Adam Little @ CIID

Eilidh plays the Hotel Fox receptionist

Attention aspiring interaction designers: I hope you like making videos. Complex systems, like those involving technology or services that take place over time, are often easiest prototyped with video. And they are often best communicated through scenarios. So video is a tool we are gaining lots of experience with here at CIID.

Adam in hotel room

Not only was Hotel Fox willing to let us test our service with their customers, but they allowed us to film our video in one of their hotel rooms. It’s amazing what can happen if you just ask. Thank you Hotel Fox!

Martin reporting from Copenhagen Airport

We also rang up our friend Martin who is a reporter on Danish TV. Thanks, Martin!

Airport staff helping us with a brief scene

And thanks to this woman who helped us eventhough she was working! I will be posting the video later in the week…

UPDATE - Here’s the video…

WK Interact room at Hotel Fox

During the past week we have been running an experience prototype at Hotel Fox in Copenhagen. That’s that “lifestyle” hotel where each room was designed by a different international artist. Many thanks to the staff there for helping us with our project because Hotel Fox is a perfect place to test our service.

Some of the props we brought to the hotel

We prepared brochures, order forms and mini catalogs for the receptionist to distribute to guests when they check in to the hotel. We also brought 20 of our own books that the guests could borrow. The books were a mix of novels, guide books and design related photo books. Almost all of them had something to do with Denmark. We also included DVDs and a few other items in the catalog even though we did not bring them to the hotel.

Hotel Fox lobby

If a guest would like to borrow a book, they just need to fill out a small order form and give it to the receptionist. We also included questionnaires so that the guests could give us feedback about the service. Inside each book is a bookmark with recommendations based on that particular book. These include sights, other library materials and places to visit (i.e. The Danish Design Museum). For the sake of this prototype, the role of the library is not important. However we still included the library’s branding on all books and print material.

Welcome packets and loaner books at the Hotel Fox desk

We spend a few hours each day hanging out in the lobby and observing guests as they receive the brochure when they check in. The idea is to see if hotel guests, who generally only stay 2-3 nights, are interested in looking at new books and bringing them back to their rooms. We would also like to know what types of books are most popular and how the receptionists are able to manager the service. Last time we checked in, the hotel had lent out one book and received one feedback form.

A recent move means a new bicycle video! Closer to school AND I get to ride through the park everyday. Music by the Figurines.

Props from our video prototype

After presenting three concepts to the class, we decided to move forward with one that involved incorporating library and hotel services. In a matter of days we were able to make a short video that communicated the idea.

We are in the process of building on this concept so let me know your thoughts! (By the way, Radisson SAS is no way involved with this and judging by the receptionist on duty when we were taking photos, they don’t want to be involved with this… guerrilla prototyping!)

Some of our favorite ideas

“The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.” — Linus Pauling

Over the past two weeks we have had the good fortune of working with Brian Rink of IDEO San Fransisco who is facilitating our current class on Service Design. But the past two days were especially fortunate, as we learned to do brainstorming IDEO style. They call them brainstormers and they take them pretty seriously. Here are some rules that Brian shared with us:

1. Defer judgment
2. Encourage wild ideas
3. Build on the ideas of others
4. Stay focused on the topic
5. One conversation at a time
6. Be visual
7. Go for quantity

Besides a helpful set of rules, each brainstorming sessions needs a focused, informed question (not too broad not too narrow) and a good facilitator. Brian’s tips for facilitating included:

• Ensure ideas are captured and everyone behaves.
• At this point, we are focusing on IDEA GENERATION, not evaluation. That comes later. Keep the group generative.
• Make sure everyone gets heard and that everyone is listening, Groups are more powerful because they BUILD on each other’s ideas.
• Encourage WILD ideas, it’s fun and can trigger great innovations.
• Try to keep ideas to a SOUND BYTE or a headline, Encourage catchy titles and drawings.
• Have fun!

Brainstorming sign up sheet

For this class we have 7 groups of students working across two different topics (libraries and telemedicine), but for the brainstorming days everyone got to help everyone else. I think this is what made the past two days so productive, we had a chance to forget about our own projects and try to come up with ideas for our classmates. This, and the fact that each session was limited to one hour, helped maintain a good level of energy of focus through out each day.

Sketching an idea

Each hour long session included about six students and are goal was to come up with 100 ideas. After the end of two days, my group had literally hundreds of ideas to move forward with. Of course many of them were matching, or unrealistic or just plain silly, but I am expecting to find a few gems of inspiration.

User research profiles and notes

After wrapping up our user testing last week, we had the enormous task of finding the best quotes and observations from all our notes, videos and photos. For each insightful quote or observation we collected (we collected a lot), we had to answer “what does it mean?” Once this helped us understand the value in our insight, we then had to ask “so what?” As a group this really helped us figure out what was interesting and if it was useful.

Trying to find the value from our insights

From the photo above, the insight was a quote that read:

“It would be romantic to meet someone at the library” - Eda, 19. Just moved to CPH.

What it means to us:

- Meeting people face to face is a richer experience

- The library has a special ‘romantic’ quality to it

So what…? (phrased as a how might we… question):

How might the library connect strangers with similar interests?

User research insights

As you can see, we had quite a few of these. But before we could move on, we had to narrow it down. So we did what any democratic group would do and we voted. We gave ourselves 5 red stickers each and voted for the how might we… statements we found most interesting.

The goal of this process was to create 3 well thought out design challenges that we could then create concepts for. In the end ours looked something like this these…

People coming to stay in Copenhagen all begin by following a very similar travel process. From researching their trip before they leave home to visiting the top tourist attractions. During this journey they use a large number of similar services and pass through many public spaces, however the library rarely plays a role in their experience. How can giving library services a presence outside of the library help newcomers become more acquainted with Copenhagen?

Many people who are new to an area seek the local library because its universal services make it reliable. The space makes them feel in touch with the community it serves. Internet access and other basic services are available for free. A special charm makes it a surprising place to meet strangers. At the same time, people visiting a new area greatly value the advice and knowledge of local people. How might we create a service that uses the library’s knowledge and visitors to help guests and new residents of Denmark feel like a local?

Many people visit a country to learn about it’s culture yet they have different tastes and interests, be it films they watch, literature they read, music they listen to or even food they relish. The library is a rich source of trusted material, but provides no access for visitors wishing to explore local culture that matches their interests. How might the library provide a service for visitors not from Scandinavia to explore cultural content within their area of personal interests?

At a self checkout terminal in Copenhagen's central library

Last week we visited Pernille Schultz, head of the Copenhagen Central Library (Hovedbiblioteket), to gain some background knowledge on the Danish library system and it’s current challenges (libraries are one of the topics for our current course on Service Design). To get a better understanding of how libraries worldwide are using digital services, Pernille recommended the blog of Lorcan Dempsey. As it turns out, this blog is actually a great resource for anyone interested in services and networks in general, not just libraries.

One particular article, Always on: Libraries in a world of permenent connectivity, was especially relevant to some of the stuff we have been talking about in school over the past few days.

Keep reading for a summary of Lorcan’s key ideas in this article…

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