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Vodafone publication reporting on Co-Design Workshop Lessons learned and guidance for practitioners
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1
Collaborate to innovate
Putting co-design to work at Vodafone
Co-design for practitioners
(flip for “Co-design for strategists”)
2 3
4 Co-design Sprints: Our experience with co-design
6 Introduction
8 Selecting a co-design organisational model
12 Designing with non-designers
14 Organising co-design teams
16 Leveraging online collaboration opportunities
20 Managing co-design teams
24 Keeping co-design teams engaged
28 Finding the co-design ‘sweet spot’
32 Conclusion
34 Our process: a visual journey
43 Hints for getting the most out of co-design
44 Acknowledgements
Contents
4 5
We took 4 themes from idea seed stage to prototype in 16 hours of co-design. On the way, we co-designed and subsequently had to discard over 100 idea seeds, of which at least 30 would have benefitted form further assessment and development.
When managed and organised correctly, the co- design process can demonstrably deliver massive innovation opportunities driven by customer’s needs, desires and values.
One of these opportunities is evidenced at the end of this section.
Co-design Sprints:Our experience with co-design
6 7
Introduction
Vodafone’s Progressive Design Team wanted to
explore the potential that co-design had to support the
delivery of innovation around the concept definition
stage. The Progressive Design team invited a team of
London based progressive collaborators to work with
them in the definition and design of a suite of services
based around the theme of ‘Micro-futures’. ‘Micro-
futures’ is the umbrella term for a series of concept
seeds that emerged from an internal programme of
ideation focussed on services for 2012. The aim of
this practical co-design initiative was to help Vodafone
identify through practice:
The potential of co-design to deliver value to •
Vodafone
The ‘sweet spots’ in the design and definition •
process where co-design could deliver the
maximum benefit to Vodafone
Operational lessons that we could employ in future •
co-design initiatives
How to co-design as sprints, in line with the •
move to adopt more agile methodologies within
Vodafone Internet Services
This exploration was supported by additional
discussion with the Lego Group. They agreed to share
the benefits of the experience they have gained whilst
pioneering co-design in their own product development
process. This helped us validate our own findings and
gather additional insights.
In common with Lego’s experiences, we found that
small, consolidated teams, the principles of self-
organisation, tight project boundaries, schedules,
constraints and clear objectives are all beneficial to the
co-design process. We found that providing individuals
with simple to follow, but accurate guidance on factors
such as feasibility, technology, business objectives,
brand etc., provided the necessary constraint to allow
effective design to take place; without constraints
there is no design. We found that as each party brings
their own skills to the table, it is important to identify
these specific skills to ensure that co-design yields the
greatest benefit.
In this section, we share our experiences of co-design
and the supporting insights we have gained from our
conversations with thought leaders at Lego.
The information provided here are not intended to
be prescriptive, but offered as practical hints to help
‘would be’ practitioners get the most from co-design.
We have found inspiration and insight in several
sources which we have used to inform the strategic
theory and practical work reported in this document.
These are acknowledged in the acknowledgements
sections of this book
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Text converted to outlines
The key motivator for me getting involved was the communication, obviously Vodafone has a reputation for being a communicative enterprise; that’s what they do.
‘For me the motivation was the challenge. I felt I couldn’t come up with answers, but working alongside others we did, and I came out thinking “that’s brilliant! I can’t ”
“
The methods for organising co-design vary. In general, your objectives and desired outcomes will define the most appropriate method for your particular project.
There are two central axes that define types of co-design:
•Openness:Cananyonejoininorarethereselection criteria?
•Ownership:Istheoutcomeownedbyjusttheinitiator or by the contributors as well?
These two dimensions differentiate the four main types of co-design. As we shall see, different organisational models map closely to the co-design continuum as described in ‘co-design for strategists’.
Selecting a co-design organisational model
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Text converted to outlines
The key motivator for me getting involved was the communication, obviously Vodafone has a reputation for being a communicative enterprise; that’s what they do.
‘For me the motivation was the challenge. I felt I couldn’t come up with answers, but working alongside others we did, and I came out thinking “that’s brilliant! I can’t ”
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Text converted to outlines
The key motivator for me getting involved was the communication, obviously Vodafone has a reputation for being a communicative enterprise; that’s what they do.
‘For me the motivation was the challenge. I felt I couldn’t come up with answers, but working alongside others we did, and I came out thinking “that’s brilliant! I can’t ”
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The key motivator for me getting involved was the communication, obviously Vodafone has a reputation for being a communicative enterprise; that’s what they do.
‘For me the motivation was the challenge. I felt I couldn’t come up with answers, but working alongside others we did, and I came out thinking “that’s brilliant! I can’t ”
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Text converted to outlines
The key motivator for me getting involved was the communication, obviously Vodafone has a reputation for being a communicative enterprise; that’s what they do.
‘For me the motivation was the challenge. I felt I couldn’t come up with answers, but working alongside others we did, and I came out thinking “that’s brilliant! I can’t ”
“
Coalition of parties
In certain situations, a coalition of parties can team
up to share ideas. Each of the parties brings a specific
asset, knowledge or skill to the group. Technical
breakthroughs and the realisation of standards
often happen only when multiple parties collaborate;
however, the engagement could be as brief as one
day. This approach is currently being explored
by Vodafone User Experience Team with other
organisations working at the social software edge or
where significant common ground and synergies are
found. Key success factors include sharing knowledge,
creating common competitive advantage, clarifying
objectives, managing expectations, building an
atmosphere of trust and the appropriate
management of IP.
Community of kindred spirits
The “Community” model is most relevant when
developing something for the greater good. Groups
of people with similar interests and goals can come
together and create. This model (so far) works mostly
in software development and social innovation
initiatives, (a good example of this is provided by the
KashKlash forum www.kashklash.net/about) and it
leverages the potential force of a large group of people
with complementary areas of expertise. The Vodafone
User Experience Team is exploring this approach
through their Code EcoMo09 Dev Camp initiative, in
conjunction with Betavine. This is a 24-hour dev camp
coding competition that will let developers put their
“green” coding skills to the test in creating prototype
mobile software tools designed to help people reduce
their impact on the environment.
(http://www.betavine.net/bvportal/community/sustainability)
*Derived from, and extending work described in the Fronteer Strategy document referenced elsewhere in the ‘Strategists’ Acknowledgements section.
Club of experts model
The ‘‘Club of Experts” style of co-design is best suited
to specific, time-pressured challenges that demand
expertise and breakthrough ideas. Contributors meet
certain specific participation criteria and are generally
found through an active selection process. Quality of
input and chemistry between participants are the key
to success. Motivated, innovative thinkers are the most
effective collaborators in this model. It is important
to manage these teams and be open with them. Lego
used this approach as the preferred organisational
model to achieve their objectives. This is the model we
used in the project reported here.
The crowd model
The crowd model, or “crowdsourcing”, exercises
the latent power of the crowd and allows anyone to
contribute. It recognises that for any given challenge,
there may be a person ‘out there’ with a brilliant idea
that deserves considering. Using online platforms,
people can propose initiatives and rate and respond to
each other’s suggestions. There is often a marketing
and seeding component/objective attached to the
process. Crowdsourcing often takes longer than more
managed approaches; however, the costs of entry are
low for all, the prize can be great and the organisation
(or initiator) can cherry-pick from contributions.
Cuusoo is a great example of an enterprise that
exercises this model of collaboration on behalf of
other organisations.
Co-design organisational models*
12 13
Designing with non-designers Choosing to work with a progressive team of collaborators means working with bright and connected individuals who are able to think openly and spot opportunities. This group is not a conventional set of creatives, nor is it representative of our customer base, yet it offers a unique perspective that is invaluable. Connecting the right individuals to the challenge at hand, bringing these talents together in the right way and enabling creative processes are all vital routes to successful co-design.
What we learned:
Understand competencies and allocate tasks
appropriately. We found that we easily slipped into
making unrealistic assumptions about what our
progressive customers could bring to co-design
sessions. We relearned that our customers are not
(necessarily) design professionals and that what
they bring of value is their inherent customer-ness,
realising that this was something we wanted to keep
and encourage.
Support the skills gaps. We were confronted by
the fact that structured design thinking and visual
communication are skills often taken for granted by
designers. At the same time, we realised that these
are the very skills our customers do not have, so
we decided to equip each collaboration team with
a trained visual communicator. This worked well,
enabling higher quality deliverables and better
communication between teams.
Encourage a visual approach. We initially designed
sessions that were based on discussion and debate.
Communication was verbal and ideas were largely
represented by text and system like diagrams.
This, however, favoured those who were better
able to articulate their thinking and tended to stilt
the overall flow and energy of the session. We
reformatted sessions, making the primary medium of
communication visual rather than verbal by using tasks
that encouraged visual representation (personas, ideas
as pictures and products/services as storyboards).
Not only did this allow us to draw the most from our
collaborators, but it also created a more accessible
working environment and effective stimulus for
communication.
Understand competencies and allocate tasks appropriately
Support the skills gaps
Encourage a visual approach
14 15
Organising co-design teams The most effective co-design sessions happen when the right collaborators are placed in the right teams. Forming the right co-design teams ensures a dynamic flow of ideas and makes the process easier to manage. For longer projects, the challenge of finding the correct balance between a consolidated team, whilst maintaining the ‘buzz’ of a fresh team, relies on smart engineering of those teams and the co-design process. We explored online and co-located team options and found that online collaborators can successfully work as remote groups or part of a co-located team as long as they have rich, multi-channel methods of communicating amongst their team.
What we learned:
Find the right group size. We maintained a stable
working group size of around 16 collaborators,
divided into four groups of four. In each session, four
of the participants were remote workers, sometimes
working as a remote collective or sometimes within
a co-located team. The ratio of external to internal
collaborators was always around 1:1. Our experiences
with this group size are supported by Lego’s best
practice findings that suggests groups of around 12-15
are the most productive. Generally, groups become
unmanageable when they exceed the threshold of
16. It should be noted that Lego’s teams were almost
exclusively composed of customers.
Find the balance between numbers and group
dynamics. We found that teams of four generally
worked well. However, we were concerned that
after some time together, some collaborators were
becoming overly comfortable with each other, reducing
the overall ‘energy’ of the group. We subsequently
reduced teams to two (a pair of collaborators), which
successfully addressed this issue. However, as a
consequence, we found that there was an associated
risk if the collaborators didn’t ‘click’ (e.g., they didn’t
get on well as a team); their productivity and the quality
of their output diminished.
Ensure team consolidation. Throughout the studies,
we maintained a core consolidated team but allowed
around 20% churn of collaborators in each workshop.
This approach is supported by Lego’s findings that
consolidated teams are most effective when striving
to achieve specific outcomes over the course of a
project. We noticed a marked development of skill,
understanding and team spirit over the period.
However, we also noticed that ‘buzz’ started to ebb
towards the end of the workshop series as individuals
found their comfort zones. Maintaining consolidated
teams, with a limited turnover of collaborators within
those teams, allows the best synergy and ensures that
the teams focus on achieving specific outcomes.
“‘ Its exciting that brands want to hear from their customer and its exciting that that’s us!”
Find the right group size
Find the balance between numbers and group dynamics
Ensure team consolidation
16 17
Leveraging online collaboration opportunities
The project offered an opportunity to understand the possible effect of remote, online collaboration on the co-design process. Throughout the study we maintained an online team of four members working with the same tasks and challenges as the co-located team. Although we always had four remote collaborators, we varied the way these members worked with the co-located team. Initially, we allocated an online team member to each co-located group. Then, we formed the remote members into a coherent team to tackle the same brief as the co-located teams. We observed several interesting socio-dynamic outcomes as a consequence of these manipulations.
What we learned:
Make sure co-located teams ‘adopt’ remote members.
When working ‘within’ the co-located teams, the
remote participants actively contributed to productivity
as long as they felt included. This required at least
one member of the co-located team to ‘adopt’ a
remote member (e.g., ensured their web cam could
see and hear visual stimulus materials or people
talking/presenting, etc). Interestingly, the ‘adoption’
relationship manifested itself in the session as the
adopter walked around holding the laptop displaying
the ‘head’ of the adoptee, pointing it and the laptop
web cam towards visual/auditory stimuli.
Provide sufficient ‘presence’ tools. Working within
co-located teams required the remote member to have
sufficient natural presence to insist their opinions were
heard. They were given sufficient ‘presence’ tools,
e.g., a ‘voice’ to communicate with sufficient volume to
interrupt conversations and a two-way web cam link.“‘ The key motivator for me getting involved was the communication, obviously Vodafone has a reputation for being a communicative enterprise; that’s what they do”
Make sure co-located teams ‘adopt’ remote members
Provide adequate presence tools
18 19
Understand the best medium for communication.
It was initially decided that the remote team would
communicate verbally, through a facilitator nominated
as their communicator. We found that this led to some
frustration from the remote team as the competitive
nature of the sessions made it important for the teams
to communicate their thinking effectively, passionately
and persuasively; something that the ‘disinterested’
communicator didn’t bring. In time, we found it useful
(and necessary) for the facilitator to be dedicated to
the team (in the same role as the adopter considered
before) to help explain tasks, access visual material
and take the role of visual communicator – whilst
letting the remote team present their ideas themselves.
The online group was afforded some advantage by
the fact that their conversations could be reviewed by
themselves and this certainly helped the facilitation
role.
Understand the role of technology. We noted that
the richer the technologies, the more effectively the
participants were able to communicate their ideas (as
long as the technologies worked reliably and close
to real time). At its most technologically mature, our
remote team used a powerful set of tools comprising
a shared online digital whiteboard (Twiddla), Skype,
an IM application and web cams. However, due to
bandwidth issues this combination tended to slow
down the process. Furthermore, these tools were
difficult to set up and recover when they failed. In later
sessions, we chose to drop the whiteboard to alleviate
bandwidth problems.
It is important to bear in mind that the ability of remote
members to actively contribute to sessions also
varies according to the capability of their personal
technology solutions. Our remote participants were
distributed throughout Europe and bandwidth and
service levels varied, and we discovered that in a
remote distributed team, progress was dependent
upon the speed of the technologically weakest
member.
Ensure ‘flat’ and inclusive working style. Within a
single remote team, we noted that a dominant and
directive team member adopted the role of driving
and organizing the rest of the remote team. This had
a counterproductive effect, as other team members
contributed and communicated less and less as the
session continued. We chose to intervene to resolve
this and instructed the team to use IM text instead of
voice communication. This intervention effectively
changed the dynamic; ‘flattening’ communication to
allow for a more egalitarian, inclusive and efficient
dialogue to emerge. Members could no longer use
verbal inflections, tone, volume and interruptions
to dominate. As in co-located teams, it is important
that no one person drives a team to the detriment of
others, and all members are given the opportunity to
contribute.
“‘ The fact we know its Vodafone, its not for some evil corporate company who we don’t know who it is, they wont go off and ruin the whole world or anything”
Understand the best medium for communication
Understand the role of technology
Ensure ‘flat’ and inclusive working style
20 21
Managing co-design We found that providing a clear structure to the sessions and setting the parameters and rules allowed creativity whilst maintaining focus on a specific objective. We achieved this by treating the team as a ‘project team’ that needed planning, support and reporting throughout that needed appropriate resources and information, understood the real project objectives and the business and technology constraints they were working within. Thinking about the details is as important as the macro structure of the workshop, and understanding how to reward contributors fairly for their efforts and choosing appropriate levels of control over IP (or otherwise) is critical. People perform best when they know what is expected of them and when they feel part of the process. Therefore, it is important to ensure we give clear directions and maintain a level playing field between all collaborators.
What we learned:
Decide on a suitable session duration. We decided at
the outset of the project that we would run four seed
ideas each through a four-hour session. We wanted
to see whether we could create ‘incubators’ in which
concepts could be ‘hot-housed’ to a useful level of
description - this being one that a professional design
team could take away and work with to create service
and product prototypes. In selecting the time frame
we needed to take into account factors such as the
resources that would be required, people’s ability to
understand and execute tasks and communicate their
work, facilitation overheads and maintaining the right
level of energy throughout.
In essence we created co-design sprints that took
ideas, worked them up, evaluated them and iterated
them over an accelerated time frame. The search
for the best concepts, or at least those that most
closely met the task objectives and the elimination of
the weakest was a consistent theme throughout the
sessions.
Find the right facilitation style. We initially allocated a
facilitator to each team in the group but soon realised
that this encouraged team members to sit back and
let the facilitator do the work. The facilitator’s role
also seemed to drive the solutions, making the team
members less accountable for the session outcome.
In subsequent sessions, we removed facilitators from
the teams, and encouraged the teams to self-organise
around clear objectives with precise time boundaries.
The facilitators then took a central role more akin to
roaming project managers.“‘ For me the motivation was the challenge. I felt I couldn’t come up with answers, but working alongside others we did, and I came out thinking “that’s brilliant! I can’t believe I thought of that””
Decide on a suitable session duration
Find the right facilitation style
22 23
Adopt these ground rules and make sure they are
clearly understood
• Imposetightandclearlydefined(andenforced)
schedules
• Explainwhyhelpisneededandsetclearobjectives
• Makesurereportingisregularandpublic
• Constrainthefocusof taskstoensurerelevance
• Keeptasksfreshandsimple,andsettangible
objectives (not just the session)
• Communicateclearlywhendivergenceor
convergence on solutions is needed
• Insistthatteamscommunicatetheirideas
persuasively and competently to the group
• Articulatethebusinessobjective
• Introducedthebrand
• Providedefined,constrainedpersonas
Be clear about IP. We maintained tight control over
IP, not attempting to share ownership, instead
participants under one-way NDA’s. Lego, for example,
have never let go of their IP, and their collaborators
have accepted this, possibly due to the iconic nature of
their product and the loyalty of their 1%ers.
We do think, however, that there may be other IP
models that may be of value to us; this is considered
more fully in the Vodafone document Co-Design State
of Play 2009.
Provide a way to reward contribution. Remote and
co-located collaborators were rewarded for their
attendance at each workshop. We also recognised
that offering involvement in other initiatives or giving
recognition for contributing can be another valuable
way of ‘giving back’.
We do think, however, that using a more sophisticated
incentive scheme tying in outcome or service success
to reward could be usefully explored in the future; this
is considered more fully in the Vodafone document Co-
Design State of Play 2009.
“‘ It makes you feel like you’re making a difference, but also makes you feel good that brands are actually wanting to listen to their customers rather than trying to think what they might like”
Be clear about IP
Provide a way to reward contribution
24 25
Keeping co-design teams engaged
Having the right people, in the right teams and with the right structure does not guarantee success. Teams often need a catalyst to inspire creativity and maintain motivation, encouraging closer engagement between collaborators and the task at hand. Tactics such as uncovering the brand, introducing elements of friendly competition and developing realistic personas add a sense of purpose, energy and flow to the sessions that are necessary for an effective outcom
What we learned:
Use the brand to focus the session. We decided
to introduce the Vodafone Brand as a design
consideration in the third workshop. Insights from an
earlier project showed that (at worst) this was likely to
have a marginal effect, although we hoped for a more
positive outcome. In fact, we found that introducing
the Vodafone Brand had a very positive impact and
our collaborators reported becoming more motivated
upon its introduction. The presence of the brand made
the task feel real and valuable for our collaborators,
adding energy and focus. The process no longer felt
like an academic exercise; it became apparent that the
designs may actually be built.
“‘ It makes you feel that your opinion really does matter, you’re not just a fish in the pond”
“‘ There’s something cool about knowing its for Vodafone; they’re like, wow, Vodafone, it’s a really big cool corporate brand”
Use the brand to focus the session
26 27
Provide collaborators with the same resources you’d expect to do the job.
Introduce a healthy competitive spirit
Exploit the value of pre-work.
We concluded that our collaborators could design
with the brand in mind and for the brand, making
judgments as to whether their concepts fitted with
their perception of Vodafone’s brand values. This
was very valuable and enhanced the quality and
appropriateness of the solutions.
Provide collaborators with the same resources
you’d expect to do the job. After our first co-design
session we realised that our collaborators had not
truly emotionally engaged with the product definition;
the process had seemed like more of an intellectual
exercise. On reflection, we realised that we had not
provided personas for the services, implicitly expecting
customers to design for themselves. Providing a
persona creation exercise proved effective in building
emotional engagement and focus for the design
activity.
Introduce a healthy competitive spirit. We introduced
explicit competition between the teams in the second
and subsequent workshops. We used a ‘blind’, peer
voting schema to ensure that tactical voting couldn’t
be undertaken. Ties were resolved by the facilitation
team’s casting vote. This was very effective in raising
energy and focus during the session. The small prizes
that were awarded to the winning team (Amazon
vouchers) added only a slight edge, as the participants
readily engaged with (and enjoyed) the spirit of
competition.
An X-factor style ‘reveal’ of the winners introduced
positive tension into the workshop that resulted in each
session ending on a ‘high’. Collaborators reported
that the competition element of the process was very
positive. We found it very important that ‘success’
criteria, or the ‘rules of judging’ were clearly defined
throughout.
Exploit the value of pre-work. We found that moving
ideation online as a pre-work activity meant that we
could set the parameters for the ideation activity and
then use a subset of the material generated online
in the sessions. Before each session, we asked
collaborators to ideate from a specific service seed
idea and then populate an online shared blog with very
concise visual and textual material to illustrate their
ideas. This allowed greater focus and prevented off-
topic ‘wild goose chases’ developing in the sessions.
“‘ I was so amazed by the level of detail and the incredible variety of ideas, the real creative thinking and total outside of the box stuff – on each task the range of ideas was really broad”
28 29
Finding the co-design ‘sweet spot’
We were interested in establishing whether certain
design process activities lent themselves more readily
to co-design than others. We had made the decision
that the phases we were interested in examining
ranged from ideation to communication of a design
(e.g., storyboard). Throughout the sessions, we moved
‘our’ window on the design process in order to identify
the ‘sweet spot’ for co-design.
In this project we were unable to address whether
detailed downstream activities such as functional or
visual design, (usually the preserve of information
architects and visual designers) could be effectively
co-designed, instead allocating these tasks to a team
of professional designers who worked with the session
output to create prototypes.
We simply defined the design process phases of
interest to us as being the activities usually undertaken
during concept development:
• Ideation
• Ideationselection
• Personadevelopment
• Conceptformulation
• Conceptdevelopment
• Conceptselection
• Conceptvisualisation
• Conceptcommunication(asstoryboardof actor(s)
interacting with a service
30 31
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‘For me the motivation was the challenge. I felt I couldn’t come up with answers, but working alongside others we did, and I came out thinking “that’s brilliant! I can’t ”
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The key motivator for me getting involved was the communication, obviously Vodafone has a reputation for being a communicative enterprise; that’s what they do.
‘For me the motivation was the challenge. I felt I couldn’t come up with answers, but working alongside others we did, and I came out thinking “that’s brilliant! I can’t ”
“
Allow the team to moderate concept selection. We
found that it was useful for the team to make concept
selections at different stages in the process in different
ways. For example, we allowed individual teams
to decide which of their concepts they would take
forward and at the end of the sessions we introduced a
blind voting system so that the group could collectively
vote for the overall winning concept. Both of these
strategies were effective, raising energy levels and
generating focus. We found it very important that the
evaluation criteria were explicit.
Support communication with expertise. During
concept visualisation and selection we found that
the communication of ideas was most effective when
teams had a visual design professional embedded
in the team. Without this, team members struggled
to formulate and communicate their ideas with the
precision, clarity or level of granularity that was
required.
We shifted the focus of each workshop further towards concept visualisation and communication. We found that the further towards this end we shifted the better the output.
WORKSHOP 3 WORKSHOP 4
What we learned:
Shift ideation online. We found that this was best
managed online as ‘blogged’ pre-work. This afforded
us greater control over the breadth and nature of
the topics that were addressed before collaborators
entered the co-design session.
Ideate in advance. We also found that ideation
selection and filtering could usefully take place
before the workshop. However, we established that
collaborators could also accomplish further selection
as an initial exercise in the workshop.
Develop focused personas. It became clear that it was
important to provide a fairly constrained and directive
persona framework for our collaborators; we found that
too much freedom allowed the personas to become
wild and unrealistic. We found it helpful to ask the
teams to create a ‘dark secret’ for their personas as a
way of managing and containing the more amusing and
deviant, but ultimately unproductive suggestions that
could emerge during persona creation.
Develop concepts with constraints. Working up brief
concept descriptions (concept formulation stage)
from the raw ideas was effective when time for this
activity was constrained, clear objectives were set and
solutions had to be presented to the group. Personas,
awareness of the brand and other constraints (e.g.,
platforms, customer propositions) were all helpful to
the collaborators at this point.
WORKSHOP 2WORKSHOP 1
32 33
Co-design, as focused collaboration with consumers, has the potential to support Vodafone’s current product and service development process.
If we are to put co-design to work in our business, we must be clear about what we want to achieve, what can be realistically achieved and ensure that our customer collaborators are engaged as equals throughout the process.
The co-design sessions must be tailored skillfully to ensure that the culture, organisation, teams and tasks are such that all collaborators are encouraged to be incredibly creative, productive and energised, yet within a framework that focuses the output to ensure the greatest value for the business.
Conclusion
34 35
Initial ideation in teams and online
Selecting ideas for further development
Each of the four seed ideas was used as the basis for a four hour ‘co-design sprint’. Final output from the workshops was then refined and developed by professional designers. The finalised service and product propositions were then visualised as animated stories. The following pages visually capture this process.
Full details of the final output of the co-design process is given at www.microfutures.com
36 37
Working in teams to develop concepts
Working as a group to select the best possible propositions
Developing personas for services for added realism
Working online and in teams to formulate concepts
38 39
From co-design to pro-design
We worked alongside professional designers to refine concepts and visualise final solutions.
Film trailers and Flash animations were produced, examples of which can be seen overleaf.
Participants used templates to describe their service scenarios
Presenting ideas to the whole group added realism to the sessions
40 41
42 43
• Beopentolettingthecustomertakethelead.
When they do, support this and join in, don’t
block their initiatives.
• Don’texpectcustomerstobeinterestedor
impressed by passive advertising anymore.
Instead, give them something useful (branded
utility).
• If youwantyourcustomers’help,then
communicate clearly - vagueness doesn’t
encourage engagement.
• Thebestwaytogetyourcustomers’attentionis
by giving them a platform that will help them look
good.
• Makeyourofferfun.Peopleliketocongregate
around objects, play with them and create their
own meaning.
• Besavvyaboutwhatyouaredoing.Don’tactout
of character or expect excitement because of who
you are or what you do; instead, understand your
customer and the way they relate to you and lead
with that.
• Whateveryouareaskingyourcustomerstodo,
make sure that you are doing it, too. Don’t expect
your customers to play along unless you appear
committed.
• Speaktoyourcustomersauthenticallyintheir
own vernacular. Otherwise, you will alienate them
irrespective of what you are saying.
• Makingmistakesishuman,admittingthemmakes
you seem more human and you’ll be forgiven.
• Co-designisaboutpeople,nottechnology.If you
want people to get involved, then make it easy for
them to do so.
• Trynottohidethemessyrealityof day-to-day
working. Behind the scenes views are far more
engaging to collaborators than polished corporate
productions and can build trust.
• Treatyourcustomerstosome‘insideinfo’and
make them feel special.
• Preparetobechangedbytheexperienceof co-
design; where and when this happens, let it show.
• Tryandlinkthepeopleinyourcompanytoyour
customers – make it human and make it personal.
• Listencarefullytothesmallminority(the1%ers)
of your customers who appear passionately
interested in your product; they are likely to
know far more than you about your products and
services.
We would like to leave you with some hints for getting the most out of the co-design process; this concerns the approach not the methodology and we have taken the inspiration from the from the Open Sauce document acknowledged elsewhere in this book.
44 45
Vodafone Collaborators Claire Awramenko
Steve Wolak
Damon Clarke
Mike Tate
Dug Falby
Mark Hicks
Sense Worldwide Collaborators Steven Heron
Tom Wynne-Morgan
Jess Charlesworth
Raj Panjwani
Members of the Sensor Network
PDD Collaborators James Steiner
Shayal Chhibber
Ian Housham
Liza Makarov
Paul Scrase
Jason Cooper
WriteByte Lisa Moore
Acknowledgements
46
Thank you.
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