Collaborative Shopping.

collaborative

How to support a startup prototyping collaborative services

Serena Nardin

Collaborative Shopping How to support a startup prototyping collaborative services

POLITECNICO DI MILANO Scuola del Design Master degree Product Service System Design A.A. 2013 / 2014

Student Serena Nardin 783028 Supervisor Marta Corubolo Assistant supervisor Liat Rogel 29 April 2014

Abstract

Abstract English Within the current economic overview, which is led by the crisis and it is able to give more different and new opportunities, the attitude of consumers and citizens towards collaboration practices is spreading out. It follows the birth of a set of collaborative services and some of them are structured and developed within the startup experience. The main features of collaborative services are the creative answer and sometimes unusual solution to daily needs, and the involvement of a community that supports and ensures the operation of the service.

This thesis project fits in this context, with the aim to investigate how the discipline of Design could on the one hand contribute to the development of strategies and tools able to implement and strengthen a collaborative service developed by a startup, on the other hand identify, engage and enable those collaborative communities able to give an important contribution in the phases of the service prototyping.

The work of analysis and design is developed on the collaborative service of Milkplease, which provides for the collaboration between neighbors for the purchase and delivery of grocery shopping. Invented by the homonymous startup that wants to improve the e-grocery market, Milkplease has chosen Milan as a city where to make a prototype of the service, which compared to the first prototype of Berlin shows the important contribution for the service enhanced.

Starting from the experience of design for social innovation and adopting a Community Centered Design approach, it was possible to develop a strategy for the involvement of three quite different communities of service’s potential users: the dwellers of the cooperative Scarsellini Village, the Via Corridoni community and two experiences of Social Street in Milan. Through the design of tools of co-design and the improvement of a series of prototypes that simulated the most critical stages of the service Collaborative Shopping will show how it is possible to collect a series of qualitative data useful for the growth of the service itself, its definition and implementation.

Abstract

Abstract Italiano All’interno dell’attuale panorama economico governato dalla crisi, capace di lasciare spazio a diverse e nuove opportunità, si sta diffondendo l’attitudine dei consumatori e dei cittadini verso pratiche di collaborazione. Ne consegue la nascita di una serie di servizi collaborativi e alcuni di essi ,strutturati e sviluppati all’interno di esperienze di start up. Le principali caratteristiche dei servizi collaborativi sono la risposta creativa e talvolta inedita, a bisogni quotidiani ed il coinvolgimento di una comunità di utenti che sostiene e garantisce il funzionamento del servizio stesso.

Il seguente progetto di tesi si inserisce in tale contesto, con l’obiettivo di indagare come la disciplina del Design possa da un lato contribuire allo sviluppo di strategie e strumenti capaci di implementare e rafforzare un servizio collaborativo ideato da una startup, dall’altro individuare, coinvolgere e abilitare quelle comunità collaborative in grado di dare un’importante contributo nella fase di prototipazione del servizio.

Il lavoro di analisi e di progettazione è sviluppato sul servizio collaborativo di Milkplease, che prevede la collaborazione tra vicini di casa per acquisto e consegna della spesa alimentare.

Ideato dall’omonima startup che vuole intraprendere la strada del e-grocery, Milkplease ha scelto Milano come città dove effettuare una prototipazione del servizio, il quale confrontato al primo prototipo berlinese mostra l’importante contributo di miglioramento del servizio A partire dalle esperienze di design per l’innovazione sociale e adottando un approccio Community Centered Design, è stato possibile sviluppare una strategia di coinvolgimento di tre comunità di potenziali utenti del servizio, ben diverse tra loro: gli abitanti della cooperativa Villaggio Scarsellini, la comunità di Via Corridoni e due esperienze di Social Street Milano.

Attraverso la progettazione di strumenti di co-design e la costruzione di una serie di prototipi che hanno simulato le fasi più critiche del servizio di Collaborative Shopping si dimostrerà come sia possibile raccogliere una serie di dati qualitativi utili alla crescita del servizio stesso, alla sua definizione ed implementazione.

collaborative

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

G. B. Shaw

index

Index Abstract / English Abstract / Italiano Introduction I. Prologue & Acknowledgements II. Aims and Methodology III. Structure of the thesis

2 4 6

1. Collaborative services 1.1 Next economy: towards new economic models 1.2 Collaborative Consumption 1.2.1 Collaborative services 1.2.2 Sharing economy 1.3 Social innovation 1.3.1 Design for social innovation

8 10 13 16 19

2. Creative Communities and Living Labs 2.1 Creative communities 2.2 Community as a resource of service’s prototype 2.3 Case studies Nutrire Milano / Feeding Milan (Italy) Living Labs (Sweden) Housing Lab (PhD research, Milan) Ideas Sharing Lab (PhD research, Milan) Cittadini creativi / Creative Citizen (PhD research, Milan)

25 27 29

Social Street (Italy) 2.4 Conclusion and CCD approach

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3. The case Milkplease 3.1 The startup and the Berlin experience 3.2 Analysis of the service 3.2 Analysis of the context 3.2.1 Worldwide e-grocers overview 3.2.2 Italian e-grocers overview 3.3 Conclusion

46 47 51 53 54 55

4. Prototyping a Collaborative Shopping 4.1 Strategic analysis 4.2 Action Plan 4.2.1 Strategy development 4.2.2 Verify basics

60 62 64 66

Communities analysis Housing Lab: Scasellini Social Street: via Maiocchi and via Morgagni Collaborative Neighbors: via Corridoni Survey

4.3 Take Action 4.3.1 Scarsellini

72 72

Focus Group Workshop and Prototyping Results

4.3.2 Collaborative Neighbors Corridoni

72

Workshop: Riunione di Condominio Prototyping Survey Feedback Implementing Prototyping Results

4.4 Conclusion

102

index

5. Future developments and conclusion 5.1Future developments 5.2 A toolbox for the startup 5.2.1 The tools 5.2.2 The strategies

106 107 108 112

Scarsellini Corridoni Social Street

5.3 Conclusion

122

Bibliography Books Articles Others List of Figures

126 128 130 132

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Introduction

Introduction

Introduction I. Prologue & Acknowledgments During my internship at Strategic Design Scenarios in Brussels1, I get the opportunity to participate to a project about Product-service system within a wide program called TURAS2 – Transitioning towards Urban Resilience and Sustainability supported by EU. This project was led by Brussels Environment3, Ecores, Group One, Strategic Design Scenarios and Égérie Research4. The aim was to develop new ideas and opportunities to increase the number of innovative start-up with sustainable business models in order to decrease the unemployment rate within Brussels-capital Region.

Fig. 0.1 Picture of ‘Café Réunion’ prototyping and flyer for advertising

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After five co-design workshop among 50 different actors (young local entrepreneurs, unemployed, NGO managers, exponents of sustainable associations) they created many concepts of new product-service systems. Furthermore, some of them were selected and analyzed in depth in order to be carried on. Finally, we started a quick-prototyping of the ones called: Café Réunion.

According to our action plan, we selected some key places in which prototype, but we didn’t have enough time to create or find the right group of users for Café Réunion, even to build a community. So we started before only by ourselves and then with some friends.

Therefore, I learnt how it is important for new start-up to be have a support during the development of their ideas, especially during the prototyping of Product-Service System especially in the creation or selection of the right incubator according with the PSS requested features. More in depth, I was motivated to reflect on what causes these kind of projects: the economic crisis and the emergence of lack of job for many people. The new and innovative product-service systems, which we were co-designing with these social associations, job companies and public administration, were made, of course to improve business and job but even to change behavior and to carry on social innovation. All of the ideas born were around new attitude of creating a network to share products, places, tools, to allow collaboration among users.

Since all these reflections I was very stimulated by the project proposed by Liat Rogel and Marta Corubolo helping a start up of younger creative engineers to develop a new collaborative service. That is why I go ahead and in depth of prototyping, analyzing what designers could do trying to find a strategy with innovative method and tools.

Thus, I would thank Marta Corubolo and Liat Rogel because they gave me this opportunity.

Moreover, it was not possible without Carmine Giardino and Lodato Luciano, the founders of Milkplease.

Special thanks are obliged for the wonderful collaboration with the communities of neighbors from Housing Lab / Scarsellini, from Social Street / via Maiocchi-e-dintorni and Social Street / via Morgagni. I can’t forget the special session of co-design and prototyping with the Collaborative neighbors of via Corridoni, so amazing what we have done together!

Thanks to all the members of the Product Service System design, professors, assistants and all my classmates to have gone along with me during this path: learning, playing, experiencing, collaborating, researching, experimenting… designing.

Lastly, I am thankful to everybody has supported and suggested me till now, a beloved thought to everyone I care.

1 2 3 4

www.strategicdesignscenarios.net www.strategicdesignscenarios.net/product-service-systems/ www.bruxellesenvironnement.be www.egerie-research.be/

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Introduction

II. Aims and Methodology The action-research aims to demonstrate how a design approach can develop the right tools and methods in order to improve services by using the creative communities as a perfect ‘fertile ground’ for this operation. So in this particular case the Milkplease’s services will be a prototype inside three diverse communities, which have different features in order to build a wide know-how and to collect qualitative responses through the various experimentations.

Moreover, the observation, coming from the analysis of the case studies, allows to verify that the communities are not structured, organized and reliable as a Living Lab, which guarantee a good result, but they could represent an opportunity to support startups (or enterprises, associations, even the communities themselves) in a dynamic and quick way only by following the adequate strategy, which lets the improvement of specific engaging, enabling and collecting tools.

n esig d e rvic Se service

Emp ath ic d gn esi

communities

digital platform

In t e rac ti

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Community Centered Design

TOOLBOX

STRATEGY

prototyping pss

Str ate gi

ign des n o

implementations

gn esi cd

Fig. 0.1 Scheme of the thesis development

network

Since the topics are collaborative services and creative communities, the disciplines of Design affected are different in order to investigate each part of the PSS development, as it’s visible in the scheme 0.1. Therefore, the presence in the communities as ‘prototype tool’ requests the approach of Community Centered Design, because it “involves local players in the design process and scales up the consolidated methods and tools of User Centered Design to community size. It also probes behavior, needs and established a potential network of relationships.” (D. Cantù, M. Corubolo, G. Simeone, 2012) Thus, it allows to identify the suitable communities, to let emerge a group identity in order to enable a co-design process within it. In this case, the strategy will be defined for exploring the opportunities offered by three selected communities; the added value, which will be gained by working in this way, is to increase the know-how and the variety of tools, that they will be shaped around the essence of the referred service, that is the Collaborative Shopping.

So the process will start exactly from the Milkplease’s service by analyzing it, its context and the benefits, then it will be reduced to be as anonymous Collaborative Shopping, in order to explore other solutions and to re-shape it by using one of the three communities. Even the platform, which is the main touch-point of the service, must be experienced in order to understand how users interact with it. Finally and most importantly is the relation played with the communities engaged, since a Living Lab ad hoc is not available, they are the best place to prototype: only a design approach can turn them into a basic working tool for the service prototype. The risk to fail is high, because they are not organized precisely for this purpose as it could be a service incubator, however, they offers many benefits, such as the opportunity to prototype quickly, they are dynamic and creative and the Design methods are made to collect valuable responses, finally, the people engaged could be the future potential users of the service.

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Introduction

III. Structure of the thesis The thesis is divided into the following sections: - Introduction, with prologue and an overview - Context analysis and literature review - Focal analysis on the case Milkplease - Experience, by experimenting throughout the project ‘Collaborative Shopping’ - Conclusion includes the plan for the following steps and future development -Bibliography and Annex, with the references and the tools used during the experience The first part of the Context Analysis mainly come from the literature review on the topics discussed during the thesis: -an overview of what are the collaborative services, from what has been caused, what are the consequences both in the economy and in the society, what is the role of design (Chap.1) -a in-depth analysis in the creative communities, what it means co-design and prototype with and within them, the approaches and methodologies adopted in the case studies analyzed (Chap. 2) The second part of the analysis pivots on the service presented by the startup Milkplease in order to understand how it works, the aim, the context, the competitors and a quick overview of very similar case studies (Chap 3) The third part consists of the planning phase with the development of strategies and tools, the prototyping phase with different communities (Chap 4)

Fig. 1.1 Chinese character for the word Crisis

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Since the experimenting phase is still in progress the fourth part embraces either the plane of the future steps, other possible developments and the conclusion achieve by the results collected (Chap 5)

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Chapter 1

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1. collaborative services 1.1 Next economy: towards new economic models The emergence created by the crisis enables people to understand that the old model of economy is not sustainable anymore. Thus, the implicated solution is not trying to fix the old model of the economy, but is affecting to build a new one with new production systems and new behaviors. That means we have to recognize the opportunity and build a new economic system, a new way to produce and consume to better invest time, money and energy. (E. Mazini, 2011)

Crisis: from Ancient Greek κρίσις : krisis, “a separating, power of distinguishing, decision, choice, election, judgment, dispute” and from κρίνω : krinō, “pick out, choose, decide, judge”.

Fig. 1.1 Chinese character for the word Crisis

When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters: one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.

The shift to a new economy is happening within the crisis, so the challenge is to promote this change even with the big lack of adequate capital, methods and skills. Nevertheless, the phenomenon is wide, it spread across the public sector, the non-profit association, as well as commercial markets, and it is operating to change public services as the daily life of citizens.

Its boundaries are not detectable and it is difficult to have a perfect overview of this innovative scenario. However, there are some emerging key-feature able to give a rapid 8

insight of it: -Collaborative consumption The possession of objects, milestone of previous economic models, is actually overtaken by the new attitude of peer-to-peer, open source, sharing, co-working. Thus, the society is facing with a new way to consume, which is not an unconditional replacement of the old one but it is an attractive choice. The causes are different from saving money to explore new experiences. People are reevaluating the power of cooperation and collaboration, the new behavior is going to share everything among skills, tools, time, information, products, places and even more. This flip as a consequence: the focus is moving of objects and products to services and product service systems. (R. Botsman, R. Rogers, 2010) -The ‘Prosumer’ (A. Toffler, 1980) User as producer, digital technology is changing the relations among people, citizen and particularly between consumers and markets. The new technology paradigm is bringing the reconfiguration of the production around the user. In many sectors users start to be involved in the design process becoming producers themselves.

- Distributed system The idea is to build a network in which there is non-hierarchical architecture, but small piece units connect each other to tackle complex activities, to exchange skills and knowledge.

That’s why the rise of technologies, which allows to structure multifarious networks, is supporting distributed system. The result is technological innovations got power thanks to its capability to improve work and to convey it accessible (Johansson, Kish, Mirata, 2005; Biggs, Ryan, Wisman, 2010; E. Mazini, 2011) -Social Economy The old model in not enough to solve the crisis and social demands, for this reason the social economy is represented by the involvement of social actors such as nonprofit associations, foundations, local authorities, social enterprises, civil society organizations, public institutions and even active citizens in order to develop economical and social solutions to people’s needs and request. Thus, the way to work in this new model is led by a ‘problem-solving attitude’ rather than a ‘money-earning attitude’, each stakeholder of the social economy is aiming to enhance the quality of the daily life. This kind of economy has always co-existed in the shadow of the consumerism, indeed right now, it begins to be as important as the other one: it is a powerful competitor.

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1.2 Collaborative Consumption1

The collaboration at the heart of Collaborative Consumption may be local and face-to-face, or it may use the Internet to connect, combine, form groups, and find something or someone to create “many to many” peer-to-peer interactions. Simply put, people are sharing again with their community_be it an office, a neighborhood, an apartment building, a school, or a Facebook network. But the sharing and collaboration are happening in ways and at a scale never before possible, creating a culture and economy of what’s mine is yours.

Fig. 1.2 Botsman R., Rogers R., What’s mine is yours.

How collaborative consumption is changing the way we live. London, Collins, 2011

The tendency of the people may be changing towards a cooperative behavior causing a revolution into the cultural, political and economic system. They are understanding the value of sharing and the open resources by juggling individual identity and community’s one, as a sort of collaborative individualism. So, all these people begin to participate at a Collaborative Consumption, which is not a unique phenomenon for geek or dwellers of big cities, but there are different array of demographic groups and subcultures.

There are two main actors in the system of a Collaborative Consumption: peer provider who is providing something to share or to borrow, and a peer user who consumes what it is offered. People can identify themselves with one of these two figures or be alternatively both.

1 www.collaborativeconsumption.com

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Fig. 1.3 Botsman R., Rogers R., 2011 - Scheme of the Collaborarative Consumption

The motivators which are pushing and attract collaborative consumer are many, for instance an urgent necessity of money and resources, or the attitude to follow good and sustainable behaviors, or the willingness to create relationships with other people, or just curiosity to try something new and different, and all the people who don’t trust anymore in the principles of capitalism.

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Rachel Bostman and Roo Rogers, organized all the example collected during their research in Collaborative Consumtion into three different systems: -Product Service System -Redistribution market -Collaborative lifestyles “In a PSS, a service enables multiple products owned by a company to be shared (car sharing, solar power, launderettes), or products that are privately owned to be shared or rented peer-to-peer.” 2In this way the concept of ownership of an object is overtaken by the usability.

“Social networks enable used or pre-owned goods to be redistributed from where they are not needed to somewhere or someone where they are.” 2That is redistribution markets, which are encouraging recycling, reusing, repairing, reselling, and redistributing by interrupting the concept to buy-more and buy-new.

“People with similar interests are banding together to share and exchange less tangible assets such as time, space, skills and money, in what we call collaborative lifestyles.” 2These initiatives have taken place in a local environment, but through the internet and the social networks which permit the coordination of people, they have been diffused worldwide.

The consequences of the Collaborative Consumption is to answer to crisis problem as well as the sustainability. As eBay announced on Earth Day in 2008, ‘We never set out to be a green business, we realized it’s intrinsic’. These positive unintended or unexpected consequences happen because sustainability and community are an inherent, inseparable part of Collaborative Consumption.

2 Botsman R., Rogers R., What’s mine is yours. How collaborative consumption is changing the way we live. London, Collins, 2011

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1.2.1 Collaborative Services

Collaborative services are social services where final users are actively involved and assume the role of service co-designers and co-producers. […] Each compensates for a decrease in the consumption of products with an increase in other qualities.

These qualities pertain to physical and social environments with the rediscovery of commons; to relationships with the rediscovery of communities; to being active with the rediscovery of individual and social capabilities; to time with the rediscovery of slowness. All these new qualities are based on the traditional qualities reinterpreted in the present context. To be appreciated, all of them require a human scale, that is, they require small (comprehensible, manageable) systems. At the same time, given the present high level of connectivity, these small systems can be (and have to be) to the interactions with wider flows of people and ideas that characterize contemporary global society.

Per servizi collaborativi digitali si intendono quei servizi che mettono in contatto persone con persone attraverso piattaforme digitali (Internet, mobile, tablet e quant’altro) che permettono di condividere, scambiare o vendere direttamente prodotti, beni e competenze.

Questi servizi si definiscono collaborativi perché prevedono uno scambio fra pari, e digitali perché sono abilitati dalle nuove tecnologie. Fanno parte di tutti quei servizi di innovazione sociale di cui si è detto e non sono perciò un’evoluzione, né tantomeno una contrapposizione a essi; al contrario aprono e consentono nuove opportunità.

Fig. 1.4 Jègou F., Manzini E., Collaborative Services. Social innovation and design for sustainability.

Milano, Edizioni POLI.design, 2008

Fig. 1.5 Mainieri M., Collaboriamo!

Come i Social Media ci aiutano a lavorare e vivere bene in tempo di crisi. Milano, Hoepli, 2013

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The intrinsic factor of to be a service defines that collaborative service must fulfill to some needs by attracting the interest of the users, which have to perceive the necessity to use it.

From the analysis of the Collaborative Services drafted by Rachel Bostman and Roo Rogers before, and Marta Manieri later, there are four principles that combine them and help us to understand how they work: Critical mass, Idling capacity, Belief in the Commons, Trust between strangers.

Trust between strangers fulfill needs

Fig. 1.5 The four principles of the Collaborative Services

Critical mass

Collaborative Services

Idling capacity

Belief in the Commons The critical mass is the limits to reach and overtook in order to self-sustain or self-run. This is fundamental for a Collaborative Service because it’s not providing goods or services as a factory or producer who is able to enlarge the offers by increase the production, for example. The only way to enlarge the offers is to reach the critical mass, namely an enough number of members of the community, able to offer more, to give more chances. “No universal magic formula can determine the right point of critical mass for different types of Collaborative consumption. It varies depending on the context, the needs being met and user expectations.[…] But the principle is the same: the system will be successful if users are satisfied by the choice and the convenience available to them” Often we buy something that uses it for a few minutes, and find a place for the object, the maintenance and the cost of the object itself become a huge wastefulness. Is it really more 14

important the ownership of an object than the usability? Considering the wastefulness, maybe not. Around us there are tons of object, whose the unused potential of those objects where they are not in use I referred to as idling capacity. At the heart of the collaborative services “is the reckoning of how we can take this idling capacity and redistribute it elsewhere. Modern technology, including Online social networks and GPS-enabled handheld devices, offers a multitude of ways to solve this problem.”

“The idea of the Commons, a term applied to resources that belong to all of us, dates back to the Romans, who defined certain things as ‘res publica’ (meaning things set aside for public use), such as parks, roads and public buildings; and ‘res communis’ (meaning thinks common to all), such as air, water, and wildlife, as well as culture, languages and public knowledge.”

Through our digital experiences, we are recognizing that by providing value to the community, we enable our own social value expanded in return. The concept of Common has taken more value, a new meaning in the digital era, because it is the birth of a group of people, community, gathered by the same interest. A collaborative service is doing exactly this, it is creating a community around at the same interest. Every single person who joins the community creates value for another member, even if this was not the intention.

Most of the collaborative services require users to trust each other, thus means to trust even a stranger. Thus, the Collaborative Services providers have to develop a digital platform with the ability to transmit even the reputation of the people. In fact, they are creating the right tools and systems that can self-control the reputation of the people and enable knowledge, the most used for example is a ranking system or the feedback left by other users. A positive rating becomes a way to spread trust among strangers. “We have returned to a time when if you do something wrong or embarrassing, the whole community will know.” 3

3 Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption TEDxSydney · 16:34 · Filmed May 2010 www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_case_for_collaborative_consumption

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1.2.2 Sharing economy

Fig. 1.6 Ivana Pais, italian professor of economic sociology at Università Cattolica di Milano

“The sharing economy can be an important bridge between the companies and startups, only if the traditional companies consider this economic model as an opportunity and not a threat.” Ivana Pais, italian professor of economic sociology at Università Cattolica di Milano.

She is the organizer of Sharitaly, the first event dedicated to the collaborative economy in Italy on November 29, 2013.

According to Pais, even in the Italian context the aptitude to share objects, places of production, skills, services and resources is not only a phenomenon caused by the crisis; she thinks it starts to go into a mature phase. It was born for saving and it’s already become a way to reduce the environmental impact, foster behavioral changes and improve social innovation due to the access to communication devices.

During the interview, she recognizes three distinctive features: sharing as the usage of a common resource; the horizontal relationship between people or communities (peer-to-peer) in which the boundaries of the roles are feeble, the consumer becomes the user, sometimes he can participate by taking part in the design, that makes him a producer; the presence of technological platforms which allow the digital relationship and the network development.

These new attitudes are: sharing (for instance the car, the home, the workplace, the clothes, etc.) crowding (practices like crowd founding and crowd-sourcing) the bartering (between people or companies) and making (who is rediscovering the DIY do-it-yourself). Clearly, in this frame the concept of property, money and purchasing are no longer the key elements of the economic system. In Italy, this model is spreading with increasing intensity and is giving rise to many promising experiences, both foreign companies such as Airbnb and Italian ones, as car2go, iFoodShare, Fubles.

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Interview to Ivana Pais, by Maurizio Di Lucchio4 Why the sharing economy is an opportunity for large companies and for Italian SMEs? Through this approach, traditional business companies can intercept some well-established consumer needs, including the expectation of equal relations in the economic sphere.

People feel the need to interact with companies in ways that are less vertical and less topdown.

What is the role they can play in this context, the start up? Can the Sharing Economy, foster synergies between start up and traditional businesses?

So the big companies as SMEs have difficulty positioning within this new paradigm. Indeed, many startups born under this collaborative model yet. Especially those who develop digital platforms that allow this type of interaction may be useful to businesses. Thus, it may be born of the partnership: the traditional companies get help by startups in the introduction of this new culture, while startups have the opportunity to access new markets.

Some examples of interaction?

I could mention Fubles, the community to seek companions for football matches. In addition to a collaboration with Adidas, has received a major funding by Renzo Rosso, who entered in the capital of the startup creating a joint sponsorship: Users of the platform can be potential buyers of the Diesel cloths. Another example is the collaboration between Barilla and Gnammo, the platform for organizing dinners at home.

There may be specific opportunities for SMEs? Of course. I could mention the case of Slowd, a platform that allows anyone who wants to buy a piece of design made in Italy to buy it and have it produced by the closer artisan.

There are many other applications in every sector: it is enough to consider the models of sharing is not a threat, but a resource to innovate the business.

4 Interview “Che cos’è la sharing economy e perché è il ponte fra aziende e start up. Intervista a Ivana Pais” di Maurizio Di Lucchio, on www.economyup.it

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How to identify areas in which you can apply these models?

Theoretically, such a system can arise in all areas where resources are not fully exploited and efficiently. Think of transport: trucks with the sharing is done so that the trucks traveling vacant after delivery of the goods they could transport goods from other companies. Taking such reasoning, many ideas can be born.

Why, then, many companies have yet to Italian resistance to the Sharing Economy?

The reasons are basically three. The first is ignorance, in the sense that there are so many companies still do not know about this phenomenon. The second is the fear of losing control over your own business: sharing is very horizontal, not vertical, therefore it is more difficult to handle with a traditional way. The third is the fear that these formulas represent a detriment to their business, while it is often an opportunity to be seized. Some studies, especially in tourism, demonstrate that the economic value created by companies active in the sharing economy, it may be even greater than the one destroyed competing with traditional business: for example, if Airbnb has challenged hotels in 2:03 stars, on the other hand has increased the b&b and individuals, both in the center and in the suburbs.

Like a researcher of the sharing economy, you say that we should not get caught up in enthusiasm and try to be cautious. Why? When enters a new cultural and economic model, there is always someone who thinks it can have a revolutionary impact and replace the old. The sharing economy obviously will not eliminate the traditional economy, as well as the e-commerce companies has not destroyed the factories. I think we should think about these innovations in the relationship as complementary models, which will go to support the existing ones and can also bring significant social and economic innovation.

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1.3 Social Innovation In this frame of changes the Social Innovation has a central role, because it is educating societies in order to find solutions to the urgent problems caused by the crisis and the unsustainable economical system. Foster by the technologies the social innovation has been explored in many fields, in which they took this new challenge as a variety of different ways to face problems.

Social innovation refers to new ideas that work in meeting social goals.

(G. Mulgan, 2006) Innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are predominantly developed and diffused through organizations whose primary purposes are social.

(B. Latour)

Manzini and Mulgan tells that Social innovation evolves when two particular condition appeared: “When society is facing difficult problems and when new widely-used technologies open new and only partially explored possibilities.� (E. Manzini, 2011). Nowadays both of these conditions are largely verified, because the crisis brings many problems hardly to tackle by our politics and economic model, meanwhile many technologies are becoming normal in everyday lives. Improving technology and tools for communications more and easier to use by normal people, it is developing high-quality abilities to produce new products and services by everybody. They do not need specific skills or expensive tools to answer their own needs if the markets are not able to do. The result is that common people have the power to 19

1. collaborative services

innovate, we are assisting to a ‘democratizing innovation’ (Von Hippel, 2005) In addition the social innovation finds a perfect context due to the new problems and needs faced in the last years, such as the environmental problems caused by pollution, the effects of the climate change, new discoveries in health and other similar fields. Jaime Lerner, the former Mayor of Curitiba (Brazil) tells even some small, isolated initiatives can boost the social innovation into the cities, he called this ‘urban acupuncture’ (Murray, 2010) Although social innovation has the conditions to develop, many ideas are blocked or have trouble to grow up, because there is yet a lack of interests to invest in this field. Thus, many social issues are not tackled and remain acute.

“We advocate a much more concerted approach to social innovation, and have coined the phrase ‘Social Silicon Valleys’ to describe the future places and institutions that will mobilize resources and energies to tackle social problems in ways that are comparable to the investments in technology made in the first silicon valley and its equivalents around the world.” (Geoff Mulgan with Simon Tucker, Rushanara Ali and Ben Sanders, ‘Social Innovation what it is, why it matters and how it can be accelerated’, 2007 The Young Foundation5) A variety of different experiences and disciplines are contributing to the definition and exploration projects of social innovation. Although each has its method and insights, they are building a network in order to learn from each other. They spread up information in order to exchange ideas and experiences as quick as possible and to solve social challenges.

These fields are: social entrepreneurship, design, technology, public policy, urban development, social movements, community development. (G. Mulgan, 2007)

5 youngfoundation.org

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1.3.1 Design for social innovation

Design for social innovation is whatever design can do to trigger and support social innovation.6 (DESIS)

Design is important for social innovation, because it could affect creative communities, which are considered as an agent for change. The synergy between designers and communities can boost social innovation, as the communities are experimenting and improving solutions while designers are dealing with the analysis of them, the development of tools and strategies to support them and the spread of their research in this field.

Designers for social innovation are whoever is actively involved in conceiving and developing social innovations: the design experts, who have been trained as designers, but also all those who, consciously or not, adopt a design approach and use design abilities.

(E. Manzini)

In the common thoughts, the capabilities of designers are to shape products and services including technological innovation to respond to the human needs and demands. Although these abilities remain valid, to improve social innovation, they should use them to do a step over it: they could point out promising cases, analyze them and support them.

Design for social innovation is not a new field or discipline; it is based on the design approaches, cultures and practices.

6 www.desis-network.org 7 Design and social innovation. A catalyst of sustainable changes, Ezio Manzini, Politecnico di Milano - DESIS Network

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1. collaborative services

“Nevertheless, dealing with design for social innovation, two of these design disciplines are particularly relevant: service design (to conceive and develop solution ideas considering the quality of these interactions) and strategic design (to promote and support partnerships between the different involved actors).”(E. Manzini, 2010) Furthermore, an expert in design for social innovation has two main tasks to pursue: Improve people’s capabilities, it is better to guide people to empower skills and knowledge in order to have turned them able to their problems by themselves. A designer should change its point of view, searching for the capabilities of the people rather than their needs. This way to act is called capabilities approach, because it’s better teach and improve capabilities in order to make people able to deal with their own problems. A designer can support and facilitate people in developing their own ideas, by co-experiencing and working in synergy.

Facilitate a new design network, thus the designer as a facilitator is not referred only in the design process, but even in the community building, and besides in a network in order to let different stakeholders (individual, experts, communities, enterprises, associations, institutions,..) able to communicate and to work together. A design network could be used as a ground to incubate ideas, initiatives, service and through its dynamic and non-hierarchical system all that ideas could be empowered and developed in order to trigger behavioral changes.

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collaborative

Chapter 2

L’etica del viandante non si appella al diritto ma all’esperienza, perché il viandante a differenza dell’uomo del territorio che ha la sua certezza nella proprietà, nel confine e nella legge, il viandante non può vivere senza la diversità dell’esperienza.

U. Galimberti

2. Creative Communities and Living Labs 2.1 Creative communities

La creatività è un carattere saliente del comportamento umano, evidente in alcuni individui capaci di riconoscere, tra pensieri e oggetti, nuove connessioni che portano a innovazioni e a cambiamenti.

La creatività non è produzione di cose nuove, ma fedele ancella del “sorprendente” La creatività ha inoltre parentela con gli orli e talvolta con gli abissi della follia. “Lo spirito creativo è al di là dell’opposizione tra normale e anormale e può essere metaforicamente rappresentato come la perla che nasce dal difetto della conchiglia” Un ultimo requisito è l’ingenuità, una parola latina che viene da in-genuus, nato libero, dove in gioco non è la libertà di, ma la libertà da tutti i condizionamenti.

Il criterio dell’originalità, presente in ogni attività creativa, non è un criterio sufficiente, se è disgiunto da una legalità generale che consente all’attività creativa di essere riconosciuta da altri individui. L’accadere della creatività secondo regole è ciò che la distingue dall’arbitrarietà.

Umberto Galimberti, Parole Nomadi, Feltrinelli, Milano 1994

Il carattere creativo è contrassegnato da una forma di pensiero detta divergente che presenta originalità di idee, fluidità concettuale, sensibilità per i problemi, capacità di riorganizzazione degli elementi, produzione di molte risposte diverse fra loro. A differenza di quella convergente che tende all’unicità della risposta. Tra i due tipi di pensiero esiste una stretta interdipendenza che tende a diminuire a livelli molto alti di intelligenza.

Il pensiero divergente, in cui si esprime la creatività, entra in gioco quando i processi convergenti si sono sviluppati al punto da permettere un’adeguata padronanza del settore di applicazione, per essere creativi dunque bisogna avere organizzato bene le basi da cui spiccare il volo, altrimenti il destino è quello di Icaro.

(U. Galimberti, 1994)

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2. Creative Communities And Living Labs

Meroni A., a cura di., Creative communities.

People inventing sustainable ways of living. Milano, Edizioni POLI. design, 2007.

During a field research led by Anna Meroni of Design Department of Politecnico di Milano, it has emerged how creativity stay and animate everyday-life because of its ability to produce innovative responses to the various problems. The power of the promoters of the initiatives analyzed lies in the sense of community. These people understood that the community can support, lead and increase the value of their initiatives.

Creative community members: “are all groups of people who cooperatively invent, enhance and manage innovative solutions for new ways of living.â€? (F. JĂŠgou, E. Manzini, 2008) A creative community can turn a limit into an opportunity to enhance the quality of everyday life by boosting behavioral changes, because they are radical innovators, with the ability to introduce new ways of doing thing. As oppose to politics and economic models which are very slow, static and attached to tradition, this new creative class of people is fostering quick and fast answer to their needs. They are developing a system of collaborative services, they are crumbling the concept of private property for the benefit of an open access to tools, information, objects, places. Creative communities are able to answer to daily life questions and dilemmas by using their creativity to generate most rapid solutions rather than the institutions and infrastructures.

They are arriving to build their solution with the tools and the methods learn from the past, so something largely practices, the way of living in the pre-industrial cultures: as sharing, bartering, collaborating, recycling. However, they are recovering old practices, there is something new that makes the difference: new technologies. This accessibility of technological devices, social network and digital platform which enables communication and tools are improving the old practices giving an added value.

The role of design in this context assumes a great importance. A designer could support these communities in the development of communication, tools and methods good for lead them to get easily to their challenges. Moreover, a the designer has necessary need competent strategic skills to point out and analyses valid ideas or solutions generated in order to improve them by co-designing and re-shaping. So, the designer became a facilitator within the community, and besides his capabilities of influencing behaviors, rapid-prototyping solution and bringing his experience can disseminate good practices in a larger scale. Of course, it is not enough copy a good case to gain the same results, but a design approach can re-shape it in order to fit in a different context.

All of that made them, either creative communities and designer, one of the most powerful promoters of social innovation. In fact, it is clear the effects that are assuming, for instance, in the Social Economy (Chap. 1), and besides, they start to have a big impact even on welfare, sustainability, environment, health and education.

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2.2 Community as resource of service’s prototype

Prototyping is core to how designers do their work. It involves moving from the world of abstract ideas, analysis, theories, plans, and specifications to the world of concrete, tangible, and experiential things. […] In our use of the term, and more typically within the design profession, prototypes can be usefully thought of as “learning tools” and consequently may exist at any level of resolution - from very rough to highly refined - and may be used at any stage in the design process to explore, evolve, and/or communicate ideas.1 (IDEO, 2007)

A prototype could be seen as thing if it is referred to a product, but rather as a group of actions and relations among the actors of a system or a service. These kind of prototypes may be means able to raise questions and problems which should be solved exactly by the experimentation started with the prototype itself. Moreover, they can be an occasion of testing to foresee how it’s possible to improve behavioral changes.

From the many case studies presented by the research lead by Design Department of Politecnico di Milano is possible to observe that Creative communities can be a very fertile ground for the development of collaborative services. Through their capabilities to develop creative ideas and thanks to their willingness to find solutions, the members are always testing, proving and prototyping their ideas to make them real.

Often they need the support of some experts, local stakeholders and association, this is the reason of their attitude to build a network of relationships among different actors.

1 P.Coughlan, J. Fulton S.K. Canales, Prototypes as (Design) Tools for Behavioral and Organizational Change. A design-based approach to help organizations change work behaviors, 2007 IDEO

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2. Creative Communities And Living Labs

This kind of communities can offer new opportunities and new challenge to develop a system or services in order to trigger and promote a change and innovative solutions, before the principal infrastructures (political, economic and social) can answer to the request.

The real power of them is hidden in their non-hierarchical structure, which is dynamic enough to give a quick answer to the problem presented. “A closer observation shows that the promising cases, they generate can be seen as service and business ideas at different stages of their specific innovation processes.” (F. Jégou, E. Manzini, 2008) Moreover, with the engagement of designers able to support their creativity, these communities can be considered almost as ‘Factories of Services’ because they can participate to the design process of a service, from the beginning to the prototyping.

However, this operation can be done only when the community are led by some strategies and supported by specific tools developed by designers.

That’s way they must become a precious resource for designing services as the dynamic and valuable place to use when you don’t have an incubator. Of course, It’s important that the designer must identify of the right community, which have to be creative, active, dynamic and basically fits to the service, as well as his ability is to bring out the idling potentialities of the group in order to reach the fixed goals.

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2.3 Case Studies

What is a living lab?

The basic principle behind all living labs is to set up and run platforms where universities collaborate with citizens, business partners, ngos (non-governmental organizations) or other stakeholders on a long-term basis to create new services, products or ideas for alternative futures.

There are several hundreds of living labs in Europe, and they are very different in comparison to each other. Most living labs seem to be driven from a business and industry perspective where the ideas start with their needs.[…] According to researchers that have been studying living labs around the world, there are actually rather few living labs that work from a community perspective.

From my point of view, I believe that the community perspective is very relevant and interesting, since they of course see both problems and opportunities in a very different way compared to academia, the public sector or the business world.

(Per-Anders Hillgren2, 2012 )3 The European Network of Living Labs, ENoLL4, which has been established on November 2006, define living labs as: “The Living Lab is a system and environment for building a future economy in which real-life user-centric innovation will be the normal cocreation technique for new products, services and societal infrastructures.”

2 Ph.D in Interaction Design and researcher at Medea responsible for running Living Lab the Neighbourhood.

3 in Prototyping the Future, Malmö, Karin Johansson-Mex Medea, Malmö University.

Chapter: Living Labs as enabling Platforms for inclusion and serendipity, pag.16 4 www.openlivinglabs.eu

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2. Creative Communities And Living Labs

Lama and Origin describe living labs as a user-centric research methodology for sensing, prototyping, validating and refining complex solutions in multiple and evolving real life contexts.

(Lama and Origin, 2006) Living Labs are Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) of firms, public agencies, universities, institutes and people, all collaborating for creation, prototyping, validating and testing of new services, products and systems in real-life contexts.

(CoreLabs, 2008) Living Lab is the idea of a city or a building as a laboratory where designers have hypothesis about what people are willing to do and how they react.

(William Mitchell, Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, 2010)

Communities are becoming sensible laboratories, where it is possible to enhance ideas for a radical change, from the small scale of everyday life solutions to the large scale. The following case studies, and many others that I haven’t mentioned, are the best practices of creative communities and Living Labs, where active citizens, designers, field experts, association and local authorities have been collaborating in order to enable solutions and spread knowledge about a specific topic or to overtake some problems.

In particular, I choose these Labs because they are led by design universities interested in social innovation, in order to demonstrate how design can be relevant for the service prototyping by gaining valuable results. Their aims are foster behavioral changes by experiencing and prototyping new economic and social models, new services and new ways of consuming, new attitudes. In the following charter I have arranged the case studies into Living Lab and Creative Community. We can see how the Living Labs mainly focus on one (or few) context of action, for example Nutrire Milano is working with the agricultural community in south of Milan, MalmĂś Living Labs have three topics, instead Social Street and Creative Citizen is working on different topics and levels decided by the people involved.

Then, the evidence of the CCD approach in the analyzed case studies lets understand how they are important for the development of the strategies and tools in this thesis.

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CCD

one topic

Nutrire Milano

CCD

Housing Lab Malmรถ Living Labs

Creative community

CCD

living lab

(spontaneous & informal)

Ideas Sharing Lab

(organized & structured)

CCD

Cittadini creativi

Social Street multiple fields

it led by universities it led by creative citizens

Fig. 2.1 Scheme of the case studies

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2. Creative Communities And Living Labs

Nutrire Milano / Feeding Milan (Italy)

Fig. 2.2 Strategic plan of Nutrire Milano (Feeding Milan)

Feeding Milan5 is a strategic design project, promoted by Politecnico di Milano-Design Department, University of Gastronomic Sciences and Slow Food Italy. The aim of the project is to answer to the city’s demand oft fresh food comes from an agricultural area near the city.

After a research in the periurban area, it emerged this large and potential park available to do that. This area is called Agricultural Park South Milan.

“The aim of the project is to design a system of services and infrastructure to redefine the local territorial features, both of the city and the Park, on the basis of an efficient and effective agri-food chain, in order to shape a scenario of sustainable and innovative metroagriculture. Our vision is a rural-urban area where agriculture flourishes feeding the city and, at the same time, offers city dwellers a number of opportunities for a multiplicity of farming and nature related activities.” (G.Simeone, D.Cantù, “Feeding Milan. Energies for change.

A framework project for sustainable regional development based on food demediation and multifunctionality as Design strategies.” Cumulus Proceedings ShangHai Young Creators For Better City & Better Life, 2010 Edited by Yongqi Lou, Xiaocun Zhu) Through a series of initiatives led by a group of designers/researchers of Politecnico di Milano they started to implement the project framework, by activating the collaboration

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between groups of citizens and farmers, and groups of designers and food experts. With the intention of figuring out a strategic problem, designers conducted specific actions such as investigating and understanding the city and the park; they mapped their resources, discovered potential stakeholders, gathering up and analyzed best practices and promising cases, and then built a scenario for the project.

“Thus the project will, on one hand foster the development of a local agricultural system with various functions, by offering an integrated network of services to both farmers and citizens and, on the other hand, support direct connections between the city and the productive countryside by creating quality relationships within new food networks. Hence Feeding Milan will provide the city with new infrastructure and services in order to create exchange relationships within Agricultural Park South Milan and city resources, defining an excellent agrifood metropolitan model, an urban landmark to celebrate and represent the city in the Expo 2015 perspective.” (G. Simeone, D. Cantù, 2010) The scenario is the basic tool to support and open the discussion with the stakeholders involved, in order to align the groups on a vision and get some directions. Other tools used in this action have been mock-ups, videos, storyboards that make ideas visible and clear for citizens and farmers and help to support their discussion on the scenario and on some specific self-standing proposals. The designers become promoters and facilitator of the projects, which are starting to take place in this scenario. The local actors are involved in the design process and “to facilitate this task, a rapid prototyping approach is needed. Such an approach allows designers to get in touch with the communities (consumers, farmers and institutions…) by showing them the service-to-be and asking for their feedback in order to implement the most feasible solution”. (G. Simeone, D. Cantù, M. Corubolo, 2012) Therefore, the increase of the activities is turning Feeding Milan into a sort of Living Lab. It is populated by some collaborative services within the community which is empowering the network, a good level of engagement of dwellers, farmers, local association in the design process, which are developing a system of product and services in order to develop solutions and trigger new relationships. All of that it is felt by designer as a Lab where they can experiment and prototype ideas related to the agrifood chain and the periurban area by co-design and a participatory process of many different actors. (D. Cantù, M. Corubolo, G. Simeone 2012)

5 www.nutriremilano.it

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2. Creative Communities And Living Labs

Malmö Living Labs (Sweden)

Fig. 2.3 Slides of the pilot projects

The media institute MEDEA at Malmö University (with financial support from the KK foundation and European Union structural funds) launched, in 2009, three Living Labs for co-production and social innovation in the city of Malmo. The city is characterized by multiethnicity, cultural production, youth culture and new media industry. This is also the basis of the project, the Labs consist in fact of three topics: the Neighborhood, the Stage and the Fabriken.

“The Neighborhood aims at mobilize, facilitate and connect heterogeneous participants and marginalized groups that collaboratively can approach complex urban challenges.

Working as a co-production environment for collaborative services and social innovation, the lab continuously connects grass root initiatives to business and university partners and set up small-scale experiments to explore new solutions that can enhance everyday life experiences and yield social, economical and ecologically sustainable development in the urban landscape.

The Stage deals with collaborative cultural production. Here small companies within music, film and book publishing will work with design companies and MEDEA researchers on developing new media services and practices related to the events as well develop more persistent collaborative cultural co-production services and place-specific experiences.

Fabriken is an open lab space located at STPLN in Västra Hamnen, Malmö. Users (citizens, researchers, companies, public institutions, NGO’s etc.) that enter the lab get access to tools, new technologies, knowledge and skills in order to experiment with, and prototype ideas, products and services. In return the users provide input to the lab by sharing their

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ideas, knowledge, skills, and experiences.� 6 Each Living Lab is carrying on a series of stand-alone projects that, with the help of new technologies, will activate initiatives to regenerate the communities that live in these places, by exploiting a series of social innovation services. They represent a system of localand stable environments devoted to exploring possible solutions to localized problems with people from different places.

In this framework of projects, the strategy is experimenting with and diffusing participatory design as a fruitful approach to design in public spaces for public issues. To achieve their goals, designers have elaborated a series of communication tools to stimulate people to take part in the project in order to obtain the direct involvement of the end-users; moreover, they have engaged a larger number of stakeholders from the municipality, and from the public sector and private companies.

All these actors were connected with the idea of co-designing in a process of continuous experimentation services and solutions capable of solving minor problems Communication, here, represents a form of strategic tool that triggers the infrastructure conditions to create quick contextual experiments to explore sustainable service solutions for social innovation together with a diverse set of stakeholders. This approach was applied by means of a continuous matchmaking process that tried to align diverse actors into common projects and initiatives, seeking emerging synergies and opportunities.

This process of alignment consists of a series of small scale experiments; events in which groups of stakeholders explore new possibilities that match and make sense from the perspective of stakeholders’ everyday activities for different design solutions. The experiments are being followed up to articulate the qualities revealed by the experiments and to articulate specific qualities among.

Stakeholders. These Labs are an animated core where experimentation and prototyping solutions, supported by a network of stakeholders are a quick reply to tackled problems and questions.

6 www.openlivinglabs.eu/node/130

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2. Creative Communities And Living Labs

Housing Lab (PhD research, Milan)

Fig. 2.4 Logo Housing Lab

Fig. 2.5 Housing Lab’s project: Vicini più vicini

Housing Lab is a project born by Liat Rogel within a PhD research at Politecnico di Milano on the topic of collaborative housing.7 “Housing Lab is a laboratory for collaborative innovation in urban housing. It is offering research and experimentation for the development of sustainable housing across three main areas: information, coaching and small-scale experiments. The Housing Lab structure aims at working with all the stakeholders on a local scale by involving them in different initiatives. […]. Housing Lab8 is taught as a living lab, a physical space supported by a virtual one that could be recognized as a collaborative environment for innovation in housing.” (L. Rogel, 2013) The Lab aims to develop services and infrastructures in the housing field by supporting the relationships among people, experts and designers. The Lab has developed some tools and techniques in order to trigger new insights and draw new scenarios. Liat Rogel presents the Lab as a potential services with a double solution: it can be a sort of independent design studio able to offer research, activities and consultancy to private clients. Nevertheless, thanks to a partnership with Politecnico di Milano and to benefits from regional, national or international grants, it can maintain a free offering towards the general public or the public administration. Otherwise, it could be seen as a public agency with a direct contact with the public administration; in this case it is possible to develop a group of active stakeholders, 36

a sort of network in order to cover all the aspects of housing from the infrastructure to the social.

Within the scenario proposed by Housing Lab there are neighbors who collaborate in order to make their life of co-housing better and easier by improving social urban relationships.

They are facilitated and supported in the challenge by enabling tools from community centered design and coaching methods. They are improving and prototyping new solutions for a new way of living based on the collaboration among neighbors, sharing spaces and objects, they are doing what may only think or desire.

Fig. 2.6 Housing Lab’s project: Vicini per casa and ExperimentCity Europe

7 Rogel L., (2013) Housing Lab. A laboratory for collaborative innovation in urban housing, PhD Thesis, advisor A. Meroni, Politecnico di Milano, Design department, Italy 8 housinglab.wordpress.com

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2. Creative Communities And Living Labs

Ideas Sharing Lab (PhD research, Milan)

Fig. 2.7 Ideas Sharing Lab project

Ideas Sharing Lab9 is a project developed by Daria Cantù within the Ph.D. research at Politecnico di Milano. This research was started in Milan, from the ‘Sharing-tool’ developed within the framework of the project Feeding Milan. Then, it was carried out at Greenmarket in Union Square in New York City. The result is the evolution of the tool, which has become a temporary Living Lab called Ideas Sharing Lab; it is set up in the market place and aims to develop new services, from the scenario building to the prototyping and implementation, by creating a synergy among the different actors of the local community.

“The IS- Lab is this is a window for the research, a place open for community participation for new collaborative services prototyping and co-design. It is a temporary Living Lab that becomes the engine of a framework project addressed to reshape territorial relationships and services, having a flywheel effect for local projects development.” (D. Cantù, 2013)

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Thus, the function of this Lab is to trigger co-designing service concepts through the engagement of local producers and consumers, and creating an open local food community in the periurban area of Milan. All the projects suggest new collaborative and sustainable behaviors, in a long term that means a social and economic innovation in the area and in the agricultural structure of the area.

The Lab generates a place or an occasion for the meeting of different actors: such as designers, producers, consumers (or co-producers), researchers, students, professionals, private organizations, public institutions, politicians, in order to be able to communicate and work together for the project.

“Afterward the IS-Lab would in some cases become a new function within the multifunctional service hosting it […] In a different scenario, it would become a “window” to be rented to companies who wants to test and evaluate innovative service’s ideas collaborating with designers and involving city dwellers. Up to now no strategies have been defined yet in the Milanese case as the framework project is still running, but many options are still workable depending on the opportunity available in the next future. […] The IS-Lab, considered as a tool for service design in the complex territorial project, requires designers to work with many stakeholders and in a multidisciplinary team in order to be effective.” (D. Cantù, 2013)

9 Cantù D., (2012) Ideas Sharing Lab. Community Centered Design for Multifunctional and Collaborative Food Services, PhD Thesis, Politecnico di Milano, Design department, Italy

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2. Creative Communities And Living Labs

Cittadini creativi / Creative Citizen (PhD research, Milan)

Fig. 2.8 Picture of Cittadini Creativi’s tools

Cittadini Creativi10 is a project developed by Daniela Selloni in collaboration with Anna Maggi within the Ph.D. research at Politecnico di Milano in the field of service design and design for social innovation, focusing on collaborative services and co-design with local communities.

The project’s aim is to create a ground where dwellers of the city could meet in order to trigger new creative ideas about specific topics presented by the designers. The projects took a shape in Cascina Cuccagna, a farmhouse located in the heart of Zona 4 which is a symbol of Milanese activism, by putting into contact designers with the local community.

However, is supported by many other actors from the Council of Zona 4, to DESIS Network, from the project Feeding Milan, with the collaboration of Slow Food Italy, Politecnico di Milano, Università di Scienze Gastronomiche.

Going through a service design research and participatory approach, this project has explored ideas and experiments in different fields: household, food system, everyday life problems. In order to engage people, to stimulate a participatory design session, to implement and prototype the ideas, they have developed a set of tools from service design methods.

The meeting planned were divided into topics and each meeting was organized in three different moments: the Ideas’ Tables, Listening Tables, the Meeting Tables.

10 www.cittadinicreativi.it

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Social Street (Italy)

Fig. 2.9 Picture of the first Social Street: via Fondazza, Bologna (Italy)

The Social Street11 is born nor from a research project nor can be defined as a Laboratory.

However, they have many features in common with the previous examples. It is born from an initiative of a citizen of Bologna, who simply did not know his neighbors. He decided to use the social network a way to communicate with the people around him. He creates a close group on Facebook and leave some flyer in the street in which he lives in order to collect some people interested in the group and these initiatives. The answers were numerous and unexpected. Actually the phenomenon is disseminated throughout the country, especially in the big cities.

These communities of neighbors only used Facebook to contact each other and to organize events, then everything is happening “on the street�. They are organizing several activities and initiatives with the common purpose to live better within the neighborhood and share information, passion, tools. There is no structure, no administrator, everybody can propose and organize something. They are really stand-alone Creative Communities. Their spontaneous and free activities are led by the knowledge and skills of all the people engaged in the collaboration.

Moreover, there is a co-participation of the experience of the different communities, there is such an open and free way of exchange that they are building a big network of Social Street.

11 www.socialstreet.it

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2. Creative Communities And Living Labs

2.4 Conclusion and CCD12 approach

Designing for creative communities: This means looking at specific typologies of collaborative organisations and, after observing their strengths and weaknesses, intervening on their contexts to make them more favourable, and to develop solutions to increase their accessibility and effectiveness and therefore their replicability. In this mode designers have to conceive and develop advanced solutions for specific collaborative organisations and/ or other enabling initiatives such as dedicated platforms, orienting scenarios and catalysing events such as exhibitions, festivals and other cultural events.

(F. Jégou, E. Manzini, 2008)

The case studies frame is drawn by two extremes: Living Labs and Creative Communities.

Both of them are part of the actors of the new economic and social model because they have a ‘problem-solving’ attitude. They have in common the aim to find solution for the current problems and to menhance the quality of the life; as a consequence they foster social innovation, like it expressed more in depth in the first chapter.

Nevertheless, they are extremely dissimilar due to their structure: Living Labs are organized and led by experts and the network around is made to attract and to engage the accurate competences of other expert in order to reach the goals. Since they are able to bolster the development process, they can be considered as effective incubators of services. Instead Creative communities as groups of active citizens don’t own strong organization, they are heterogeneous; this could be a risk because they can’t have the adequate experiences, knowledge or tools, but even an opportunity to discover creativity and innovation.

Thus, the thesis project wants to probe how to experience this opportunity with the communities, which will be turn into as a sort of tool of service prototyping. The results will be not sure, but if the designer is able to ‘play a suitable role’, many goods insights and 42

ideas can be collected in order to shaped and design the service. Design discipline as well as the designers are fundamental for this operation due to their experience and knowledge, which is coming from action-researches into Living Labs and Creative Communities. These design researches and their result are evident in almost all the case studies selected.

The first observation is that the designers have adopted a specific participatory approach, called Community Centered Design, with the people engaged in their projects in order to facilitate the involvement into the design process. A participatory approach allows a very dynamic process able to re-shape and build the initial ideas and even make it real and functional through a prototype, which is co-designed with the adequate communities.

A community centered design is a suitable approach to be used with Creative Community as well as in a Living Lab, it will be the main big intervention of the designers and it causes a series of actions like getting insight from the members, triggering new collaborative behaviors, fostering new relationships between different actors and creating the opportunity to co-design gathered with them. This approach is improving the User Centered Design experience in order to up-scale it and fit in a bigger contest like the community. (A. Meroni 2008)The group become the ‘the new user’ with its own heterogeneous personality and a specific identity. Although it’s possible use the methods and tools already developed, they need to be re-shaped for the different context.

“Working with such an approach, design professionals are required to have two main competences: on one hand the ability to gain knowledge about the community by field immersion and to develop empathic relations with its members; on the other hand to use design knowledge to design with and for the community, developing tools to enable the co-design of new solutions coherent with the context and allowing non-designers to apply their knowledge and professional skills to the issues discussed.” (D.Cantù, M. Corubolo, G. Simeone, 2012) The thesis project is about the prototyping of a collaborative service, Milkplease and the aim is to support the startup by stimulating the communities for improving the service. In order to explores the opportunities offered by the three communities, which will be chosen and analyzed later in the chapter 4, the designer have to be ready with a strategy and a toolbox, each must be though to achieve the purpose. The communities will be chosen owing to some precisely features that fit with the service to let the prototyping process work in the right direction.

12 Community Centered Design (A. Meroni 2007; D. Cantù, M. Corubolo, G. Simeone 2012).

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collaborative

Chapter 3

3. The case Milkplease

3. The case milkplease 3.1 The startup and the Berlin experience Milkplease1 was born during a dinner with friends in 2012. While the founders were cooking, they realized to have not enough food to prepare the dishes. Fortunately, after a couple of messages to neighbors they fixed the problem and the dinner was successful. Thus was born Milkplease, a service offered to purchase groceries online, which are home delivered by neighbors. They founded the startup with the same name, since then the group of young engineers has improved it.

They participated in a Start-up Weekend in Trento in 2012 and won it. Thus they made some surveys and by collecting responses they build a prototype of the platform. They developed a prototype of the service by changing it completely to answer to a specific demand of the parks in Berlin; thus they tested it for three months during the summer in 2013 at the Gรถrlitzer Park in Berlin. Since the prototype was thought to fulfill a temporary need of the tourists, whose like spending time at the park during the summer where coffee shops are missed, the success was great for the moment. However, it was unuseful for the development of the service because the solution was temporary and not scalable, the users were a niche strictly linked with the place.

Therefore, they had decided to land in Milan and to come back to the original concept asking to Housing Lab to help by prototyping that.

1 www.milkplease.it

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3.2 Analysis of the service Milkplease aims to innovate the way to do grocery shopping creating a system of cooperation in the purchase and delivery of food among neighbors. The users may choose to purchase their groceries online and receive it comfortably at home, or do the shopping and deliver it to a neighbor in exchange of a small reward.

Milkplease began as a service designed for full-time workers, who do not find time for the grocery shopping so they might be attracted by a comfortable purchase online with home delivery. On the other side, it draws the attention of part-time workers, students or unemployed, all people with flexible time and interested in saving money. Thus Milkplease is a collaborative service based on interactions between neighbors or people who lives in the same area by purchasing grocery goods.

From the System Map, you can understand the process of the service:

i insunsura ran nce ce

Milkplease Milkplease

er oerd inoerd olinnel

on

Platform Platform

m tmfor ptfloar a l e p h hnet tyn ot tbyiloi i l s i i b v ies visi ci esr creor g o f r go loisft list

r rec eceiv eive e th the e ord ord er er

Grocerystores stores Grocery

buy goods buy goods

bank/ bank/ insurance insurance

c cre redit dit car car d s d s erv erv ice ice

Fig. 3.1 System Map of the service

action flow action flow

buyer buyer

deliver grocery shopping deliver grocery shopping

Deliveryuser user Delivery

money flow money flow

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3. The case Milkplease

Milkplease provides the platform and the system able to keep in contact online grocery stores with neighbors by showing their goods.

The buyer can see the goods and prices offered, choose them by creating his own list.

Before paying by credit card, he decides the where and when the delivery might be.

The delivery user receives notification of the request for purchase; he goes grocery shopping and delivers it to the buyer.

Buyer checks the products and give a confirmation code to deliver, who give back to Milkplease in order to be paid.

At the end, the platform asks both users to give a feedback, which is the most common way in collaborative service to track and control the trade and improve trust among users.

Milkplease has to ask banks to allow credit card transactions on its platform and it be covered by insurance for any possible incidents.

Through Customer Journey Map the interactions between users and the platform is shown more precisely:

Milkplease BUYER

Milkplease User

chooses time and place of delivery

pays by credit card

registration

offline interaction among users

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makes shopping list

Milkplease Delivery user

receives a notification of a new list

views the request

The actors Buyer: it is the user who has the need to purchase online groceries due to lack of time. He expects reliability, efficiency and a quick response.

Delivery user: is the user with time availability or flexibility during the day. His economic needs or tendency to save, makes it interested in turning grocery shopping into an opportunity for gain. He is open and has the willing to help their neighbors.

Grocery stores: are local business or supermarkets without an online sales channel, open and available, especially in these early stages. They are selected by the team of Milkplease or may be suggested by the users themselves.

Fig. 3.2 Customer Journey Map

056008423

receives a notification and the checking code

receives the goods

gives the checking code

gives feedback to Milkplease

056008423

056008423

receives the checking code

gives feedback and checking code to Milkplease

offline interaction among users

views the request

accepts

goes grocery shopping

delivers the goods

receives the payment

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3. The case Milkplease

The benefits that are multiple: a great time-saver for those who order online with the flexibility to choose the best products at competitive costs, whereas who deliver receives a reasonable return for the rescue. This is definitely a sustainable solution for the city because it reduces the number of trips to the supermarkets. It’s improved even social innovation by promoting cooperation among neighbors with the common goal of doing the grocery shopping.

Fig. 3.3 Motivation Matrix

give to

Milkplease buyer

TO SAVE TIME BY BUYING

DELIVERy user

Grocery Stores

a part of delivery fee

to buy their goods

a part of delivery fee

TO SAVE MONEY BY GOING

to buy their goods

delivery to buyer

FOOD ONLINE WITH HOME DELIVERY

buyer

TO KNOW NEW NEIGHBOURS

to do and deliver grocery shopping

GROCERY SHOPPING TO KNOW NEW NEIGHBOURS

Delivery user

shopping goods provided on the platform

NEW SALES CHANNEL

delivery to buyer

TO IMPROVE VISIBILITY TO INCREASE CUSTOMERS

Grocery stores

Milkplease

online platform to buy products of local shops and supermarket

online platform to view grocery lists of neighbours

new sales channel with a network of potential customers

OFFER AN INNOVATIVE SERVICE ABLE TO CONNECT ONLINE LOCAL GROCERY STORES AND CUSTOMERS

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3.3 Analysis of the context

Although e-commerce accounts for only 1.2% of total sales made at supermarkets, mass merchandise and convenience stores, consumers are shifting at least some of their consumer packaged goods purchases, like soap and groceries, to e-commerce sites.

Consumers spent approximately $15 billion online for packaged goods products in 2010, 10% more than in 2009, ComScore says. Approximately 12% of Internet users say they’ve bought grocery items online.

The new frame of grocery shopping is marked by the inception of e-grocers, which are changing the way of the groceries or fresh foods distribution by moving from physical stores to online ones. However, there are some facts that limits a lot this distriubution channel: i.e. limitations with the experience of online grocery shopping itself, many traditional grocers are not providing any form of digital engagement with shoppers, the limits of perishable food and the willingness of the people to ‘see’ the freshness of the chosen products, the shipping cost are not enough competitive. “Despite the substantial fresh limitation, recent insights from The Hartman Group’s ‘Clicks & Cravings’ social media study highlight the fact that shoppers today are deeply engaged with a broad.” Moreover technologies, new devices, social networks and media are changing the food culture of the people by improving the way of buying, delivering and cooking food.

1 ComScore conference call, as reported in Internet Retailer, May 18, 2011, http://www.internetretailer.com/2011/05/18/eretail-gains-more-ground 2 The Online Grocery Opportunity. A Hartman Group White Paper, 2012

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3. The case Milkplease

UK France Spain

Italy

U.S.A.

Fig. 3.4 E-grocery Diffusion map

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The diffusion of e-grocer is mainly in the USA and in the UK, where companies started to invest capitals in this sector about a decade ago. But it’s start to be spread even in Spain, France and Italy, mainly in the big cities.

3.3.1 Worldwide e-grocers overview The following chart presents some world cases of e-grocery stores, gather in only online or physical and online, in which there is a delivery service or a point of pickup or both. The bottom part is concerned with some e-grocers specialized in the sell of niche products. I consider important to look at them because these kind of companies need a new distribution channel. Compared to traditional grocers they are more affected by internet power to reach and communicate with customers. physical and online store

pure play online order

store pickup

home delivery

Fast delivery

24h

Fig. 3.5 Worldwide e-grocery overview

return policy

special products

food or meal from local specific shops and restaurants

3d 3d 24h 2h organic food local food local food from farms and manufacturer organic food vegetarian / vegan kosher local and sesonal vegetables / fruits local meat

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3. The case Milkplease

3.3.2 Italian e-grocers overview The primary conflict between Italian e-grocer and the others is the exploitation and diffusion of the services: they have already passed the limit of the critical mass necessary to pull in them run. Thus, they can be flexible, increase the quality of the service and widen diversification of products. For instance, Amazon Fresh has added some local stores, restaurants and bakeries, Fresh Direct has found a point of pickup, Insatcart is offering a fast deliver (2 hours), many of them achieve a high quality of refund service.

Fig. 3.6 Italian e-grocery overview

In Italy the e-grocers are few with a low level of diffusion and supported by supermarket chains: i.e. Coop is improving a delivery service in Rome and pick-up ones in Viareggio; Esselunga offers to their customer an expensive service of home delivery (only in 5 Regions); Chronodive, which is French chain, owns two points of pickup (north of Italy); Prontospesa, supported by Crai deliver in Torino and the surrounding area, Drindrin.it which is relied on local supermarkets is delivering in Milan.

traditional store

online order

store pickup

home delivery

Fast delivery

24h

to reserve

24h 3d

3d

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return policy

special products

3.4 Conclusion From the analysis of the competitors is evident how they are working to shape a strong network to boost their own services. Specifically, they put together a small and local network, both of stores and customers. Concerning niche products, the current strategy of the providers is collecting as much as possible local farmers and producers, so they plan delivery according to request and offers. Nevertheless the delivery is not fast, the customer can win in quality of products and the variety and prices are reasonable.

Not having many competitors in Italy, could be a great opportunity for a new service as Milkplease, however, it is true that foreign competitors are powerful enough to achieve the Italian market. Thus, Milkplease has to find a way to be attractive and gain a strong relationship with customers in order to anticipate the competitors by offering something more.

The added value of Milkplease is the structure of the service itself, because thanks to the collaborative system of delivery is possible to decrease the cost, having a free delivery might be the challenge. From the survey done, chap. 4, it has emerged that people could appreciate the e-grocery only if the delivery cost is low or free. Moreover, when people have an emergency they ask help to their relatives, so someone who trust more; that’s means an other strenghtnes for Milkplease, because if it allows a network of reliable relationship, the users will chose it rather than its competitors.

Actually the service could have a weaknesses, that is fact that the delivery is not guarantee.

Thus, during the co-design session with the communities the designer have to be ready to find a solution for the problem by exploring new functionalities. This new features could be a way to solve the problems as well as an occasion to simultaneously add and test implementations, which could make the service competitive.

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collaborative

Chapter 4

Fail early to succeed sooner D. Kelley

collaborative

4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping Since the previous analysis of the case Milkplease, it’s possible to extract the essence of the service of this startup, that I called Collaborative Shopping. Although the founders of the startup have developed a concept of the service and a mock-up of the digital platform, their goal is to verify the basic assumptions and try to prototype the service.

Indeed, as a designer my point of view it’s a little different, I guess it is necessary to create a sort of ‘fertile ground’ where to put a preliminary version of the service the essence, to explore new opportunities and to see how it is possible to develop the service through a co-design process, namely by engaging the members of a community. Because of the a Collaborative Shopping is based on a relation among neighbors, the community which I will chose of course need to have this main feature. So the communities of neighbors become the ‘box’ where the service will grow thanks to the tools and methods developed and coming from the action-researches about Participatory Action Research and a Community Centered Design approach. Tools and techniques, mostly deals with a rapid and experience prototype in order to experiment on the field how the members create relationships and how the service fit with them.

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

4.1 Strategic analysis The Milkplease startup wants to engage the challenge of bringing forward the e-grocery market in Italy. In order to avoid big investment and to have enough power to compete against stronger competitors the suggested way is to follow the collaborative consumption trend. Thus, they shaped the service as a collaboration of neighbors by delivering their grocery shopping each other by allowing an online purchase. Toward they have the right direction; the process to get the goal is not clearly planned.

“Non è un’idea che determina il successo di un’iniziativa, ma il processo: riuscire a metterla in piedi, realizzarla, organizzare il team che la riesce a tradurre in un progetto.”1 English translation: “It is not an idea that defines the success of an initiative, but the process: the capability to put it up, to realize it, to organize team able to translate into a project.”

A startup usually needs an incubator to grow up by solving the problems (financial, management, technique) and even with prompting activities (design, marketing, communication). Moreover, they might have a clear and accurate plan of the following years to prevent failure. For this reason, methodologies, best practices and tools in the field of design, meant as strategic design, design for services and Community Centered Design, could help to translate the idea in a project. By provoking and properly stimulating, a project can gain implementation and solutions, which are useful to grow it up. The designer with his peculiar capabilities can support the startup by doing that, instead for promotion, distribution and business model development the startup have to involved some expert consultancy.

Before moving on an action plan, it is relevant to have a reference of what is surrounding.

Accordingly, the aim of the Strategic analysis is to build a deep awareness of the Milkplease frame, which is integrated in double context: business and society. The observation and research, done in the previous steps, are merging together aiming to bring social innovation.

A new economy brings new way to consume: the consumer becomes prosumer, the user a member of the community, meanwhile society is changing by following best practices

1 Mainieri M., Collaboriamo! Come i Social Media ci aiutano a lavorare e vivere bene in tempo di crisi, Milano, Hoepli, 2013

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to live in order to answer to its needs. So this frame made by flexibility, new models, and bottom-up initiatives is a fruitful field for startuppers, who want to let their ideas set up. Here Milkplease is, in between neighbors and stores, with the aim to re-frame the Italian grocery shopping. Here Milkplease is in between neighbors and stores, with the aim to re-frame the Italian grocery shopping, and the communities of neighbors are ideal places for the service prototyping: specifically, Social Street and Scarsellini group (in Milan) are perfect community for testing. These communities are already shaped, in which mutual trust and support levels, thus the Collaborative Shopping could be experimented and promoted.

Fig. 4.1 Strategic Analysis Graph

This graph is an overview of the scenario:

BUSINESS

ANALysis emerging contexts

society

Milkplease

Social economy Sharing economy Rise of Startup Collaborative services Co-housing Social Street Creative communities

state of art

find & Engage

Incubators of Startup Communities Living-lab

...

Scarsellini; Social Street via Maiocchi; Social Street via Morgagni / Collaborative Neighbors via Corridoni

proposal Action plan (strategy, models and tools)

social innovation Milkplease was already figured and the founders’ desire is to collect responses on that.

But as a designer, I think exploring opportunities and co-designing with the users are initiatives to do before prototyping, especially when you moving from city to another. Thus, I have identified another group of neighbors (Corridoni) to convert into a community to see the reaction. Moreover, this community can be pulled alongside a network of small store, to experiment even with small stores instead big supermarket. The aim, of course, is developing a scalable PSS and when it will be ready, the promotion of the service will start in bigger communities such as Social Streets. Indeed, in order to overtake the critical mass essential for the service’s survival, Milkplease would assemble a network with grocery stores and neighbors.

At the end it will be possible to reach a model of the process by generalizing the path followed. The purpose is supporting startup during the experimentation. Despite collaborative services have common features, the singularity of each place is distinguished by some conditions and people, which facilitate (or not) the development of the service. So it’s recommended this process as a practice to improve, it must be adapted to every context.

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

4.2 Action Plan

Research

Service and contest Analysis

design for services

Milkplease Team

in Berlin

Analysis Ideas generation

awareness in Milan

implement solution

strategy generation

evaluation Communities analysis

promoting

Development prototyping

Prototyping Development

experience

Software engineering Business Marketing

Fig. 4.2 Action Plan

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Service design Community centre design Design for experience Strategic design

The graph displays what happened in Berlin, with the foundation of Milkplease and its first prototype there. The founders put their main capabilities to this project by developing the platform, and building the services resulting from the survey collected in the city, thus the prototype was completely different from the service because it was designed to answer to a specific need. It caused a strictly link with the place, that makes it not reproducible elsewhere. It was made for the tourist of the GÜrlitzer Park in Berlin, whose during the summer like to lay down there and it’s not easy to find a coffee shop to drink or eat

something. So they realized this platform to order a limited group of items, while a biker was hired to buy and deliver the items to the people. It was not even a collaborative service, but the big mistake was that with that shape they cannot reproduce it elsewhere because the needs it really linked to place and it’s temporary limited to the good season where is usual to spend much time at the park. The test was useful for the digital platform, to verify if it could work and how he user interface with it. Again, even the observation on the platform cannot work for the current service because the delivery section should be thought for users that are not hired, the list of items has to be wide and accurate to what the user find in the local supermarket.

Now in Milan and neighboring the designer probably have to come back to the essence of Milkplease in order to overtake the weaknesses, to explore new features in order to implement the service and collect qualitative and useful responses. The process will take care of the network of communities and stores as a founders’ concept. But mainly it will follow the principle of a collaborative service (M. Mainieri 2013, R. Botsman and R. Rogers 2007). Then, Community Centered Design approach would suit because it is able to propose new collaborative behaviors by informing, coaching and provoking; it can promote networking opportunities, allow co-experience and co-design opportunities. Thus, it will develop a rough prototype of the service co-designed with users. All of that will be supported by concrete tools to engage people, to trigger participation in order to collect insights and feedbacks.

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

4.2.1 Strategy development

Milkplease

Meeting

context research

analysis

synthesis

Social economy Sharing economy Collaborative services Living labs Creative communities

system map offering map customer journey map value proposition motivation matrix personas swot

action plan strategy method and tools

investigation

dip

process

knowledge

literature review

verify basics

data collecting

survey focus group

Fig. 4.3 Scheme of the strategy

The diagram shows the strategy and there are evident three main areas: knowledge, experience, evaluation.

Knowledge section concern on whatever is research and the background of the topic, in order to understand the context; even of the methods and tools to be able to develop a good strategy and to be ready to co-design with people. After some meeting with Milkplease’s founders to understand their purpose, the context research began. Specifically the dip into the analysis of the service, making graphs and maps was partially viewed by the founders.

I got the point in synthesis phase, in which I gather everything with the goal to design the action plan that would have guided me.

Experience, the chief one, is less linear and more complex because the idea is to work with the communities and follow a different sort of experiment in each one. After the verification of the basics by doing surveys and focus group, the core is exploring opportunities by checking

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experience

fostering collaborative behaviour

focus group platform developing prototyping implementation

enabling

exploring opportunities

TOOLBOX CCD approach

collecting

results

Corridoni

engaging

network and service

interaction

Scarsellini

workshop prototyping networking implementation

TOOLBOX CCD approach

collecting

results

workshop networking implementation

TOOLBOX CCD approach

collecting

results

conclusion

evaluation

network

Social Street

implement solution future development

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

some assumptions during the meetings with the three selected groups. The aim is to trigger a behavioral change by offering a co-experience opportunity as an interaction among neighbors and even between neighbors and local stores. The service is built on the concept of Milkplease but other different solution is experimented for two main purposes to foster trust and awareness in the community and to find a better solution.

Evaluation is a synthesis phase in which are merging all the results collected, in order to verify if all the initial assumptions are overtaken, thus the service could be implemented. If the system is scalable it might be spread over bordering areas to involve other local actors to enlarge the network.

4.2.2 Verify basics Before starting designing and prototyping, the collection of data is largely suggested to probe the basics and to have quantitative and qualitative responses from the people. It is even useful to draw some line direction for the following steps. The designer can contribute by assisting and structuring some guidelines to follow during the exploring ideas. The main action made in this phase is: Survey Communities analysis

Survey In the overture to verify the concept of Collaborative Shopping, the research has developed to explore the two primary contexts of the theme: the relationships inside the neighborhood and the habits of grocery shopping. This research presupposes to understand the present condition of either context and formulating a critical vision to foster the following development.

Thus, the online survey2 has aimed to probe if the theme affects interest and if it is able to trigger a starting point of changing. It was done both in Italian and in English to have an overview even about foreign people who live in Italy and investigate their relation with neighbors. Usually an immigrant in a new city as in a new country finds difficult to be part of the local community and doesn’t feel part of it.

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The survey is mainly divided in three parts: Personal data (age, profession, typology of house, flatmates) Neighborhood investigation (kind of relationship, interest, willing to collaborate) Grocery shopping (frequency, kind of stores, interest, willing to buy online) The data collected through the survey shows that: among neighbors, the relations are quite good, even if they are not so strong, but there is a potential willing to collaborate in order to enhance the quality of the daily-life by sharing or exchanging some favors; there is a little interest for the e-grocery, some people can appreciate the idea to buy online specially for emergency or lack of time if the cost is low, and besides they prefer more to support or to be aided by neighbors

Fig. 4.4 The online Survey

Communities analysis Looking at living labs in the approach of Community Centered Design, we can individualize some basic actions such as facilitate the community engaging by preparing toolkit to inform and to coach, to trigger insights and foster new behavioral changes in order to

2 Online Survey_Eng: socialshop-serena.typeform.com/to/vmxyOv _Ita: socialshop-serena.typeform.com/to/gpWdv8

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

collaborate to develop the new service. When you have a network supported by a platform that allows communication among the members other synergies could potentially be activated depending on the people involved. Thus, for the facilitator, it’s really important to get acquainted with the community. Moreover, considering the communities as a tool to prototype the service, it is required to have a deep awareness of them. The communities have been analyzed considering some specific feature that fits with the service and the aims of the thesis. The results are visible into the Fig.4.4: experience means that the community has the awareness of its potentialities; structure because there is someone who leads and guide a bit the community more as a facilitator then a leader; dynamic because of the activities and the ability to react positively to the incentives; opening, if they have the tendency to enlarge the community or not; digital if they are familiar with digital tools.

The purpose to have chosen groups so diversified is to afford the experimentation of the services in different levels. This opportunity triggers a series of action that enables new solutions by sharing the experiences and compares the results.

The three communities can offer a unique point of view inferring to the level of experience, to the structure, their capability to be dynamic, the opening to new members and the digital potentialities.

experience SCARSELLINI

digital

Structure

Fig. 4.5 Communities’ Analysis Corridoni

opening 68

Dynamic

Housing Lab: Scasellini

The Lab managed by designer and researcher in PSS design, it is supported by a group of neighbors who live in the same building-blocks in Scarsellini street (Milan) whose are experimenting a new way of livings. It was born meanwhile the housing cooperative company was designing and building the apartment house. Every family owns a flat; in addition, they share two big rooms: one furnished with a kitchen for neighbor’s convivial moments (festivity, breakfast, dinner...) and the other as a playground for the children. They have organized a GAS (social group of purchasing), a “barter day”, some fitness courses, a trip, a share purchase of appliances. Thus, they are ‘messengers’, more than an expert, of their experience because throughout Housing Lab website they spread the experience.

Fig. 4.6 Pictures of Scarsellini

All of this it was possible thanks to Liat Rogel, professors and researcher in the Design Department at Politecnico di Milano, who was the Lead Expert that design the community supported by the architects of the cooperative for the space design and others expert in co-housing to share experience. Even if it is just perceptible, behind the community there is the structure designed by her, namely it is the shape of the Lab. Therefore, at the beginning she was the facilitator and a reference for the group, now everybody is active and feels free to suggest and organize activities. The presence of Liat defines a sort of boundary, like a filter between inside and outside. Everybody is friendly and open, but before you might pass through the filter (could be everyone, officially the reference is Liat). My first contact in fact was Liat. At the first meeting, she introduced me the story and the places of ‘Scarsellini Village’, than the people and lastly he gave me the access to their private blog. They own a private blog in which can discuss and exchange ideas, even if the level of friendly technology is not so high.

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Social Street: via Maiocchi and via Morgagni

Fig. 4.7 Pictures of events in via Maiocchi and via Morgagni

As told in the Chapter 2, although this phenomenon is recent, it is spread over quickly. I get in touch with two groups, via Maiocchi and via Morgagni in Milan, they are very similar.

They born in the same period, actually the people are very enthusiastic and blowing up with many ideas so the two groups are growing up yet. Even if there are founders who cared to organize some activities, these communities might be without any administrator, everybody feel free to realize the ideas only with the collaboration of who is interested in.

Talking with a founder, she said “we are trying to let people aware that they have the ability and the power to organize something without me or the other founder. We are not the boss of the group!” Step by step they are reaching the goal. Thus, the Social streets have no structure and this allows them to be very dynamic and always open to new members.

Despite I don’t live in Milan they involved me in the group and even in some activities.

Finally, they were born as a close group of neighbors on Facebook, so they have used the digital platform as a main tool of communication. During a conference on social network at the Social Media Week in Milan on 21st February 2014, they told Facebook usually used to keep in touch people from far away, they used to build social connection between people who live very near. It was able to break down the wall of mistrust opening to a new scenario in which people really want to collaborate and share something with neighbors. Although the digital experience was fundamental to create the network, to meet in person.

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Collaborative neighbors: via Corridoni Story of the area During the sixties, this residential area was characteristic for the presence of two main big courtyards. The neighbors were creating a community where a daily communication and collaboration was natural. In the last years the situation has become different, only few sons of the previous families stayed there and a couple of widows.

The buildings were ancient and unsafe, thus, a couple of years ago, they were demolished and replaced by two towers-blocks. Excepting a couple of families and the two widows, the people there don’t know each other.

(Interview with elderly local citizens)

The community is not a community yet, it’s a group of people that live in the same building, supported by Community Centered Design approach I’m trying to build the community in order to experiment the Collaborative Shopping. Thus, after the first meeting in which they see the development of communities of neighbors who share and collaborate (such as Housing-Lab, Social Street and others experiences) they accept the challenge of experimenting. Due to the presence of a facilitator who is suggesting best practices to follow and supporting them in the managing, this community as a bit structured. The people are really enthusiastic and active, full of insights and proposal. Nevertheless the potentiality to be a dynamic community is high; they still to be a little shy in doing. They actually set a closed group, but they have already expressed the willing to include the other neighbors of the building, especially the elderlies. They are good with technology and devices, but there is a heterogeneous usage of them, for instance Facebook is not popular, so it was a bit difficult to collect them on the same platform. Indeed, during the Collaborative Shopping experience, we mainly use e-mail, short messages and a shared calendar.

Fig. 4.8 Picture of the towers-blocks in via Corridoni

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

4.3 Take Action Design can contribute to assisting and structuring the initial incubation phases of idea generation and the community building in order to foster a behavioral change by improving collaborative services, for instance a Collaborative Shopping. The Community Centered Design method (A. Meroni, 2008; D.Cant첫, M. Corubolo, G. Simeone, 2013) in which the designer is able to catalyze and orient a collective insight toward a shared interpretation of the Collaborative Shopping in their lives. Indeed, the participatory process relies on a synergy of the local stakeholders in all phases, from the very beginning to the prototyping.

4.3.1 Scarsellini In Scarsellini the community has already built and well developed. So, my activity was to get involved and gain knowledge toward the help of the design expert who build it, Liat Rogel.

All the communications within the community have initially been filtered by Liat, but I was gradually introduced by meeting them and then taking part of the blog.

Focus group This technique involves a small group of people and the aim is to investigate in depth any actions or reactions of the community members. It was made by the Milkplease team because they had the willing to explore marketing assumptions about the online purchasing and grocery shopping habits.

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ACTIONS

SCARSELLINI

First contact

TOOLS

community

expert interview visiting place

Experience

Analysis

documents website focus group understand the potentialities

Experience

meeting feedback

feedback via blog

failed the service as Milkplease’s team has drawn

prototyping the service prototyping the service process of process of simplifying simplifying

failed

DIGITAL ACTIONS PLATFORM

ACTIONS SERVICE

pss

fixing issues

fixing issues test

fixing issuses test

test

The website allows: -to make a list of products and to post it with time and place of delivery -to check the request and accept it -notification of accepted request

prototyping

WhatsApp introducing instant messaging service

Fig. 4.9 The applied strategy development at Scarsellini

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Workshop and Prototyping Before the meeting with the people of the Scarsellini community, a simplified version of the service was developed according with the functionalities offered by the digital platform of Milkplease. For instance, the most awkward feature of the system, namely the online payment with credit card, has been switched off and replaced with an exchange in cash at the time of delivery. Since the trust factor within the neighbors’ community does not lack, is also much easier to do this. Thus, the customer journey map of the simplified service appears as follows:

Switched off

Milkplease BUYER

makes shopping list

chooses time and place of delivery

Milkplease Delivery user

Fig. 4.10 Customer Journey Map of the semplified service

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add a suggetion for the delivery reward

receives a notification and the checking code

pays by credit card

receives a notification of a new list

views the request

accepts

r

goes grocery shopping

d

es grocery hopping

offline interaction among users

056008423

receives the goods

gives the checking code

gives feedback to Milkplease

replaced by

gives the payment (shopping + delivery)

Feedback Survey

receives the payment (shopping + delivery)

Feedback Survey

offline interaction among users

delivers the goods

056008423

056008423

receives the checking code

gives feedback and checking code to Milkplease

receives the payment

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Scarsellini Blog Fig. 4.11 Post on Scarsellini Blog

This informal channel allowed me to be in contact with the community in order to reach immediately some feedback or answering to some questions.

Towards a post on the Scarsellini’s blog, the first meeting was planned. So the communication of the meeting passed toward the Scarsellini blog as a post of Liat.

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The time table for the first meeting expected four core moments: Introduction: the aim is to introduce the topic and make awareness of the benefits of the service proposed Activity phase: people should have been enabled to discuss about the topic and to deepen the service throughout a participatory action approach. Moreover, people are invited to visit the Milkplease website and start to play with the digital platform in order to start the usability test.

The kick off of the prototyping week: it is the beginning of the prototyping phase to get experience and learn from it by using the digital platform.

Informal moment: to let people free to ask and discuss to end the meeting.

workshop

SCARSELLINI

Fig. 4.12 Workshop Program, Scarsellini

Introduction: what is? who? “why Housing Lab Community� benefits?

3 SLIDES IN 3 MINUTES

Activity phase:

PROBLEMS-CARD

Kick off: Two weeks of prototyping Informal moment: discussion questions

co-design

problems-card / discussion introduction of the platform

COMMENTS / QUESTIONS FEEDBACK

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Workshop tools 3 Slides in 3 minutes (enabling tool)

Fig. 4.13 Tool: 3 slides in 3 minutes

The challenge is to present the service, how it works and its benefits in a short time lapse with the support of few slides. It this way it’s possible to catch the attention of the people enough to give them the main concept of the message.

Problem-cards (enabling tool)

Fig. 4.14 Tool: Problemcards

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These cards were developed in order to foster a discussion on what could have been the hitches during the experimentation of the service.

Video Tutorial / How to use Milkplease platform (enabling tool)

Fig. 4.15 Tool: Video tutorial

This tool was developed to support people in the usage a new interface. It concerns a couple of video tutorial ‘Ordina’ and ‘Consegna’ (either from a Computer’s view and from Smartphone view) to explain easily how to use the platform. Due to the problems with the digital platform it was not used.

Survey (collecting tool)

Fig. 4.16 Tool: Survey, paper and online form

The feedback request has been implemented to collect qualitative responses on what would happen during the two weeks of testing Milkplease service and platform. The surveys were both online and paper forms. The online form should have been attached to an email of thanks to people who used the service. Instead, the paper form was distributed as postcards in order to be even a prompt to remember to use the service. Due to the failure of the test, the results were not raised.

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Results Since the first test of the platform during the workshop, some big problems related to the interface were highlighted. Unfortunately, they were so large to affect the two weeks of prototyping phase, ratifying a failure of the test.

It is obvious that the platform as a unique touch-point of the service still has many features to fix, to add and to re-design; all that has deeply affected the use of the service by seriously hampering the prototype itself. Although, we try to find other ways to temporarily replace the platform, the expectations of the community were different, so they are no longer willing to make compromises.

What we achieved are information mainly pertinent to the platform, such as it does not fit very well on a mobile device and it is not user-friendly because it has to be opened in the browser and does not work as a standalone application besides, we identify a series of little bugs that must be fixed.

Furthermore, other small tricks on the service side are to be emphasized, in order to gather useful observations able to head during the activities in Corridoni Community: The products collected are generic and do not correspond perfectly to those of the nearest and most popular supermarket of the members (Esselunga of Affori). Not having the same product cause hesitation in the users, it may become a purpose of difficulties during the shopping. Thus, it is basic to build a community of users as well as it is necessary to create a network of stores and local shops involved in the service itself. So, the main role of stores it shouldn’t be underrated.

As we learn in the chapter 2 that collaborative services have to be flexible, infact the users contests the lack of flexibility on the list of items. The platform does not allow to ask for removing some items if the list it is too big or too heavy. For instance, it could be solved by implementing a chat in which people can discuss, nevertheless the point is not that one.

Although, the failure of the test, all of the observations I have made are important and useful to learn how to re-shape better the service to prototype with the Corridoni community

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

4.3.2 Collaborative Neighbors: Corridoni In the analysis of the result of the previous activities it’s possible to extract some ‘rules’ to follow. It’s evident that in Milkplease, the biggest impediment has been the digital platform with its problems of the interface. As well as the service appears, it is too much conditioned by the digital platform, it seems that was born the platform before the service. Indeed, from PSS design we know that they have to raise at the same time, in order to be one as a function of the other. Thus, in the next action Milkplease platform and service will be setaside, and a ‘Collaborative Shopping’ service will take its place. Instead, to cover the lack of a dedicated platform will be used common free tools, according to the digital knowledge of members of the community, the aim is to facilitate the people in order to make a rapid prototype of the Collaborative Shopping.

Before starting to keep touch with the new group, it’ important to analyze the experience collected through the generic survey and the feedback during the experience in Scarsellini group, in order to build the strategy in the next scheme.

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Fig. 4.17 The applied strategy development at Corridoni

ACTIONS

Corridoni

First contact

Analysis

Organize

Community building

TOOLS

community

visiting place local interviews

understand the potentialities: -to build a community of neighbors -to build an expanded network included local shops

flyer facebook mailing list

meeting: Riunione di condominio

Community feedback

Experience

prototyping

survey

prototyping

collaborative

DIGITAL PLATFORM

ACTIONS

SERVICE

pss

Experience

analysing of Scarsellini experience analysing the datas from survey

get the essence of Milkplease

discussing re(shaping)

prototyping the service

implementing the prototype

prototyping the service

digital shared calendar

Google Calendar

instant messaging service

WhatsApp e-mail

app. to making a list of supermarket’s items

Esselunga spesa online

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Strategic Analysis As well as told in the results of Scarsellini activities, ‘the main role of stores it shouldn’t be underrated’, because they define part of the function of the Collaborative Shopping service.

To allow people to collaborate in the purchasing of the grocery shopping, it is not enough give a channel of communication. In fact, someone of the Scarsellini group said “It’s easier to ask the missed item to my neighbors rather than wasting time in the digital application.” If the service doesn’t give an added value, as the right list of products with prices of the most popular local stores and shops, it is not enough attractive and useful to involved people.

Thus the purpose of the analysis of the neighboring area is to understand what are the most popular stores, where the people usually go grocery shopping, and lastly to get a list of local shops.

Even the small and familiar businesses might be included, because can disclose affected to get a partnership and turn into a point of strength for the service. On the contrary to big supermarket or store, which could already have a service of home delivery, the small shops can be attract by the idea to get a new channel of purchasing, exactly like it is supplying the niche-products provider, in which common channel of purchasing are not enough. (Case studies in the analysis of the e-grocery context, chap. 3) Obviously, the service have to find a way even to relate to the big chain of stores and supermarket, otherwise it can reach the critical mass.

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Fig. 4.18 Analysis of the area Corridoni

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Workshop / Riunione di Condominio

This workshop has been dense of purposes: -to involve the group of people directly by building a community identity -to give awareness of collaborative behavior in the neighborhood -to discuss about the Collaborative Shopping service -to co-design the prototype

Fig. 4.19 The Workshop program, Corridoni

workshop

collaborative Corridoni

Appetizing and introducing:

happy hour wall exhibition of case studies

EXHIBITION

Engaging and enabling:

comments and questions presentation of the cases extract of the video about Social Street

COMMENT UPON

VIDEO EXPERIENCE

The Focus:

discussion Kick off: two weeks of prototyping Co-designing:

COMMENTS / QUESTIONS FEEDBACK

discussion

planning / mapping PLANNING

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MAPPING

Riunione di Condominio collaborative

Thus, the activities were organized following this four main part: Appetizing and introducing, in order to engage people, to whom it is required to have a badge and to introduce the topic through the exhibition on the wall of the case studies collected (Case studies Exhibition)

Engaging and enabling, the beginning was when the people started to participate in the activities. The group was invited to animate the exhibition by leaving comments, insights or question on the wall (‘Comment-upon) Meanwhile, I started to lead the group into an open discussion by answering to their questions and doubts and toward a detailed explication of the case studies with the support of other examples out of the context ‘Neighborhood’, for instance, Airbnb, Blablacar, Fubles. Furthermore, to bolster the theme it showed them

Fig. 4.20 The Workshop logo ‘Riunione di Condominio’

Fig. 4.21 Picture during the Exhibition

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

an extract of the conference on Social Street during the Social Media Week, in which the founders has spoken and explained their great experience. (‘Case studies Video Exhibition’)

Fig. 4.22 Picture during the Exhibition

Fig. 4.23 Picture during the discussion

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The Focus, when the conversation was heated and when the attention was caught, I gently lead the topic to the Collaborative Shopping. They were enough informed to be ready to understand the potentialities of the activity that I was going to suggest them. After a quick overview of their habits about grocery shopping, I played a little by provoking on what could have been happening if they have only started to deliver something to the neighbors. It was enough to trigger a chain reaction, a guy started by saying he used to go buy bread every morning for his family, so he offered himself to deliver bread for who wanted, next a couple of others.

Co-designing, thanks to the previous little provocation, the group was designing a time table to organize the tasks for some of them and to enable the others, I suggested that they should have posted some offer or request during the week, in order to animate the service. (‘Planning Table’) In addition, I asked them to try with a common grocery shopping at the supermarket. The idea to post a list of products to buy at the supermarket was warmly welcomed: few had already used the home delivery of Esselunga, not often due to the expensive reward. The only doubt was for the accuracy on the choice of the goods. That it was solved by the suggestion to use a shared profile to create a list of desired products on the Esselunga website3.

Workshop tools Flyer and doodle (engaging tool)

Riunione di Condominio Il programma : Aperitivo con piccola mostra di esempi di realtà condominiali e di vicinato collaborativo.

Dove : In Casetta via Orcelletto 91-B Seregno

A seguire una chiacchierata sul tema vicinato al termine vi verranno raccontati nei dettagli i casi presentati, sarete voi a votarli e commentarli. Si continuerà con la chiacchierata e considerare qualche iniziativa o idea.

Si terminerà con: ci mettiamo in gioco? (sorpresa!)

..vi aspetto numerosi! La serata è aperta a tutti i condomini per informazioni contattare serena.nardin@gmail.com

To promote and organize the tools chosen were the basics: a ‘Doodle’4 pool to choose the day with the guests, and an advertising flyer both paper and online form (sent by email)

collaborative

Fig. 4.24 Flyer, online form Fig. 4.25 Doodle, the pool for the Workshop

3 www.esselungaacasa.it/ecommerce 4 www.doodle.com

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Case studies Exhibition (engaging tool)

Fig. 4.26 Pictures of the Exhibition’s preparation Fig. 4.27 Pictures of Lara writing and Francesca fixing question

To guarantee a good understanding of the theme and to avoid immediately the lack of trust, it has been collected some strong experience on the themes concerned about collaborative practices and expert neighborhood. They have been exhibited on the wall, organized in groups: collaborative services within neighbors5 from activities (cooking, gardening, babysitting‌) to sharing stuff (tools, cars, clothes..) than the two examples: Scarsellini group and Social Street.

Comment upon (enabling tool)

People have been invited to look at the exhibition and to write on little pieces of paper their question, comments, ideas and fix it on the wall.

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Case studies Video Exhibition (engaging tool)

Since was not possible to invite some expert on the subject in order to carry their personal experience, the substitution has been an extract of the interview made to Social Street founders (at the Social Media Week in Milan on 21st February 2014 ) and it has left a free access to the website of other case studies to complete the scenario of the collaborative services (some website suggested: Coltivando, Landshare, Blablacar, Airbnb, Reoose, Taskrabbit, The Solver City, Impact Hub Milan, Fubles, Dinnair;…)

Fig. 4.28 Picture during the Social Media Week in Milan on 21st February 2014

Planning Table (Enabling tool)

It’s only a simple timetable to let people fill in the gaps in order to plan the task for the prototyping week.

Fig. 4.29 Picture during the Video Exhibition

5 Many examples was taken from ‘Jègou F., Manzini E., Collaborative Services. Social innovation and design for sustainability. Milano, Edizioni POLI.design, 2008’ and ‘Meroni A., a cura di., Creative communities. People inventing sustainable ways of living. Milano, Edizioni POLI.design, 2007’

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Fig. 4.30 Pictures of the Workshop

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Prototyping The table below is an overview on what happened during the first week of prototyping the Collaborative Shopping.

08:00 09:00

Monday Bread

Tuesday Bread

Wednesday

Thursday

Bread

Bread Market

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Bread Newstand

10:00

Butchery

11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00

Beekeper

17:00 18:00

Water

Luca accepted

Groceries Water

esselunga shop list “Lista Marco”

delivered

19:00 20:00

Groceries esselunga shop list “Lista Andrea”

Luca accepted

Milk

Milk

Planned during the meeting

Offer

Posted during the week

Request

delivered

Fig. 4.31Timetable of the tasks happened during the first prototyping week

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

People follow regularly the events we planned during the workshop besides, they increase it with new offers and two grocery shopping request. The goal has been reached, all of them agreed on the planning table so this system was clear, easy to use and flexible enough.

Afterwards, the shared calendar was perfect to organize the delivery, people made the offers by creating an event and inviting the others; who was interested just accepted by answering what they need. That allows even to have an automatic reminder in order to avoid forgetting the task. Everything is managed by email and using the free service Calendar (developed by Google).

Fig. 4.32 The Collaborative Shopping Calendar

This method was adopted only to offer some goods came from specific local shops or services: such as Milk Maps (vending machines of dairy milk) Casa dell’acqua (vending machines of water) bakery, butchery, local beekeeper, newsstand, village market.

Instead, for the request of grocery shopping at the supermarket, another method was implemented. In a private group on an instant messaging service (WhatsApp) they write a request. In order to be very precise with the needed items they shared a profile in the Esselunga online platform, that allows to save some list of desired products. In this way, we have gained speed using WhatsApp and accuracy by using the right list of product purchase in the store.

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Survey / Feedback At the end of the week I recapped the situation and I prepared an online survey to probe what people felt and thought about the week. The questions has been made to investigate the first week of prototyping as well as the workshop.

The first part aims to give feedback on the themes tackled during the meeting if they feel involved and interested. Instead, the second part wants to see if the experience of the week went well.

Towards, my main goal was to explore if they were ready to start a new challenge or just to go on likewise the previous week. From what I received, I have inferred a bit of shyness to post the offers and the requests, indeed for the tasks planned previously went well.

Fig. 4.33 Survey of the workshop and the first week of prototyping, online form

Implementing From the results of the survey the community has appeared satisfied of the experiment.

Since they have been excited yet, the implementation could be launched. Furthermore, the community doesn’t have the feeling that the Collaborative Shopping is a prototype of a service, but only an exchange of favors a bit organized. Thus, carrying on this prototype may arrive to cause some rifts, the beginning of it it visible in the doubts expressed in the survey at the question about the fairness of this method. In order to shape the service, and to catch the attention of the people of the community, it has been introduced a new rule: each 95

4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

delivery has to be paid by a credit.

So I set a number of credits interrelated to deliveries performed during the first week, and besides, they received one bonus point for actions which were particularly significant.

Fig. 4.34 Table of the credits and bonus of the first week

This system to moderate the offers and request allows to increase the number of offers in order to collect credits to pay the deliveries, and the real goal is to improve quality of the actions, in a way to guarantee a quick deliver. As Fubles introduced “Rango” a system to collect credits by playing and winning the football matches or Reoose in which the members use the credits as currency of exchange, in this prototype of a Collaborative Shopping would be used as a system of payment of the deliveries.

The graph below is the sum of the credits gave to each housing unit:

typology

n. of delivery

bonus

tot

Matteo c.

Bread

9

* Frequency

10

alessandro m.

Giacomo P. Gianmaria S.

Water

5

* Weight

6

Valentina V.

Milk

5

alessandra B. Francesca P. Luca C.

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frequency

Beekeper Grocery shopping

3+2 delivery to elderly neighbors out this group) 2

5

* “Outsider” * Elderly Quick * answer

7 3

alice p.

Market

3

3

marco g.

News-stand

4

4

andrea b. lara r.

Butchery

3

3

Prototyping The table below is the result of what happened during the second week of prototyping the Collaborative Shopping. The way to organize the task (planned or not) and the digital tools which enables that, have been the same of the previous week.

08:00 09:00

Tuesday

Monday Bread

Bread

Wednesday

Thursday

Bread

Bread Market Pharmacy

10:00

Friday Bread

Saturday

Sunday

Milk Butchery

11:00 12:00

Alessandra

13:00

esselunga shop list “Lista Ale e Fra”

14:00 15:00

Brunelli accepted delivered

Cicloofficina

16:00

Ice-cream

17:00 18:00

Groceries Water

esselunga shop list “Lista Matteo” Alice accepted delivered

19:00 20:00

Green grocer

Milk

Bakery Groceries esselunga shop list “Lista ValentinaV” Luca accepted delivered

Planned during the meeting

Offer

Posted during the week

Request

Groceries

esselunga shop list “Lista Alessandro” Water Francesca accepted 18:00-19:00

Water

Milk

08:30 -09:00

delivered

Fig. 4.35 Timetable of the tasks happened during the second prototyping week

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Thanks to the credit system people get the effort to give offers and deliveries in order to deserve credit to be used in case of necessity, and besides, who has gained many credits is pushed to use them. Then this system improves the offers and the requests by creating a balance between them, because who hasn’t planned any tasks might answer to the grocery shopping at supermarket request or to find some new offers. For instance, this week, we gained some evolution: both the number of the grocery shopping and the offers are increased, and besides they introduces new shops or store. The most original was ‘Cicloofficina’ it’s a shop where the bikes are sold and repaired.

The graph below is the sum of the credits gave to each housing unit with the calculation of the two weeks together:

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typology

frequency

n. of delivery

bonus

tot

n. of request

1ST+2ndW

Matteo c.

Bread

8

* Frequency

10

-5

10+5=15

alessandro m.

Giacomo P. Gianmaria S.

Water

4

* Weight

5

-4

6+1=7

Valentina V.

Milk

6

* “Outsider�

7

-5

5+2=7

Bakery

3 4

-6

7-2=5

4

-3

3+1=4

5

-4

3+1=4

3

-4

4-1=3

3

-3

3+0=3

alessandra B. Francesca P.

Luca C.

alice p.

Grocery shopping

1

Ciclofficina

2

Grocery shopping

marco g.

andrea b. lara r.

1

Market

2

Pharmacy

1

Grocery shopping

1

Ice-cream

3

Butchery

2

Green-grocer

* Originality

* answer Quick

1

Fig. 4.36 Table of the credits and bonus of the second week

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

Results Fig. 4.37 The features of the service

From the two prototyping phase, the service has gained these features presented in the graph below:

main features of the service

collaborative

REQUEST

INSTANT MESSAGING

COMMUNICATION

LIST OF ITEMS

ORGANIZATION

PLANNING TABLE

1st week to plan the offers of deliveies HOW -to create an events, selecting a range of time for the delivery -to invite at the event the other memebers

to answer to the offers

HOW -to enroll at the event by answering the desired good

to make a quick offer

to make a quick request

to make the exactly list of the desired products

to visualized the same prices and scount of the supermarket

to remember all the tasks

HOW -to looking at the table, and besides, to use an automatic reminder

to ask for some doubts

HOW -to create a wish list

PAYMENT

100

COUNT TABLE

2nd week

to pay the deliveries

to make a balance between request and offer

to foster the service and increse the number of offers and requests

Thus, the incubation of the Collaborative Service into the Corridoni community allows to build the service, add some parts in order to make it functional and useful. It has been gained the added value which could make it attractive, even in a partnership with a network of shops and local stores. This experience has been successful for both the building community and the service prototyping. The people have started easily to collaborate because with the presence of the service that give some rules to follow they don’t feel lost in relation. It was as a sort of game that affords to create links between people, they have achieved a new way to communicate and to collaborate also by helping each other.

The effect is the feeling to improve the quality of the relationships with the neighbors and even in their everyday life. Although they already knew each other before this experience, they have never been in touch as they have done during the two weeks. For them it was enough to say hello and smile, in that sense the service doesn’t push to have a deep relation with the neighbors, but the exchanges of favor allow to build a ground of neighbourliness much stronger. Moreover, there was a faint interest to enlarge the community by including particularly people who could have really a necessity of the a Collaborative Shopping service, such as elderlies. Afterwards, the results were good for the community as well as for the service due to the increasing and the implementation of both.

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4. Prototyping a Collaborative shopping

4.4 Conclusion

“Non è l’dea quella che conta” sostiene il CEO di Fubles, “in un mondo come il nostro che va un po’ tutto nella stessa direzione l’idea la possono avere tutti. É saperla realizzare, andare fino in fondo che fa la differenza.

(Mirko Trasciatti interviewed by Marta Manieri)

The idea of Milkplease it’s great and can really work, but according what happened to the different experience in Berlin before and in Milan after, we learn that working with people and not for people, a collaborative service could grow up. This shift from ‘designing for’ to ‘designing with’ it’s oblige for the new startuppers who wants to develop services or PSS to improve the quality of the life by co-designing with the users themselves, users-before-users.

This process could be done at every step, from the beginning by shaping the idea, or by prototyping service, to develop the digital platform or the touch-point of the PSS. Thus, it’s demonstrate how a Community Centered Design approach could really support a startup in the development of a collaborative service by giving right strategies of work. The background research was made by investigating different community and different way of prototype a collaborative service, in order to understand which tools and methods are the best to draw a strategy to support the startup. The plan that took shape during the project development could be used again to up-scale the service in other cities. It’s a sort of toolbox leave in the hand of the startup to show them how design approaches can be able to solve some difficulties: By enabling people to co-design the right functionalities for the service By building the community By facilitating the interaction among people, between people and the digital platform 102

By collecting reaction, feedbacks and qualitative responses The strengths of a Community Centered Design approach lie in the prototyping process and in building a network, it’s not possible to assume anything on a new collaborative service without beginning to do both and learn from the experiences, the expressed feedback and unexpressed reactions.

From these moments of experimentation, I really understand what Mirko Trasciatti said in the interview, it is not the idea that counts, but the ability of the team to process it and make it a project, it’s a synergy of different capabilities and disciplines able to reach the goal. It’s what is allowed you to turn your idea into a real project. This is possible to realize throughout a prototype, because the main purpose of prototyping is to concretize an idea (Fulton Suri, 2008). Only with the prototype a designer can verify if the project works, what are its weaknesses and strengths, where there are the threats to tackle and the opportunities to grab. And my solution on how to develop a collaborative service, it’s to adopt the methodologies and tools learnt by the CCD approach.

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collaborative

Chapter 5

5. Future developments and conclusion

5. Future developments and conclusion 5.1 Future developments Since the project is still a working progress, the future steps concern either the actions to do in a short term and a plan for future development in order to continue the service prototype through the experimentation with the communities, with the final goal to become a competitive startup and begins a new venture in the business. However, before to think about the business model and to ask financial support, the PSS need to be implemented.

So the short-term actions to do are to continue the development of the service with the communities and to enlarge them by engaging other neighbors to one side and the local shop to the other side.

As the Fubles team works each time they kick off the service in a new city, it’s possible to build a model, a “list of tasks to do” in order to achieve the goals: develop and implement a collaborative service and communicate it. From a designer this “list of tasks to do” become a toolbox because it’s not only a series of actions to do, but they need tools to facilitate the results of the actions, to keep the control of what happen and to guide or coach towards the right direction. Engaging people in the designing process could be powerful as dangerous because if they get a bad experience they will spread it, this could be a threat for a collaborative service, which is based on trust. But this threat can be an opportunity if the right approach is used.

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5.2 A toolbox for the startup Thanks to the previous experimentation with the communities is possible to reach knowledge to create a deeper strategy to develop effective results useful to arrive to have a complete version of the service, ready to be kicked off on the market.

FEEDBACK LE SAcollaborative

COMMENT UPON

SALES

DECALOGUE

collaborative

collaborative

EXHIBITION

SURVEY

PICK-UP

SHOPPING BAG

collaborative

VIDEO TUTORIAL

INVITATION BLOCKER CHECKS

SUGGESTION CARD

DIGITAL PLATFORM

Fig. 5.1 The Toolbox

STORYTELLING USABILITY TEST

MAPPING THE STORES

MANUAL

TOOLBOX

coll ab

ora

tive

CCD approach

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5. Future developments and conclusion

startup

Service

Fig. 5.2 From a service to a startup

So, the suggestion is to continue to support the startup by the creation of toolbox in which the designer can fill with a strategy and some practical tools that the startuppers will be able to use in order to carry on the development of the service.

These tools have to be shaped on the different communities in order to reach the different goal by following the CCD approach that it has been proved how let the achievement of the goals. In order to be precise and in line with the job done till now, I decided to split the tool box to fit for each community. However, this could assemble in one unique box to be used later during the diffusion in other areas or cities.

5.2.1 The tools The tools are one of the most evident intervention of the designer. They are thought to be used to people not expert, so exactly for the community members. The tools have defined purpose: they have to engage people in the co-design process and besides, catch and stimulate their curiosity (engaging tools); tthen they might inform and coach to let people able to act and to work with the designer (enabling tools) and at the end they have to collect the insights, ideas and feedbacks (collecting tools). Moreover, for the Collaborative Shopping development I added one category of hybrids of tool and strategy, called ‘PSS implementation’ because they are a sort of features and touch-points of the service, which aims is to explore new ideas and opportunities in order to test if they could work for the final shape of the service. In the Fig. 5.2 all the tools developed are organized in the different categories.

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VIDEO TUTORIAL

USABILITY TEST

MANUAL LE SAcollaborative

SALES STORYTELLING

INVITATION

STORYTELLING

BLOCKER CHECKS

DECALOGUE

USABILITY TEST

BLOCKER CHECKS

collaborative

SHOPPING BAG

FEEDBACK collaborative

PICK-UP EXHIBITION

COMMENT UPON

SURVEY collaborative

MAPPING THE STORES

SUGGESTION CARD

MAPPING THE STORES

DIGITAL PLATFORM

ENGAGE

ENABLE

COLLECT

PSS IMPLEMENTATION

Fig. 5.3 Tools’ categories

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Blocker checks (enabling and collecting tool)

Everybody is invited to make a list of the supposed problems, bugs, obstacles on a paper.

Then all the responses are collected and are summarized in a unique list, where at the end will be highlighting the most voted obstacles. This is an occasion to start to discuss about the most important problems and begin to find solutions by the insights received from the conversation.

Decalogue (enabling tool)

It is a list of ten rules, which come from an interview of the users by asking them what are the most important rules and attitude to follow to let the service works well. It’s important these “rules of the game” are coming from the people, because in this way they understand the purpose of them.

Exhibition and Comment Upon (engaging and enabling tools)

These tools are able to inform and introduce people in the topics by showing some good example, case studies and best practices as an active exhibition,where the people can comment, leave feedback or question on small pieces of paper on the exposed material.

Altought it is mainly a strategy to say about the topic, it’s always helped to coach people and to trigger the discussion in depth.

Feedback (collecting tool)

It’s a tool to keep control of the users’ task and the service thought a requested votation.

Mapping the stores (engaging and collecting tool)

It’s a shared map of the stores or shops frequented by the users, it’s possible to keep control of the local businesses are involved in the system, and besides, it could be a tool to make known new shops.

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Storytelling (engaging and enabling tool)

It is the ‘story’ of the service told by the users in order to communicate a real experience of the service. The story needs to be clear and easy, in order to display the benefits and spread trust of this new service which is changing the frame of the grocery shopping and the relationships among neighbors.

Suggestion cards (enabling tool)

They are a series of card where some problems or implementation of the prototype are described in order to trigger a discussion with the community and try to verify their expressed and unexpressed reactions.

Survey (collecting tool)

By collection qualitative and quantitative responses it’s possible to maintain a contacts and control of the service and always have a personal point of view of the people engaged.

Usability test (enabling and collecting tool)

It is a check on how people use the digital platform, if they are able to use it, to understand the interface and how they react on the interface.

Video tutorial and Manual (enabling tool)

These tools are mainly made for the users in order to support them in the usage of the digital platform of some details about the service itself. They could be useful to build the ‘how it work’ and the ‘FAQ session’ on the website of the service.

The PSS implementation tools are illustrated in the following paragraph because they are connected to the strategy, where they are developed.

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5. Future developments and conclusion

5.2.2 The strategies This plan aims to develop the service as well as the digital platform by increasing the member of the communities. The service is achieving a good level of development, as it needs to be supported by a dedicated tool, a digital platform able to collect all the functions sought. Something that can work on the main digital devices used nowadays. It probably requires the interventions of some expert of Information Technologies.

Fig. 5.4 The future strategy

Anyhow, the local shops and stores must be engaged in, supporting the purchasing of the members, but it’s obvious that they might understand the benefits of the partnership with the Collaborative Shopping. Moreover, to create a system which is able to sustain itself, the indication is to create a way to engage and enable, as for example the personal Shoppingbag, that the shop can prepare with the shopping in advance for the customers. Otherwise, the suggestion for the shops is to create a special event for the community, where they can offer discounts to sharpen fidelity bond. Furthermore, it’s possible to introduce a new way for the deliveries, by picking-up the purchases in specific point.

collaborative

service coll ab o

communities

collaborative

collaborative

LE SAcollaborative

implementations

Community Centered Design

collaborative

digital platform

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p r ot

o ty

g pi n

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rati ve

network

These three suggested implementations to tackle are thought for enlarging the number of the users and to reinforce the value of the service in order to reach the critical mass, to engage the shops and stores to have a strong value and to improve th quality of the service itself.

They will take shape during the experimentation with and within the different communities by approaching with the same methods of the previous prototyping process, namely the Community Centered Design.

From the insights got during the prototype in Corridoni, it has been created a list of what the interfaces need according with the service functionalities. To legitimize the evolution in a startup, it has to be developed a suitable digital platform, which allow the operation of the service. It must be composed by a website and a standalone application, so, the mock-up might be structured in order to able to answer to the functionalities shown in the Fig. 5.5

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5. Future developments and conclusion Fig. 5.5 The functionalities of the service

REQUEST

INSTANT MESSAGING

COMMUNICATION

LIST OF ITEMS

ORGANIZATION

collaborative

PLANNING TABLE

main features of the service

to plan the offers of deliveies HOW -to create an events, selecting a range of time for the delivery -to invite at the event the other memebers

to answer to the offers

HOW -to enroll at the event by answering the desired good

to make a quick offer

to make a quick request

to make the exactly list of the desired products

to visualized the same prices and scount of the supermarket

to remember all the tasks

HOW -to looking at the table, and besides, to use an automatic reminder

to ask for some doubts

PAYMENT

COUNT TABLE

HOW -to create a wish list

to pay the deliveries

to make a balance between request and offer

to foster the service and increse the number of offers and requests

to maintain a sort of an auto-control of the system

trust imrovement

FEEDBACKS

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RANKING

HOW it’s based on a system of credits and bonus that people can earn by delivering

to check the satisfaction of the people

Scarsellini Although the first test with Scarsellini failed, it is possible to drive the community in a new direction in order to start again with the interface development.

Thus, thanks to the experience done in Corridoni, which have shaped the Collaborative Shopping, the plan for Scarsellini group is mainly based on the digital platform development and the implementation of the new way of delivering (Fig. 5.7). Since the community owns two common rooms and they are already organized in purchasing group, it could be easier test the Pick-up system of delivering.

Even if it’s clear how to proceed with the service and the interface, there is a little obstacle to be overtook, that is recover the attention and the interest of the people. This lack is caused by the failure of the first test and by the presence of the supermarket very near and their G.A.S (ethical purchasing group). These hurdles could be leaped over if it’s found a way to attract the people with a purpose and trying to fulfill them.

SCARSELLINI

TOOLBOX CCD approach

Fig. 5.6 Logo of Scarsellini strategy

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Meeting

STEP 2

STEP 1

5. Future developments and conclusion

engage enable collect

show what happened in Corridoni and ask to give some feedback

TOOLS

ACTIONS

meet community in order to:

EXHIBITION

meet community in order to:

kick off the mock-up of the application and start to use it

verify if they are able to use it

MAPPING THE STORES

USABILITY TEST

collaborative

COMMENT UPON DIGITAL PLATFORM

Fig. 5.7 Future developments for Scarsellini

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prototyping

engage enable collect

deleop new way of d

support the people during the test

keep controlling on the service and the community

VIDEO TUTORIAL

FEEDBACK

MANUAL

SURVEY

STEP 4

STEP 3

Implementing (pick-up)

engage enable collect

networking (stores) engage enable collect

deleop new way of deliver to:

keep controlling on the service and the community

facilitate the deliveries, it’s possible to find a common place to pick up the shopping

collaborative

engage local stores into the system to show how can really increase of sales with this service

enable the local stores to receive the communication of the community when they are planning

STORYTELLING

STORES INVITATION

PICK-UP

MAPPING THE STORES

Corridoni Since the Corridoni community has responded very well to the challenges proposed, and besides the prototyping of the service is working quite well. It has reached the goal to standalone service, without big intervention from the outside, thus, to continue to manage the service and the community it is suggested to complete the following tasks: to meet the community in order to get insights of what happen to engage local stores and shops in the system through a new implementation (Shopping Bag) to enlarge the community to introduce the digital platform (after the prototyping phase in Scarsellini)

Corridoni

TOOLBOX CCD approach

Fig. 5.8 Logo of Corridoni strategy

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Meeting

STEP 2

STEP 1

5. Future developments and conclusion

engage enable collect

networking (stores)

engage enable collect

check how is going the prototyping and establish some fixed rules

map the stores with the user and verify if they are ready to involve local store and shops

prepare the storytelling for the local stores and shops by video recording interviews of the users

engage local stores into the system to show how can really increase of sales with this service

enable the local stores to receive the communication of the community when they are planning

BLOCKER CHECKS

MAPPING THE STORES

STORYTELLING (DEVELOPMENT)

STORYTELLING

STORES INVITATION

TOOLS

ACTIONS

meet community in order to:

DECALOGUE

Fig. 5.9 Future Developments for Corridoni

SURVEY

MAPPING THE STORES

So the main purpose of the strategy for Corridoni group is to introduce a network of shops and stores already associated with the community in order to increase the service and add the partnership with them. That can get the possibility to obtain a list of product and prices available online for the users that want to order something.

To engage the shops it is suggested to show how the system is working and how many deliveries have done the people during the two weeks of prototyping, in this way they can see the effective number of items sold through the Collaborative Shopping. Thus, for them it means a new channel for purchasing and advertising.

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introduce the idea to shopping-bag ready w items inside prepared shop to facilitate the

deleop the bag-system to: enable the local stores to receive the communication of the community when they are planning

introduce the idea to use a shopping-bag ready with the items inside prepared by the shop to facilitate the deliver

collaborative

keep controlling on the implementation

when the prototype developed in Scarsellini is ready

FEEDBACK

SHOPPING BAG

STEP 5

introduce digital platform

engage enable collect

STEP 4

STEP 3

Implementing (shopping-bag)

enlarge the community engage enable collect

diffuse the service locally in order to:

enlarge the community by including the neighborhood

keep controlling on the service and the community

EXHIBITION

FEEDBACK

INVITATION

SURVEY

digital platform SURVEY

DECALOGUE

Moreover, to facilitate the deliveries by creating a collaboration between customers and shops, it will be developed a new implementation: the Shopping Bag. This bag is a multifunctional tool because it’s allow the shops to prepare the grocery shopping in advance in order to facilitate the task of the deliver, then, since the branded bags are displayed in the shops, it get the evidence of the system working in this area, it’s a way to diffuse and promote the service, finally the bags might be reusable so people should give them back to the shop in order to create a system able to bolster he relationships and avoid waste of money (the cost of the bags) time (of who delivers) trash (the tote bags).

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Social Street

TOOLBOX CCD approach

So it is suggested to reinforce the contacts struck up with some members of the social street and understand if they are already developing or doing something like the social shopping.

Although they don’t like business advertising, it’s appreciable organize a small event, a sort of focus group to introduce the theme. Like the workshop in Corridoni, it’s better to present case studies and best practices to inform them enough on the topic and then, according

meeting

STEP 2

STEP 1

Fig. 5.10 Logo of Social Street strategy

A good opportunity is to try to prototype the service among the communities of Social Street.

First of all, they are communities of neighbors, so it’s exactly the group of people who use this service. Furthermore, these communities are big, open and dynamic, and besides, the members welcome this sort of initiatives based on social innovation, behavioral change towards virtuous actions such as collaboration, sharing, boating.

engage enable collect

prototyping engage enable collect

show what happened in Corridoni and Scarsellini, and ask to give some feedback

TOOLS

ACTIONS

meet community in order to:

kick off the service and application

check how is going the prototyping

verify they are able to use the platform

BLOCKER CHECKS

USABILITY TEST

support the people during the use

collaborative

EXHIBITION MAPPING THE STORES

SUGGESTION CARD

COMMENT UPON

VIDEO TUTORIAL

MANUAL

collaborative

STORYTELLING

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MAPPING THE PICK-UP POINT

DECALOGUE

to the reaction of the people the Collaborative Shopping should be explained. People will be invited to try and to test the service, it’s suggested to organize a controlled session of prototyping in order to collect qualitative feedback on the new area, with new shops and stores involved.

Then, for these communities it possible to implement the service on the shops side by asking them to offer some discounts in order to give an added value to the system and make the community stronger. That means the stores and shops could use the service as a new channel of purchasing as well as a way to advertise their products on sale. The community receives special discounts which encourage people to be in, as a consequence the number of people will increase.

networking (stores)

STEP 4

STEP 3

Fig. 5.11 Future Developments for Social Street

engage enable collect

Implementing (stores sales) engage enable collect

deleop the sales-system to:

support the people during the use

engage local stores into the system to show how can keep controlling on the really increase of sales with service and the community this service

FEEDBACK

STORYTELLING

enable the local stores to receive the communication of the community when they are planning

STORES INVITATION

let stores create special events, in which the community get discount on some items

LE SAcollaborative

SALES SURVEY

MAPPING THE STORES

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5.3 Conclusion Taking the first Berlin prototype of Milkplease as basis for comparison, the differences with the thesis project are more than ever evident: the first one, unfortunately, did not help much, because it has not been able to develop a model and replicable solutions, but above all it doesn’t manage to involve and enable the community in order to collect qualitative data useful for the growth. Instead, the Community Centered Design approach, which has been adopted in thesis project, proves the opposite result: Milkplease get in addition to the documentation of all the work done a list of features and ideas, which comes from the reactions caused by the designer during the experimentation.

Therefore the thesis has achieved its aims: it has demonstrated how the Design discipline is capable of processing solutions such as strategies and tools, which are specifically dedicated to reach the goals set in the action plan. These tools are essential for enabling and engaging creative communities, that are previously selected in order to participate in the co-design session of the Collaborative Shopping prototypes.

In detail, the tools have been designed with three main goals, which are: engage, that is to catch the attention and to stimulate curiosity of people; enable, that is to give them the knowledge and the necessary support in order to co-design; collect, that is to collect both quantitative and qualitative data, such as ideas, insights and unconscious reactions.

The Collaborative Shopping prototypes have been designed to test the most critical steps of Milkplease and besides, to suggest new and innovative solutions to the problems of the service, enriching it with features developed for and with the users. These new implementations experimented with the Collaborative Shopping allow the Milkplease’s team to understand how to enhance the service in order to be more competitive.

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Buchenau M., Fulton Suri J.,(2000) Experience Prototyping, IDEO San Francisco Cantù D.,(2012) “Ideas Sharing LAB”. Co-designing multifunctional services with local food communities. Politecnico di Milano, INDACO dep., at Cumulus 2012 Helsinki Cantù D., Corubolo M., Simeone G., (2012) A Community Centered Design approach to developing service prototypes, Politecnico di Milano, INDACO dep., at Cumulus 2012 Helsinki Coughlan P., Fulton Suri J., Canales K.,(2007) Prototypes as (design) tools for behavioral and organizational change. A Design-Based Approach to help organizations change work behaviors, IDEO, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 2007; 43; 122 Houde S., Hill C., (1997) What do Prototypes Prototype? Apple Computer, Inc. Cupertino, CA, USA Hillgren P., Seravalli A., Emilson A., (2011) Prototyping and infrastructuring in design for social innovation MEDEA Collaborative Media Initiative, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden, 28 January 2011 Johansson A., Kisch P., Mirata M. (2005) Distributed economies. A new engine for innovation. Journal of Cleaner Production 13-2005, n.971-979 Manzini E., Viewpoint. New design knowledge, (2008) International Conference Changing the Change, Turin, Italy, 10-12 July 200 Manzini E., (2011) Design and social innovation. A catalyst of sustainable changes.

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Others Thesis Cant첫 D., (2012) Ideas Sharing Lab. Community Centred Design for Multifunctional and Collaborative Food Services, PhD Thesis; advisor A. Meroni, Politecnico di Milano, INDACO department, Italy; Rogel L., (2013) Housing Lab. A laboratory for collaborative innovation in urban housing, PhD Thesis, advisor A. Meroni, Politecnico di Milano, INDACO department, Italy Miaosen G., (2009) Collaborative Services in Ubiquitous Network : Exploring design for social innovation and sustainability in network society, PhD Thesis, advisor E.Manzini, Politecnico di Milano, INDACO department, Italy;

Websites www.collaborativeconsumption.com www.collaboriamo.org www.cumulusassociation.org designforservice.wordpress.com www.desis-network.org housinglab.wordpress.com www.interaction-design.org www.imagination.lancs.ac.uk/activities/ServDes_2014 130

knowledgeconnect.com.au/2012/03/co-creation-and-participatory-design www.openlivinglabs.eu www.nesta.org.uk prototypingalternativefutures.wordpress.com www.shareable.net www.socialstreet.it socialmediaweek.org/milan thinkpublic.com youngfoundation.org The website were consulted during the period between December 2013 and March 2014

Videos TALKS | TEDX: Rachel Botsman: The case for collaborative consumption www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/rachel_botsman_the_case_for_collaborative_consumption.html Ezio Manzini-Keynote: Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability from Interaction Design Association vimeo.com/9660466 Le Social Street, o del virtuale che si fa reale - Social Media Week Milan 2014 on www.youtube.com

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List of figures Fig. 0.2 Fig. 0.1 Picture of ‘Café Réunion’ prototyping and flyer for advertising Fig. 0.1 Scheme of the thesis development Fig. 1.1 Chinese character for the word Crisis Fig. 1.2 Botsman R., Rogers R., What’s mine is yours. How collaborative consumption is changing the way we live. London, Collins, 2011 Fig. 1.3 Botsman R., Rogers R., 2011 - Scheme of the Collaborarative Consumption Fig. 1.4 Jègou F., Manzini E., Collaborative Services. Social innovation and design for sustainability. Milano, Edizioni POLI.design, 2008 Fig. 1.5 The four principles of the Collaborative Services Fig. 1.6 Ivana Pais, italian professor of economic sociology at Università Cattolica di Milano Fig. 2.1 Scheme of the case studies Fig. 2.2 Strategic plan of Nutrire Milano (Feeding Milan) Fig. 2.3 Slides of the pilot projects Fig. 2.4 Logo Housing Lab Fig. 2.5 Housing Lab’s project: Vicini più vicini Fig. 2.6 Housing Lab’s project: Vicini per casa and ExperimentCity Europe Fig. 2.7 Ideas Sharing Lab project Fig. 2.8 Picture of Cittadini Creativi’s tools Fig. 2.9 Picture of the first Social Street: via Fondazza, Bologna (Italy) Fig. 3.1 System Map of the service 132

Fig. 3.2 Customer Journey Map Fig. 3.3 Motivation Matrix Fig. 3.4 e-grocery Diffusion map Fig. 3.5 Worldwide e-grocery overview Fig. 3.6 Italian e-grocery overview Fig. 4.1 Strategic Analysis Graph Fig. 4.2 Action Plan Fig. 4.3 Scheme of the strategy Fig. 4.4 The online Survey Fig. 4.5 Communities’ Analysis Fig. 4.6 Pictures of Scarsellini Fig. 4.7 Pictures of via Maiocchi and via Morgagni’s events Fig. 4.8 Picture of the towers-blocks in via Corridoni Fig. 4.9 The applied strategy development at Scarsellini Fig. 4.10 Customer Journey map of the simplified service Fig. 4.11 Post on Scarsellini Blog Fig. 4.12 Workshop Program, Scarsellini Fig. 4.13 Tool: 3 slides in 3 minutes Fig. 4.14 Tool: Problem-cards Fig. 4.15 Tool: Video tutorial Fig. 4.16 Tool: Survey, paper and online form Fig. 4.17 The applied strategy development at Corridoni Fig. 4.18 Analysis of the area Fig. 4.19 The Workshop Program, Corridoni 133

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Fig. 4.20 The Workshop logo ‘Riunione di Condominio’ Fig. 4.21 Picture during the Exhibition Fig. 4.22 Picture during the Exhibition Fig. 4.23 Picture during the discussion Fig. 4.24 Flyer, online form Fig. 4.25 Doodle, the pool for the Workshop Fig. 4.26 Pictures of the Exhibition’s preparation Fig. 4.27 Pictures of Lara writing and Francesca fixing question Fig. 4.28 Picture during the Social Media Week in Milan on 21st February 2014 Fig. 4.29 Picture during the Video Exhibition Fig. 4.30 Pictures of the Workshop Fig. 4.31 Timetable of the tasks happened during the first prototyping week Fig. 4.32 The Collaborative shopping Calendar Fig. 4.33 Survey of the workshop and the first week of prototyping, online form Fig. 4.34 Table of the credits and bonus of the first week Fig. 4.35 Timetable of the tasks happened during the second prototyping week Fig. 4.36 Table of the credits and bonus of the second week Fig. 4.37 The features of the service Fig. 5.1 The Toolbox Fig. 5.2 From a service to a startup Fig. 5.3 Tools’ categories Fig. 5.4 The future strategy Fig. 5.5 The functionalities of the service Fig. 5.6 Logo of Scarsellini strategy 134

Fig. 5.7 Future developments for Scarsellini Fig. 5.8 Logo of Corridoni strategy Fig. 5.9 Future Developments for Corridoni Fig. 5.10 Logo of Social Street strategy Fig. 5.11 Future Developments for Social Street

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