Key Take-away

Bank of America reminds us of the importance of observing extreme users as a way to inspire innovative product development.

The Outcome

The “Keep the Change” service turned out to be a huge success for Bank of America. After its launch in September 2005, the program attracted 2 million customers in less than a year. Since then, more than 12 million customers signed up for the program and saved more than 2 billion dollars in total. 60% of all new customers enroll for “Keep the Change”. 99% of customers who signed up for the program stayed with it.

The Problem

Bank of America needed to wanted to create a new savings product, and analysed existing behaviour of customers for inspiration.

The Insight

User research began with observing and interviewing families within Atlanta, Baltimore and San Francisco to investigate their behaviours towards savings. Within this investigation, a clear trend was becoming more apparent; Mothers were almost always in charge of managing the finances of their families. Digging deeper, IDEO ethnographers observed the behaviour of single mothers, a target group who were particularly tight on their spending budget. It was found within the checkbook registries of one particular Mother from Atlanta that instead of transferring $22.73 for her refuel bill, she had paid $23. She had explained that she often rounded up her bill payments to create a build up of savings within her customer account to support months of lower income. Another important insight was the realisation that most single mothers are not willing to open up a bank account for the purpose of savings as they believe they do not have enough funds to set aside.

The Solution/Product

Two Bank of America Vice Presidents, Faith Tucker and Ray Chinn, assembled a team of product managers, finance experts, software engineers, and operation experts for brainstorming. The team held 20 sessions and generated 80 product concepts. They favored one idea: the “Keep the Change” program. “Keep the Change” is a service that automatically rounds up all purchases made with a debit card. These rounded up cents are transferred to a savings account. To test a prototype of the idea, the team created a cartoon video displaying the rounding up service and tested it in an online survey with 1600 participants. After an extremely positive response, “Keep the Change” was pitched to the consumer division and got approved. In an iteration of the idea, the product development team added three features, as a Bloomberg case study describes: Firstly, a summary of the rounded-up transactions in the account; secondly, a feature preventing a rounding-up transfer from pushing the user’s account into overdraft; and thirdly, a promotion. As a treat, Bank of America matches the saving at 100 per cent for the first three months up to a certain amount.

Reference

https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2018/09/feeling-in-control-bank-of-america-helps-customers-to-keep-the-change/

Key Take-away

The best ideas that have the potential to transform your organisation, could be sitting in your office as we speak. Often times, it is the employees of the organisation that experience the real battle scars of a business and who better to create new ideas than the people who experience the true pain points day by day. Provided the right tools, infrastructure, and support from upper management, you can unlock the potential of your employees and at the same time, improve corporate culture.

The Outcome

Eight proof of concept examples and short documentary film done during the programme has raised the awareness in organisational wide of the need for organisational change towards more customer centricity. A Chief Customer Officer was appointed to lead a dedicated Customer Experience team and customer experience has become a core focus area for all product and service change initiatives. Besides changing mindsets, a specific Design Thinking department was established, mandated to work across the entire organisation. This is now responsible for designing and delivering a comprehensive range of masterclasses, workshops and design sprints — of varying complexity — with cross functional teams of Bank of Ireland employees. The Experience Design Programme increased competences and gave strong mandate to engage customers and stakeholders to co-design and prototype early on.

The Problem

Due to the rapid speed of fintech, and blockchain technology, the market was moving faster than what 234 year old BOI (Bank of Ireland) could innovate and support. They needed to find ways to create a new product offering, in order to capture the modern needs of its customers.

The Insight

Traditional methods of market research had failed to help BOI understand and design for their customers’ rapidly changing requirements. For example, the API sharing economy, open banking and blockchain have drastically accelerated the rate and pace of change. To keep ahead, the challenge was to fundamentally alter the way BOI designs and runs its business. BOI's task was to help senior management understand customer-centricity and service design and how to apply it to support the bank’s overall business goals.

The Solution/Product

Over an 8-month period, 36 design thinkers from the management team were divided into eight cross-functional teams participating in an extensive programme of workshops, mentoring sessions and team assignments which were all designed to address real-life customer experience challenges faced by the bank. These challenges ranged from complex processes like bereavement and customer identification and verification, plus day-to-day tasks like customer payments, through to the simple act of appointment setting. The Experience Design Programme provided participants with the relevant tools and expertise to support the organisation’s shift towards customer-centricity. Additionally, the programme devised and ran workshops with senior management, which sought to uncover significant obstacles. Finally, a series of steering committee workshops, in conjunction with the training sessions and hands-on mentoring support, was used to drive the cultural change. This helped ensure continuous, systematic implementation of customer-centricity and the service design approach across Bank of Ireland. For example, one of the themes explored was bereavement, for which we helped create a redesigned service offering. Every year BOI loses almost 17,000 customers this way. The end-to-end journey for customers, their relatives and executors, was a broken and disjointed experience, requiring multiple touchpoints depending on the number of products held by the deceased. Little recognition was given to the fact that the deceased and their family had been loyal customers for many years. After getting to know customers with recent experience of bereavement, the team created a solution to enable BOI make a better emotional connection with these vulnerable customers. The redesigned outcome is a seamless ‘one-and-done’ process which eliminates frictional elements (e.g. redundant identification and verification requests), replacing them with a personalised, wholly empathetic service that recognises loyalty.

Reference

https://www.hellon.com/project/service-design-transformed-bank-of-ireland-from-customer-focused-to-customer-centric/

Key Take-away

While it is very easy to assume the problems of your end customers, it is easier to assume the right solutions for such problems. In Danske's case, service design helped filter which ideas contained tangible weight to existing problems experienced by end customers, and was able to save £4 million worth of investments into the wrong products and services.

The Outcome

Following this exercise, Danske Bank championed the service design process through its ability to save the organisation over £4m worth of planned technology investments for products and services that were falsely promised to satisfy customer needs. On top of this, this process allowed Danske Bank to increase customer satisfaction by upto 37%, doubled the amount of meetings financial advisors scheduled with both new, and existing customers and increased the number of customer referrals through higher customer satisfaction. Morever, employees rated a 68% higher satisfaction rating following this exercise and particularly recieved support from senior parts of the organisation who are now confident in leading future projects taking a similar approach.

The Problem

Danske Bank in Denmark exists as the regions largest Bank, with over 5 million retail customers. In order to gain greater market share, competitors however have been aggressively marketing new account-switching services that have been seen to take customers away from Danske's services. As customers rarely change banks often, it was imperative for Danske to maintain the retention of their customers through optimal customer experience, and value.

The Insight

It was found that traditionally staff and management were not allowed to contact customers directly, and thus were not able to properly recieve and process true customer insights. To counteract this, Danske began to build customer centricity by hosting in-depth customer interviews, ideation and prioritisation workshops, ensuring the participation of front line employees and key stakeholders.

The Solution/Product

Following eight customer in-depth interviews and over three ideation and prioritisation workshops, the team were able to objectively abandon a number of planned technology investments after proving that such investments were not meeting the true pain points of their customers. This paved the way for more than 28 new ideas, which were later refined to 9 winning concepts to be prototyped and tested. At this stage of development, these prototyped were discussed with Danske's customer within in a Concept Lab — a test environment for early stage service prototypes. The team then simulated three new, improved customer journies by prototyping all the new service touch points, from handouts to interior configuration to new web pages and then invited customers, advisors and key stakeholders to go through the journey and give feedback to continue continuous improvement of the developed prototypes.

Reference

https://www.hellon.com/project/we-inspired-a-uk-bank-to-think-differently-about-new-challenges/

Key Take-away

1) Embedding Design Thinking within Organisations takes time, and does not happen overnight 2) Appropriate education is the key to sustainable success. Design thinking is not just a set of principles; it also requires a certain mindset that is acquired by project-based training and experiences overseen by coaches who have previously acquired this mindset. 3) Recruit strategic members of your core design thinking team. Recruit internal staff who have worked in the organization for a considerable time and therefore have a well-developed network of contacts within the business. Such people can then be assigned as DT team members and later move back into the business. 4) Prototyping is a key tool for management buy-in. Fully functional prototypes of ideas are not necessary for getting people involved; a rudimentary, tangible prototype of a unique idea is sufficient to engage top-level managers and get them thinking about further usage scenarios, even during post-project phases.

The Outcome

Over the next 6 years of implementation, a innovation community of over 150 members was formed, of whome regularly attended each milestone presentation, 8 projects were succesfully fostered from concept to market.

The Problem

How to embed Design Thinking within DB's IT Division.

The Solution/Product

A small team of 4 people from multidisciplinary backgrounds were assigned to form a full-time Design Thinking team. Such a team would be required in order to gain full access and interaction with their own pre-existing staff networks and facilitate cross-integration of division silos. These individuals were sent to a bootcamp workshops to kickstart the use and implementation of basic desng thinking toolsand capabilities such as Interview and Observation techniques, as well as Ideation exercises. Following the bootcamp, the small team started to work on small ideas within Deutsche Bank, and following this, presented a few prototyped solutions to their internal interested parties. Although these prototyped generated mixed results, the process began to create growing communities of individuals interested in Design Thinking within their organisation, and particularly captivated one Managing Director which further championed the concept within his strategic discussions and conversations with clients. Although the initial prototypes may not have been considered as the 'best, or practical' solutions, the Deautsche Bank community could not doubt the impressive speed of development, and the power of rapid prototyping. Within the first 11 months of implementation, the DT team rolled out their first end-to-end concept: A Financial Planning Timeline to engage new younger customers. Following the initial implementation phase, Deusche Bank continued to grow the Design Thinking concept by creating milestone presentations that were open to all Bank employees, every 2 months, describing the internal process of concept to prototype for a variety of different problems. This audience began to grow as curious employees and managers from a variety of different divisions came, observed, and were ultimately inspired by the ideas generated from the process of design thinking. The community was so large, that DB created a systematic education program to foster its innovative community, by providing voluntary workshops on DT tools, techniques, and developed changing mindsets on innovation within their individual sectors.

Key Take-away

Creating a culture of intrapreneurship is a critical way for established companies to differentiate themselves from the competition. A business that encourages a culture of intrapreneurship is one that’s ready for the future — whatever it may bring. By encouraging fresh ideas, welcoming failure, and working as a team, companies both big and small can compete in even the most cutthroat industries.

The Outcome

The current platform has about 200 active boxes. It’s helped generate 60,000 comments on roughly 30,000 ideas. One out of every 30 ideas is typically approved for implementation.

The Problem

Ericsson has a long history of technology and business innovation in communications, leading the industry in areas such as digital switching, mobile systems and managed services. Going forward, innovation must be accelerated to meet increased competition and broadened to put a greater emphasis on areas such as services and business model innovation. More specifically, Ericson needed to find a way to compete against Instant Messaging services like WA, Skype and Wechat as Ericsson relied on global mobile traffic as key revenue.

The Insight

It was found that teams would mostly shared ideas with their direct colleagues and managers and were often lost during its transit towards Upper Management which may approve, and implement the changes. Moreover, each business unit had their own tools and ways of doing things. In this model, one person collects the ideas, and from there, the ideas need to be pushed to someone else. You end up with a lot of small islands of ideas without cross-fertilization or visibility as to what’s happening throughout the larger organization. It’s costly and it’s not a smart solution. The challenge was to figure out how to address the complexity of self-organization.

The Solution/Product

Ericsson has created its own internal innovation pipeline precisely for marginalized innovators to get their own concepts noticed and developed. In 2008, the company started IdeaBoxes, an online idea sharing platform that is used for all types of ideas, from game-changing to incremental. Employees can post their ideas to an online forum to solicit peer feedback and votes of approval. The best way to think of IdeaBoxes is as dedicated brainstorming space. First, managers are encouraged to start topics relating the places where they spot inefficiencies and, in many cases, suggest a broad way that can be refined. Each box creator then becomes the manager of their own thread, tinkering with the suggestions that come in from others until they’ve built their rough idea into a more polished finished concept that might attract attention. Once a box is created, dozens and sometimes hundreds of employees can weigh in with their own ideas. An idea that might help more than one department can always be placed in more than one box. Employees can also find existing boxes to send their suggestions to using keyword matching, which also helps departments around the world see how others are tackling similar issues. Most importantly, everyone gets credit for their contributions. Managers who like suggestions are encouraged to publically flag them with notes saying what was claimed for interest, action, or implementation. Most innovators don’t receive raises or bonuses for creating new products for the company, but interactions on IdeaBox do pay off in other ways. Traditionally, each box creator hands out virtual medals–that’s gold, silver, or bronze–to the collaborators who help best troubleshoot solutions. That gives idea creators visibility, which can help to build their reputation as innovators internally. Box managers are also allowed to incentivize their idea exchanges (some offer their own gift certificates for great suggestions). Each IdeaBoxes participant also accrues points, which become important around review time. “One of the discussions that managers have with employees is around innovation,” Karlsson says. “And since there is a common system across the company it’s easy to get the metrics to see how much the person is contributing.”

Key Take-away

Businesses entering new markets must remain dynamic against the feedback, and experience of its customers, particularly during its early stages. It is important to test and learn quickly, in response to customer insights and adapt your offerings if required.

The Outcome

After 5 years of operational losses, TESCO abandoned the US market, and wrote off over 1.3 billion USD in assets including 4300 full-time staff redundancy payments. During this period, TESCO was seen to have lost $100-200 million USD per year while in operation.

The Problem

TESCO rapidly expanded into the USA using the same successful business model used in Europe and Asia. This model centred around providing convenience, at a cheap cost for busy individuals or families through its selection of ready made meals, and daily essentials.

The Insight

TESCO started off very strong within their initial market research stages. It was known that TESCO conducted market research for over the course of two years ensuring that US market was a viable, and profitable choice for their business offering. Over the two years of research, some of the activities that were conducted included living with american families to understand key buying patterns and commonly purchased items and opening up a prototyped 'test store' within an abandoned warehouse for customer feedback. From such insights, TESCO built their product inventory of 3500 items based on the purchasing trends, and requirements of the customer groups they analysed. TESCO opened their first store in 2007 in LA and opened 120 more stores within Southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix and its own distribution and cooking centre all within the next 2 years. TESCO was opening a store every 5 days, without changing the initial business model that was established following their extensive two year research period. This was the beginning of the doom that TESCO was about to face. 1) TESCO Teams worked in scilos. Research and procurement teams built inventory specific to the families that they studied, with a selection of offerings to fit pain points surrounding price and convenience with a similar business model as retail competitors Wegmans, and Walmart. Marketing teams however pressed forward to target an alternative customer group who sought wholefoods and fresh offerings, similar to Trader Joe's target market. This created a great discontinuity between the offering provided, and the expectations of the users. Moreover, this could not allow TESCO to compete well against the other existing competitors due to the lack of synergy between teams, and their respective visions. CostCo would be cheaper, Restaurant takeout options had a greater range, and were more convenient, Trader Joe's contained a greater range of healthier, wholefood options. TESCO would be a jack of all trades, but master of none within the US retail food market. 2) TESCO Teams did not test and learn following their initial launch. After consolidating their business plan, TESCO went ahead and expanded 121 stores within the short two year period. Operations were mainly focussed on growth, instead of the continuous improvement of their branches. After key criticisms from customers, the TESCO US management team were forced to make significant changes in decor, product offering and branding, however these criticisms were only addressed 1.5 years after the branches were opened, losing considerable profit and revenue as a consequence. 3) TESCO Teams promoted a service that did not co-exist with the users typical journey. TESCO has always been renowed for its 'on the way home' shopping experience, with a focus towards speed over selection variety. This model proved beneficial for regions such as Asia, and the UK where space is limited and commuters would often need to take public transport or walk home. Within this journey, there would be at least one TESCO that you could easily walk in and walk out, on the way home. Within the US, particularly within west and central regions, commuters often rely on cars as their main mode of transport between home and work and consequently, the convenience model that TESCO is built on was not suited to the typical journies of US customers. This particularly harmed sales of their ready-to-eat food selection as users would not be willing to park their car and walk into the centre to purchase the pre-made meal.

Key Take-away

Businesses entering new markets must adjust their business offerings, and strategies to the requirements and needs of its new target customers. It should not be expected that business models proven within home markets, shall achieve matched a matched within new ones.

The Outcome

With over 558 stores, in 17 states in Brazil at its peak. 2018 brought the closure of 120 stores due to inefficiencies in operations, labour force and profit losses over the past 7 years. Growth of sales continues to exist below market average at 2.5%, while local competitors were growing between 3-11%.

The Problem

Walmart saw Brazil as an key emerging market, as its business landscape shifted from being controlled and managed by corporate monopolies to existing as a free market. Walmart entered into Brazil in 1996 with 5 initial stores, and more than doubled their locations with a total of 14 stores over the next 4 years. In 2004, Walmart believed that they would not be able to compete with the rapidly growing market without strategic partnerships, and decided to enter an acquistion strategy over the next 5 years, acquiring both Bompreo and Somaes to collect 258 locations in exchange for 1.26 billion USD. By 2013, Walmart managed more than 535 stores across the country.

The Insight

1) Divisions worked in Silos. With three individual brands to manage, and 558 individual stores to operate, each institution was observed to work strictly in scilos. Information systems that operated Bompreco and Sonae were not syncronized with the Walmart's signature systems, so communications and information flow between all locations were disrupted. It was said that the Walmart procurement team often required three laptops, one to monitor and manage inventory for all Bompreco locations, one to manage Sonae locations as well as another to operate their existing Walmart locations. This created critical disruptions to the speed, and efficiency of logistical operations, sometimes leading to days of empty shelves, and inconsistent inventory between branches. 2) Walmart did not serve the pain points of their users. There was an overall lack of understanding of the local target market as a large value proposition for Walmart, was the opportunity to buy products online. This was a short-term solution formed to support customers as they worked to solve their internal fulfillment issues between institutions. This however failed against Brazilian consumers, who wish to touch and feel the products they buy and have limited trust within the online shopping experience. 3) Walmart focussed on growth, instead of continuous improvement. Walmart expanded way too quickly without considering the delays and constraints that would be involved in the synergy between Walmart and its acquistion partners Sonaes and Bompreco. The extended transition period to synergise the three institutions led Walmart to lose considerable customer satisfaction, and reduced their market share. Factors that would lead to detrimental effects towards the long-term brand of Walmart due to the growing strength and offering of other local competitors within the market.

Key Take-away

Plum Organics reminds us of how powerful existing customer behaviour may assist the creation of great new products, and services. Researchers shadowed mothers through their daily life, and found more valuable insights through watching their users live through pain points they didn't vocalise.

The Outcome

Baby Bowls for Plum are now available at retailers nationwide and are a natural evolution for the brand, helping Plum continue to provide high-quality, organic baby food for consumers and their children, even if they’re eating on the go.

The Problem

For most parents, ensuring their child’s proper nourishment is a top priority, but that’s not always easy, especially for parents on the go. Plum Organics, an organic baby food company, set out to solve that problem by providing families with pureed fruits and veggies in pouches, making it easy for them to feed their babies.

The Insight

By conducting research and in-person interviews with families, Plum set out to ensure that the new product was both desirable and functional for parents and their babies. By joining families in their homes, researchers was able to gather essential insights that helped inform prototypes and the final design, like the fact that nothing can replace the feeling of making an intimate connection with a child through spoon feeding; that baby food is often wasted if a parent can’t remember how long a product has been in the fridge; that families struggle with how to spoon-feed their children on the go without making a mess, and that both parents and retailers were concerned that baby food jars don’t stack securely on shelves

The Solution/Product

With those insights in mind, the team designed a transparent bowl that allows consumers to see the natural color of Plum’s vibrant, organic food. A resealable lid makes it easy for parents to store food between feedings, and the container includes a feature that allows them to track the day that they opened the pack to ensure that they don’t end up throwing away perfectly good food. Lastly, the new package is easily and safely stackable and includes a divot in the lid for parents to rest a spoon on, making for a much cleaner and more sanitary feeding experience.

Reference

https://www.ideo.com/case-study/rethinking-baby-food-packaging

Key Take-away

Businesses entering new markets must remain dynamic against the feedback, and experience of its customers, particularly during its early stages. It is important to test and learn quickly, in response to customer insights and adapt your offerings if required.

The Outcome

After 5 years of operational losses, TESCO abandoned the US market, and wrote off over 1.3 billion USD in assets including 4300 full-time staff redundancy payments. During this period, TESCO was seen to have lost $100-200 million USD per year while in operation.

The Problem

TESCO rapidly expanded into the USA using the same successful business model used in Europe and Asia. This model centred around providing convenience, at a cheap cost for busy individuals or families through its selection of ready made meals, and daily essentials.

The Insight

TESCO started off very strong within their initial market research stages. It was known that TESCO conducted market research for over the course of two years ensuring that US market was a viable, and profitable choice for their business offering. Over the two years of research, some of the activities that were conducted included living with american families to understand key buying patterns and commonly purchased items and opening up a prototyped 'test store' within an abandoned warehouse for customer feedback. From such insights, TESCO built their product inventory of 3500 items based on the purchasing trends, and requirements of the customer groups they analysed. TESCO opened their first store in 2007 in LA and opened 120 more stores within Southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix and its own distribution and cooking centre all within the next 2 years. TESCO was opening a store every 5 days, without changing the initial business model that was established following their extensive two year research period. This was the beginning of the doom that TESCO was about to face. 1) TESCO Teams worked in scilos. Research and procurement teams built inventory specific to the families that they studied, with a selection of offerings to fit pain points surrounding price and convenience with a similar business model as retail competitors Wegmans, and Walmart. Marketing teams however pressed forward to target an alternative customer group who sought wholefoods and fresh offerings, similar to Trader Joe's target market. This created a great discontinuity between the offering provided, and the expectations of the users. Moreover, this could not allow TESCO to compete well against the other existing competitors due to the lack of synergy between teams, and their respective visions. CostCo would be cheaper, Restaurant takeout options had a greater range, and were more convenient, Trader Joe's contained a greater range of healthier, wholefood options. TESCO would be a jack of all trades, but master of none within the US retail food market. 2) TESCO Teams did not test and learn following their initial launch. After consolidating their business plan, TESCO went ahead and expanded 121 stores within the short two year period. Operations were mainly focussed on growth, instead of the continuous improvement of their branches. After key criticisms from customers, the TESCO US management team were forced to make significant changes in decor, product offering and branding, however these criticisms were only addressed 1.5 years after the branches were opened, losing considerable profit and revenue as a consequence. 3) TESCO Teams promoted a service that did not co-exist with the users typical journey. TESCO has always been renowed for its 'on the way home' shopping experience, with a focus towards speed over selection variety. This model proved beneficial for regions such as Asia, and the UK where space is limited and commuters would often need to take public transport or walk home. Within this journey, there would be at least one TESCO that you could easily walk in and walk out, on the way home. Within the US, particularly within west and central regions, commuters often rely on cars as their main mode of transport between home and work and consequently, the convenience model that TESCO is built on was not suited to the typical journies of US customers. This particularly harmed sales of their ready-to-eat food selection as users would not be willing to park their car and walk into the centre to purchase the pre-made meal.

Key Take-away

Businesses entering new markets must adjust their business offerings, and strategies to the requirements and needs of its new target customers. It should not be expected that business models proven within home markets, shall achieve matched a matched within new ones.

The Outcome

After 2 more years of operation, Dunkin Donuts has experienced a slow improvement in profitability as management began to respond to user feedback, adapting their offerings to include more indian-based flavours, healthier options and a greater tea-based beverage selection. However, this slow response has cost Dunkin the foreclosure of 35 stores to be closed due to lack of sales, and poor operational efficiency.

The Problem

Dunkin Donuts rapidly expanded into the Indian Market with the same business model and product offering that proved to be a success within the USA. It's business model was originally focused on offering breakfast and beverages from 7AM with its core offering of sweet doughnuts. Dunkin Donuts opened its first store in 2012, in India and further opened 77 more stores around country within the next 4 years with the hope of impressive market acceptance within India.

The Insight

1) Dunkin Donuts promoted offerings that did not co-exist with the users typical journey. Dunkin Donuts had expanded through India promoting their sweet breakfast offerings as a Grab and Go solution to busy, commuting individuals. This proposition however did not attract the consumers they had targetted, as these individuals often preferred a sit-down meal as a way to start their day. Moreover, it is extremely uncommon to find local indians purchasing foreign menu items like donuts, or pastries, when locals typically prefer to eat local cuisines for their Breakfast. 2) Dunkin Donuts promoted offerings that did not meet the pain points of the users. Dunkin Donuts is known worldwide for their selection of sweets, and beverage offerings. It is known that Dunkin' sells more coffee-based beverages than both Starbucks, and Mcdonalds, however within the Indian market, users typically prefer Tea over Coffee, and are not appealed by the standard American beverage flavours that Dunkin initially offered. To make matters worse, change in product offerings were faced by management who were hesitate to change despite measuring record low sales. Their response to this low performance was to continue to open more branches, with the hope that profitability would increase with economy of scale.

The Outcome

The result was a complete service experience that is intuitive and enjoyable, and incorporates mobile and digital technologies. To get there we needed to engage with stakeholders worldwide, working across the functional silos, to design a seamless end-to-end service. Here’s what the results looked like — New end-to-end customer centric GBS services based on user insights and journey mapping. New, digital, mobile-friendly, user-centric communication tools for employees. Improved user experience of the Coca-Cola careers sites and internal digital resources. The impact of these projects is clear – when services are organised around employees’ needs we have seen a significant increase in employee engagement, satisfaction and productivity.

The Problem

The Coca-Cola Global Business Services (GBS) provide services to the more than 700,000 Coca-Cola employees around the world. Wanted to create a human-touch to digital services, and provide a better service experience for their employees.

The Insight

By 2030, Millennials (those born somewhere between 1980 and the early 2000s) are expected to account for 75% of the global workforce. As a generation they bring with them consumer expectations shaped by the experience of great online services from the likes of Google and Apple — and expect the same quality of digital services in the workplace. These expectations are a major challenge for businesses worldwide. And firms will need to innovate in the way they hire, manage and grow the best talent.

The Solution/Product

When Coca-Cola’s HR Operations became part of GBS in 2013, they decided to take a fresh approach to the way we provided these services. The idea was to treat the Coca-Cola employees we worked with, our colleagues, as customers of our services. Along with this new mindset came new emphasis on the experience of these services. Putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers, we asked ourselves four key questions — 1. How do we ensure our services are relevant and easy-to-use? 2. How can we demonstrate a human touch in the digital world we work in? 3. How do we make sure our customers enjoy working with us? 4. How we deliver a delightful experience that reflects the Coca-Cola brand? To answer these questions we turned to service design – an innovative approach to creating great service experiences grounded in customer insight.

Key Take-away

Finavia reminds us that sometimes it is not the final product that gives the greatest value, but rather the process itself. In the case of Travellab, Finavia chose to invite end customers to act as participants, and key decision makers through their process of refining and converging their top twelve ideas down to a single winner. The hype generated from the experiment alone formed significant praise from domestic, and international media, and even affected the number of passengers through inbound flights as more and more people wanted to participate.

The Outcome

The project has won two awards: first prize in the prestigious Best of the Year (Vuoden Huiput) design award in Finland and the global Service Design Award in New York from the leading institution for expertise in service design. Finavia also saved 12 M euros / year on cost savings, while the Finland airport experienced a 3% growth in international transfer passengers and 80+ mentions in global press and online media.

The Problem

Finavia, Finland’s airport operator, had an enviable problem: they had generated over 200 ideas for improving their service at Helsinki Airport, collected from customers and employees, but weren’t sure what their next steps should be. Finavia needed to create a trustworthy and agile model for prototyping and measuring these ideas. The goal was to present Finavia’s management with a validated and prioritised list of new services which would best support Helsinki Airport in its strategic aim to become Northern Europe’s leading transit airport for passengers in the Asian market.

The Insight

The airport has identified four different passenger profiles among its users: fast and efficient flyers, who make up 38% of the airport’s passengers; enjoyment seekers, who come in second at 31%; safety seekers, who are the smallest group at 13%; and habitual travellers, who make up 18% of Helsinki Airport’s passengers.

The Solution/Product

As a way to verify and test the service prototypes, Finavia created Travellab, a multi-use space that may be transformed to support a variety of different services and expose Finavia's prototypes to real customer traffic and insights. Finavia tested 12 new service prototypes chosen from the initial 200 improvement ideas that they had gathered from passengers. They included pop-up yoga classes (‘YogaGate’) and mobile coffee vendors, Information boards, a Finnish-themed photo wall, and a Midsummer Nights Dream experience, fitted with Finnish food tastings and traditional dance. Each prototype was tested for a period of a week and recieved customer feedback from each 'sprint'. In total the experiment took 75 days to complete, however an astounding 900 passenger interviews were collected over this time period.

Reference

https://www.hellon.com/project/we-made-passengers-want-to-change-planes-at-helsinki-airport/

Key Take-away

Service design principles and change is not only beneficial for private organisations. Public organisations such as the Ministry of Manpower, believed they could further improve long, unneccesary waiting times, and got the buy-in from management due to its significant impacts to the organisations' bottom line and operational efficiency metrics.

The Outcome

The new orientation made clear that Singapore’s demand for their contributions was as important as their desire to have a pleasant experience living and working in the city. The service redesign process required a better understanding of the decision points of both users and non-users. This involved taking a closer look at the opportunities and difficulties facing users, including those who had succeeded and failed within it, or had encountered problems or avoided it. Design Thinking in the Public Sector – a Future Model? While design thinking has gained currency in the private sector, it has yet to become widespread in the public sector. There are several reasons why this might be so. Such an approach may appear irrational, abstract or even extravagant with outcomes that may not be directly measurable or tangible and hence at odds with the quantitative indicators that customarily account for public spending. Design is often regarded, at best, as a good-to-have element in support of other key public roles instead of being itself a strategic function of operational planning. Most public agencies are the sole providers of unique and often mandated services; there is inherently no strong impetus to radically reinvent their services and operations, and little comparative basis with which to make changes. Three factors can determine a public organization’s success in using design thinking to transform service provision

The Problem

The process of applying for an Employment Pass used to be a laborious 13-step procedure with long waiting times for both employers and foreigners. Process re-engineering efforts in 1996 and 2002 were geared towards reducing processing times, since it was believed customers most desired speed in their applications. It was also easier to derive indicators for efficiency.

The Insight

The Employment Pass service involves two critical touchpoints: the Employment Pass OnLine (EPOL) system which applicants must first access while still in their home countries, and the Employment Pass Services Centre (EPSC) where applicants visit Singapore to submit documents for verification, register biometric data and complete their application. The EPOL was first offered in 2002 but it had limited functions. Fewer than 20% of applications were submitted through the system, leaving some 25,000 hardcopy applications to be received and manually processed each month. Applicants had little information on how applications were evaluated. One of these insights was that users appreciate certainty in their application — such as waiting times, outcomes, or even whether their applications have been received. As a result, visits to the EPSC are now appointment-based, ensuring that applicants would be served at their selected date and time.

The Solution/Product

In 2009, the Work Pass Division collaborated with IDEO. Design thinking methods were applied for the first time. Instead of looking at Employment Pass services as a series of functional processes, Work Pass Division (WPD) began to consider them through the eyes of their users — the employers, employment agencies and foreign workers. The Work Pass application transaction was recast as an experience — applicants were not units to be moved from point to point in the process but instead were individuals with aspirations, preferences and relationships. Between 2005 and 2009, the EPOL was enhanced and redesigned to increase the information flow to users of the system. This has helped to shift the perception of WPD from an opaque and high-handed regulator to that of a responsive and transparent facilitator of employment. An Employment Pass Self Assessment Tool was introduced to help employers and applicants determine the likelihood that their applications would be approved, minimizing efforts wasted on clearly non-qualifying applications. In this collaborative spirit, employers of EP applicants take ownership of the process by ensuring that their background checks on candidate employees meet the stipulated guidelines. The new EPOL serves two critical functions: it is an information portal for applicants, accessible to anyone any where in the world who may be considering taking up employment in Singapore. It is also a direct channel of communication between applicants and the WPD; applicants can submit or cancel applications, check their eligibility and application status, or seek clarifications through email from WPD officers. The form and function of the Centre were redrawn to create the desired user- centred experience. The space was divided into three areas according to their distinctive roles: the arrival lobby, the waiting area, and the enrolment bar. The new arrival lobby has been kept uncluttered as a space for guests to step away from the hustle and bustle of the streets when entering the Centre. Customer service staff, known as service ambassadors, greet visitors at the arrival lobby at once and guide them in using the Centre. These ambassadors replace unwieldy counter queues, complicated signage and awkward navigation, reducing the chances of disorientation during a user’s first visit. Within the waiting area, a main service counter occupies the center of the room (which by convention would have been taken up by rows of hard-backed chairs and numeric queue prompters). This brings the service experience closer to users. Wall-to-wall counters have been replaced by purpose- built modular service counters; no longer do counters appear frustratingly unmanned if service staff step away from their posts. Waiting areas recede against the perimeter of the room, with clear window views overlooking the Singapore River and the city skyline, offering a pleasant waiting environment. Adding to the sense of personalized service, a single- row display for names has replaced the old, large numeric queue number displays.

Reference

https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2015/06/re-designing-employment-pass-application-in-singapore/

Key Take-away

While it is very easy to assume the problems of your end customers, it is easier to assume the right solutions for such problems. In Danske's case, service design helped filter which ideas contained tangible weight to existing problems experienced by end customers, and was able to save £4 million worth of investments into the wrong products and services.

The Outcome

Following this exercise, Danske Bank championed the service design process through its ability to save the organisation over £4m worth of planned technology investments for products and services that were falsely promised to satisfy customer needs. On top of this, this process allowed Danske Bank to increase customer satisfaction by upto 37%, doubled the amount of meetings financial advisors scheduled with both new, and existing customers and increased the number of customer referrals through higher customer satisfaction. Morever, employees rated a 68% higher satisfaction rating following this exercise and particularly recieved support from senior parts of the organisation who are now confident in leading future projects taking a similar approach.

The Problem

Danske Bank in Denmark exists as the regions largest Bank, with over 5 million retail customers. In order to gain greater market share, competitors however have been aggressively marketing new account-switching services that have been seen to take customers away from Danske's services. As customers rarely change banks often, it was imperative for Danske to maintain the retention of their customers through optimal customer experience, and value.

The Insight

It was found that traditionally staff and management were not allowed to contact customers directly, and thus were not able to properly recieve and process true customer insights. To counteract this, Danske began to build customer centricity by hosting in-depth customer interviews, ideation and prioritisation workshops, ensuring the participation of front line employees and key stakeholders.

The Solution/Product

Following eight customer in-depth interviews and over three ideation and prioritisation workshops, the team were able to objectively abandon a number of planned technology investments after proving that such investments were not meeting the true pain points of their customers. This paved the way for more than 28 new ideas, which were later refined to 9 winning concepts to be prototyped and tested. At this stage of development, these prototyped were discussed with Danske's customer within in a Concept Lab — a test environment for early stage service prototypes. The team then simulated three new, improved customer journies by prototyping all the new service touch points, from handouts to interior configuration to new web pages and then invited customers, advisors and key stakeholders to go through the journey and give feedback to continue continuous improvement of the developed prototypes.

Reference

https://www.hellon.com/project/we-inspired-a-uk-bank-to-think-differently-about-new-challenges/

The Outcome

The result was a complete service experience that is intuitive and enjoyable, and incorporates mobile and digital technologies. To get there we needed to engage with stakeholders worldwide, working across the functional silos, to design a seamless end-to-end service. Here’s what the results looked like — New end-to-end customer centric GBS services based on user insights and journey mapping. New, digital, mobile-friendly, user-centric communication tools for employees. Improved user experience of the Coca-Cola careers sites and internal digital resources. The impact of these projects is clear – when services are organised around employees’ needs we have seen a significant increase in employee engagement, satisfaction and productivity.

The Problem

The Coca-Cola Global Business Services (GBS) provide services to the more than 700,000 Coca-Cola employees around the world. Wanted to create a human-touch to digital services, and provide a better service experience for their employees.

The Insight

By 2030, Millennials (those born somewhere between 1980 and the early 2000s) are expected to account for 75% of the global workforce. As a generation they bring with them consumer expectations shaped by the experience of great online services from the likes of Google and Apple — and expect the same quality of digital services in the workplace. These expectations are a major challenge for businesses worldwide. And firms will need to innovate in the way they hire, manage and grow the best talent.

The Solution/Product

When Coca-Cola’s HR Operations became part of GBS in 2013, they decided to take a fresh approach to the way we provided these services. The idea was to treat the Coca-Cola employees we worked with, our colleagues, as customers of our services. Along with this new mindset came new emphasis on the experience of these services. Putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers, we asked ourselves four key questions — 1. How do we ensure our services are relevant and easy-to-use? 2. How can we demonstrate a human touch in the digital world we work in? 3. How do we make sure our customers enjoy working with us? 4. How we deliver a delightful experience that reflects the Coca-Cola brand? To answer these questions we turned to service design – an innovative approach to creating great service experiences grounded in customer insight.

Key Take-away

Creating a culture of intrapreneurship is a critical way for established companies to differentiate themselves from the competition. A business that encourages a culture of intrapreneurship is one that’s ready for the future — whatever it may bring. By encouraging fresh ideas, welcoming failure, and working as a team, companies both big and small can compete in even the most cutthroat industries.

The Outcome

The current platform has about 200 active boxes. It’s helped generate 60,000 comments on roughly 30,000 ideas. One out of every 30 ideas is typically approved for implementation.

The Problem

Ericsson has a long history of technology and business innovation in communications, leading the industry in areas such as digital switching, mobile systems and managed services. Going forward, innovation must be accelerated to meet increased competition and broadened to put a greater emphasis on areas such as services and business model innovation. More specifically, Ericson needed to find a way to compete against Instant Messaging services like WA, Skype and Wechat as Ericsson relied on global mobile traffic as key revenue.

The Insight

It was found that teams would mostly shared ideas with their direct colleagues and managers and were often lost during its transit towards Upper Management which may approve, and implement the changes. Moreover, each business unit had their own tools and ways of doing things. In this model, one person collects the ideas, and from there, the ideas need to be pushed to someone else. You end up with a lot of small islands of ideas without cross-fertilization or visibility as to what’s happening throughout the larger organization. It’s costly and it’s not a smart solution. The challenge was to figure out how to address the complexity of self-organization.

The Solution/Product

Ericsson has created its own internal innovation pipeline precisely for marginalized innovators to get their own concepts noticed and developed. In 2008, the company started IdeaBoxes, an online idea sharing platform that is used for all types of ideas, from game-changing to incremental. Employees can post their ideas to an online forum to solicit peer feedback and votes of approval. The best way to think of IdeaBoxes is as dedicated brainstorming space. First, managers are encouraged to start topics relating the places where they spot inefficiencies and, in many cases, suggest a broad way that can be refined. Each box creator then becomes the manager of their own thread, tinkering with the suggestions that come in from others until they’ve built their rough idea into a more polished finished concept that might attract attention. Once a box is created, dozens and sometimes hundreds of employees can weigh in with their own ideas. An idea that might help more than one department can always be placed in more than one box. Employees can also find existing boxes to send their suggestions to using keyword matching, which also helps departments around the world see how others are tackling similar issues. Most importantly, everyone gets credit for their contributions. Managers who like suggestions are encouraged to publically flag them with notes saying what was claimed for interest, action, or implementation. Most innovators don’t receive raises or bonuses for creating new products for the company, but interactions on IdeaBox do pay off in other ways. Traditionally, each box creator hands out virtual medals–that’s gold, silver, or bronze–to the collaborators who help best troubleshoot solutions. That gives idea creators visibility, which can help to build their reputation as innovators internally. Box managers are also allowed to incentivize their idea exchanges (some offer their own gift certificates for great suggestions). Each IdeaBoxes participant also accrues points, which become important around review time. “One of the discussions that managers have with employees is around innovation,” Karlsson says. “And since there is a common system across the company it’s easy to get the metrics to see how much the person is contributing.”

Key Take-away

Businesses entering new markets must adjust their business offerings, and strategies to the requirements and needs of its new target customers. It should not be expected that business models proven within home markets, shall achieve matched a matched within new ones.

The Outcome

After 2 more years of operation, Dunkin Donuts has experienced a slow improvement in profitability as management began to respond to user feedback, adapting their offerings to include more indian-based flavours, healthier options and a greater tea-based beverage selection. However, this slow response has cost Dunkin the foreclosure of 35 stores to be closed due to lack of sales, and poor operational efficiency.

The Problem

Dunkin Donuts rapidly expanded into the Indian Market with the same business model and product offering that proved to be a success within the USA. It's business model was originally focused on offering breakfast and beverages from 7AM with its core offering of sweet doughnuts. Dunkin Donuts opened its first store in 2012, in India and further opened 77 more stores around country within the next 4 years with the hope of impressive market acceptance within India.

The Insight

1) Dunkin Donuts promoted offerings that did not co-exist with the users typical journey. Dunkin Donuts had expanded through India promoting their sweet breakfast offerings as a Grab and Go solution to busy, commuting individuals. This proposition however did not attract the consumers they had targetted, as these individuals often preferred a sit-down meal as a way to start their day. Moreover, it is extremely uncommon to find local indians purchasing foreign menu items like donuts, or pastries, when locals typically prefer to eat local cuisines for their Breakfast. 2) Dunkin Donuts promoted offerings that did not meet the pain points of the users. Dunkin Donuts is known worldwide for their selection of sweets, and beverage offerings. It is known that Dunkin' sells more coffee-based beverages than both Starbucks, and Mcdonalds, however within the Indian market, users typically prefer Tea over Coffee, and are not appealed by the standard American beverage flavours that Dunkin initially offered. To make matters worse, change in product offerings were faced by management who were hesitate to change despite measuring record low sales. Their response to this low performance was to continue to open more branches, with the hope that profitability would increase with economy of scale.

Key Take-away

Businesses entering new markets must remain dynamic against the feedback, and experience of its customers, particularly during its early stages. It is important to test and learn quickly, in response to customer insights and adapt your offerings if required.

The Outcome

After 5 years of operational losses, TESCO abandoned the US market, and wrote off over 1.3 billion USD in assets including 4300 full-time staff redundancy payments. During this period, TESCO was seen to have lost $100-200 million USD per year while in operation.

The Problem

TESCO rapidly expanded into the USA using the same successful business model used in Europe and Asia. This model centred around providing convenience, at a cheap cost for busy individuals or families through its selection of ready made meals, and daily essentials.

The Insight

TESCO started off very strong within their initial market research stages. It was known that TESCO conducted market research for over the course of two years ensuring that US market was a viable, and profitable choice for their business offering. Over the two years of research, some of the activities that were conducted included living with american families to understand key buying patterns and commonly purchased items and opening up a prototyped 'test store' within an abandoned warehouse for customer feedback. From such insights, TESCO built their product inventory of 3500 items based on the purchasing trends, and requirements of the customer groups they analysed. TESCO opened their first store in 2007 in LA and opened 120 more stores within Southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix and its own distribution and cooking centre all within the next 2 years. TESCO was opening a store every 5 days, without changing the initial business model that was established following their extensive two year research period. This was the beginning of the doom that TESCO was about to face. 1) TESCO Teams worked in scilos. Research and procurement teams built inventory specific to the families that they studied, with a selection of offerings to fit pain points surrounding price and convenience with a similar business model as retail competitors Wegmans, and Walmart. Marketing teams however pressed forward to target an alternative customer group who sought wholefoods and fresh offerings, similar to Trader Joe's target market. This created a great discontinuity between the offering provided, and the expectations of the users. Moreover, this could not allow TESCO to compete well against the other existing competitors due to the lack of synergy between teams, and their respective visions. CostCo would be cheaper, Restaurant takeout options had a greater range, and were more convenient, Trader Joe's contained a greater range of healthier, wholefood options. TESCO would be a jack of all trades, but master of none within the US retail food market. 2) TESCO Teams did not test and learn following their initial launch. After consolidating their business plan, TESCO went ahead and expanded 121 stores within the short two year period. Operations were mainly focussed on growth, instead of the continuous improvement of their branches. After key criticisms from customers, the TESCO US management team were forced to make significant changes in decor, product offering and branding, however these criticisms were only addressed 1.5 years after the branches were opened, losing considerable profit and revenue as a consequence. 3) TESCO Teams promoted a service that did not co-exist with the users typical journey. TESCO has always been renowed for its 'on the way home' shopping experience, with a focus towards speed over selection variety. This model proved beneficial for regions such as Asia, and the UK where space is limited and commuters would often need to take public transport or walk home. Within this journey, there would be at least one TESCO that you could easily walk in and walk out, on the way home. Within the US, particularly within west and central regions, commuters often rely on cars as their main mode of transport between home and work and consequently, the convenience model that TESCO is built on was not suited to the typical journies of US customers. This particularly harmed sales of their ready-to-eat food selection as users would not be willing to park their car and walk into the centre to purchase the pre-made meal.

Key Take-away

Businesses entering new markets must adjust their business offerings, and strategies to the requirements and needs of its new target customers. It should not be expected that business models proven within home markets, shall achieve matched a matched within new ones.

The Outcome

With over 558 stores, in 17 states in Brazil at its peak. 2018 brought the closure of 120 stores due to inefficiencies in operations, labour force and profit losses over the past 7 years. Growth of sales continues to exist below market average at 2.5%, while local competitors were growing between 3-11%.

The Problem

Walmart saw Brazil as an key emerging market, as its business landscape shifted from being controlled and managed by corporate monopolies to existing as a free market. Walmart entered into Brazil in 1996 with 5 initial stores, and more than doubled their locations with a total of 14 stores over the next 4 years. In 2004, Walmart believed that they would not be able to compete with the rapidly growing market without strategic partnerships, and decided to enter an acquistion strategy over the next 5 years, acquiring both Bompreo and Somaes to collect 258 locations in exchange for 1.26 billion USD. By 2013, Walmart managed more than 535 stores across the country.

The Insight

1) Divisions worked in Silos. With three individual brands to manage, and 558 individual stores to operate, each institution was observed to work strictly in scilos. Information systems that operated Bompreco and Sonae were not syncronized with the Walmart's signature systems, so communications and information flow between all locations were disrupted. It was said that the Walmart procurement team often required three laptops, one to monitor and manage inventory for all Bompreco locations, one to manage Sonae locations as well as another to operate their existing Walmart locations. This created critical disruptions to the speed, and efficiency of logistical operations, sometimes leading to days of empty shelves, and inconsistent inventory between branches. 2) Walmart did not serve the pain points of their users. There was an overall lack of understanding of the local target market as a large value proposition for Walmart, was the opportunity to buy products online. This was a short-term solution formed to support customers as they worked to solve their internal fulfillment issues between institutions. This however failed against Brazilian consumers, who wish to touch and feel the products they buy and have limited trust within the online shopping experience. 3) Walmart focussed on growth, instead of continuous improvement. Walmart expanded way too quickly without considering the delays and constraints that would be involved in the synergy between Walmart and its acquistion partners Sonaes and Bompreco. The extended transition period to synergise the three institutions led Walmart to lose considerable customer satisfaction, and reduced their market share. Factors that would lead to detrimental effects towards the long-term brand of Walmart due to the growing strength and offering of other local competitors within the market.

Key Take-away

YTA reminds us of the importance of co-design between internal stakeholders, particularly when organisations require significant transformational change. YTA's management knew that the experience of each pharmacy was largely the product of the service level and satisfaction of the pharmacists that operate them. At the conclusion of the service implementation roadmap, YTA chose to implement workshops for all pharmacists from all branches to introduce the refined prototype, and build sustainable training to ensure that service level was consistent between the physical environment, the product offering upto the stakeholders that support it.

The Outcome

The results from the overall transformation was astounding. Prescription sales rose by 27%, 4 out of 5 customers were very likely to recommend to other customers for optimal customer experience, 86% of customers shopped more than once and total sales rose by 21% overall. YTA also recieved the 2015 The Global Service Design Award in New York from the Service Design Network, First prize in the prestigious Best of the Year (Vuoden Huiput) Service Design category in Finland in 2014, and a Honorary mention in the Fennia Prize design competition in 2013 for their exceptional user-based service design experience.

The Problem

YTA, Finland’s largest pharmacy chain, aimed to extend its offering into services, in addition to selling medicines. This presented a strategic challenge for positioning a new type of pharmacy, and how to provide a more holistic service. It also impacted the type of physical environment they needed to support this brand new service offering.

The Solution/Product

YTA conducted intensive research into how pharmacies were currently operated. The work included visits to pharmacies in Finland and abroad, in-depth interviews with end customers as well as shop-alongs with customers, where researchers were able to analyse and ask end users about the decision making process at each touchpount of their journey. During concept design, YTA created almost two hundred ideas for improving future services, which were later screened with online participants and tested in seven pharmacies for the next two weeks. After refining the service offering through rounds of customer feedback, the final service model was explained to pharmacy employees in the form of workshops to ensure all members were able to understand all changes, and were even able to co-design small changes within the process. This process overall smoothed the transition of implementation, and was well documented within a concept manual distributed to the pharmacists following the workshops. Finally, a concept pilot pharmacy was built where many of the ideas were taken to reality. The outcome was truly a new service model which shifted from selling products to wellbeing consultation.

Reference

https://www.hellon.com/project/we-created-a-new-holistic-wellbeing-offer-for-a-pharmacy/

Key Take-away

Service design principles and change is not only beneficial for private organisations. Public organisations such as the Ministry of Manpower, believed they could further improve long, unneccesary waiting times, and got the buy-in from management due to its significant impacts to the organisations' bottom line and operational efficiency metrics.

The Outcome

The new orientation made clear that Singapore’s demand for their contributions was as important as their desire to have a pleasant experience living and working in the city. The service redesign process required a better understanding of the decision points of both users and non-users. This involved taking a closer look at the opportunities and difficulties facing users, including those who had succeeded and failed within it, or had encountered problems or avoided it. Design Thinking in the Public Sector – a Future Model? While design thinking has gained currency in the private sector, it has yet to become widespread in the public sector. There are several reasons why this might be so. Such an approach may appear irrational, abstract or even extravagant with outcomes that may not be directly measurable or tangible and hence at odds with the quantitative indicators that customarily account for public spending. Design is often regarded, at best, as a good-to-have element in support of other key public roles instead of being itself a strategic function of operational planning. Most public agencies are the sole providers of unique and often mandated services; there is inherently no strong impetus to radically reinvent their services and operations, and little comparative basis with which to make changes. Three factors can determine a public organization’s success in using design thinking to transform service provision

The Problem

The process of applying for an Employment Pass used to be a laborious 13-step procedure with long waiting times for both employers and foreigners. Process re-engineering efforts in 1996 and 2002 were geared towards reducing processing times, since it was believed customers most desired speed in their applications. It was also easier to derive indicators for efficiency.

The Insight

The Employment Pass service involves two critical touchpoints: the Employment Pass OnLine (EPOL) system which applicants must first access while still in their home countries, and the Employment Pass Services Centre (EPSC) where applicants visit Singapore to submit documents for verification, register biometric data and complete their application. The EPOL was first offered in 2002 but it had limited functions. Fewer than 20% of applications were submitted through the system, leaving some 25,000 hardcopy applications to be received and manually processed each month. Applicants had little information on how applications were evaluated. One of these insights was that users appreciate certainty in their application — such as waiting times, outcomes, or even whether their applications have been received. As a result, visits to the EPSC are now appointment-based, ensuring that applicants would be served at their selected date and time.

The Solution/Product

In 2009, the Work Pass Division collaborated with IDEO. Design thinking methods were applied for the first time. Instead of looking at Employment Pass services as a series of functional processes, Work Pass Division (WPD) began to consider them through the eyes of their users — the employers, employment agencies and foreign workers. The Work Pass application transaction was recast as an experience — applicants were not units to be moved from point to point in the process but instead were individuals with aspirations, preferences and relationships. Between 2005 and 2009, the EPOL was enhanced and redesigned to increase the information flow to users of the system. This has helped to shift the perception of WPD from an opaque and high-handed regulator to that of a responsive and transparent facilitator of employment. An Employment Pass Self Assessment Tool was introduced to help employers and applicants determine the likelihood that their applications would be approved, minimizing efforts wasted on clearly non-qualifying applications. In this collaborative spirit, employers of EP applicants take ownership of the process by ensuring that their background checks on candidate employees meet the stipulated guidelines. The new EPOL serves two critical functions: it is an information portal for applicants, accessible to anyone any where in the world who may be considering taking up employment in Singapore. It is also a direct channel of communication between applicants and the WPD; applicants can submit or cancel applications, check their eligibility and application status, or seek clarifications through email from WPD officers. The form and function of the Centre were redrawn to create the desired user- centred experience. The space was divided into three areas according to their distinctive roles: the arrival lobby, the waiting area, and the enrolment bar. The new arrival lobby has been kept uncluttered as a space for guests to step away from the hustle and bustle of the streets when entering the Centre. Customer service staff, known as service ambassadors, greet visitors at the arrival lobby at once and guide them in using the Centre. These ambassadors replace unwieldy counter queues, complicated signage and awkward navigation, reducing the chances of disorientation during a user’s first visit. Within the waiting area, a main service counter occupies the center of the room (which by convention would have been taken up by rows of hard-backed chairs and numeric queue prompters). This brings the service experience closer to users. Wall-to-wall counters have been replaced by purpose- built modular service counters; no longer do counters appear frustratingly unmanned if service staff step away from their posts. Waiting areas recede against the perimeter of the room, with clear window views overlooking the Singapore River and the city skyline, offering a pleasant waiting environment. Adding to the sense of personalized service, a single- row display for names has replaced the old, large numeric queue number displays.

Reference

https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2015/06/re-designing-employment-pass-application-in-singapore/

Key Take-away

Change designed through service design principles does not always have to require a significant investment. In the case of Rotterdam's transformation, they relied on small, but frequent experiments to not only inspire internal buy-in from stakeholders, but also to avoid high costs that would have required significant approval delays from upper management.

The Outcome

Making the Rotterdam Eye Hospital a more pleasant environment has had a number of positive effects. Patient intake rose by 47%, Patients heal faster now and have a more positive experience overall. The hospital staff can now conduct 95% of all procedures without an overnight stay and the hospital itself scores 8.6 (out of 10) on its customer satisfaction surveys. Employees are also happier. To learn more about some of the implemented solutions created within Rotterdam's transformation, click through to https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2017/01/rotterdam-eye-hospital/.

The Problem

How to transform a 130 year old insititution, into a world class health-care provider.

The Insight

Before establishing the vision of the new Rotterdam facility, their transformation team including Rotterdam’s CEO, CFO, managers, staff, and doctors sought to understand how their patients felt when they entered their current hospital to inspire what could be done to improve their experience. A critical insight found after patient interviews was the realisation that they arrived into the hospital with a fear of becoming blind, either due to their existing condition, or through the procedure of the hospital itself. It was believed that this fear was a key decision making catalyst that encouraged patients to choose one hospital, over another. To maintain market leadership, it was therefore the primary goal of the transformation team to holistically reduce patients’ fear.

The Solution/Product

To do this, the Rotterdam Eye Hospital created a team of 'Innovation Hunter's' whom looked inside and around the patient experience for inspiration on ways to improve the hospital’s service. Following research, and rapid ideation from this team, teams of caregivers from the hospital began designing experiments based on the most promising concepts. Such experiments were crucial to the program’s success as it was impossible to know in advance what impact an idea will actually have. Making small-scale experiments by both Innovation Hunter and Caregiver teams were a crucial part of refining each of the ideated concepts which further supported buy-in from senior managers. These small experiments were somewhat informal, as teams were encouraged by the hospital management to remain curious under unpressured timelines. This allowed operational changes to transition more organically, and gradually as teams would inspire others within other divisions to try new methods of operations. One reason the hospital could be so flexible was that most of the ideas eventually adopted were fairly inexpensive. From the start, planners kept a tight rein on costs, in part because the hospital worked with no outside consultants or high-priced designers. When designers were needed, the planners usually found up-and-coming external designers who saw a commission from the hospital as a way to gain experience and exposure. Not every idea worked. One concept, to pick patients up directly from their homes in a taxi, didn’t reduce their fears at all. When a pilot didn’t catch on, the hospital planners would analyze the experiment and try to understand why. In the case of the taxi service, patients’ fears weren’t reduced because the taxi ended up in the same traffic jams as patients would have encountered if they had used their own cars. Other ideas, such as the EyePad, an iPad app that made it possible for an individual patient to track his or her progress through a procedure, took more time to sell to the staff than to the patients. In that case, planners had to persuade employees that the idea behind an electronic checklist was to reduce patient anxiety and improve service quality, not “blame and shame.”

Reference

https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2017/01/rotterdam-eye-hospital/

The Outcome

The results appeal to patients, families, and caregivers. According to Dr. Lane Donnelly, Nemours chief medical officer, “all the amenities at Nemours focus not only on the child but their parents and families as well.” The hospital won two awards at the International Interior Design Association’s 2013 Best of the Best Gala (Georgia Chapter), one for the Healthcare Design category and one for best overall out of all 11 categories. Parenting.com writer Shawn Bean noted, “Set amidst a wooded expanse of central Florida, with theme park roller coasters peppering the horizon, Nemours Children’s Hospital is arguably the new high water mark for pediatric care in the United States.”

The Problem

Establish Nemours as industry leader by creating an innovative, differentiated, and patient-centric experience.

The Insight

Pediatric healthcare system Nemours provides primary, hospital, and clinic-based specialty care, prevention and health information services, and medical education programs in Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. When Nemours wanted to strengthen its brand, it faced two challenges: Empowered patients had more access to information and choice than ever before, and new players—alternative-care centers, retail-based care clinics, and urgent-care centers—were entering the marketplace, diverting market share.

The Solution/Product

Concepts that were realized in the hospital’s final design included1) An integrated Care Team division where patients and families are introduced to each member of their care team to ensure continuity of care. 2) An adjusted standard operating protocol of Floor Greeters: a concierge-like greeter to welcome and orient families and answer questions. 3) Family Lounges which contained private dining rooms to allow families to cook and eat togethe, while getting treatment. 4) Smart Bracelets and Smart rooms: Personalized RFID-enabled bracelets to keep track of the care team, and smart rooms triggered by the Smart Bracelet, “welcome” the patient upon entry. To arrive at these designs, researchers sought inspiration via analogous kid-friendly environments, such as museums, schools, toy stores, and zoos. Designers also conducted in-context interviews with patients, parents, families, doctors, nurses, support staff, and outside physicians. One key insight that led to the final design: Patients and families came to Nemours with varied levels of experience—first-timers, occasional visitors, and those who were chronically ill—but the hospital treated them all the same. To address these needs, the team created an experience blueprint focused on welcoming, guiding, and supporting patients and families through unique environments, integrated service moments, and market-differentiating spaces and tools. To test the look, feel, and value of the designs, designers built full-scale foam core prototypes of welcome stations, waiting lounges, and exam rooms.

Reference

https://www.ideo.com/case-study/a-hospital-centered-on-the-patient-experience

Key Take-away

Within the highly competive landscape of product development, Nintendo provided us with a critical example of how success can be achieved by avoiding industrial trends, to use service design principles to build new, out of the box ideas through observing the behaviour and needs of their customers.

The Outcome

Over 100 million consoles were sold worldwide, beating competitors XBOX 360 (67 million) and Playstation 3 (64 million). Nintendo Wii remains as the best-selling video game console from Nintendo and was recieved enormous praise by the market for its out-of-the-box thinking.

The Problem

The industry was filled with competitors including Sony and Microsoft, which created a highly competitive environment for developing the best gaming console. In 2001, Microsoft released their XBOX while a year before Sony was enjoying their sales of their newly released Playstation 2. Both products were key leaders in processing power, graphics, design and memory and Nintendo was struggling to compete with their GameCube sales. By 2006, Nintendo was losing significant market share to its dynamic competitors Microsoft and Sony, and was set to lose even more in the next round of console release.

The Insight

It was found that most gaming consoles were typically targetted towards young males, who were hardcore gamers, but in reality Nintendo's competitors failed to acknowledge the potential of kids, teenagers, parents, grandparents, girls and boys as hardcore fans. Nintendo aspired to be a console for everyone to enjoy.

The Solution/Product

Nintendo decided to open a new market of games based on gestural controls to create a more immersive experience. The ‘wii’ intends to break down the wall that separates the video game players from everyone else. This game was designed to appeal to both genders and may be used by first-time gamers as well as hardcore gamers. Pricing was also positioned to ensure that mass market would have access to the product ($250 USD vs. $599 PS3, and $299 Xbox360).

Key Take-away

Bank of America reminds us of the importance of observing extreme users as a way to inspire innovative product development.

The Outcome

The “Keep the Change” service turned out to be a huge success for Bank of America. After its launch in September 2005, the program attracted 2 million customers in less than a year. Since then, more than 12 million customers signed up for the program and saved more than 2 billion dollars in total. 60% of all new customers enroll for “Keep the Change”. 99% of customers who signed up for the program stayed with it.

The Problem

Bank of America needed to wanted to create a new savings product, and analysed existing behaviour of customers for inspiration.

The Insight

User research began with observing and interviewing families within Atlanta, Baltimore and San Francisco to investigate their behaviours towards savings. Within this investigation, a clear trend was becoming more apparent; Mothers were almost always in charge of managing the finances of their families. Digging deeper, IDEO ethnographers observed the behaviour of single mothers, a target group who were particularly tight on their spending budget. It was found within the checkbook registries of one particular Mother from Atlanta that instead of transferring $22.73 for her refuel bill, she had paid $23. She had explained that she often rounded up her bill payments to create a build up of savings within her customer account to support months of lower income. Another important insight was the realisation that most single mothers are not willing to open up a bank account for the purpose of savings as they believe they do not have enough funds to set aside.

The Solution/Product

Two Bank of America Vice Presidents, Faith Tucker and Ray Chinn, assembled a team of product managers, finance experts, software engineers, and operation experts for brainstorming. The team held 20 sessions and generated 80 product concepts. They favored one idea: the “Keep the Change” program. “Keep the Change” is a service that automatically rounds up all purchases made with a debit card. These rounded up cents are transferred to a savings account. To test a prototype of the idea, the team created a cartoon video displaying the rounding up service and tested it in an online survey with 1600 participants. After an extremely positive response, “Keep the Change” was pitched to the consumer division and got approved. In an iteration of the idea, the product development team added three features, as a Bloomberg case study describes: Firstly, a summary of the rounded-up transactions in the account; secondly, a feature preventing a rounding-up transfer from pushing the user’s account into overdraft; and thirdly, a promotion. As a treat, Bank of America matches the saving at 100 per cent for the first three months up to a certain amount.

Reference

https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2018/09/feeling-in-control-bank-of-america-helps-customers-to-keep-the-change/

Key Take-away

The best ideas that have the potential to transform your organisation, could be sitting in your office as we speak. Often times, it is the employees of the organisation that experience the real battle scars of a business and who better to create new ideas than the people who experience the true pain points day by day. Provided the right tools, infrastructure, and support from upper management, you can unlock the potential of your employees and at the same time, improve corporate culture.

The Outcome

Eight proof of concept examples and short documentary film done during the programme has raised the awareness in organisational wide of the need for organisational change towards more customer centricity. A Chief Customer Officer was appointed to lead a dedicated Customer Experience team and customer experience has become a core focus area for all product and service change initiatives. Besides changing mindsets, a specific Design Thinking department was established, mandated to work across the entire organisation. This is now responsible for designing and delivering a comprehensive range of masterclasses, workshops and design sprints — of varying complexity — with cross functional teams of Bank of Ireland employees. The Experience Design Programme increased competences and gave strong mandate to engage customers and stakeholders to co-design and prototype early on.

The Problem

Due to the rapid speed of fintech, and blockchain technology, the market was moving faster than what 234 year old BOI (Bank of Ireland) could innovate and support. They needed to find ways to create a new product offering, in order to capture the modern needs of its customers.

The Insight

Traditional methods of market research had failed to help BOI understand and design for their customers’ rapidly changing requirements. For example, the API sharing economy, open banking and blockchain have drastically accelerated the rate and pace of change. To keep ahead, the challenge was to fundamentally alter the way BOI designs and runs its business. BOI's task was to help senior management understand customer-centricity and service design and how to apply it to support the bank’s overall business goals.

The Solution/Product

Over an 8-month period, 36 design thinkers from the management team were divided into eight cross-functional teams participating in an extensive programme of workshops, mentoring sessions and team assignments which were all designed to address real-life customer experience challenges faced by the bank. These challenges ranged from complex processes like bereavement and customer identification and verification, plus day-to-day tasks like customer payments, through to the simple act of appointment setting. The Experience Design Programme provided participants with the relevant tools and expertise to support the organisation’s shift towards customer-centricity. Additionally, the programme devised and ran workshops with senior management, which sought to uncover significant obstacles. Finally, a series of steering committee workshops, in conjunction with the training sessions and hands-on mentoring support, was used to drive the cultural change. This helped ensure continuous, systematic implementation of customer-centricity and the service design approach across Bank of Ireland. For example, one of the themes explored was bereavement, for which we helped create a redesigned service offering. Every year BOI loses almost 17,000 customers this way. The end-to-end journey for customers, their relatives and executors, was a broken and disjointed experience, requiring multiple touchpoints depending on the number of products held by the deceased. Little recognition was given to the fact that the deceased and their family had been loyal customers for many years. After getting to know customers with recent experience of bereavement, the team created a solution to enable BOI make a better emotional connection with these vulnerable customers. The redesigned outcome is a seamless ‘one-and-done’ process which eliminates frictional elements (e.g. redundant identification and verification requests), replacing them with a personalised, wholly empathetic service that recognises loyalty.

Reference

https://www.hellon.com/project/service-design-transformed-bank-of-ireland-from-customer-focused-to-customer-centric/

Key Take-away

1) Embedding Design Thinking within Organisations takes time, and does not happen overnight 2) Appropriate education is the key to sustainable success. Design thinking is not just a set of principles; it also requires a certain mindset that is acquired by project-based training and experiences overseen by coaches who have previously acquired this mindset. 3) Recruit strategic members of your core design thinking team. Recruit internal staff who have worked in the organization for a considerable time and therefore have a well-developed network of contacts within the business. Such people can then be assigned as DT team members and later move back into the business. 4) Prototyping is a key tool for management buy-in. Fully functional prototypes of ideas are not necessary for getting people involved; a rudimentary, tangible prototype of a unique idea is sufficient to engage top-level managers and get them thinking about further usage scenarios, even during post-project phases.

The Outcome

Over the next 6 years of implementation, a innovation community of over 150 members was formed, of whome regularly attended each milestone presentation, 8 projects were succesfully fostered from concept to market.

The Problem

How to embed Design Thinking within DB's IT Division.

The Solution/Product

A small team of 4 people from multidisciplinary backgrounds were assigned to form a full-time Design Thinking team. Such a team would be required in order to gain full access and interaction with their own pre-existing staff networks and facilitate cross-integration of division silos. These individuals were sent to a bootcamp workshops to kickstart the use and implementation of basic desng thinking toolsand capabilities such as Interview and Observation techniques, as well as Ideation exercises. Following the bootcamp, the small team started to work on small ideas within Deutsche Bank, and following this, presented a few prototyped solutions to their internal interested parties. Although these prototyped generated mixed results, the process began to create growing communities of individuals interested in Design Thinking within their organisation, and particularly captivated one Managing Director which further championed the concept within his strategic discussions and conversations with clients. Although the initial prototypes may not have been considered as the 'best, or practical' solutions, the Deautsche Bank community could not doubt the impressive speed of development, and the power of rapid prototyping. Within the first 11 months of implementation, the DT team rolled out their first end-to-end concept: A Financial Planning Timeline to engage new younger customers. Following the initial implementation phase, Deusche Bank continued to grow the Design Thinking concept by creating milestone presentations that were open to all Bank employees, every 2 months, describing the internal process of concept to prototype for a variety of different problems. This audience began to grow as curious employees and managers from a variety of different divisions came, observed, and were ultimately inspired by the ideas generated from the process of design thinking. The community was so large, that DB created a systematic education program to foster its innovative community, by providing voluntary workshops on DT tools, techniques, and developed changing mindsets on innovation within their individual sectors.

Key Take-away

Doug Dietz provides us with a great reminder about the power of empathy. Only after 20 years of service to GE, did Doug realize the impact of his machines to his younger clients, albeit the operational protocols required in order to keep children calm to improve imaging outcome. Through just small changes in aesthetics, and operating protocols, the adventure series provides us with a great case study on the importance of putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers.

The Outcome

Many children suffer from anxiety and are not able to stay still whilst the procedure is underway, making the process stressful and forcing scans to be redone. The new child-friendly scanners make a big difference in how children react to being scanned. Patient satisfaction scores went up 90%, and scanned children no longer experience anxiety anymore. Instead some of them even ask their parents if they can come back tomorrow. It makes it easier for children to hold still during the procedure what in turn prevents the doctors from having to repeat the scan. This also reduces the need for anaesthesiologists, decreasing the screening cycle time, and allowing more patients to be scanned sooner, without the limitations of the doctor. The experience of joy and play during the scan also took away the fear from parents. As Doug Dietz puts it: “If you got the child you got the parent, and if you got the parent, you got the child.” He now trains other GE employees to use design thinking and innovation methods in their teams.

The Problem

Diagnostic imaging procedures are cutting-edge technology, but at the same time they are an unpleasant experience for patients – and even more for pediatric patients. Doug Dietz is an industrial designer, working for GE healthcare since more than 20 years. He remembered the first time when he saw a little girl who was crying on her way to a scanner that was designed by him. Doug suddenly saw the situation with the eyes of the girl. Dietz explained that MRIs made a terrible noise, and the little girl started to cry. “The parents are looking at each other and they don’t have to say a word, because they don’t know how they’re going to get their child through this,” he explained. Understanding that the environment where the scanning was done simply didn’t work for younger children was a wakeup call. From here, A new challenge was born. How could one create a scanner experience that children would love?

The Insight

The engineer started from the knowledge that the anxiety curve for both children and parents start with finding out that the child has to have the scan. The anxiety is then exacerbated until they find themselves in the hospital, already upset by the time they see the scanner. The plan was simple: offer an environment that was so welcoming that children would feel like being scanned is an adventure and not a trial. To do so, they asked customers and children about what they would like during ideation sessions.

The Solution/Product

The pilot rooms, which were showcased in the University of Pittsburgh Hospital, received incredible response. In the variety of adventures, which include aromatherapy, calming decorations and in some cases, disco-ball bubbles, children are transported to another, more imaginative world where simple commands to get the scan done accurately become part of the adventure. In one of the Adventure Series, children have to get into a canoe, and are made to lie down inside. “They tell children to hold still so that they don’t rock the boat, and if you really do hold still, the fish will start jumping over the top of you,” Dietz explains. In the Pirate Adventure, a visual transformation of the equipment that was available before, patients are on a dock. There is a shipwreck and some sand castles in the corner. Children then work on the plank to be scanned. The Coral City Adventure in the emergency room gives children an underwater experience. It has a disco ball that makes light like bubbles around the room; children get into a yellow submarine and listen to the sound of harps whilst the procedure takes place. The Cozy Camp gives children the chance to be scanned in a specialized sleeping bag, under a starry sky in an impressive camp setting.

Reference

http://newsroom.gehealthcare.com/from-terrifying-to-terrific-creative-journey-of-the-adventure-series/

Key Take-away

Plum Organics reminds us of how powerful existing customer behaviour may assist the creation of great new products, and services. Researchers shadowed mothers through their daily life, and found more valuable insights through watching their users live through pain points they didn't vocalise.

The Outcome

Baby Bowls for Plum are now available at retailers nationwide and are a natural evolution for the brand, helping Plum continue to provide high-quality, organic baby food for consumers and their children, even if they’re eating on the go.

The Problem

For most parents, ensuring their child’s proper nourishment is a top priority, but that’s not always easy, especially for parents on the go. Plum Organics, an organic baby food company, set out to solve that problem by providing families with pureed fruits and veggies in pouches, making it easy for them to feed their babies.

The Insight

By conducting research and in-person interviews with families, Plum set out to ensure that the new product was both desirable and functional for parents and their babies. By joining families in their homes, researchers was able to gather essential insights that helped inform prototypes and the final design, like the fact that nothing can replace the feeling of making an intimate connection with a child through spoon feeding; that baby food is often wasted if a parent can’t remember how long a product has been in the fridge; that families struggle with how to spoon-feed their children on the go without making a mess, and that both parents and retailers were concerned that baby food jars don’t stack securely on shelves

The Solution/Product

With those insights in mind, the team designed a transparent bowl that allows consumers to see the natural color of Plum’s vibrant, organic food. A resealable lid makes it easy for parents to store food between feedings, and the container includes a feature that allows them to track the day that they opened the pack to ensure that they don’t end up throwing away perfectly good food. Lastly, the new package is easily and safely stackable and includes a divot in the lid for parents to rest a spoon on, making for a much cleaner and more sanitary feeding experience.

Reference

https://www.ideo.com/case-study/rethinking-baby-food-packaging

Key Take-away

Creating a culture of intrapreneurship is a critical way for established companies to differentiate themselves from the competition. A business that encourages a culture of intrapreneurship is one that’s ready for the future — whatever it may bring. By encouraging fresh ideas, welcoming failure, and working as a team, companies both big and small can compete in even the most cutthroat industries.

The Outcome

The current platform has about 200 active boxes. It’s helped generate 60,000 comments on roughly 30,000 ideas. One out of every 30 ideas is typically approved for implementation.

The Problem

Ericsson has a long history of technology and business innovation in communications, leading the industry in areas such as digital switching, mobile systems and managed services. Going forward, innovation must be accelerated to meet increased competition and broadened to put a greater emphasis on areas such as services and business model innovation. More specifically, Ericson needed to find a way to compete against Instant Messaging services like WA, Skype and Wechat as Ericsson relied on global mobile traffic as key revenue.

The Insight

It was found that teams would mostly shared ideas with their direct colleagues and managers and were often lost during its transit towards Upper Management which may approve, and implement the changes. Moreover, each business unit had their own tools and ways of doing things. In this model, one person collects the ideas, and from there, the ideas need to be pushed to someone else. You end up with a lot of small islands of ideas without cross-fertilization or visibility as to what’s happening throughout the larger organization. It’s costly and it’s not a smart solution. The challenge was to figure out how to address the complexity of self-organization.

The Solution/Product

Ericsson has created its own internal innovation pipeline precisely for marginalized innovators to get their own concepts noticed and developed. In 2008, the company started IdeaBoxes, an online idea sharing platform that is used for all types of ideas, from game-changing to incremental. Employees can post their ideas to an online forum to solicit peer feedback and votes of approval. The best way to think of IdeaBoxes is as dedicated brainstorming space. First, managers are encouraged to start topics relating the places where they spot inefficiencies and, in many cases, suggest a broad way that can be refined. Each box creator then becomes the manager of their own thread, tinkering with the suggestions that come in from others until they’ve built their rough idea into a more polished finished concept that might attract attention. Once a box is created, dozens and sometimes hundreds of employees can weigh in with their own ideas. An idea that might help more than one department can always be placed in more than one box. Employees can also find existing boxes to send their suggestions to using keyword matching, which also helps departments around the world see how others are tackling similar issues. Most importantly, everyone gets credit for their contributions. Managers who like suggestions are encouraged to publically flag them with notes saying what was claimed for interest, action, or implementation. Most innovators don’t receive raises or bonuses for creating new products for the company, but interactions on IdeaBox do pay off in other ways. Traditionally, each box creator hands out virtual medals–that’s gold, silver, or bronze–to the collaborators who help best troubleshoot solutions. That gives idea creators visibility, which can help to build their reputation as innovators internally. Box managers are also allowed to incentivize their idea exchanges (some offer their own gift certificates for great suggestions). Each IdeaBoxes participant also accrues points, which become important around review time. “One of the discussions that managers have with employees is around innovation,” Karlsson says. “And since there is a common system across the company it’s easy to get the metrics to see how much the person is contributing.”

Key Take-away

Finavia reminds us that sometimes it is not the final product that gives the greatest value, but rather the process itself. In the case of Travellab, Finavia chose to invite end customers to act as participants, and key decision makers through their process of refining and converging their top twelve ideas down to a single winner. The hype generated from the experiment alone formed significant praise from domestic, and international media, and even affected the number of passengers through inbound flights as more and more people wanted to participate.

The Outcome

The project has won two awards: first prize in the prestigious Best of the Year (Vuoden Huiput) design award in Finland and the global Service Design Award in New York from the leading institution for expertise in service design. Finavia also saved 12 M euros / year on cost savings, while the Finland airport experienced a 3% growth in international transfer passengers and 80+ mentions in global press and online media.

The Problem

Finavia, Finland’s airport operator, had an enviable problem: they had generated over 200 ideas for improving their service at Helsinki Airport, collected from customers and employees, but weren’t sure what their next steps should be. Finavia needed to create a trustworthy and agile model for prototyping and measuring these ideas. The goal was to present Finavia’s management with a validated and prioritised list of new services which would best support Helsinki Airport in its strategic aim to become Northern Europe’s leading transit airport for passengers in the Asian market.

The Insight

The airport has identified four different passenger profiles among its users: fast and efficient flyers, who make up 38% of the airport’s passengers; enjoyment seekers, who come in second at 31%; safety seekers, who are the smallest group at 13%; and habitual travellers, who make up 18% of Helsinki Airport’s passengers.

The Solution/Product

As a way to verify and test the service prototypes, Finavia created Travellab, a multi-use space that may be transformed to support a variety of different services and expose Finavia's prototypes to real customer traffic and insights. Finavia tested 12 new service prototypes chosen from the initial 200 improvement ideas that they had gathered from passengers. They included pop-up yoga classes (‘YogaGate’) and mobile coffee vendors, Information boards, a Finnish-themed photo wall, and a Midsummer Nights Dream experience, fitted with Finnish food tastings and traditional dance. Each prototype was tested for a period of a week and recieved customer feedback from each 'sprint'. In total the experiment took 75 days to complete, however an astounding 900 passenger interviews were collected over this time period.

Reference

https://www.hellon.com/project/we-made-passengers-want-to-change-planes-at-helsinki-airport/

Key Take-away

While it is very easy to assume the problems of your end customers, it is easier to assume the right solutions for such problems. In Danske's case, service design helped filter which ideas contained tangible weight to existing problems experienced by end customers, and was able to save £4 million worth of investments into the wrong products and services.

The Outcome

Following this exercise, Danske Bank championed the service design process through its ability to save the organisation over £4m worth of planned technology investments for products and services that were falsely promised to satisfy customer needs. On top of this, this process allowed Danske Bank to increase customer satisfaction by upto 37%, doubled the amount of meetings financial advisors scheduled with both new, and existing customers and increased the number of customer referrals through higher customer satisfaction. Morever, employees rated a 68% higher satisfaction rating following this exercise and particularly recieved support from senior parts of the organisation who are now confident in leading future projects taking a similar approach.

The Problem

Danske Bank in Denmark exists as the regions largest Bank, with over 5 million retail customers. In order to gain greater market share, competitors however have been aggressively marketing new account-switching services that have been seen to take customers away from Danske's services. As customers rarely change banks often, it was imperative for Danske to maintain the retention of their customers through optimal customer experience, and value.

The Insight

It was found that traditionally staff and management were not allowed to contact customers directly, and thus were not able to properly recieve and process true customer insights. To counteract this, Danske began to build customer centricity by hosting in-depth customer interviews, ideation and prioritisation workshops, ensuring the participation of front line employees and key stakeholders.

The Solution/Product

Following eight customer in-depth interviews and over three ideation and prioritisation workshops, the team were able to objectively abandon a number of planned technology investments after proving that such investments were not meeting the true pain points of their customers. This paved the way for more than 28 new ideas, which were later refined to 9 winning concepts to be prototyped and tested. At this stage of development, these prototyped were discussed with Danske's customer within in a Concept Lab — a test environment for early stage service prototypes. The team then simulated three new, improved customer journies by prototyping all the new service touch points, from handouts to interior configuration to new web pages and then invited customers, advisors and key stakeholders to go through the journey and give feedback to continue continuous improvement of the developed prototypes.

Reference

https://www.hellon.com/project/we-inspired-a-uk-bank-to-think-differently-about-new-challenges/

Key Take-away

Plum Organics reminds us of how powerful existing customer behaviour may assist the creation of great new products, and services. Researchers shadowed mothers through their daily life, and found more valuable insights through watching their users live through pain points they didn't vocalise.

The Outcome

Baby Bowls for Plum are now available at retailers nationwide and are a natural evolution for the brand, helping Plum continue to provide high-quality, organic baby food for consumers and their children, even if they’re eating on the go.

The Problem

For most parents, ensuring their child’s proper nourishment is a top priority, but that’s not always easy, especially for parents on the go. Plum Organics, an organic baby food company, set out to solve that problem by providing families with pureed fruits and veggies in pouches, making it easy for them to feed their babies.

The Insight

By conducting research and in-person interviews with families, Plum set out to ensure that the new product was both desirable and functional for parents and their babies. By joining families in their homes, researchers was able to gather essential insights that helped inform prototypes and the final design, like the fact that nothing can replace the feeling of making an intimate connection with a child through spoon feeding; that baby food is often wasted if a parent can’t remember how long a product has been in the fridge; that families struggle with how to spoon-feed their children on the go without making a mess, and that both parents and retailers were concerned that baby food jars don’t stack securely on shelves

The Solution/Product

With those insights in mind, the team designed a transparent bowl that allows consumers to see the natural color of Plum’s vibrant, organic food. A resealable lid makes it easy for parents to store food between feedings, and the container includes a feature that allows them to track the day that they opened the pack to ensure that they don’t end up throwing away perfectly good food. Lastly, the new package is easily and safely stackable and includes a divot in the lid for parents to rest a spoon on, making for a much cleaner and more sanitary feeding experience.

Reference

https://www.ideo.com/case-study/rethinking-baby-food-packaging