle. Feedback is, after all, at its core, a communication process. Communication is not static and the act of giving and receiving (and ultimately, using) feedback to organically pivot and adapt plays an key role.

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

Resilient Organizations Building on the belief that organizations are “living communities,” in the organizational development realm, practitioners have been studying and discussing the development of “Resilient Organizations” (Robb, 2000). Coined by Dean Robb (2000), the framework stemmed from “complex adaptive systems” or “learning systems,” and analyzed how the most successful companies were able to overcome challenges in a more robust way. Essentially, a Resilient Organization is one that is able to adapt quickly to change and use its learnings as a starting point for growth. According to Robb, Resilient Organizations have the capability to do the following two things concurrently: /

“Deliver excellent performance against current goals;” and,

“Effectively innovate and adapt to rigid, turbulent changes in markets and technologies”

(Robb, 2000, p.27).

The theory behind the success in Resilient Organizations lies in its hybrid approach – it combines the best qualities of “Performance-Driving Organizations” with “Adaptation-Driven Organizations” in order to build a culture that is both based on strong foundations but has a strong ability to remain flexible and adapt (Robb, 2000). Furthermore, Robb argues that working towards more ‘resilient’ organizations is especially crucial now, in “the most amazing period of transformational change the world has ever seen....[where] thriving or even surviving in this context requires a fundamental re-thinking of the meaning and application of our most basic assumptions about leading, and managing, business growth, and survival” (Robb, 2000, p. 27).

// Chapter 05 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Organizational Context

“The natural sciences are concerned with how things are…. Design, on the other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be.”

/ Herbert A. Simon

// Chapter 06 – Design Context

CHAPTER 06 D esign C ontext

F eedback

in the

D esign C ontext

Feedback is at the core of the design process, as it is one of the key elements that assist in the creation of a new product or service. Without feedback, design is limited to a soloed idea of what the user wants. There was a time when designers were limited to creating physical objects based on what they perceived people wanted; the field of design, however, has shifted greatly and feedback is playing an ever-important role in co-creating superior products and services for customers.

C hanging D efinition

D esign

From the Design of Components to the Design of Contexts Just as there is a paradigm shift occurring in organizational behavior and collaboration, the field of design is also in a state of immense transition. This change is economic in nature and is a product of manufacturing moving to the East, leaving the West to shift “toward a knowledge economy model focused on technology and services development” (Muratovski, 2015, p. 120).

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

Traditionally, the design field was reserved for specialists working with a certain medium to create a physical outcome. In the past few decades, however, design has moved from being viewed predominantly as the creation of products – having to do with aesthetics and usability – to the design of processes. In other words, the term ‘design’ is frequently being used as a verb rather than a noun and is used in a much broader context – not just designing ‘components,’ not even only designing ‘connections,’ but going one step further to design ‘contexts’ or systems (Hughes, 2016).

Hughes, 2016

// Chapter 06 – Design Context

“Everyone Designs” But Few “Make” One of the first scholars to link the field of design to the creation of processes was Nobel Peace Prize winner Herbert A. Simon. In his revolutionary work, The Sciences of the Artificial (1969), he boldly asserted that the act of ‘designing’ is more universal that previously thought, and related the process of a designer to that of other fields: “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training….Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, business, education, law, and medicine, are all centrally concerned with the process of design” (Simon, 1996 p. 111). At the same time that “everyone designs,” American Industrial Designer, George Nelson, argued that the essence of the design profession remains the same – the act of creating something: “The designer may think of himself as a farmer or a machinist, or he may call himself a designer. It doesn’t matter particularly as long as there is someone around with the urge and the competence to give form to an idea” (Nelson, 1957, p. 18). From these two different but complimenting definitions, one could make the argument that while the design process is universally applicable, the making or creating function of a designer is what remains unique – in other words, the ability to make an idea or a vision come to reality, is what distinguishes a designer from someone applying the design mindset to another field. Buchanan (2015) aptly reminds us that Design Thinking does not replace the ‘making and doing’ that designers are originally known for; rather, the Design Thinking process bolsters the designers’ role by emphasizing the thinking part before the doing (Buchanan, 2015).

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

Design as an Approach to Solving Complex Problems “Designers have shifted from being stylists to becoming professional ‘problem solvers’ (Muratovski, 2015 p. 119). Following Herbert Simon, other scholars have expanded upon the idea that designing is more than simply creating an aesthetically pleasing product, but is also an approach for solving complex problems. Notably, L. Bruce Archer, a British mechanical engineer and design research scholar, wrote extensively on this subject. Archer defined these complex problem, which he called “ill-defined” problems, as “one in which the requirements, as given, do not contain sufficient information to enable the designer to arrive at a means of meeting those requirements simply by transforming, reducing, optimizing or superimposing the given information alone (Archer, 1979, p. 17).

Design Thinking While the shift in the primary definition of design happened gradually over a few decades, in 1991, a man named David Kelley founded the strategic design firm, IDEO, and began marketing “Design Thinking” as a key offering to clients. Design Thinking is defined by Gruber, de Leon, George, and Thompson as “a human-centered approach to innovation that puts the observation and discovery of often highly nuanced, even tacit, human needs right at the forefront of the innovation process” (Gruber et al., 2015, p. 1). The methodology places significance on finding multidisciplinary, holistic solutions to problems that “considers not just the technological system constraints but also the sociocultural system context” (Gruber et al., 2015 p. 1). The belief is that when all components – desirability (human needs), viability (business needs), and feasibility (technological capabilities) are considered, an innovative space is created (Brown, 2009).

// Chapter 06 – Design Context

(Brown, 2009)

Essentially, Kelley and his colleagues took the creative process that designers had been using for decades to creatively approach problems, packaged the concept so that it would be easily understood by the general public, and began publicizing its effectiveness when applied to other disciplines. It quickly caught on in the business world. IDEO’s methodological design approach has become wildly trendy over the past 5-7 years, and, as a result, it is now more-or-less widely accepted that adopting a human-centered approach to business challenges creates value. Since IDEO, there have been a great deal of modified versions of the Design Thinking process – ranging from between four to seven steps – and a number of niche design firms who operate in this space. Regardless of semantics, however, the basic schematic is more or less the same: the steps allow companies to follow an easy-to-learn, standardized process with the freedom to reflect and iterate throughout.

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

At the same time that there is a set methodological approach proposed by Design Thinking, Tim Brown, President and CEO of IDEO, reminds us that “there is no ‘one best way’ to move through the process….the continuum of innovation is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps” (Brown, 2009, p. 16).

Design as an Approach to Creating Superior Experiences Service Design In the age of the Experience Economy (as defined in Part I), companies place more and more focus on designing products and services with a human-centered approach – that is, not just designing the product itself, but thinking through the human experience around the product, from beginning to end. To adapt to this shift in focus, a specialization of the design field emerged around 20 years ago and has been evolving ever since to being considered of immense value to companies today: Service Design. “Over time, for many leading businesses, merely developing the same goods and services was no longer seen as enough to guarantee success in the highly competitive global market. As a result, a new stage of business innovation focused on creating experiences, and developing systems for living, working, and entertaining. This called for new currents of thinking that would challenge existing business models….Design methodologies once used to design products are now being used to design systems, processes, services, digital interfaces, entertainment, communications, and other kinds of human-centered activities” (Muratovski, 2015 pp. 119-120). There are many definitions of Service Design, as it is ultimately “an interdisciplinary approach that combines different methods and tools from various disciplines” and is being continually defined and re-defined by practitioners around the world (Stickdorn and Schneider, Eds., 2011, p. 29).

// Chapter 06 – Design Context

According to Birgit Mager, one of the leading experts on Service Design and the President of the Service Design Network (SDN), Service Design “aims to ensure service interfaces are useful, usable and desirable from the client’s point of view and effective, efficient and distinctive from the supplier’s point of view” (Mager, 2009, qtd. in Stickdorn and Schneider, Eds., 2011, p.31). Based on Mager’s definition, Service Design directly relates to the topic of feedback as it is built directly into the process. In order to design a service, one must work with and/or use methods to ask the customer for ongoing feedback. Ultimately, one is designing the service for people and needs their input!

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

Principles of Service Design Thinking and Holism Since there is no agreed-upon, one-fits-all definition of Service Design, Marc Stickdorn, Service Design expert and practitioner, lists five principles of, what he calls, “Service Design Thinking,” which he believes illustrates what Service Design stands for: / User-Centered – services should be experienced through the customer’s eyes / Co-Creative – all stakeholders should be included in the service design process / Sequencing – the service should be visualized as a sequence of interrelated actions / Evidencing – intangible services should be visualized in terms of physical artifacts / Holistic – the entire environment of a service should be considered

(Principles taken directly from Stickdorn and Schneider, Eds., 2011, p.34)

Interestingly, Stickdorn (2011) uses the word ‘Holistic’ in the fifth principle to describe Service Design. He expands upon this term in the book, This is Service Design Thinking: Basics, Tools, Cases, by explaining that despite the fact that designing services can seem intangible, “they take place in a physical environment” and that “customers perceive this environment with all their senses” (Stickdorn and Schneider, Eds., 2011, p.44). In order to work holistically when designing a service, therefore, one should set the “intention” to “see the wider context in which a service process takes place” (Stickdorn and Schneider, Eds., 2011, p.44).

// Chapter 06 – Design Context

“D esignerly ” Q ualities If design, as it is defined and used in this thesis, is a model or approach for going about creating something (a product or service) to fulfill a human need, what is it exactly that makes it different than other fields, such as engineering? It is the dual ability to ‘think’ and then ‘do.’ In order to effectively bring these new ideas to fruition, designers are said to possess a set of unique qualities, or a designer mindset. “Good design…is a manifestation of the capacity of the human spirit to transcend its limitations. It enriches its maker through the experience of creating, and it can enrich the viewer or user who is equipped to respond to what it has to say….It reaches its full potential when it is experienced by a person fully equipped to understand and enjoy what it has to communicate.” – George Nelson (1957) To understand what makes the field of design unique, one must briefly examine the design process. The broad definition of the “Design Process” is when a “form” is created from the “interactions between actors and their environments” (Design Dictionary, 2008, p. 128). From this perspective, the designer is an intermediary between actors and how they interact with their environment in order to produce something. If a designer must effectively observe interactions, understand relational dynamics and create something, designers must approach the process from the outset with a very different lens than other professions. This brings us to the design mentality, or “designerly qualities,” as they are commonly known. The term, “designerly qualities” was first coined by Archer in 1979: “My present belief, formed over the past six years, is that there exists a designerly way of thinking and communicating that is both different from scientific and scholarly ways of thinking and communicating, and as powerful as scientific and scholarly methods of enquiry, when applied to its own kinds of problems” (Archer, 1979, p. 17).

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From this description, therefore, we can conclude that the difference between designers and non-designers lies in the approach or mentality. Design is, at its core:

Highly iterative

Emphasis is placed on the fact that there is no final ‘solution;’ rather, one must go through a continual process of creating and testing in small increments – even refreshing ideas over time in order to adapt to changing needs.

Collaborative

The epitaph ‘No man is an island’ rings true in the design process – designers generally work in teams.

Interdisciplinary

Great value is seen in using inspiration, methods and expertise from different fields in the design process.

Human-centered

Design is approached from the perspective that the end result is ultimately used by a human being and should, therefore, be reflective of a certain unmet need.

Action-oriented

Designers place an emphasis on doing rather than talking. Often, small experiments are carried out or low-fidelity prototypes are created in order to spark initial dialogue. This stems from the idea that we learn by doing.

(Gruber, et al., 2015)

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Furthermore, taking into account the nature of the design process – “where the end goal is not explicitly defined at the outset of the process” (Design Dictionary, 2008, p. 129) – there are certain qualities that designers inherently possess or nurture in themselves in order to be successful at what they do: /

Embracing uncertainty and ambiguity;

Using the power of five senses;

Engaging deep empathy;

Playfully bringing ideas to life; and,

Creating new meaning from complexity.

(Taken directly from Murphy, 2015, cited originally by Bason, 2014).

The qualities and mindset listed above along with the ability to ‘think’ and ‘do’ make designers one of the most sought-after candidates for positions nowadays in management and strategic planning.

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(Press and Cooper, 2003)

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R ole

D esign

O rganizations

As companies are prompted to adopt more adaptive practices to be able to shift with customer needs, and society is increasingly faced with complex problems, the field of design has stepped up in the past few decades to play a major role in organizations in regards to problem solving and building capacity to be agile. In many ways, this changing role of designers is evidence that there is a major shift in organizational culture (Buchanan, 2015).

The Value of Design in Business Affirmed by Birgit Mager in her opening remarks at the 2017 Service Design for Innovation (SDIN) conference, “companies are now developing internal capabilities” and acquiring design firms because we are seeing a shift in the role of design (Mager, 2017). Reflective of the newfound appreciation for design in organizational contexts, a relatively new field in design, known as Design Management, has been quickly gaining momentum. Design Management, defined Design Management is defined as “the implementation of design as a formal activity within an organization, with a clearly defined relationship to corporate goals, and explicit systems of management, monitoring, and resource allocation. Also, an academic discipline which investigates the commercial and organizational context of design” (Press and Cooper, 2003, p. 204).

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Models Depicting the Shifting Role of Design in Organizations A number of large corporations are now seeing the value of design and implementing design in the organization to varying degrees. In order to visualize and attempt to map these levels of involvement and their benefits, Sabine Junginger (2009) presented a model to visually represent the role of design in organizations, demonstrating the trend of an increased function and responsibility that designers play, strategically.

(Junginger, 2009)

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Similarly, The Danish Design Centre (DDC) created “The Design Ladder” in 2001. The four steps in the model imply that as a company moves higher up the ladder, the value of design increases: “The Design Ladder is based on the hypothesis that there is a positive link between higher earnings, placing a greater emphasis on design methods in the early stages of development and giving design a more strategic position in the company’s overall business strategy” (“The Design Ladder,” 2015).

("Danish Design Center," 2015)

In fact, it is now proven that design offers concrete monetary value to companies. The 2015 Design Management Institute’s “Design Value Index Study” reported a 211% return over the S&P 500 from 16 publicly traded companies who are considered “design-centric” (Rae, 2016). 87

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Somewhat similar to Junginger (2009) and The Design Ladder (2015)’s descriptions of the level of involvement of design in companies, the Design Value Index listed six distinct criteria that companies must meet in order to be placed on their list: 1. Design operates at scale across the enterprise; 2. Design holds a prominent place on the company org chart, and either sits on the leadership team or directly reports to a leadership team member; 3. Experienced executives manage the Design function; 4. Design sees a growing level of investment to support its growing influence; 5. Design enjoys senior leadership support from the top tier of the organization; and, 6. The company has been publicly-traded on a U.S. exchange for the last ten years and thereby adheres to GAAP accounting rules. (Criteria taken directly from Rae, 2016) Furthermore, in a recent Forrester research report, companies have placed “improving customer experience” as one of the top three priorities in 2017, alongside “revenue growth” and “cost reduction” (Visitacion, et al., 2016). Clearly, as society is faced with increasingly complex problems, companies are looking to cultivate the design mindset and imbed the design process into their organizations in order to adapt quickly to shifting needs and innovate – and it is working! This brings us to the next part in this thesis: exploring what role feedback plays in the design process, examining existing feedback models, and creating a typology of feedback methods/tools to solicit the feedback that companies need in order to design superior products and services.

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PART III CLASSIFYING // On Feedback // Typology of Feedback

“Many a man would rather you heard his s tory than granted his request.”

/ Phillip Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield

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CHAPTER 07 O n F eedback

Q ualities

F eedback

As was outlined in Part I of this thesis, the term “feedback” has a very broad definition – it means something different to virtually everyone – and the original term is traced back to cybernetics, or computer science. This has, naturally, posed a challenge for me throughout this thesis project, as I have had to continually define the term clearly for others and re-examine my own definition of feedback as used in this work. After much thought and research, I have come to the conclusion that while the context in which I use feedback in this thesis differs from the original definition, in many ways, the core of the concept remains the same: feedback is the act of receiving some sort of input or response to the output one created in order to, in turn, improve the output. Simply put, feedback is the key to methodologically go about improving something. During this process of reflection and revision, I identified ten general principles or underlying qualities of feedback, which are listed and explained below:

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

1. Feedback is…a way for “problem finding” Feedback is not just a way to test solutions, but also a way of need-finding, and thus, a way to identify problems. “Problem finding,” which was used by Muratovski to describe the next big shift in the role of design in organizations, is one step beyond problem solving in the sense that it is the ability to ascertain or perceive possible problems before beginning the process to solve them (Muratovski, 2015). Methods such as observation and design ethnography and having a design mindset (as outlined in Part II) allows designers to do this. In order to find a problem, one must use feedback methods – that is, methods by which one interacts with the customers in order to determine areas for improvement. 2. Feedback is…a way to create innovative solutions Connected to principle #1 above, feedback is ultimately a way to come up with innovative solutions. After using feedback methods to find problems in the beginning of the creative process, feedback is used in the ideation, creation and testing phases to help the design team to come up with new and improved products/services. Without actual user feedback, products/services would take much longer to produce and improve. 3. Feedback is…a way to remain “adaptive” Feedback between people is a dynamic communication process – it acts as a way for us to sense how we are doing at any given time based on those around us – we rely on it. Similarly, according to Herbert Simon, feedback is a way for companies to continually keep a ‘pulse’ on predictions and expectations, and shift where needed (Simon, 1996, p. 35). Simon spoke about the importance of building “adaptive systems” capable of reacting to unexpected circumstances, asserted that feedback is used as a way to “correct for unexpected or incorrectly predicted events” (Simon, 94

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1996, p. 35). If feedback is carried out correctly, it can help companies sense how their product/service is or will be perceived by customers. 4. Feedback is…complex The act of giving feedback is driven by human behavior, which is difficult to study and generalize. The reason(s) why someone would or would not provide feedback is the product of many different factors and companies can only do so much to encourage participation. With this in mind, we can attempt to study common behavior and adopt an interdisciplinary approach to exploring how to best carry out soliciting feedback from people. 5. Feedback is…iterative There are no set guidelines on how often to solicit feedback – it is up to the entity asking and depends heavily on the goal of collecting the input. Feedback can be used before the final design of a product/ service, during the entire process in order to make small adjustments, and/or after the product/service is designed and launched in order to test its success. All three of these general scenarios require different time needed to carry out the solicitation of feedback and different methods to use when engaging with customers. 6. Feedback is…a way to improve processes Relating to the process being iterative, in the end, the common aim of collecting feedback should be to make some sort of improvement, which requires companies to realize what designers inherently build into their work: there is no “end” to the creative process – needs change and solutions are not final.

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7. Feedback is…biased Applied to processes, feedback is a term used to describe the method with which one expresses an opinion to the source based on one’s understanding of the output. The ‘understanding’ is important to emphasize because when we talk about feedback in the context of this thesis – i.e. the sharing of information between a company and customers – it’s implied that both the giver of the feedback and the receiver of the feedback must interpret or contextualize what the other has said, done or presented. In other words, feedback is biased on both ends – the ‘giver of feedback’ is offering up their personal experience, and the ‘receiver of feedback’ is interpreting that reaction to match what they were consciously or subconsciously looking for in the response. This act of interpreting feedback is a “highly contextual and relational process” (Design Dictionary, 2008, p.153). Additionally, according to Joe Ferry, Head of Design and Service Design at Virgin Atlantic, feedback is limited to people’s experiences and should therefore be taken into account when testing a product/ service: “consumers are only able to react to what they have already experienced” (“Eleven Lessons,” 2017). Although bias is often spoken of as a negative trait in the social sciences, in relation to this topic it should be viewed neutrally. When talking about feedback between human beings based on emotions and personal experience, bias is a given that should be taken into account and respected - not dismissed as “unscientific” or “irrelevant.” 8. Feedback is “a gift” Building off of principle #7 above, when someone opens up and provides you with their feedback, you should view it as something desirable and positive – even if it is negative! In a design context, feedback is a method built into the creative process in order to act as the guiding post for the product or service. 96

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Customers, or “users,” are at the forefront of the design process and are often brought in to co-create, or bring to life their ideas side-by-side with the team. As such, designers view customer feedback to be of utmost importance and value. In fact, during my informal interviews, two design professionals separately used the word “gift” to describe how they view receiving user feedback (Chu, 2016 and Rosenbusch, 2016). Feedback, even negative, should be viewed as a gift to aid in the improvement of your product or service. 9. Feedback is…emotional Related also to principle #7, feedback is emotional, as it is based off of personal experiences, which are viewed through the lens of individuals. Something can trigger one person but not phase another – it is entirely personal, and, often highly emotional. One thing to understand in relation to collecting emotional feedback is that customers have varying degrees of self-awareness and emotional clarity. This requires the designer or market researcher to act as a facilitator to help draw out the latent insights. Methods using semiotics, roleplaying or contextual interviews using the “5 Why’s” can help customers to dig deeper inside themselves to provide companies with underlying feelings about a product or service. 10. Feedback is…necessary And lastly, feedback is necessary. As was touched on a few times previously in this thesis, we need feedback – socially, in order to interact effectively with our peers; biologically, in order to adapt and shift to changing environmental states; and in business, in order for products/services to improve and remain relevant and valuable in a shifting global market.

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

F eedback S cales : W orking T owards M ore C omprehensive I nput When conducting research on existing feedback techniques, I found that the most commonly used method is surveys: questionnaires and interviews. There is a wealth of information that already exists relating to creating the best survey, differentiating between qualitative and quantitative data, and asking closed vs. open-ended questions, to name a few. I assert, however, that these methods as they are carried out today, are not sufficient in alone capturing customer feedback. So why are surveys the most popular method for soliciting feedback? /

They are quantitative (i.e. easier to calculate, rate and report on than qualitative research);

They are relatively quick to deploy – don’t require a lot of time to complete on the part of the customer;

They are easy to make (depending on the level of depth of information requested); and,

They are generally a reliable way of doing surface-level gauging of current thoughts and opinions from customers.

Overall, they are sufficient if one wants to get a superficial sense of how people are feeling about a product/service. They are, however, a one-way communication channel, static, and usually impersonal.

Types of Survey Scales Before launching into alternative ways to solicit feedback, I found it helpful to know about the three main types of scaling systems used in questionnaires: Likert, Stapel, and Semantic Differential. Each seem to expand upon the other, with the Semantic Differential reputed to be “the most widely recommended technique to measure 98

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the perception of concepts, opinions and attitudes” (“The Semantic Differential,” 2015). Likert-Scaling The Likert Scale is based on an evaluation of how much someone agrees or disagrees with a statement (“Likert Scale,” 2017). The left hand side of the scale is marked “strongly disagree” and the right hand side of the scale is marked “strongly agree” (“Likert Scale,” 2017). Coined by Rensis Likert, it provides a way to “identify the attitude of people towards the given stimulus objects by asking them the extent to which they agree or disagree with them” (“Likert Scale,” 2017). The advantage of this type of scale is that it is easy to create and dispense (“Likert Scale,” 2017). The major disadvantage, however, is that is it time-consuming due to the fact that the respondents must carefully read and reflect on the statements provided before answering, which also leaves room for misinterpretation of the meaning (“Likert Scale,” 2017).

// Master Thesis – Towards Holistic Feedback

Stapel Scaling The Stapel Scale is defined as a “unipolar (one adjective) rating scale designed to measure the respondent’s attitude towards the object or event” (“Stapel Scale,” 2017). It provides the respondent with 10 points on a line ranging from -5 to +5, without a neutral (0) point (“Stapel Scale,” 2017). Named after Jan Stapel, this technique is usually represented vertically with the chosen adjective in the middle, visually prompting the respondent about the meaning of the numbers above and below (“Stapel Scale,” 2017). The idea is that the respondent should think through how “accurate” or “inaccurate” the adjective is relating to the product/service (“Stapel Scale,” 2017). Similar to the Semantic Differential Scale but with only one adjective, the Stapel Scale is similarly analyzed (“Stapel Scale,” 2017). The advantage of this scale is that it can be deployed without extensive pre-testing of the adjectives (unlike the Semantic Differential) and can also be given over the telephone (“Stapel Scale,” 2017). The disadvantage is that some find it to be “complex and confusing” (“Stapel Scale,” 2017).

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Semantic Differential Scaling The Semantic Differential Scale is a rating scale giving the respondent 7 points to choose from between two bipolar adjectives (“Semantic Differential Scale,” 2017). This type of scale is believed to better rate the “intensity and direction of the meaning of concepts, opinions, and attitudes” (“The Semantic Differential,” 2015). First proposed by Charles E. Osgood (1957), the Semantic Differential is used to produce rating results that are “more reactive in nature than sensory, more broadly affective than discriminatively cognitive, and thus closer to connotative than to denotative aspects of meaning” (Osgood, 1964). Osgood was interested in finding ways to “subject meaning to quantitative measurement,” as he noted in his seminal work, The Measurement of Meaning, that up until then, the term “meaning” was dismissed by psychologists as non-scientific (Osgood, 1957). He created this scale based on the belief that people need a frame of reference that everyone can relate to in order to judge the difference: “Indeed, it is only by virtue of this common frame of reference that differences between people for the same concept and between concepts for the same people can be specified” (Osgood, 1964). The advantage is that it is proven to out-perform the other types of scales on “robustness,” “reliability,” and “validity” (“The Semantic Differential,” 2017). It is also proven to be a good tool to reduce the time it takes to complete a survey (“The Semantic Differential,” 2017). The disadvantage is that the two adjectives need to go through rigorous testing to determine them an appropriate opposite pair (Verhagen, et al., 2015).

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E motional F eedback : F illing the G aps in T raditional M ethods Survey techniques, as outlined in the previous section, tend to rely on respondents’ reading, thinking and writing skills. This is limiting, as it is common knowledge that people communicate and process information in varying ways.

Semiotic Feedback: Using Emotions and Metaphors Some researchers in the market research field are catching on to the fact that traditional feedback methods are not sufficient for capturing customer insights for this very reason. Gerald Zaltman is one of the main voices in this arena. Customers Don’t Think in Words (And Other Fallacies) Zaltman advocates that customers do not think in words, rather through images and metaphors (Zaltman, 2003). He believes that the current way in which feedback is solicited – placing an emphasis on reason rather than emotion – is creating a knowledge gap between companies and their customers, accounting for the reason why approximately 80% of all new products/services fail or fall short in the first six months of their release (Zaltman, 2003, p. 3). “Over 80% of all market research serves mainly to reinforce existing conclusions, not to test or develop new possibilities.” -Rohit Deshpandé, Marketing Science Institute (cited in Zaltman, 2003, p. 7)

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As is evidenced in Zaltman’s extensive work on this topic, it is important for the market research industry to realize that “data quantity does not assure data quality” and that in order to truly understand customers, companies need to collect more than “surface-level information” (Zaltman, 2003, p.16). In his book, "How Customers Think: Essential Insights Into the Mind of the Market,” Zaltman lays out his Six Marketing Fallacies, which explain how the industry fails to understand their customers: 1. Consumers think in a well-reasoned or rational, linear way 2. Consumers can readily explain their thinking and behavior 3. Consumers’ minds, brains, bodies, and surrounding culture and society can be adequately studied independently of one another 5. Consumers’ memories accurately represent their experiences 6. Consumers think in words 7. Consumers can be “injected” with company messages and will interpret these messages as marketers intend

(Taken directly from Zaltman, 2003, pp. 6-14)

Other Means of Communication The fallacies above regarding customers’ ability to think and explain does not imply that customers are dumb and do not know what they want – on the contrary! Zaltman believes that it takes more than simply asking customers what they think in order to collect useful insights (Zaltman, 2003). “A lot goes on in our minds that we’re not aware of…Most of what influences what we say and do occurs below the level of awareness. That’s why we need new techniques: to get at hidden knowledge – to get at what people don’t know they know.” –Gerald Zaltman, as qtd. in Fast Company, 1998

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It is a well-understood that human beings communicate as much as 80% via nonverbal means, such as touch, posture, sense of time, gaze, etc. (Zaltman, 2003). All of these means of communicating play a part in feedback, as they are clues to the market researcher or designer about a customer’s overall feelings about a product/service.

Zaltman’s central ideas are around the importance of using images to evoke metaphors, which he defines as “the representation of one thing in terms of another” (Zaltman, 2003, p. 37). Similar to the purpose of the Semantic Differential Scale, metaphors are a means for our brains to compare things to each other and use them as a frame of reference to sense how we feel. It uses very different internal skills than speaking, listening or writing – metaphors evoke imagination (Zaltman, 2003). Holistic Market Research – Factoring in Emotions Overall, Zaltman encourages marketers to approach research from a new perspective, emphasizing the importance of connecting with customers and understanding them in a more holistic way (Zaltman, 2003). In his book, Zaltman proposes a new model illustrating the importance of viewing marketing as integrated: acknowledging the mind-brain-body-society connection (Zaltman, 2003, p.29).

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Zaltman, 2003

When any of the four components in the triangle change, it affects the others, since our thoughts and opinions are connected internally – whether they are connected consciously or unconsciously (Zaltman, 2003). One significant aspect in this approach is paying more attention to gathering people’s emotions. In traditional market research methods, emotions are not taken into account (Zaltman, 2003). This is based largely on the fact that the methods used do not solicit those responses: “Consumers share only the logical aspects of their decision-making process because marketers ask for those aspects – and conscious, logical thoughts are much easier to articulate than emotions” (Zaltman, 2003, p. 39).

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The Unconscious Mind and Hidden Emotions Why is this important? It is believed that about 95% of our thoughts, emotions and learning happens in the “unconscious mind” ( Zaltman, 2003) and customer emotions are very important, as they often drive purchasing decisions and can act as the differentiator between products: “…the experiential or emotional quality of products is becoming more and more important for differential advantage in the marketplace because products are now often similar with respect to technical characteristics, quality, and price” (Desmet, 2003). Furthermore, emotions are seen as a byproduct of “appraisal processes” in the cognitive emotion psychology field (Desmet, 2003) and is thus important to take into consideration when trying to solicit feedback. In order to tackle this challenge, Zaltman encourages market researchers to use metaphors to assist in bringing people’s latent thoughts and ideas to the surface: “By evoking and analyzing metaphors from consumers, marketers can draw back the curtains on consumers’ tacit knowledge, encourage consumers to look in, and then share what they see so that managers can create enduring value for customers in response to the insights revealed” (Zaltman, 2003, p.41). As a result of his theories, Zaltman created the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), which attempts to “uncover people’s hidden thoughts about the products they use” using visual images which evoke metaphors (Eakin, 2002). Furthermore, this process allows emotions that are hidden, to emerge. It is believed that we all have a set idea of which emotions are acceptable to express and which are not, which shapes how we communicate our feelings (Stone, et al., 1999). If someone is not used to being self-reflective and emotionally present, oftentimes their more subtle emotions are covered by a more common, strong emotion, such as love or anger (Stone, et al., 1999). Below is a list of some of these hard-to-find emotions, according to Stone, et al. (1999).

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Hard-to-Find Emotions Love Affectionate, caring, close, proud, passionate Anger Frustrated, exasperated, enraged, indignant Hurt Let down, betrayed, disappointed, needy Shame Embarrassed, guilty, regretful, humiliated, self-loathing Fear Anxious, terrified, worried, obsessed, suspicious Self-doubt Inadequate, unworthy, inept, unmotivated Joy Happy, enthusiastic, full, elated, content Sadness Bereft, wistful, joyless, depressed Jealousy Envious, selfish, covetous, anguished, yearning Gratitude Appreciative, thankful, relieved, admiring Loneliness Desolate, abandoned, empty, longing (Taken directly from Stone et al., 1999)

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Acknowledgement of Feelings Stone et al. talk about the importance of describing feelings as a first step in solving interpersonal problems and how important it is for each side to acknowledge those feelings (Stone et al., 1999). This can also be applied to the feedback process. When one solicits feedback, one side is potentially showing vulnerability by offering up their thoughts and opinions about a product/service and the other side has the potential to take the feedback personally. While it certainly is not feasible in every feedback situation to have a one-onon, interpersonal connection, I feel it is one of the most important and often overlooked purposes of feedback: people want to feel that their voice has been ‘heard,’ and, in a way, that their feelings have been acknowledged or understood. "I just wanted to share my story" - Mini Case Study After a community event to discuss recent racial tensions in one neighborhood, which brought together police officers, politicians, business leaders and neighbors, a young black teenager was asked if he thought he had changed any minds. The teenager responded in tears, saying, “You don’t understand. I don’t want to change their minds. I just wanted to share my story. I didn’t want to hear that everything will be okay or to hear that it wasn’t their fault, or to have them tell me that their stories are just as terrible. I wanted to tell my story, to share my feelings. So why am I crying? Because now I know: they care enough about me to just listen” (Cited in Stone, et al., 1999, p. 107).

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F eedback M odels : W orking T owards C onnectivity There are many existing models demonstrating how feedback works; however, for the purposes of this thesis, it is important to highlight three central types that establish how the concept of feedback has evolved over the years to become more “complex” and “dynamic” (Kio, 2015). Provider, defined: The person reacting to a product or service and providing their input. Receiver, defined: The person (or entity) receiving the input from the Provider and interpreting the meaning in order to alter the product or service in a way that ‘improves’ it.

Linear Model As visualized below, the linear model of feedback is just that: linear. It is the one-way action of the ‘provider’ giving feedback to the ‘receiver’ resulting in an ‘outcome’ (Kio, 2015). The information from the provider is given to the receiver regardless of previous knowledge of the receiver and the receiver will interpret the information as he/she sees fit, which leads to the outcome (Kio, 2015). There is very little interaction between the provider and the receiver and the information is used in a silo to create the outcome (Kio, 2015).

(Kio, 2015)

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Cyclic Model The cyclic model, as illustrated below, is an advancement on the linear model. It is “based on perceiving that dialogue…is fundamental to the success of learning” and is a two-way process between the provider and the receiver (Kio, 2015). Suddenly, with this model, the process of feedback becomes a system where the parts play an equal role in regulating the feedback flow (Kio, 2015). As such, two-way feedback is necessary in order to achieve the best results long-term (Kio, 2015).

(Kio, 2015)

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Connected Model The connected model of feedback is representative of the advancement of thought around the nature of human relations and how we interact with one another in regards to feedback – it recognizes that feedback is dynamic and is a social process (Kio, 2015). As illustrated in the diagram below, feedback flows between each receiver – in addition to the provider – providing an ever-changing and interrelated flow of opinions (Kio, 2015). The connections are two-way and cyclic, causing the identity of the ‘true’ provider to become less clear, as dialogue can also take place between two receivers (Kio, 2015). This model is a good visualization of how social networks work and how customers interact with brands online (Kio, 2015).

(Kio, 2015)

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F eedback

in the

D esign P rocess

“Systematic Feedback” and Product/Service Feedback Loops As was previously established, the growth and success of companies depend on the ability to stay competitive and anticipate or even predict needs of users. Peter Drucker, known as the founder of modern management theory, argued that in order for companies to measure their innovation outcomes and make decisions about the future, it is crucial for companies to integrate “systematic feedback:” “Only by analyzing a company’s own innovative experience, the feedback from its performance on its expectations, can the company determine what the appropriate expectations are for innovations in its industry and its markets” (Drucker, 1985, p. 204). Only then, Drucker adds, can companies use that information to “design” its next actions (Drucker, 1985, p. 205). In design, “systematic feedback” is built into the process. During my research, I concluded that there exists a stark difference between the way feedback is integrated into the traditional product/service creation process and the way that designers use feedback in the product/service creation process. To demonstrate this difference, I have illustrated the two diagrams below. The numbers on the diagrams correspond with the numerical order in which the action is carried out in the development process.

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From these diagrams, I have concluded that there are two main differences between the traditional creation process and the design creation process: 1. Differences in the front end: In the traditional creation process, the company creates the product/service before interacting with the customer; whereas, in the design-driven creation process, the design researcher interacts with the customer prior to designing the product/service. Additionally, feedback is first gathered in a more exploratory way. Designers place special emphasis on the beginning phase of a project and gain empathy for the user before creating the product/service. 2. Differences in the back end: In the traditional creation process, the company takes the feedback from the first iteration and creates the second product/service for the customer to interact with; whereas, in the design-driven creation process, the company and the customer work together to co-create the second iteration. This allows for a more close relationship between the customer and the company â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the customer is no longer just the source of inspiration for the product/service, but also one of the creators. Feedback, as played out in the traditional model, is carried out in a one-way or two-way communication process (Linear and Cyclic Models of Feedback) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the customer interacts with the existing product/service and provides feedback to the company. The design-driven model, on the other hand, suggests a more dynamic, interactive relationship between the customer and the company. The customer is first understood and is then brought in to co-design the second iteration of the product/service. It follows a more dynamic, multidimensional communication process (Connected Feedback Model).

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Elections could be considered an example of a one-way, sporadic feedback method

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Design versus Marketing Approach The majority of information existing on the topic of feedback is connected to the marketing research field. This makes sense as marketing is interested in how to best advertise their products to the right customers and, in turn, get feedback on how the product is doing on the market. The role of a market researcher is somewhat similar to a designer in this respect; however, there are some fundamental differences in their approach. Lucy Kimbell, a professor of Design Management specializing in Service Design, clearly lays out in the book, This Is Service Design Thinking, how they vary:

Marketing Approach Concerned with “creating and Approach to building relationships with custoCreating Services mers to co-create value”

Puts various stakeholders “at the center of designing services and preferably co-design with them”

Use tools to “focus on the service encounter”

Use tools and “develop others that often focus on individual users’ experiences as a way into designing services”

Definition of Customers

Marketers “Define who the customers of a service are or could be and the broad detail of the kinds of relationship an organization might have with them”

Designers “give shape and form to these ideas, and can enrich and challenge assumptions by making visualizations”

When/How They Use Customer Insights

Marketers “study customers to develop insights into their practices and values”

Designers “can use these insights as the starting point for design and add a focus to the aesthetics of service experiences”

Have the perspective of developing a new service “that is shaped by problem-solving” using convergent (single solution-seeking) thinking

Designers “have an understanding of an iterative design process that involves exploring possibilities and being open to serendipity and surprise” – in other words, using divergent (multiple solution-seeking) thinking

Tools Used

Approach to Solving Problems

(Kimbell, in Stickdorn and Schneider, 2011, p. 50-51)

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One can glean from this analysis that the main differences between the two fields is that designers have a more co-creative, human-centered, divergent thinking approach to creating products or services than market researchers. In fact, the qualities that are commonly associated with design – namely, the emphasis on human-centricity, rapid prototyping, iteration, ideation methods and testing with actual users – are increasingly viewed as important when it comes to designing a more ‘holistic’ way of collecting customer feedback (Muratovski, 2015).

Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver, and Ask for Feedback Designers are defined by their open-minded approach to problems; namely, the ability to thrive in an eternal state of seeking rather than finding. Press and Cooper argue that design research is primarily concerned with the following: the search for understanding, the search for ideas, and the search for solutions (Press and Cooper, 2003). Along this process of searching and creating, designers are engaged in various activities, all of which involve some form of feedback. In fact, feedback is built into every phase of the creative process, with the understanding that the designer can use that feedback to move forward or take a step back to re-evaluate. Using the UK Design Council’s ‘Double Diamond’ model (2005) as a visual representation of the collective design process, I outlined what role feedback plays in each phase, corresponding with the activities carried out, as identified by the UK Design Council (“Eleven Lessons,” 2017). The illustration that I created, below, is an adaptation of the ‘Double Diamond’ model, summarizing what kind of feedback is used in each of the four design phases.

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(Figure adapted from The Double Diamond Process, 2005)

Discover: ASK Feedback begins in the Discover phase, when user research is conducted in order to try to understand customers and look for any unmet needs. This phase occurs regardless of whether or not there is an existing product/service in place, as it is a fundamental step in the design process. The methods used to solicit feedback on an existing product/service, however, is generally “asked for” in the form of interviews or questionnaires, and designers will also conduct empathy-building exercises such as observation and shadowing to pick up on any hidden insights. Discover

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Market research

User research

Managing information

Design research groups

(Taken directly from “Eleven Lessons,” 2017)

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Define: UNDERSTAND In the Define phase, feedback is more of an internal process, where the design team comes together, synthesizes the insights that they received from the Discover phase, and defines the design challenge. It is in this phase where designers practice being what Donald Schön (1983) called the “reflective practitioner,” interpreting every action or inaction on the part of the customer as a piece of information (Baker, 2015). The goal is to “understand” the customer, the problem area, and plan for the next phase. Define /

Project development

Project management

Project sign-off

(Taken directly from “Eleven Lessons,” 2017)

Develop: DO In the Develop phase, the design team ideates and comes up with possible solution ideas for the design challenge. At this point, synthesis of the insights are visualized, methods are used to map customer journeys and prototypes are built. The emphasis on this phase is to “do” – take action rather than simply debating the next steps. After prototypes are created, testing is carried out and feedback is solicited, which is also action-oriented. Develop /

Multidisciplinary working

Visual management

Development methods

/ Testing

(Taken directly from “Eleven Lessons,” 2017)

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Deliver: ASK…AGAIN The Deliver phase is where the design team has gathered user feedback on the initial ideas and is ready to make some final decisions. This can involve evaluating the feedback and making a decision about which direction to go in, or it can be the point where customers are brought in again to be consulted or act as co-creators. When the product or service is launched, evaluation is carried out and feedback loops are set in place so that the product/service can be continually updated. Deliver /

Final testing, approval and launch

Targets, evaluation and feedback loops

(Taken directly from “Eleven Lessons,” 2017)

The design process is dynamic, non-linear, and therefore challenging to map, but there are certain qualities to the process that can be generalized.

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Buchanan asserted that the beginning of the design process is concerned with “problem definition” (or “analytic” thinking) while the latter part is focused on “problem solution” (or “synthetic” thinking) (Buchanan, 1992). Upon further reflection and analysis of the use of feedback in the creative process, I created the following image: an illustration of the ‘Double Diamond’ model with Buchanan’s (1992) classification of the phases superimposed above and below.

Co-Creation in the Design Process – When Customers Become Creators In the 21st century, design has moved from designers being the sole creators of products/services to teams working collaboratively, with people from other disciplines and also with customers (Design Dictionary, “Collaborative Design,”p. 65). As our society is currently operating in the Experience Economy (defined in Part I), companies are more and more focused on designing experiences around 121

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their products or services. Since the quality of services are reliant on interactions between customers and companies, it makes sense to co-create them with the customers. Co-Creation, defined: “An active, creative and social process, based on collaboration between producers and users, that is initiated by the firm to generate value for customers” (Plumley and Bertini, 2014).

Participatory Design, initially made popular in the 1960s and 1970s, was known to have “fundamentally changed the relation between designers and stakeholders” (Blomkvist and Holmlid, 2011). It is defined as a “collaborative approach” to designing services, products and systems which brings together stakeholders to take part in the design process (Design Dictionary, “Participatory Design,” p. 290). Originating in Scandinavia, its original goal was to “democratize the process of workspace design” (Design Dictionary, “Participatory Design,” p. 291).

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While the concept of including stakeholders in the design process was revolutionary a few decades ago, today, when designing products/ services, it is common for design teams to include the customer at various points during the process in order to gauge their opinions and allow them to take ownership of the end result. In fact, it is now recognized as a value add for businesses. A Forbes article from 2014 affirms that using co-creation in business is a way to remain competitive: “Low economic growth and high unemployment have led companies to look for ways to remain competitive and find new growth opportunities. Co-Creating products or services together with social entrepreneurs could allow them to detect market failures quicker and find creative ways to address them, placing themselves ahead of the curve (“Why Co-Creation Is the Future for All of Us,” 2014). Three “Perspectives” of Co-Creation While various terms are often thrown around by designers explaining this type of design process (co-creation, co-design, participatory design, etc.), Blomkvist and Holmlid point out that co-creation is still very much unclear and there is general confusion on how to carry it out, on a practical level (Blomkvist and Holmlid, 2011). Sanders and Stappers (2012) dedicate a large part of their book, Convivial Toolbox: Generative Research for the Front End of Design, to defining the concept and outlining its different applications; namely, they outline that co-creation can be viewed from three main perspectives: /

Co-creation as a mindset

Co-creation as a method

Co-creation as a tool or technique

(Taken directly from Sanders and Stappers, 2012, p.30)

They then map these perspectives along the creation process, noting where they are most appropriately found – from “pre-design” all the way to “after sale” (Sanders and Stappers, 2012, p.31).

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(Sanders and Stappers, 2012)

Henry Ford and his “Faster Horse” At one point or another, every designer has been caught quoting or has heard a designer quote the famous alleged words of Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Besides not being able to be officially attributed to Henry Ford, this quote is often loosely interpreted in its meaning. Some use it to justify their belief that ‘the designer knows best’ and that customers don’t really know what they want because they can’t imagine it; while others use it as an example of the importance of having user input (Vlaskovits, 2011). In the interest of this thesis on the topic of user feedback, however, it is extremely relevant to examine, even hypothetically.

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If we agree that one of the main goals of feedback is to be able to gauge more accurately (ideally, in real-time) the changing attitudes, opinions and needs of customers in order to be adaptive, we can interpret this adage as a warning to brands to not only ask customers what they want, intermittently, but to follow up continuously and use a multi-channel methodology to draw out hidden, latent needs. As Patrick Vlaskovits adeptly said in his 2011 Harvard Business Review article, “Henry Ford, Innovation, and That ‘Faster Horse’ Quote,” “An innovator should have understanding of one’s customers and their problems via empirical, observational, anecdotal methods or even intuition” (Vlaskovits, 2011).

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What is problematic for companies is when they lose touch with their customers and fail to take their feedback into account. Vlaskovits ends his article by asserting that the Ford Motor Company’s failure in the late 1920s was less about his failure to listen to his customers; rather, about “his refusal to continuously test his vision against reality, which led to the Ford Motor Company’s failure of continuous innovation, resulting in a catastrophic loss of market share from which it never recovered” (Vlaskovits, 2011). Four Principles of Co-Creation Venkat Ramaswamy and Francis Gouillart, experts in helping large companies implement co-creation methods to better interact with customers, share their learnings in a 2010 Harvard Business Review article, “Building the Co-Creative Enterprise.” In their article, they list four principles of co-creation, acting as tips for companies who want to use co-creation in their regular market research activities: 1. Stakeholders won’t wholeheartedly participate in customer co-creation unless it produces value for them, too This principle corresponds directly with some of the reasons why people participate in giving feedback, which I outlined in Part I of this thesis. Essentially, participating in co-creation with a company must be beneficial and provide incentives for the participants. 2. The best way to co-create value is to focus on the experiences of all stakeholders Companies must realize that in order for co-creation to be successful, they must adopt a more holistic approach to creating value. In other words, in addition to creating economic value, “creating rewarding experiences” for all stakeholders is also a value added (Ramaswamy and Gouillart, 2010).

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3. Stakeholders must be able to interact directly with one another Something magical takes place when people from different fields, departments, and management levels are brought together to create something. The energy and spirit of people who normally donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t interact with one another, interacting in a new way is refreshing for all. 4. Companies should provide platforms that allow stakeholders to interact and share their experiences Technology can add to co-creation in that it helps the stakeholders to keep in touch and interact before and after co-creation sessions (Ramaswamy and Gouillart, 2010). Idea Management is a growing field in the IT and HR industry and has a lot of potential for the future as we think through ways to systematize and scale co-creation activities internally and externally in companies. (Principles taken directly from Ramaswamy and Gouillart, 2010, explanations by author) In summary, while there is a wealth of knowledge existing on the topic of the importance of co-creation in a design context and the added value it brings for companies (not only monetarily but also in providing a more holistic experience around the product/service); however, a gap still exists in design research in relation to an analysis of the methods, tools and techniques used by companies and designers to solicit feedback. As such, in the next chapter, I will explain and lay out my justification for my proposed typology of feedback methods/tools.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;People can give us only what we give them the opportunity to provide.â&#x20AC;?

/ Gerald Zaltman

// Chapter 08 – Typology of Feedback Methods

CHAPTER 08

T ypology of F eedback M ethods

O verview : T ypology

F eedback

As mentioned previously, there is a lack of accessible, synthesized information on the topic of how one goes about actually soliciting feedback, which tools to use for what type of feedback needed, and in what situation to use them. The market research industry is entrenched in conducting surveys (interviews and questionnaires), which predominantly access customers’ hearing, speaking and writing skills, leaving out other ways of processing information and communicating. Market research tools are generally quick for users to interact with, relatively inexpensive to deploy, and focus on quantitative data. With our rapidly changing economic environment and the need for companies to remain competitive, however, user research experts are now realizing that they need to make a more concerted effort at capturing what customers think, feel and do, and use methods that don’t just ‘ask.’ The design field provides a set of additional methods/tools that help to synthesize large amounts of information, visualize insights, and allow companies to empathize with customers to find latent, hidden needs that otherwise wouldn’t be captured in traditional methods. In general, one could say that design tools used for soliciting feedback are more time-intensive, personalized, co-creative, and qualitative in nature.

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Based on my hypothesis for collecting more â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;holistic feedback,â&#x20AC;&#x2122; companies should consider using a mix of different types of tools in order to diversify the type of methods being used, type of feedback being received, and, consequently, reach a more diverse customer base. My proposed typology combines methods/tools from the social sciences and design. Some of them are actual tools for collecting feedback, while others are methods that can be used to help companies collect feedback. The classification outlined below and illustrated in the tables and visualizations demonstrates the key differences between the various methods/tools and proposes a model for visualizing them at-a-glance based on their core characteristics. It is necessary to note here that while the proposed typology of feedback (including the visualizations) are based in theory, I took a great deal of personal liberty in choosing of the exact wording of the categories, how to classify the methods, and the rating scale and subsequent value of the various methods used in the visualizations. It is my sincere hope that this work can be viewed as a personal contribution to the topic of feedback and act as a starting point for future research.

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H orizontal A xis E xplanation : C haracteristics of F eedback M ethods The eight categories on the horizontal axis at the top of the typology figure (labeled “Method” through “Amount of People Involved (Individual or Group?),” were carefully reflected on, chosen, and revised multiple times during this thesis project (See chart on page 142-143). They ultimately represent the differentiating aspects or factors of individual feedback methods. For example, the time that a method takes for a customer to complete a method is significant to note and is important to factor into a comparison or classification.

Methods and Sub-Methods When researching this topic, I did not find an existing exhaustive list of feedback methods; therefore, the ones that I have chosen for this study were pulled from various sources and ultimately curated by myself, based on which ones I thought were the most representative. I pulled the market research methods from various articles and scientific research papers and the design methods mainly from Service Design and Participatory Design, using books such as This is Service Design Thinking (Stickdorn and Schneider, 2011) and Convivial Toolbox: Generative Research for the Front End of Design (Sanders and Stappers, 2012). 14 Methods After reviewing a series of compilations of commonly used tools that could be used to collect user feedback, I decided to group them into slightly larger categories in order to make the classification more manageable. These categories, which I call “methods,” are 14 in total – seven of which are taken from the market research field and seven from the design research field. I believe that the 14 chosen methods encapsulate the various types of existing feedback-collection methods, taking into account the important distinguishing factors between them.

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FOR EXAMPLE: an In-Person, 1-1 Interview is very different from an In-Person, Group Interview, as the dynamics between the “provider of feedback” (i.e. customer) and the “receiver of feedback” (i.e. company) is drastically different one-on-one versus in a group. Below is the list of 14 methods chosen for this typology, sorted into what field they were borrowed from: Social Sciences Field: 1. Paper Questionnaire 2. Telephone Questionnaire 3. Web/Computerized Questionnaire 4. Human-to-Human, Telephone Interview 5. In-Person, 1-1 Interview 6. In-Person, Group Interview 7. Scientific Observation Design Field: 1. Visual Process Evaluation Tools 2. Customer-Driven Tools 3. Contextual Interview 4. Design Observation 5. Physical Prototype 6. Digital Prototype 7. Action Prototype 26 Sub-Methods Since the goal of this classification is ultimately to think through what kind of “INPUT” the tool uses (i.e. what medium) and what kind of “OUTPUT” (i.e. type of feedback) it solicits, I found it important to think precisely through the variations of each method and list the characteristics of each. With each medium (e.g. telephone or in-person interview) comes a difference in application, context and in the type of feedback that it yields.

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As such, I took the list of 14 methods above and broke them down further, based on more specific categories referring to the medium used (e.g. automated or human-to-human) or the structure of the method (e.g. formal or informal). Interesting to note: two of the methods, Web/Computerized Questionnaire, and Human-to-Human Telephone Interview, did not have sub-methods as they were already the “lowest common denominator” in their category.

V ertical A xis E xplanation : T ypes or W ays to S olicit F eedback The three main categories on the far left column of the vertical axis of the typology figure (labeled “Tools to ASK,” “Tools to UNDERSTAND,” and “Tools to CREATE”), were decided upon after completing the list of methods and sub-methods and thinking intensely through the main quality which differentiates them.

Say (ASK), Do (UNDERSTAND), Make (CREATE) Techniques and Feedback Models While creating the the overall types of feedback methods, I was influenced greatly by the model that Sanders and Stappers (2012) introduces, which cluster co-creation tools and techniques into three main categories: “Say techniques,” “Do techniques,” and “Make techniques” (Sanders and Stappers, 2012, p.66). They confirmed my initial intuition on this topic when I began: that it is important to capture all of what people “say/think,” “do/use,” and “know/ feel/dream,” as it encompasses all of the different types of human knowledge (explicit, observative, tacit, and latent) (Sanders and Stappers, 2012, p. 67). They argue, adeptly, that in order to do this, a combination of methods must be used (Sanders and Stappers, 2012).

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(Sanders and Stappers, 2012)

In addition to building on the theory of Sanders and Stappers (2012), I drew a parallel between the three existing models of feedback that were outlined earlier in Part III – Linear, Cyclic, and Connected – and the three main types or ways to solicit feedback (what I call, ASK methods, UNDERSTAND methods, and CREATE methods). I assert that methods used to “ask” for feedback generally follow a Linear Model, in the sense that the communication is generally one-way; methods used to “understand” customers as a way of getting feedback generally follow a Cyclic Model, due to the fact that communication is two-way; and, methods used to “create” with customers as a way of receiving feedback generally follow a Connected Model, since the way in which the feedback is collected is dynamic and multidirectional.

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“Say” Techniques – ASK (Linear Model) “Say” techniques are the same as what I call “Tools to ASK.” They are methods that are used to solicit feedback by asking customers what they think – either in writing, in-person, or via telephone. Sanders and Stappers (2012) acknowledge that most market research techniques use Say techniques and it is more and more commonly accepted that only using these methods is not sufficient in truly capturing customer feedback. “Do” Techniques – UNDERSTAND (Cyclic Model) “Do” techniques are what I call in my typology, “Tools to UNDERSTAND.” They are methods that are used to understand how customers behave and feel through their actions (Sanders and Stappers, 2012). The main channel through which one does this is observation – regardless of whether it is Scientific Observation or Design Observation (Sanders and Stappers, 2012). It also includes methods used by designers to prompt customers to self-observe (Sanders and Stappers, 2012). Some of these methods include, A Day in the Life, Mobile Ethnography, and Cultural Probes. These methods are gaining more traction and it is becoming more and more common for companies to use UNDERSTAND tools in conjunction with ASK tools (Sanders and Stappers, 2012). “Make” Techniques – CREATE (Connected Model) “Make” techniques, or “Tools to CREATE,” are methods that help researchers to probe for underlying needs and motivations – it is used to help people “express their thoughts and feelings” (Sanders and Stappers, 2012, p. 70). These tools are at the center of the concept of co-creation since making or creating something reveals things that otherwise would not be made manifest by only using ASK or UNDERSTAND methods. Sanders and Stappers (2012) echo my initial sentiments by saying that not enough research has been done in this area and the possibilities created when all three techniques (ASK, UNDERSTAND, and CREATE) are used to collect customer feedback.

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V isualization of M ethod C haracteristics After completing the typology of feedback methods, as outlined above, I designed an effective way to visualize each individual method according to their “input” and “output” characteristics (See chart on page 144). The goal of this was not only to visualize something that is very theoretical and otherwise wordy, but also to provide a tool for companies to potentially use to decipher which methods to use in combination with each other to collect more ‘holistic feedback.’

INPUT, Defined The term “input,” as used in this visualization, refers to the characteristics or qualities of the feedback method. Through research and reflection, I identified three main qualities of feedback input – Visual (SEEING), Auditory (HEARING), and Introspective (SENSING). Below is a brief description of each. SEEING (Visual) I use the term “visual” to measure to what extent the provider of feedback uses their sense of sight when interacting with the feedback method. A Paper Questionnaire, for example, is slightly visual, as there is a piece of paper and some writing in front of the person, but it is not nearly as visual as Design Observation. HEARING (Auditory) The term “auditory” refers to what extent the provider of feedback uses their sense of hearing when interacting with the feedback method. One example of a method that predominantly uses the auditory senses is a Telephone Questionnaire. SENSING (Introspective) This category was the most challenging to pinpoint. Instinctively, I knew that there was a third input categorization that had to do with

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the level of awareness or insight that the feedback method evoked in the person using it. The term “introspective” is the closest term to symbolize what I mean by this. For example, a paper questionnaire ranks extremely low on SENSING because it requires the giver of feedback little-to-no introspective skills, whereas Scientific Observation, for example, requires the person using the method (in this case, the researcher), to use a great deal of SENSING skills.

OUTPUT, Defined The term “output,” as used in this visualization, refers to the form or type of feedback that is produced through the method. After thinking through the main differences between the various outputs of the 14 methods examined, I identified three main qualities types feedback output – Verbal (SAYING), Written (WRITING), and Active (DOING). Below is a brief description of each. SAYING (Verbal) The term “verbal” here refers to the extent to which the feedback received (the product of using the method) is verbal in nature, or spoken. A Contextual Interview is an example of a method that ranks high in this category. WRITING (Written) The term “written” as used here refers to how much of the output of the method is in writing – e.g. a Paper Questionnaire ranks high whereas a Physical Prototype ranks very low in this category. 139

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DOING (Active) The final category, just like SENSING, was difficult to define but was a crucial category in the output section. In the end, the term “active” refers to how much action or DOING is the result of using the feedback method. All of the prototyping methods, for example, ranked the highest in this category, whereas the surveys (questionnaires and interviews) ranked low.

Explanation of Rating System of Visualizations For the visualizations, I wanted to create something that was easy-to-understand – visually and content-wise – and useful for a company to use to decipher which methods are best to collect the feedback that they want. I took inspiration from various ways of visualizing data and decided on a hexagon shape, with each side representing a different quality of the feedback method. The top three sides represent the INPUT qualities/characteristics of the method and the bottom three sides represent the OUTPUT, or type of feedback received. In order to compare the methods, I needed some way to rate them. Since using one’s senses are more on a gradient scale rather than absolute, where having absolutely no aspect of SEEING, for example, is virtually impossible unless the person is blindfolded, I decided on a scale of one to five, where one is the lowest (“Not Significantly”) and five is the highest (“Extremely”). 1 2 3 4 5

– – – – –

Not Significantly A Little Some Aspects Predominantly Extremely

After deciding on the rating system, I spent a great deal of time assessing each method and assigning a number (1-5) to each of the input and output characteristics. In some cases, it was necessary for me to view the methods side-by-side in order to compare the rating that was originally given, and as a result some ratings changed in the

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process. This was to ensure that the system of rating was as uniform as possible. At the end of the rating process, I tallied up the numbers, looking for patterns or insights. I first totaled the numbers of each of the Input/ Output categories, judging any differences between ASK, UNDERSTAND and CREATE tools. I then totaled the numbers of each individual method across Input/Output, to see how they rated against each other.

Findings of Visualization Ratings Overall the visualization and rating system demonstrated that tools that solicit feedback using the same types of methods (i.e. ASK, UNDERSTAND or CREATE) rate highest in the qualities in which they are characteristically strong (INPUT) and highest in the type of feedback generated that reflects the input. Ways to Solicit Feedback

Highest Input Quality

Highest Output Type

Tools to ASK

HEARING

SAYING

Tools to UNDERSTAND

SENSING

WRITING

Tools to CREATE

SEEING

DOING

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Typology of Feedback Methods/Too Characteristics of Feedback Metho WAYS TO SOLICIT FEEDBACK (Corresponding Feedback Model)

Method

Sub-Methods

Tools and Skills Involved

Amount of Effort Required For Feedback Provider (Minimal, Average, or More)

Level of Interpretation Needed On Part of Feedback Receiver (Minimal, Some, A lot)

SURVEY TOO Questionnaire Paper Questionnaire

Telephone Questionnaire

Tools to ASK

Web/Computerized Questionnaire

In-Person

Paper, Writing Tool, Seeing capabilities, Writing skills

Minimal effort required

Minimal interpretation, since the questions are mainly not open-ended and straightforward

Telephone, Hearing capabilities

Minimal effort required

Minimal interpretation, since the questions are mainly not open-ended and straightforward

Internet/Email Access, Seeing capabilities, Writing skills

Minimal effort required

Minimal interpretation, since the questions are mainly not open-ended and straightforward

Telephone, Hearing capabilities, Verbal communication skills

Minimal effort required

Some interpretation - the interviewer needs to record the answers and ask follow-up questions in real-time

Social skills, Level of self-awareness, Hearing capabilities, Verbal communication skills

More effort required

Some interpretation needed - interviewer needs to interpret results

Social skills, Level of self-awareness, Hearing capabilities, Verbal communication skills, Group dynamic awareness

Average amount of effort required

Some interpretation needed - interviewer needs to interpret results

By Mail Automated Human-to-Human N/A

Interview

(Linear Feedback Model) Human-to-Human, Telephone Interview

In-Person, 1-1 Interview

N/A

Formal Structure Informal Structure Focus Group

In-Person, Group Interview Town Hall Event

EMPATHY-BUILDIN Observation

Controlled Observation (Disclosed) Scientific Observation

Ability to self-analyze, Observation skills, Emotional Maturity, Pen and paper or other note-taking devices, Camera for documentation

Minimal effort required

A lot of Interpretation needed - observer needs to interpret results and assign meaning

Natural Observation (Undisclosed) Participant Observation (Disclosed and/or Undisclosed)

Need-finding Customer Journey Mapping

Tools to UNDERSTAND (Cyclic Feedback Model)

Visual Process Evaluation Tools

Visualization skills, Materials to visualize processes - sticky notes, markers, More effort required and other tools, Empathy, Ability to self-analyze, Emotional maturity

Some interpretation needed - customers and company engage in dialogue using artifacts created to start the conversation

Smartphone or camera to take photos, Visualization skills, Empathy, Emotional maturity, Ability to self-analyze

More effort required

Some interpretation needed - customers and company engage in dialogue using artifacts created to start the conversation

Speaking skills, Listening skills, Empathy, Ability to self-analyze, Pen and paper or other note-taking devices, Social skills, Intuition

More effort required

Some interpretation needed - interviewer needs to interpret results and be able to also infer needs and ask follow-up questions based on what they observe, taking into account the person's environment and other factors

Ability to self-analyze, Observation skills, Emotional Maturity, Pen and paper or other note-taking devices, Camera for documentation, Empathy, Intuition

Minimal effort required

A lot of Interpretation needed - observer needs to interpret results and assign meaning; however they are trained in thinking more holistically about the person they are observing and can ask follow-up questions

Expectation Mapping Stakeholder Mapping A Day in the Life

Customer-Driven Insight Tools

Mobile Ethnography Cultural Probes

Contextual Interview

Empathy Interview (5 Why's)

Service Safari Design Observation Shadowing

ARTIFACT-CREATIN Prototyping Physical Prototypes

Tools to CREATE (Connected Feedback Model)

Storyboarding Desktop walk-through Video

Digital Prototypes

Visualization skills, Materials to visualize processes - sticky notes, markers, More effort required and other tools, Ability to take risks, Speaking skills, Ability to envision the future

Some interpretation needed - customers and company engage in dialogue using artifacts created to start the conversation

Visualization skills, Photo or video camera, Ability to take risks, Speaking skills, Ability to envision the future

More effort required

Some interpretation needed - customers and company engage in dialogue using artifacts created to start the conversation

Visualization skills, Social skills, Empathy, Materials to visualize processes - More effort required sticky notes, markers, and other tools, Ability to take risks, Speaking skills, Ability to envision the future

Some interpretation needed - customers and company engage in dialogue using artifacts created to start the conversation

App mock-up/Wireframes Service Blueprint Action Prototypes

Service Roleplay/Service Staging

ols: ods Time Needed to Complete (Very little, Average, A lot)

Structure (Formal or Informal)

Amount of People Involved (Individual or Group)

OLS Very little time

Formal structure with pre-decided questions

Individual - analysis is done entirely on the part of the individual

Very little time

Formal structure with pre-decided questions

Individual - analysis is done entirely on the part of the individual,

Very little time

Formal structure with pre-decided questions

Individual - analysis is done entirely on the part of the individual

Average amount of time

Formal structure with pre-decided questions but opportunities for follow-up questions

Individual with the added benefit of having the interviewer to have a conversation with

Average amount of time

Formal structure with pre-decided questions but opportunities for follow-up questions

Individual with the added benefit of having the interviewer to have a conversation with

Average amount of time

Formal structure with pre-decided questions but opportunities for follow-up questions and discussion among participants

Group - participants interact just as much with their fellow participants as with the interviewer/facilitator/moderator

S O C I A L S C I E N C E T O O L S

NG TOOLS A lot of time - sometimes multiple times Informal - observer either participates with the people being observed in their natural environment or silently to get a full picture observes without intervening in any way. there is no structure of the observation, only perhaps an idea of what to look for beforehand. The observer follows whatever prompts them to investigate further, often remaining as neutral as possible during the process

Group and/or Individual - people being observed are left in their environment, whether that involves just them at home or at their workplace, for example. Each environment plays a big role in the type of interactions observed.

A lot of time - customers and companies Informal - researcher acts as a facilitator in the process and has the opportunity to ask questions where they think must work together to create the there are latent needs or hidden insights visualizations and discuss.

Group - participants go through the process together to map their experiences and discuss. The group dynamic plays a significant role in the outcome.

Group and/or Individual - participants are asked by the researchers to remain in their environment, whether that involves just them at home or at their workplace, for example, and to record their experiences to share afterwards. The level of self-awareness in the person plays a significant role in the outcome.

Average amount of time, but more Informal - researcher asks an open-ended question and lets the conversation guide itself, only asking follow-up emphasis is placed on the environmental questions where they believe exists latent needs or hidden insights factors around the person rather than just the topic at hand

Individual with the added benefit of having the interviewer to have a conversation with

A lot of time - sometimes multiple times Informal - observer participates with the people being observed in their natural environment and only asks to get a full picture questions when they believe there exists latent needs or hidden insights

NG TOOLS

A lot of time - time is needed to build Informal - participants have the ability to create whatever they want to based on the direction they are taking the them and discuss, but this can be in a one- exploration. The researcher only asks questions if there are latent needs or hidden insights day workshop

Group - participants interact just as much with their fellow participants as with the facilitator. It is a communal effort to create these prototypes.

A lot of time - however, it depends Informal - participants have the ability to create whatever they want to based on the direction they are taking the because it can be accomplished in a one- exploration. The researcher only asks questions if there are latent needs or hidden insights day workshop or it can stretch over a week longer if desired

Group - participants interact just as much with their fellow participants as with the facilitator. It is a communal effort to create these prototypes.

D E S I G N T O O L S

// Master Thesis â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Towards Holistic Feedback

Input/Output Evaluation Qualities of 14 Feedback Methods/Tools WAYS TO SOLICIT FEEDBACK (Corresponding Feedback Model)

INPUT

FEEDBACK METHODS

OUTPUT

(i.e. qualities of feedback method/tool)

(i.e. form of feedback given)

SEEING

HEARING

SENSING

SAYING

WRITING

DOING

(Visual)

(Auditory)

(Introspective)

(Verbal)

(Written)

(Active)

TOTAL

SURVEY TOOLS SURVEY Tools to ASK (Linear Feedback Model)

Paper Questionnaire

Telephone Questionnaire

Web/Computerized Questionnaire

INTERVIEW Human-to-Human, Telephone Interview

In-Person, 1-1 Interview

17 16

In-Person, Group Interview TOTAL

EMPATHY-BUILDING TOOLS OBSERVATION Tools to UNDERSTAND (Cyclic Feedback Model)

Scientific Observation

Visual Process Evaluation Tools

Customer-Driven Insight Tools

Contextual Interview

22 23

S C I E N C E T O O L S

NEED-FINDING

Design Observation TOTAL

D E S I G N T O O L S

ARTIFACT-CREATING TOOLS PROTOTYPING Tools to CREATE Physical Prototype (Connected Feedback Model) Digital Prototype Action Prototype TOTAL

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Key

Input Output

1 - Not Significantly 2 - A Little 3 - Some Aspects 4 - Predominantly 5 - Extremely

Paper Questionnaire

Telephone Questionnaire

Auditory

l ua

Vis

cti tiv e Ac

l rba Ve

Ac tiv

cti

Vis

ros

Int

l rba Ve Written

Written

145

Web/Computerized Questionnaire

Human-to-Human, Telephone Interview

Auditory

l Vis ua

c pe ros

Int

c pe ros

Int

In-Person, Group Interview

Auditory

cti

tiv ec

Vis u

ros Int

p ros Int

ua l

Written

In-Person, 1-1 Interview

Vis

Ac ti

l rba Ve

Ac ti

tiv

l rba Ve

Written

e Ac tiv

e tiv Ac

al Creadits or Explanation

rba Ve

rb Ve

Written

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Scientific Observation

Visual Process Evaluation Tools Auditory

Vis

ua l Vis

cti

Written

Auditory

ua l Vis

c pe

tiv Ac

e tiv Ac

rb Ve

l rba Ve Written

tiv

cti pe ros Int

ros

Int

e Contextual Interview

Auditory

tiv Written

Customer-Driven Insight Tools

Vis

e tiv

rb Ve

cti

ros Int

ua l

Auditory

Written Creadits or Explanation

Design Observation

Physical Prototype Auditory

Vis

ua l Vis

cti

Written

Action Prototype Auditory

Vis

c pe tiv e

Ac tiv

rb Ve

rb Ve Written Creadits or Explanation

v cti

ros

Int

ros Int

Auditory

tiv e Written

Digital Prototype

Vis

tiv e

rb Ve

cti

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ua l

Auditory

Written

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Auditory

tiv

Vis

p ros Int e

tiv

rb Ve

Written A Suggested Model for Collecting Holistic Feedback Contextual Interview Paper Questionnaire In-Person, Group Interview Action Prototype

PART IV APPLYING // Action Research Experiment // Exploring Alternative Tools for Collecting Feedback

“What is the answer?… [silence] In that case … what is the question?”

/ Gertrude Stein

// Chapter 09 – Action Research Experiment

CHAPTER 09

A ction R esearch E xperiment

Action Research comes from the social sciences and became a popular research method beginning in the 1940s (Susman and Evered, 1978, as cited in Sanders and Stappers, 2012, p. 29). It is a special kind of research in which the researcher, as the name suggests, ‘actively’ explores an area through “an iterative sequence of interventions in work practice, and learning from this by critical reflection” (Avison et al., 1999, as cited in Sander and Stappers, 2012, p. 29). In a way, action research can be thought of as a sort of prototype in the sense that it is something not fully formed but action-oriented and participatory and helps give direction for future research. According to Bettina von Stamm, some reasons why a prototypes are particularly helpful is that they “allow for failure at the early stages,” they “contribute to the learning process,” and they help “to communicate the unknown” (Stamm, 2008, p. 184). I thought it appropriate, therefore, as a part of this thesis to conduct a small action research experiment in order to test my initial hypothesis and be able to see the results in a tangible, albeit small, way. Below is a brief description of the aim of the project, my process, and the results. The rest of the materials can be found in Appendix 1.

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A im As designers, we are taught that learning often happens by doing – Embodied Learning, or Kinesthetic Learning – and that conducting small experiments carries immense power in the creative process. While in the beginning of my research on the topic of collecting more ‘holistic feedback,’ I decided to conduct an experimental action research project in order to see, firsthand, if my hypothesis was true that different feedback methods yield very different results. The aim of this action research experiment was to use a group of people who have had a shared experience and see if asking them for their feedback in different ways would yield drastically different results.

P rocess & R esults Participants I decided to perform the action experiment on my classmates, the KISD M.A. class of 2016, using them as my ‘subjects’ since they are a group of people who have all experienced the process of applying for a visa at the German Foreigner Office, or “Ausländerbehörde,” around the same period of time. Overall, there were ten participants, from ten different countries, or provinces: Iran, Colombia, Russia, Indonesia, Mexico, Lebanon, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Chile. It is important to note that whether or not the diversity of the participants, who all participated in English, affected this action research experiment could be an entirely different study on its own. For the sake of this experiment, it was good to have a diverse group of people coming from very different cultural backgrounds and norms and commenting on the same experience they had with the German Foreigner Office.

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Assignment I chose to give all of the participants the same assignment, so as to make the results more of a comparison between the types of feedback each method solicited on this one shared experience. The prompt was asking them to reflect on the last time they were at the German Foreigner Office, or “Ausländerbehörde,” and to respond to provide feedback in the form given, as though someone from the German Foreigner Office had asked them to give their feedback. In order to test in a way that was manageable, I decided on three varying methods to use to collect the feedback: /

Paper Questionnaire;

Group Interview; and

Image Exercise.

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As was evidenced in Chapter 8 in the typology of feedback methods, the Paper Questionnaire, Group Interview and Image Exercise consist of very different input characteristics. The Paper Questionnaire rates high in a written output; the Group Interview rates high in auditory input and verbal output; and the Image Exercise, which can be considered a Visual Process Evaluation Tool, is high in introspective and visual input, and high in active output. For a small-scale action research project, I felt that this combination of methods was appropriate.

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Paper Questionnaire & Analysis The paper questionnaire was designed by myself based on some examples of surveys and generic survey questions found online (See Appendix 1). It consisted of 9 questions total, with two questions as sub-questions asking respondents to expound upon the previous answer. The questions were a combination of multi-choice answers, Yes-No, and questions that resembled but were not identical to Semantic Differential scaling. The final question at the end was open-ended, asking respondents to share anything else that could be improved about their experience at the German Foreigner Office. All respondents answered the questions within 5 minutes and had no further feedback for me. The data did not reveal significant information besides giving me quantitative data to display in a chart-form or spreadsheet and it did not give me insight into the respondent’s underlying feelings, emotions or needs.

What one can glean from the survey is that most of the answers to the questions were “Somewhat Satisfactory,” which is only one level better than “Miserable.” The questions guided what information the respondents provided me and the open-ended question at the end simply gave them a space to tell me an anecdote or a bullet-list of suggestions. One interesting learning is that the act of providing suggestions is very different than sharing an emotion-filled experience through a 157

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story, and the method of feedback directly dictates this. The questionnaire placed the respondents in the mindset that they had little time to provide feedback, and thus, using convergent thinking, they provided proposed “solutions” in the open-ended section rather than sharing more qualitative information.

Group Interview & Analysis The Group Interview was conducted with three students. The session was moderated/facilitated by myself, took a total of 10 minutes, and was recorded (See Appendix 1). The interview was unstructured but ended up following the expected traditional format of everyone taking their turn to answer the question. Halfway through, however, the conversation turned more dynamic when one participant said something provocative and the others responded. I noted down that at that point, the conversation took on a life of its own, and the group dynamic then played a significant part in what kind of feedback the Group Interview yielded, as I could

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tell the personalities of the respondents played off of each other and affected their answers. The interview was beneficial in that it was face-to-face (personal) and gave me the opportunity as the interviewer to ask follow-up questions. It wasn’t, however, successful in drawing out latent needs or incredibly emotional stories. The respondents answered my questions matter-of-factly and I felt that they were, in a way, subconsciously answering how they thought I wanted them to respond. Furthermore, during the interview, I was acutely aware of my own shortcomings as a moderator and understood in that moment the need for a professional, or at least someone with some training, to carry out this feedback method. Reading back on the transcript (Appendix 1), I noticed that I frequently used affirmative statements, such as “yeah.” While this was simply my attempt at making the respondents feel comfortable and ‘listened to,’ I realized that it is in fact a non-neutral way of leading someone to give you the answer that you were hoping for.

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Image Exercise & Analysis The Image Exercise was given to four students (See Appendix 1). In addition to the prompt, which consisted of the question and two empty, lined pages where they could write their responses, they were given a deck of image cards by Heragon Verlag, normally used for inspiration and coaching exercises. This particular deck had the theme of “Schatten” or “Shadows.” This meant that the images were all relating to more introspective, emotional themes in order to solicit emotions. The respondents were asked to reflect on their last experience at the German Foreigner Office and choose three image cards that best described their experience. They were then asked to write which cards they chose and what it represents to them in this context.

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The results yielded from this exercise were rich in storytelling layers and complex in emotion. To me, the success of this exercise demonstrated the power of using images to evoke emotions and confirmed Gerald Zaltman’s (2003) argument that metaphors help to reveal unconscious thoughts. Some of the highlights in the responses included the following: Ziad (from Lebanon) chose an image of a toilet (Appendix 1) and explained that, to him, the toilet represented “history…I know it’s been used and abused…The Ausländerbehörde is kind of like a toilet…you can feel that you are not the only, nor first, nor the last to be there…” The image represented not just dirtiness but also a feeling of not being unique, of having your presence going unnoticed.

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Anida (from Indonesia) chose an image of a lantern (Appendix 1) and commented, seemingly unknowingly, that when she had a good experience there that one time, she “felt positive and lightened up.” The image had clearly evoked the feeling of feeling “lightened” and she included that word to describe her experience. Shania (from Hong Kong) chose an image of a bird sitting alone on a tree (Appendix 1) and explained that, to her, the bird is “sensitive to time and weather” and that “visiting the [foreigner] office means I will have [a] better idea of what to do next and I can plan my following time and calendar easier.” Interestingly, the bird, an image of something seemingly unrelated to the German Foreigner Office, was able to evoke positive feelings relating to the ability to better plan her time.

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And lastly, Xiao (from China) chose an image of a girl floating underwater, which, to her, represented the fact that visiting the German Foreigner Office made her feel “the pressure of German bureaucracy” that puts an “extra weight on your shoulder that makes you feel like you’re drowning.” Water, in this context, rather than being an image for drowning, became a representation of weight or pressure/heaviness. Interestingly, three of the four image exercise respondents diversified their cards, choosing a combination of positive and negative images/stories, while only one chose three negative cards. This makes me wonder if the flexibility and open-ended nature of the exercise allowed for participants to be more forgiving in their assessment or, rather, to not just think of the negative but also the positive. This response drastically differs from the overall answers I received in the paper questionnaire, which showed fairly negative quantitative results on the overall experience at the German Foreigner Office.

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“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model o bsolete.” / R. Buckminster Fuller

// Chapter 10 - Exploring Alternative Tools for Collecting Feedback

CHAPTER 10

E xploring A lternative T ools for ÂC ollecting F eedback The research for this thesis began in a conventional way by examining existing methods for collecting feedback in the market research field, exploring observation in the scientific field, and then mapping design methods, such as tools used in Service Design, and thinking through the value that they add to create a more well-rounded and diverse approach to soliciting feedback from customers. What I did not anticipate, however, were a number of tools that are emerging in this space that have a blend of knowledge from all of these fields. It is clear to me that the industry is catching onto the fact that traditional tools are not sufficient in capturing customer feedback in the way that companies need it today. Even prominent design researchers acknowledge the need for a more in-depth study on this topic. The following are a few examples of alternative tools, paving the way for more consideration on this topic.

M apping M icro -N arratives & E motions There are researchers studying now the effect that metaphors have in discovering unconscious thoughts as well as how small social interactions play into having an overall picture of customer feedback. Two notable products, SenseMaker and ZMET, are at the forefront of this pioneering effort.

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SenseMaker SenseMaker is a tool created by Dave Snowden (not to be confused with Edward Snowden) of Cognitive Edge. It works based on the belief that people are more apt to give their opinion in small-scale, informal situations – “water cooler conversations” – and he aimed to build a tool that could collect that information and analyze it visually (“SenseMaker,” 2017). Dave calls this information “self-signified micro-narrative,” as SenseMaker is set up that the person providing the feedback interpret their own response, thus eliminating human error and assumptions that come along with observation and interviews (“SenseMaker,” 2017). This tool is interesting because it emphasizes the importance of normal, everyday narrative as a way to measure feedback from a Big Data perspective. Could this be a viable solution for companies who wish to sense how their customers perceive their products or services?

ZMET ZMET is a “patented research method [which] centers around metaphors” (“Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique,” 2017). Based on Gerald Zaltman’s research (as outlined in Chapter 7), it stems from the belief that images create metaphors that correspond to latent needs and insights that otherwise would not have been discovered in traditional market research methods (“Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique,” 2017). Essentially, customers are asked to collect images that represent their thoughts and feelings on a product, service or topic that the client chooses, they are interviewed in length on their images and a “trained, licensed ZMET” expert then analyzes the findings (“Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique,” 2017). The technique is increasingly popular with large brands who can afford to use the service and it echoes on a larger, more organized scale the type of exercise I carried out in the action research experiment (as outlined in Chapter 9). I see a lot of potential in this area, but I believe that this tool should be always combined with other tools as well, in order to get diversity of medium.

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R eal -T ime T echnology Technology is providing some interesting tools to solicit feedback. The following tools are platforms that attempt to bridge the gap between customers and companies, digitally.

Vision Critical Vision Critical advertises themselves as being able to solicit “real, honest customer feedback to improve marketing, customer experience and product development” (“Vision Critical,” 2017). They believe in constantly engaging with customers, as opinions can shift at any moment and one bad experience with a brand can lead to loss of customers. It’s interesting that the language they use indicate that they recognize the flaws in traditional market research. Words such as “continuously,” “engage,” “deepen,” “authentic relationship,” and “customer lifecycle” give the impression that they are interested in searching for more ‘holistic’ ways of engaging with customers. The platform itself is real-time, as it encourages customers to interact with companies continually through a social-media-like platform; however, I believe it is only successful with “super users,” or people who are already actively engaged with providing feedback to a brand they love. The platform has co-creative elements but it’s not really active because it seems to only capture thoughts and opinions and not work with the customer to create a better product or service.

Experience Fellow Started by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider, the editors of This is Service Design Thinking, Experience Fellow is a mobile ethnography tool that helps companies actively research their customers’ experiences. Through their platform, companies invite customers to download a mobile application with a QR code, and ask them to track their experience through a service from beginning to end (“Experience Fellow,” 2017). The company, in turn, receives up-to-date information and analysis in the form of a large-scale Customer Journey Map. This tool is interesting as it prompts customers to self-analyze their experience through a service; however, as with Vision Critical, the risk is that the only customers willing to download the app and participate are “super users” and thus do not represent the entirety of a company’s customer base. In a sense, platforms like this and 167

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Vision Critical fall into the category of surveys that fail because of lack of incentives on the customer side.

T he U se

S miley F aces

A new trend in collecting customer feedback is in the use of smiley faces. Smiley faces are universal (translated across languages), quick to decipher (easy to deploy), and a bit playful, which is why they are gaining traction.

Usabilla Usabilla is a company that produces software that inserts feedback tools into websites, apps and emails in order to get quick, “live” customer input (“About Usabilla,” 2017). The company also believes that gauging customer feedback, real-time, is necessary: “Usabilla was founded with the belief that continuous user feedback is the key to any successful website, product or service” (“About Usabilla,” 2017). They use four smiley faces and one heart emoticon to playfully encapsulate what a customer could be feeling at that moment in time. As a result of the data, in-depth analysis reports are drawn, so companies can see where exactly people have pain-points with a product or service. The tool is taking an interesting step in the direction of providing companies with continuous feedback but the question still remains: what benefit is this to the customer? Are services like this imply a more modern, playful spin on customer surveys? Pop-ups on screens can be just as annoying as receiving ten customer surveys per day via email.

HappyOrNot HappyOrNot is a company that produces an easy-to-use, quick way for collecting feedback on a minute-to-minute basis using “smiley terminals” (“HappyOrNot,” 2017). Today, one may see them in airports after security or in the bathrooms. The four smiley faces ranging from happy to sad and two more neutral emotions in-between prompt customers to think about how their experience just was and press a button as they pass by. Advertised as “approachable” and “anonymous,” HappyOrNot believes that they “encourage participation, increase customer and employee engagement, and

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give you 20 times more feedback compared to our competitors’ solutions” (“HappyOrNot,” 2017). This is an ambitious claim, as pressing a smiley face is limiting in terms of qualitative feedback. This tool is an interesting move in the direction towards participatory feedback but it is also a one-way, impersonal channel in which the only incentive to participate is how easy it is to do. I wonder if this apparatus also predominantly captures extremely happy or extremely unhappy opinions or if it manages to also capture the two somewhat neutral smiley face emotions in-between.

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I nteractive T ools People generally love open, anonymous participatory engagement. There is something inherently exciting about being asked what you think with no one around watching what you write – how else would one explain street art/graffiti? The following are two tools used to engage people in a participatory way in order to solicit their feedback.

VoxBox Project VoxBox Project is an ongoing research project conducted by a team at University College London examining alternative ways of interacting with the public to obtain input. They recognized that there are “limitations with traditional means for gathering opinions and views from the public” and so they investigated ways to engage people with as little interruption in their daily environment/experience as possible (“VoxBox Project,” 2017). Their first research played with the idea of a “physical questionnaire,” called VoxBox (“VoxBox Project,” 2017). It is a large structure that captures attention and prompts participants to give their opinion of an event through the use of “physical buttons, knobs, and spinners” (“VoxBox Project,” 2017). The team behind VoxBox believes that the key is to design something that draws people to participate: “The question this raises is how best to design a range of tangible input devices that people are drawn to, will find compelling, will know intuitively how to interact with, and will also not feel self-conscious when doing so, or feel that it is too childlike or too technical for them to use” (Golsteijn et al., 2015). I really like the design and execution of this tool. The team put a great deal of thought, from a human-centered perspective, into what makes people want to participate and give input and they built a physical structure that plays with people’s traditional ideas of how feedback is solicited. I believe that the elements of VoxBox should be studied to see if they can be implemented in other settings/contexts. I also believe that, like the other tools mentioned, it should be supplemented by another tool with different input/output qualities.

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“I Wish This Was” Participatory public art has the potential to engage people in ways that make them rethink commonplace behavior and take action in ways they otherwise wouldn’t. The project, “I Wish This Was,” took place in New Orleans and aimed to engage residents to voice their thoughts and emotions in their own neighborhoods (“I Wish This Was,” 2017). The artist, self-proclaimed introvert Candy Chang, is known for similar public art project like this, where she believes it gives a channel to the voiceless (“I Wish This Was,” 2017). The concept was incredibly simple: Chang printed thousands of stickers with the words “I wish this was” printed on them with a blank space underneath. She then posted them on buildings and vacant lots around New Orleans and passed them out in local shops (“I Wish This Was,” 2017). The responses, according to Chang’s website, “ranged from the functional to the poetic” (“I Wish This Was,” 2017). Initiatives like this are related to the topic of feedback because I believe feedback is inherently linked to the same principles evoked by public art – people want to be heard and understood.

("I Wish This Was," 2017)

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T owards a F ramework H olistic F eedback

for

The Current Landscape and Challenge Ahead The examples outlined in the previous section of emerging tools to collect feedback demonstrate that the marketing research industry and the design field are both working, perhaps still in separate corners, on finding more holistic ways of soliciting customer feedback. While their approach varies greatly, the problem to solve is one and the same: traditional tools are not sufficient in, alone, collecting comprehensive feedback from customers. This is due in part to two separate forces: the societal realization that emotions and unconscious thoughts play a big role in behavior and have been traditionally ignored in this space; and, the changing nature of our current business environment in which information bombards us everywhere and superior experiences around products/services are at the forefront of business innovation. The unfortunate reality is that these two forces makes it increasingly difficult to cut through all of the noise and entice customers to provide feedback in the way it was always done before, through surveying tactics. As such, companies are desperately trying to get ahead by polling customers in new and often intrusive ways and providing monetary incentives, but survey participation is still at an all-time low. Meanwhile, market research companies are creating new products (like some of the ones outlined in the previous section) to sell to companies, promising that they will help them to get the feedback that they need to get ahead.

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Thinking Through More Holistic Approaches As was laid out in the typology of feedback methods and visualized in the hexagon figures (Part III), each method, when standing alone, has strengths and weaknesses. Each is best used with a different type of person in a different context and yields a different feedback result. The main hypothesis of this Master thesis and the goal in this research was to explain the reasons why it is important to consider each method individually and use that information to create a suggested way of approaching collecting more comprehensive, qualitative customer feedback: Holistic Feedback. Based on the visualizations in Part III, we can see that combining tools is one of the keys to ensuring diversity of input techniques and output types â&#x20AC;&#x201C; increasing chances that a more broad range of customers will be engaged in the process and the feedback collected will be more substantial, complex, and emotionally revealing. I assert through my research and findings that the key to soliciting more Holistic Feedback lies in the intersection between the UNDERSTAND tools, DO tools and ASK tools. This ensures not only a diversity of types of feedback methods, as suggested in Sanders and Stappers (2012) but also of types of feedback models, as outlined in Kio (2015).

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“We need to develop and disseminate an entirely new p aradigm and practice of collaboration that s upersedes the traditional silos […] and replace it with networks of partnerships working together to create a globally prosperous society.” / Simon Mainwaring

// Conclusion

CONCLUSION In November 2016, upon exiting U.S. Customs and Security at the Philadelphia International Airport and waiting for my luggage, I was approached by a well-dressed, smiling man in his mid-30’s, asking me if I have a few minutes to answer some questions about my experience going through security. He was an employee of a well-known, large consulting firm, hired by the airport to assess their customer service. I smiled and said “yes,” as I was deep into my research for this Master thesis and it was the perfect moment to be asked, in-person, after a stressful experience, for my feedback. The man promptly pulled out an iPad and proceeded to share the screen with me as he swiftly read the questionnaire. The questions were pointed and didn’t give me many options for a different type of response, but I obliged. At the end of the short interview, he asked me if I had anything further to add, to which I replied “no” – at the time, I was a bit overwhelmed by all the questions, jetlagged, and honestly thought that I had conveyed everything that I had wanted to. A minute later, however, my mind cleared and I realized I had one very important piece of information to add. I walked over to him (he was already prepping for another interview) and told him something that wasn’t at all asked in the questionnaire and was a point that I thought had not even been considered by him or his team. He thanked me politely and the interaction was over. I reflected on my experience giving him feedback. I was glad it was in-person and directly after my experience, but I was a bit dismayed at not being able to know what would happen with my feedback – would it be another number displayed in a pie chart to management? Would my “yes,” “no,” “very satisfactory,” “not at all satisfactory,” answers be sufficient in telling my story? And

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finally, would my qualitative, open-ended answer given at the end of the interview (and not, may I add, noted down) ever make it into the final reporting? Clearly the airport paid a great deal of money to the consulting firm to carry out these in-person interviews, but I was skill skeptical of the outcome and the tool with which they used to carry it out. This experience confirmed for me my initial assumptions and motivated me to explore this topic further. As was outlined in Parts I, II, and III of this Master thesis, it is apparent that our world is moving in the direction of a more integrated, interdisciplinary, holistic paradigm, which requires a new attitude to solving complex problems, and, essentially, a new approach in how we collaborate. The recent widespread recognition that using a human-centered approach is key to making this shift happen, has been pushing us ever closer to creating more innovative, superior products and services. But there is still advancement that needs to be made: market researchers need to collaborate with designers to combine traditional approaches with human-centered design methods/tools; and, design researchers need to conduct more advanced study on the practical side of how one carries out feedback, when, and to what end – avoiding the pitfall of using buzzwords without detailing their meaning. “Most designers live in a world where the gulf of evaluation is infinite. True, we often know the product to well to envision how people will use it, yet we are separated from the end users by multiple layers of corporate bureaucracy, marketing, customer services, etc. These people believe they know what customers want and feedback from the real world is limited by filters they impose.” – Dan Rosenberg, design engineer (qtd. in Norman, 1990, p. 158) Furthermore, as the quote above indicates, we as designers are not immune to developing, what Donald Norman calls, “everyday psychology,” where we rely on our conscious thoughts based on “rationalizations of behavior” and “explanations after the fact” (Norman, 1990, p. 155). As Norman aptly warned, “designers are not 178

// Conclusion

typical users” – and we should not forget this when we go about creating products/services for customers: “There is no substitute for interaction with and study of actual users of a proposed design” (Norman, 1990, p. 155). This Master thesis is an attempt at further advancing the dialogue around the topic of feedback from a human-centered design perspective, and proposes a way of classifying current commonly-used market research and design research tools. The visualizations presented in Part III demonstrate that the key to collecting Holistic Feedback is to combine tools with different strengths – UNDERSTAND, DO, and ASK tools – in order to reach an optimal range of customers, varying in personality type and preferred method of engagement. While many of my initial questions were answered in my research and analysis, one main area for exploration remains:

How might one test this proposed framework for collecting Holistic Feedback?

Given more time, I would have liked to work with an interdisciplinary research team from the market research, cognitive psychology and design research fields in order to create an exhaustive list of feedback soliciting methods/tools used by all three industries, and create an experiment to test the most ideal combinations of tools using qualitative and quantitative data. In the end, companies want to know more about their customers to create superior products and services, and customers want to be engaged in a more meaningful, authentic, non-intrusive, collaborative way. The only way to achieve this is through the collaboration between the marketing field and the design field to come up with a more ideal combination of methods and tools that cater to more people and provide channels that encourage people to engage with. I believe that there is great potential in this area for further development, as evidenced by the incredibly positive feedback I have received from informal conversations with industry professionals, and I am excited to continue this exploration in my career moving forward. 179

// Appendices

APPENDICES A ppendix 1: A ction R esearch E xperiment M aterials Paper Questionnaire Survey Prompt The following is the question that was given to the three students who filled out the traditional paper survey: Think back to the time(s) that you have visited the Ausländerbehörde (German Foreigner Office) to get your visa, renew your documents or ask questions. Imagine that after your experience, the officer handed you this form and asked you to fill it out, stating, “Your opinion matters to us! Please rate how your experience was.” Please reflect individually on your experience and fill out this survey as you would in this scenario…. Dear Customer: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to better serve you. Please help us by taking a few minutes to tell us about the service that you have received so

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far. We appreciate your business and want to make sure we meet your expectations.

Group Interview Interview Prompt The following is the question that was given to the three students who were tasked with taking part in a Group Interview: Think back to the time(s) that you have visited the Ausländerbehörde (German Foreigner Office) to get your visa, renew your documents or ask questions. Imagine that after your experience, the officer asked if you and a few others have 5-10 minutes to talk to him/her about your experience since they really value your opinion and want to improve their services. You consent to an empathy interview. Please reflect on your experience at the Ausländerbehörde and participate in this group empathy interview as if this scenario were being played out in real life. Interview Transcript Interviewer (Nahal): "Thank you so much. So, as you know I’m going to just ask you a few questions - it’s make believe - I’m an officer at the Ausländerbehörde and I come to you and tell you “I’d really like to know how your experience was today…” um so yeah, just a couple of questions, to start things off, how was your last experience like at the Ausländerbehörde?" Alberto (Chile): "Well, from my personal view, it was really easy. I don’t have to pay anything and I get the visa in two weeks and it was super good, in Chile. it was really easy for me. for example my classmate had to pay 100 and in my case I didn’t have to pay."

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Interviewer (Nahal): "Nice, okay, and how were the staff, were people nice to you?" Alberto: "Yeah, really nice." Interviewer (Nahal): "Did they speak English or German?" Alberto: "English." Interviewer (Nahal): "Ok, nice. anyone else?" Alejandro (Mexico): "For me, I guess the overall experience was good, um, in a sense of having the outcome because normally when you have the visa you are happy and you don’t care about how long you waited in the waiting room, but if I go to through the specific experience, I can remember when I came to the foreign office and I used the elevator, I can totally remember you have to go to this hall and then look for your name, like the first letter of last name, and then knock on the door of this person and then open it yourself, leave your passport and go out and then go and find your place. it was a little bit crowded and I remember I wasn’t able to find any available seats. but that experience of going and knocking at the door was somehow a little bit weird because many persons that went there for the first time were a little bit afraid because when you go to a place like that, it was a little bit imposing, because you don’t want to make mistakes because you think they won’t give you the visa or something. so sometimes those kinds of things can make people afraid of doing it or not, should I ask, should I stay here, should I wait, should I go in. then when I got the call from the officer 30 min after - I was sitting on the floor because there were no chairs - and I went inside and he was talking to me really nicely, telling me about the documents that I was supposed to bring to the next meeting and veri183

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fying if I have the correct documentation - he was speaking in English - when he realized that I could speak German he switched to German and um, we continued speaking in German. and uh, yeah, the overall experience with this person was good - he kind of explained clearly what I was supposed to bring and I felt like maybe there is a barrier between the person and you because he’s somehow an officer and is a figure of authority somehow because you don’t want to mess up or do something wrong to prevent you from having the visa. I guess that’s basically my first experience." Interviewer (Nahal): "Thank you." Yen (Taiwan): “I think for my general experience is very bad - often really terrible. first I will describe the environment. I live in Kalk so I do my visa extension in Kalk Kundenzentrum and the whole environment is messed up - they have too many people waiting and they don’t have enough room for people waiting so many people were like sitting or standing just packed before the office door and nobody knew what they should do, like, there’s no clear instructions where they should go, how long they should wait and, uh, if they will be called or not and if they should knock on the office or they should just like line up in front of the door. the environment for me is extremely unfriendly, even though it’s the foreigner office, like they don’t provide any foreign language for visitors to understand…" Interviewer (Nahal): “Mhmm” Yen: "And yeah, there are all kinds of people like refugees, parents with kids and individuals so the whole environment is quite messed up for me." Interviewer (Nahal): “And what is your mindset when you go to the Auslander-

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behorde?” Yen: “Yeah that’s also one of the things - because I heard a lot of things and I had my previous experience of extending my visa in the past… so um before I got there I got nervous because I know people aren’t easy to talk with, and they always assume you can speak German when you don’t so I have this assumption that if I speak bad German they will treat me badly so I was already kind of nervous… and I see many people like that as well. and I see there are body guards in front of the door or they say “sometimes you can’t do this” and some mad facial expressions so that’s pretty unfriendly. and when I got called, I got called twice, it’s very random because the whole hallway was packed with people and it was all random - people want to stand away from the crowd - and when the officer comes outside their door they shout randomly in the air." Interviewer (Nahal): “Mhmm” Yen: “Sometimes you hear it and sometimes you don’t - one time I missed my name so they just like pushed me back like “no no you cannot get in now, you have to wait for another call” so I got called the second time, one hour later or so, and I got into the office with a young lady and she’s really unfriendly and she knows I cannot speak perfect German and sometimes I have a hard time to understand what she said, but she kind of shouted at me like she would at her pet or so. I think she’s stressed, but overall, I think in overall situations she shouldn’t treat visitors like that." Alberto: “I think it depends on the place where you’re going to get your visa, and the country where you come from.” Alejandro: “So you’re saying they treat Chileans differently?”

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Alberto: “No…for example…” Yen: “They’re racist?? [laughter]” Alberto: “How long did you get your visa? when do you have to renew your visa?” Alejandro: “One year” Alberto: “One year? and for you?” Yen: “One year” Alberto: “I have the visa for three years” Yen: “Yeah I know you got the privilege, but, like, the thing is, even though…” Alberto: “Sorry, two years” Alejandro: “Two years. two years is the maximum.” Yen: “Yeah but what I’m saying is that they shouldn’t treat people differently because they’re all the same and we all need help, kind of. and uh normally after my first time I went for asking for a visa, they put me waiting for three months and after three months I didn’t receive anything and then after the fourth month, I sent an email and they told me they forgot to order my visa and that I need to wait for two months.”

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Interviewer (Nahal): “But they did respond to your email…?” Yen: “Yeah. they did. and they told me that the colleague either staff on my case - that they forgot to order the visa for me. so, it’s a very horrible situation. I would say if it’s not needed I wouldn’t definitely not go to that place and every time I go there I know I have to be fully prepared for that environment and situation. the whole stress of this place."

Image Exercise Image Prompt The following is the question that was given to the four students who took part in the Image Prompt exercise: Think back to the time(s) that you have visited the Ausländerbehörde (German Foreigner Office) to get your visa, renew your documents or ask questions. Imagine that after your experience, the officer handed you this form and asked you to fill it out, stating, “Your opinion matters to us! Please rate how your experience was.” Please reflect individually on your experience and fill out the following prompt as you would in this scenario…. Instructions: Please choose 3 photos from the pile of image cards that best describe how you feel about your experience with the Ausländerbehörde. Then please write below a description of why you chose each photo and what about the photo evokes a certain emotion. There are no right or wrong answers.

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Image Cards Ziad (Lebanon)

Xiao (China)

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Shania (Hong Kong)

Anida (Indonesia)

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A ppendix 2: V isual E xploration - "W hat is F eedback to Y ou ?" Eleven KISD students were asked how they would visualize the feedback process. This was an open-ended, small-scale, exploratory study to see if there were any commonalities in the general perception of the term as a whole. Below are the sketches with their provided explanation.

"Feedback is a process of sharing thoughts that are sometimes overlapping. There is real discussion on the micro-level..." / Wookseob

"You have two different actors and each with a perception of a concept. Each one has a different concept in mind based on their own perception." / Alex 190

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"Feedback is a constant, Âevolving system where input adds on eachother and keeps getting tested, improved, Âtested, improved..." / Liwen

Feedback reflects a lot of your identity it's a mirror of yourself - when you give feedback you're trying to reflect yourself." / Mariana

"It's a loop - it begins with something and from the answer you got, it creates more content it still develops!" / Alejandro

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"You see something and then you have opinions you have to say what you like and don't like - and then you see the result of your feedback - otherwise, it's worthless." / Hassan

"I think that feedback goes both ways. We should make a conversation out of it...it's more productive [that way]." / Sam

"Feedback is a loop that gets better with mutual agreement through open discussions and argumentation. Each iteration creates a more positive outcome!" / Mary

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"Feedback is the response to what the Âreceiver gets as information, which he receives from the sender. The feedback is the receiver's own perception of what the sender sends. The information sent by the sender is his/her own message." / Angelia

"Feedback is something you expect to bounce back - shaped by the recipient and sent back to you. It can hit you back unexpectedly , in a bad way, or bounce back again with your response." / Denis

"Feedback is the user actively giving information and the designer passively listening. The designer then clarifies the information they receive and gives it back to the user." / Anida

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A ppendix 3: M ultidisciplinary , Q ualitative S urvey In the exploratory phase of thesis research, I was curious about what definition people from different industries had of feedback and how it is used in their work. In a week and a half, I received 42 responses from around the world. Respondents ranged from lawyers, doctors and engineers to educators and designers. The following were the questions asked: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Full Name Occupation/Job Title Company Name/Affiliation Years in Industry What does feedback mean to you? How would you define the term, "holistic feedback?" Can you explain how feedback plays a role in your current job and your personal views on it? 8. What do you think is needed in order to collect more comprehensive feedback (from customers or other stakeholders)? Are there any tools/methods you use currently to do this? 9. What do you think is a hindrance to collecting comprehensive feedback or what do you think is currently done incorrectly?

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The answers varied greatly, were very interesting to read, and Âprovided me with a great first step in thinking through what aspect of feedback I wanted to focus on. In order to make some of my findings visual, I took the 42 responses to the question "How would you define the term, "holistic Âfeedback," and created a Wordle (using wordle.net) of the most used words. I have included it above.

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“Your a ccomplishment is not your own. It b elongs to everyone. You just get to have the p rivilege of being the vessel through which the a ccomplishment b ecame manifest.” / Robert Lopez-Lengowski

// Acknowledgements

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS T hank you for the feedback ! I did not get to this point without the incredible help and support from the following people. Thank you to everyone for providing me – whether formally or informally – with FEEDBACK on my thesis on feedback. Thank you, Prof. Birgit Mager, for your wise guidance on the topic and providing me with the opportunity to delve into the field of Service Design intensely these past two years at KISD; Thank you, Paul Hughes, for your endless support and encouragement over the last few years, your supervision, and much-needed pep talks during the research and writing of this thesis project. A great deal of thanks goes to my dear immediate and extended family & friends back home – too many to list – whose incredible love over these past two years was felt, intensely, even from a long distance away. Special thanks to my mom and dad for their undying support. Eternal gratitude goes to Roman Höffgen, who kept me to task on my work, entertained me on my “time off” from thesis writing and kept me well-fed during my late nights. Thank you to the KISD MA Class of 2015 – my adopted family away from home: Aline Alonso, Mariana Lourenço, Mary Rizk, Wookseob Jeong, Patricia Frieß, Yundi Wei, Mohamed Hassan, Hyunji Lee, and a special thank you to Liwen Zhong, for being my go-to-gal for InDesign questions, helping me with my typology visualizations, and trouble-shooting in the printing process.

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Thank you to all of my fellow students and professors I befriended and worked closely with these past two years at Köln International School of Design: KISD MA Class of 2016 for their endless motivation in Room 306; Janina Rösch for her superb design abilities and motivation; Herbert Heitmann Arraes and Aleksandra Marjanovic for taking precious time from their schedules to sit with me and hear me babble about feedback; Kokaew Wongpichet, Carolin Schabbing, and Alejandro Juárez Saucedo for lending me an ear on multiple occasions; Ms. Lindner, Ms. Salcines, and Prof. Heidkamp for their support and guidance during my two years at KISD. Thank you to my Deutsche Telekom colleagues – too many to name individually: For providing me with valuable insights during my internship at the Telekom Design Academy and making my experience memorable. Thank you to my “unsung heroes” and external guides – for their inspirational conversations, thoughtful suggestions, and personal anecdotes relating to my topic: Stephanie Hughes, Holger Gelhausen, Peter Dierkes, Mela Chu, Johanna Rosenbusch, Stephan Moritz, Vanessa Rodrigues, M. Enrique Lopez-Claros, Moujan Toloubadei, Rebecca A. Tavangar, and a special thank you to Patrik Frauzem for the chocolate and yoga to keep me sane. And last, but not least, to my beloved Design Thinking DC (DT:DC) community, where my journey into human-centered design first began: Frankie Abralind, Stephanie Wade, Artemio Rivera, Stephanie Brown, Ryann Hoffman and many more (you know who you are)...

…And anyone else whom I have forgotten in my old age, but who deserve the same level of appreciation. Thank you.

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