In 1993 I was looking for an internship as Industrial Design student and talked with several companies. At one, a Dutch High Tech start-up, I had a meeting with an ex Fokker Fine Mechanical Engineer, he said to me "I want you, you are a designer that speaks my language". High tech chose me and I fell in love with high tech. Along the way I met the real geeks and it became different then talking with the Fine Mechanical Engineer and I had to learn about their speciality in order to build the bridge between technology and people. With technology changing fast paced I learned to understand the big lines but intuitively found out I'd better let the geeks understand me. An image tells more then a thousand words so started making conceptual designs: sketches, illustrations, models, scenarios, etc. just as a means of communication. What happened was even more interesting these studies where understood by everybody and stretched the mindset so well that developers, marketing & sales, customers, users, etc. started to contribute to the concepts in a very early stage.
As blogged before to me the Schiphol Project opened my eyes for the opportunities for Design Innovation but the story of the Methodology start years in advance. When confronted with the technological approach from IBM in this project I was reading "The Art of Innovation" http://theartofinnovation.com/ written by Tom Kelley about the Leading American Design Firm IDEO. Reading this was like coming home, here the #1 in the world was doing the same thing as the loner I always chose to be and the book helped me a great deal in structuring my methodology. I created the User Centric Innovation Methodology (UCIM) and applied it successfully in the Schiphol project. When faced with the challenges of the technological driven Schiphol Project I blend my and IDEO's Methodology together into UCIM and started to practice it.
In UCIM I have defined 5 phases:
1) Understand
2) Observe
3) Visualise
4) Evaluate & Refine
5) Implement
Let me explain this Methodology following the Schiphol Project. For the project Schiphol looked for a team experienced in designing user friendly products and approached design agency MMID www.mmid.nl who realised that this project was more then a typical physical design project, in this project the physical world met the virtual world. At this stage I was talking with MMID and they wanted me to be the project leader because of the conceptual character and high level of IT involvement. Our role was to do a feasibility study and answer the question if dropping of luggage in a self service process was feasible within acceptable process time in a user friendly way, second task was to stop the technology push of Schiphols suppliers. A challenging task, managing and participating in a creation process and keep conflicting individual- and corporate political interests out of the project.
In phase 1 you do your homework regarding: user, market, business rules & objectives, technology & innovation, specifications, etc. For Schiphol this meant to dig through specifications, IATA rules, KLM policies for customer care, visit a comparable Lufthansa solution, talk with suppliers, etc.
In phase 2 you observe real people in real life situations. Always the best thing to do is go out there and observe, experience it yourself and talk with the people involved. For the Schiphol project we observed for days the Self-Service Check in Area, interviewed people, etc. and saw great things happening because the current Check-in kiosks are far from perfect.
In phase 3 you come up with ideas: conceptual design, storyboards, scripts, video, etc. Based on what we observed we decided to design the Self-service Drop Off Service (SSDOP) as part of the Airport Experience. We used 8 characters that tested the system, not average users but critical people: the control freak, older people who cannot read well, inpatient business travellers, etc. We gave these a name and face and with them we simulated the process building the SSDOP in carton board playing the process of the characters. This role playing was such an eye opener for everybody and we experienced a group process of creative contribution. Based on this we designed the business rules for the process, the user interface, the SSDOP desk itself and an innovative label concept.
In phase 4 you simulate and/or build mock-up’s, prototypes, evaluate, etc. The SSDOP projects go/no go decision was related to the manned Drop Off Desk. We had to design a low burden solution for 90% of all air travellers that cost 10% extra time related to the Manned Drop Off Desk. To measure this we build a prototype simulating the average process, we invited 30 test persons, set up a observation lab with camera's and gave them 2 suitcases and an e-ticket saying they where flying to Paris. Without instruction every test person checked-in 2 suitcases and after an interview they checked in again. It was another interesting phase to see the concept being used by all the characters we selected in phase 3. The result convinced Schiphol to continue and plan a pilot on Schiphol Airport.
In phase 5 you materialize concept into commercial products. In this stage I am not involved anymore, but this is the typical Design Agency design & engineering work. Design Agency MMID continued the project after a long period of internal procedures within the Schiphol organisation and redesigned the Concept into a SSDOP prototype that currently is being tested on Schiphol Airport, Hal 3. The implementation of the SSDOP is planned in 2009 on a larger and commercial level on Schiphol and possibly also other Airports.
EYE-D Designed Innovation, User Centric Innovation Method
From: ron66, 6 months ago
15 years of experience in the design and innovation world resulted in a method to build bridges between people, innovation and strategy.
www.eye-ddi.com
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Next blog I will highlight some projects I have worked on, pitched on a few but was confronted that not everybody realises the importance of my work.
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