Lotta Hassi

Continuing on the topic of prototyping and experimenting…

In January 2011, MIND-research group of Aalto University will start a project called Act Out Of The Box -centre (AOB), where the aim is to create a space where businesses that are related to a physical phase can easily experiment with new ideas for their store space. For example hairdressers, grocery stores, or opticians are typical businesses that are tightly related to a physical space. Now, what all these businesses have in common is the high experimentation hurdle, due to its high cost. AOB aims to lower that hurdle and make it quick, inexpensive, and easy to experiment with new ideas related to the store space. The dream of course is, that in the near future will will experience some rather innovative space-related solutions in our local stores.

Starting next spring, there will be two AOB -centres: one in Aalto Design Factory, Espoo and one in Sanomatalo, in downtown Helsinki. I am quite excited to see what comes out of this project! And will definitely be posting news about its progress here.

picture: The Library of Congress, Flickr

For some time already, I’ve been interested in different means to prototype services. The work by Roberta Tassi presents a good set of design tools for testing and prototyping services. At her website Service Design Tools she shares a great variety of service design tools.

There is also an interesting post on Business Week by Jeneanne Rae, where she writes:

“Good service prototypes appeal to the emotions and avoid drawing attention to features, costs, and applications that can clutter the conversation and derail the excitement factor.”

However, are there service prototyping methods where the actual service action could be easily prototyped, and where the focus would not be on the tangible elements of the service? So instead of sketching a blueprint etc., the process would be brought to life instantly, as a rough prototype of the service moment.

Two years ago, we experimented with some open-minded improvisation theater actors from the group Häpeämättömät. The question was, how could improvisation theater assist with experimenting with service ideas, especially to support idea generation and instant experimentation. The actors breath life into the ideas as the teams generated them, and the teams received immediate feedback of what the process and the different activities could be like. The set-up wasn’t an instant success, but there is definitely potential here.

Last week, I heard of the Forum theater -method, developed by Augusto Boal.This method can be applied e.g. to help imagining different responses and outcomes of e.g. a change in a system, and has reportedly been a great way for generating ideas and prototyping them early.

It seems that theater could provide interesting methods to prototype services.

Zoe Burgess raises this very interesting question in GOOD: How to teach and evaluate the progress of the student when it comes to creative and critical thinking?

Read what Zoe thinks here.

You simply have to love the idea of The Good Gym:

“The Good Gym arose out of a frustration with normal gyms being a waste of energy and human potential…The Good Gym pairs runners with isolated less-mobile people in their area. Runners jog to their house, deliver something nice, have a brief chat and are on their way again. It helps people get fit by providing a good reason to go for a run and it helps the person being visited by providing them with some friendly human contact and a newspaper or piece of fruit.”

Getting involved is easy. Find out more here.

If you want experience the lessons on the importance of early prototyping, experimentation, and thinking by doing, The Marshmallow Challenge is a great exercise to do. The challenge was originally presented by Peter Skillman at TED, but Tom Wujec has now turned it into a global sport.

I experienced this first hand last week - and did all the rookie mistakes (even relied on cheating). This was a fantastic and fun exercise, that really underlined the role of a prototype as means for thinking, and not so much as “an end product of thought”, as Michael Schrage (2006) so well phrased it.

This was the outcome of our stack of 20 spaghetti, yard of tape, yard of string, and the marshmallow.

This set of cards created by by Dan Lockton with David Harrison and Neville A. Stanton offer 101 patterns for influencing behavior through design.

The authors write:

“All design influences our behaviour, but as designers we don’t always consciously consider the power this gives us to help people, (and, sometimes, to manipulate them). There’s a huge opportunity for design for behaviour change to address social and environmental issues where people’s behaviour is important, but as yet little in the way of a guide for designers and other stakeholders, bringing together knowledge and examples from different disciplines, and drawing parallels which can allow concepts to be usefully transposed. The Design with Intent toolkit (the cards and wiki) aims to make a start, however small, on this task”

The Design with Intent Cards are organized in eight groups: architecture, interaction, ludic, perceptual, cognitive, machiavellian, and security.

You can learn more about the cards and download them here.

Positional value could be described as value that a person/product/service has through its existence in relation to other persons/products/services. E.g. a bus stop has value for the passengers as a place to wait for the bus AND as advertisement space for companies - it has value in two value systems.

It is a concept that continuously makes me excited. I have often considered the link between positional value and environmental innovations: often positional value is about utilizing, for example, an existing network of bus stops for an additional purpose, therefore meaning also increased efficiency in utilizing existing assets.

An example often mentioned by Anssi Tuulenmäki, a research director at the BIT research center of Aalto university, is that of cars. Roughly 90% of the time, cars stand idle, on the side of a street, and their value goes down by the day - starting from the moment you drive out from the car dealership. A car often represents a significant investment, therefore it is rather surprising that they are utilized for such a short time, and much of their value is “wasted”. As Anssi Tuulenmäki often asks: “Couldn’t we use these valuable assets for any other purpose while they stand unused on the street? E.g. could the trunk be rented out as storage place?”

I have seen at least one attempt to create value for the owner while the car is not in use - and that is to sell it as advertisement space (e.g. www.tienaaautollasi.fi). Now, reading an article on peer-to-peer renting in Wired-magazine made me once again think about the concept of positional value. Clive Thompson writes about new companies found around the idea of renting to peers. For example Zilok and iRent.fi offer web sites that allow anyone to rent anything - including cars.

The idea is not that new, but the Internet has now provided the means that were missing earlier. “The genius of these sites  is that they make a virtue of modern society’s ecological sin: oversupply”, writes Clive Thompson.

I am not sure if the example of peer-to-peer renting fits in the boundaries of positional value, but at least it can increase the use-efficiency of a car. As Clive Thompson well captures the essence: “Want to use someone’s car for the day?”

In his doctoral research, Jamie O’Hare from University of Bath generated understanding of how eco-innovation tools could be developed and introduced to a company in a way that they are adopted into the long-term practices.

This very interesting PhD thesis “Eco-innovation tools for the early stages:
an industry-based investigation of tool customisation and introduction” can be downloaded here, with the permission of Jamie.

Making sense of ‘design thinking’. The exchange of thoughts between Don Norman and Bill Moggridge on Core77. “Design Thinking: A Useful Myth” - by Don Norman on  June 25th followed by “Design Thinking: Dear Don…” - Bill Moggridge’s response to Don August 2nd.

The first annual publication of Aalto, the newly formed multidisciplinary university that merges the schools of science and technology, business, and art and design.