academically speaking too
Inside flap. Better than flappy birds.
Š Brand Manual, 2019 All rights reserved
academically speaking too
Strategy is easy. Execution is hard.
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Discover > Define
Discover > Define
Develop > Deliver
Academically Speaking, our previous book,
was essentially about how to create a strategy for your business or organisation. It covered the discovery process until you got to a re(de)fined problem. Discovery is the predictable part of service design. The first diamond*. Now you know what you should fix.
* Double diamond design model. Source: British Design Council
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Now what?
Develop > Deliver
Once the problem has been properly defined, it's time to develop different ideas for a solution. This is best done with the people for whom the solution has to solve a problem. These people are colloquially known as customers.
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One way to co-create with customers Ideating with customers around a concrete problem requires you to have a method in place, for doing that. The goal is to come up with hundreds of ideas in a short time, rather than work out a few really detailed concepts. One way of getting lots of ideas in a short time is to avoid talking about them. Instead people should
write down their ideas on pieces of paper in a very short period of time. Say 5 minutes. Then each and everyone should stick their idea on the wall and explain what they meant by it. As people do this, the ideas will start grouping into themes. Once the themes become apparent, form as many groups of people as there are themes and ask the groups to ideate just around that theme, considering the ideas from many different angles, expanding the ideas and adding details. After an hour or two, you’ll have hundreds of ideas and some very well expanded full concepts. In a mostly fun and painless way. 13
Time to test which idea works
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Before you start testing, however, keep in mind four key aspects:
People. Both those who are
testing as well as those being tested.
Objects. Both the static and
interactive objects, including the prototype and other objects being interacted with.
Location. Where things are happening.
Interactions. Either physical
or digital. Between people, the object, the location.
These four aspects are always present. And it is important to understand how they affect the testing and the results.
To draw the right conclusions, test your interface on the train, where it will be used. Not in your office.
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Ways to test stuff, a.k.a. prototyping
Prototyping is a big word. Used by engineers and professional product designers and other important people. In reality, anything that will help you learn about your idea is a prototype. Just keep in mind, to separate the feedback about the idea from how you feel about the feedback. Don't take it personally. So here’s eight ways of getting your idea out in the world.
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1. Sketching
Grab a piece of paper and a pencil and draw your idea. Forget about artistry, just try to get your thoughts onto paper. It can be a sketch of your next skateboard or a process map outlining how a new service would work. Visualising information lets people react to it. It makes what’s inside your head visible to others and people can literally “get onto the same page”. Sketching early and often will save tons of money in the development phase.
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Digital interfaces are especially useful sketch objects, because they are two dimensional and easy to constrain within the screen dimensions. Drawing out the different interface views, actions and reactions, allows you to quickly visualise your concept (so that you understand it) and do usability testing quickly and cheaply.
2. Storyboarding
In the discovery phase you mapped your customers’ journies. You found out where they worked and where they didn’t. So how to improve the parts that left something to be desired? Storyboard it. Storyboarding is a technique used in the movie industry. Essentially, it is a comic strip that tells how the story should go. In this case, describe the customer journey touchpoint by touchpoint of how the service should be.
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By storyboarding the desired customer experience, and comparing it with today's experience that doesn't work, you can isolate concrete touchpoints that don't work. Once isolated, you can determine ways that allow you to test different solutions for improving them. Anything from the smile on the face of the person meeting the customer to the feedback form that should be easier to fill out.
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3. Crazy 8s
There are lots of different instructions for Crazy 8s. So if you google them, you’ll likely go crazy because you don’t know which one’s right.
Don’t worry. It’s like a recipe. There are different versions. Like different hamburgers. Ours, of course, is the best. 29
So what’s Crazy 8s? Simple. Take an A4 (that’s letter in the US) and fold in half. And in half again. What you end up with are 8 rectangles on a sheet of paper. Now, our take on Crazy 8s is to force you to iterate. So in the first square draw an apple. In the second square draw another apple, but unlike the first one. And so on. This forces you to think of different versions of the same thing. Now all you have to do is apply it whatever it is that you are working on.
If it is an interface, take one important aspect of it, and force yourself to create 8 distinctly different versions of it. The lesson of Crazy 8s is that there is always another way of looking at the same issue. So if you can see 8 of them, imagine how many a diverse group of customers can see?
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Recording human reactions
When testing solutions with humans, it pays to record reactions. If they allow it, whip out your iphone / android / real film camera and save for posterity reactions to actions. This is especially valuable, if you’re testing something live, where you can get lots of people to try something. Later on, the reactions will be effective to convey the results of the research both to your design team as well as those bankrolling your work in the c-suite.
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4. Lego
LEGOs are everywhere. Usually, of course, found on the floor in the hallway as you make your way to the bathroom at 2 a.m. But for designers, LEGOs present an excellent opportunity for group work and prototyping. It’s an easy way to build and dismantle quick models, to test concepts. Whether for workshops, where groups of people can quickly get hands-on or for building and iterating quickly, LEGO bricks are as practical as they are ubiquitous. Moreover, they make you work with your hands.
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There is research to support, that thinking with your hands speeds up the thinking in your head. Just sitting and being still is not as effective as moving around and manipulating artifacts to manipulate thoughts. Whether it’s LEGO or paper and glue doesn’t matter.
Problem solvers think with their hands
The added benefit of something like LEGOs, especially for workshops, is that everyone sort of knows what to do, and that people start doing instead of talking about doing. As Michel Closterman from DesignPlay says, playing is:
MEANINGFUL
ITERATIVE
ACTIVELY ENGAGING
SOCIALLY INTERACTIVE
JOYFUL
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5. Role-play a.k.a. bodystorming
Brainstorming is a group of people thinking about a problem, trying to develop a solution. Bodystorming is a group of people acting out a scenario to discover problems and to develop a solution. The key is the experience, to understand how people feel in different situations. It requires a suspension of disbelief, but within an organisation of people that trust each other, it is a really fun way of experiencing a situation to really understand what the problem(s) feel like to real customers.
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What can you use bodystorming / role-playing for? Any physical service situation that you can imagine.
M
Using everyday artefacts and some imagination, any situation can be recreated. Even interaction with technology can be simulated by having a participant “play� the interface.
BR M
M
In role playing, adding props can be crucial for participants to lose their shyness. Whether these are clothes, tools, masks depends on the situation. In the case that the situation requires the participation (in reallife) of many different stakeholders / organisations, it might make sense to involve participants from all these organisations. The key discovery tends to be, other than that there is room for improvement, that this is the first time all stakeholders have actually met.
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6. Physical models
In the move from 2D sketches to 3D models, your first best friend could be cardboard. It is available everywhere, doesn’t cost much (or anything) and you won’t mind if your model breaks. The only obvious drawback to cardboard is its durability. If your model has moving parts then the cardboard will soon wear out. On the positive side, however, cardboard requires no previous qualifications and anyone can start working with it. As kids, we all did.
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7. Wizard of Oz
No, it’s not about the movie. It’s about faking it. Basically, it is about pretending the stuff behind the stuff actually works, when in fact there is a person there instead. Doesn’t make sense? Consider a computer interface. Everytime you click something or enter some kind of information, the system needs to connect to a database and do some heavy math, before it gives you an answer.
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From a testing perspective, designing the interface is something that can be done relatively quickly. But building the backend that actually does the work, is very timeconsuming. If the goal of the test is to understand how people act and react to the system, then it makes more sense to build the front-end (interface) and fake the back-end by simply having a person on the other side “acting� as the system. This way, by the time you get to building the back-end, you actually know what you need to build, rather than presume that you know how people will act and react.
In Brand Manual the principle of “presumption is the mother of all fuckups” applies. When building complex systems based on “I think I know”, it is a very expensive fuck-up, indeed.
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8. User prototypes
Before the cup holder appeared in cars, you had to squeeze your drink between your legs, to keep it in place. Kunzmann
A tricky one to find, understand and utilise. Essentially, the user prototype is a user-modified device, that does something more / different than what it was originally meant to do. However, the solution may be incredibly specific to one situation. Furthermore, they are almost never advertised outside the intended user group, so you’ll have a hard time finding them. But if you do, they can be great sources of innovation for you. Some of the best known user modifications are not in the device, but rather in its use.
49
For instance, while the original microwave oven was built and marketed to the housewife to save time on cooking full meals, the average family used it to reheat and warm-up instead. Over time this has also seen the microwave shrink in size from an oven to a toaster.
User innovation
Why does user innovation happen? Eric von Hippel* posited, that some kinds of information is “sticky� and depends on the particular situation of the user and the problem they face. This kind of information is so location centred, that acquiring it can be prohibitively expensive, and that therefore the innovation will happen at the location rather than where the device / service is created. * Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Sticky_information
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Just do it
4
Which prototype
3
Which method works for me? Questions to answer
2
What’s the idea
1 53
1. What’s your idea about? ?
??
With your team, note down the key components of your idea or ideas. Figure out what needs to be tested, and ask a key question for each component of your idea that you wish to test.
Settle on one, and test that.
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2. Which questions do you want to ask?
why?
Choose a few questions you want answered. For instance, if you want to test out whether the weight of your product is acceptable and usable, consider building a rough prototype with the same weight as that of the final product. On the other hand, if you want to test the level of interaction between the product and the user, you may want to use role-playing instead.
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3. What prototype makes sense?
For each question, think about the kind of prototype that makes the most sense and that would most effectively answer the question. If possible, hold a brainstorming session with your team so that you can generate as many alternatives as possible, then narrow down the choices via discussion.
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4. Just do it! Impossible is nothing
Brand Manual does not endorse either Adidas or Nike. Honestly!
Don’t spend too much time deliberating on what to build, and how to build it — just go out there and start testing! If you are not sure about what kind of prototype to use, make a few and test them.
Your first few prototypes may be failures, but they will tell you so much more than just thinking about it.
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The goal of prototyping is learning
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Learning through prototyping takes courage
As people, we have a hard time accepting criticism and being told, that our idea just isn’t any good. Which is why we actively avoid negative feedback. Both to give it and receive it. However, now you have to learn to love criticism. You have to also learn to love the messenger even if you hate the message. Because they’re saying that your idea doesn’t work, not that you don’t work. Take it as an input for your next idea, not as proof that you should become an undertaker instead.
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Thirsty for more?
There's a lot to share but this book is running out of pages. So, if you’re curious to know more about service design and how to develop products and services from the user’s perspective, then why don’t you get in touch? We’d love to hear from you. thebrandmanual.com
Brand Manual was established in 2009. Ten years later, in 2019, Brand Manual celebrates its 10 year anniversary. Coincidence? We think not. Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter at thebrandmanual.com And read our other books at issuu.com/thebrandmanual.com
Academically speaking was last year’s book. This one talks largely about the same thing, only more so. Which is why it has this smart title that plays on repetition and phonetics to create a double-entendre. But since the explanation of the title took all the space for the blurb, then to find out what’s in it, you’ll have to read it.