We are delighted to be working with Touch Design to help facilitate an Open Space Event for for a mixed group of communication professionals on December 7th.  The theme is focusing on creativity: how do you generate creative ideas, thinking, and innovative team working? How do you create new ideas for new and old campaigns?

Products today have a higher service component than in previous decades and we are increasingly moving from models of ownership to access. In an increasingly digital, connected world, the boundary between product and service can blur more easily.

We undertook a 6 month user research and design strategy project on childcare policy development for The Cabinet Office’s Policy Lab. We worked with the Department for Education to research and co-design  options for early years childcare provision that meets parents’ needs.

We did exploratory research sessions with stakeholders, desk research and worked with an ethnographer on in-depth contextual interviews. Phillippa led a series of co-design workshops across  with 57 parents, and 16 child-care providers to generate insights on childcare needs and report a range of solutions to inform national policy development.

Phillippa championed the £50k Innovation and Jobs sector challenge for NESTA and the ODI as part of the wider Innovation Open Data Challenge series. This involved cultural intelligence, community building, advocacy. We also provided intensive coaching and mentoring to shortlisted applicants through-out the programme.

This Challenge and £50,000 prize was won by Performance in Context (PiC). PiC developed an algorithm to use open data to put academic attainment performance into context, enabling more informed student recruitment decisions, increasing access to university and jobs.

In January 2017 Rob and Phillippa ran another Service Design and Innovation immersive. See a prezi one of the participants made to reflect design process followed over the three days:

We’ve been working on a year long customer experience project with front-line staff at London College of Communication.

Stemming from a Design Thinking Workshop with over 60 staff, we have supported working group of staff from diverse teams to explore ways to improve the student customer experience.

Topic ranges from enrolment to communications, and we have worked together to research and analyse pain-points in existing user-journeys and develop improved processes and touch-points being piloted.

We worked with Decathlon Lakeside on a 5 day service design sprint led by Phillippa to devise solutions to improve employee experience.

We worked with four teams of junior service designers from UAL and four departments and the senior management team at Decathlon’s largest UK store.

Following an intense three day process, one team was selected to further develop their concept in-store and since been piloted with a view to roll out nationally. 

Improved employee experience and optimised processes attributed to this pilot, have led directly to increased sales in-store as a result.

We led user-research over 18 months on the latest Weather App and worked across digital with multiple teams and partners. We also helped the Met Office transition to agile project management.

We employed a range of methods to identify existing and potential users and better understand user needs, working closely with product designers to develop initial concept to continuous improvement over time.

Methods included remote diary studies, usability lab testing, data analysis to guerilla research interviews. Personas developed as part of this project have been featured in the forthcoming 'This is Service Design Doing' book.