Summary of the event

1. The event explores the concept of having a place to find, organize, and work on design methods.
2. Miro is highlighted as a great tool for describing and planning design methods.
3. The guests introduced are Lorena, Karo, and Klaus, who are all involved in spatial design.
4. The Design Methods Library consists of 50 design methods with accompanying videos, resources, and pro tips.
5. The Design Method Mix Canvases provide visual summaries of how different design methods can be used in a project.
6. Three types of Design Method Mix Canvases are discussed: timeline-based, ping-pong mix, and impact-based.
7. Students share their own Method Mix canvases, showcasing their unique approaches to mixing design methods.

Automated transcript

Teaser

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Daniele: What if you had a place where you could find organize and work on all your design methods? 

That's what we explore in this event of the Swiss Service Design Network. 

You'll discover

A library of 50 design methods that live within a Miro board. 

Why Miro is such a great tool for describing learning and planning, design methods. 

Different ways of summarizing the mix of design methods that you want to use for one project in one simple canvas. 

Our favorite and least favorite design methods.

Thanks to all the Spatial Design students of the HSLU, Lucerne School of Art and Design that helped create these resources, to Karolina Pelaez, Anna Lorena Lodeiros Velasquez and Klaus Marek for sharing their knowledge and experience when it comes to design methods.

Welcome everybody. I'm super excited that you are all joining us today for a webinar on design methods. 

Introduction of Guests

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Daniele: I'd like to introduce you to the lovely guests that we have today.

We have Lorena, we have Karo, and we have Klaus. Let me just shortly introduce them to you. We have Ana Lorena Loideros Velazquez, who is a spatial designer living in Switzerland. She has an experience in architecture and she's extremely interested in how to help indigenous people express a cultural their cultural meaningful meaningfully through digital experiences.

We have someone very interesting in here. We have also Carolina Pelaez, who is also a spatial designer, living also in Switzerland, who has experience in facility management. And her deep interest these days is in helping local music festivals create unique and memorable experiences. And on the other side like me, we have Klaus Marek professor at the Hochschule Luzern who teaches there Service Design and Spatial Design.

And he is also the head of the bachelor's program in Spatial Design at this university. And before we start I would like to give the word maybe to Klaus so that he tells us a bit can maybe answer the question. 

Discussion on Spatial Design

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Daniele: What is this spatial design thing? Klaus, 

Klaus: we are listening to you. Yes, thank you very much, Daniele, for giving especially our students the opportunity to share their knowledge in this format.

I really appreciate that and And just I also just like your commitment to the Bachelor of Spatial Design where you teach students design methods in this semester and helping them to set up their bachelor thesis. Thank you very much, Daniele, for having us here. for your engagement in the Bachelor of Spatial Design.

Yeah what is spatial design? Sometimes I'm struggling a little bit of explaining what it is, because it's a very broad approach of designing spaces. Other than or in comparison to interior design or other approaches that have already a a solution in their name, let's say we are dealing with, let's say, spatial problems and not with solution at the first hand.

And let's say we focus on the flow of people between different areas of the indoor and outdoor environment and try to create value and understanding of spaces from the private to the public areas, from detailed interior design to large regional strategies and from the physical to the digital space.

And I come, I have different backgrounds. The kind of the bachelor is also mirroring this different background. So I'm a product designer originally and an architect, but also engaged in service design and a mix of all that is for me service spatial design, because as I said the focus on the flow of people between different areas means there is always a journey of people.

Let's say a visitor or customer journey or just a chain of experiences that are related to a space. And I think that's interesting also because we then could use. Methods from different disciplines and I love very much the approach of service design because it's always related to people to human beings and their experiences in different kinds of contexts and every context has to do with space.

So we are, let's say in this area working. And the students should know the methods, so I'm very happy that Daniele worked with the students on methods. But they should also be ready with kind of tools to design spaces. That's what spatial design is.

It's complex to explain, but I love complex things, let's see what Carolina and Lorena come up with. 

Daniele: Thanks so much for sharing that Klaus. In fact, Often when I try to explain it I often say, it's, we're taking the best of architecture, trying to take the best of media, trying to take the best of also theater and this kind of side things, they trying to take the best of service design, you put it in a mix, you do your Bercham usually.

And because we're Swiss, and that's where you have one taste that we can call spatial design, which is the art of designing spaces if they are virtual or physical and all the experiences that go with it. 

Introduction to the Design Methods Library

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Daniele: I'm super excited that we have the possibility today to speak about that, because the plan that we have today for This event is to share with you a framework and tools that we have created within the class of Spatial Design about design methods.

We've created together a list of 50 design methods, and all created in a mirror board, plus a tool that A set of tools that help you to imagine how you could use these methods in a project. So this is what we will share today. And now let's go into the interesting stuff, which is the design method and this library of these methods. Caro, the stage 

Karo: is yours. Perfect. Thank you so much, Daniele. Hi, everybody. Welcome.

The library of Design Methods

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Karo: Today I'm going to talk a little bit about what we did in our service design course at the HSLU. We got familiar with 50 different design methods and each of the students got to analyze some of them and actually design something like a card showing or showcasing the method and let's see if I can open it.

So everything that we did was in Miro which is super easy to work to to work on together in groups, which is always very nice, especially with a big group like our class.

So here, for example, somebody did a card for card sorting for the method of card sorting. And then what we did was A little video, like here you can see like a three minute video. They talk in the video about what this method is and when do we use it. And then we have to list some further resources and sometimes there's also pro tips from Daniele in those videos.

As you can see here. ANd what's also good about this.

You can see the status of when it was done. If you're still working on it. So it's all really really easy to handle, which was super nice for this entire course. And also we categorized them in the different categories. sections of the design process which was also easier for us while we were recording the videos to be able to locate the methods and where we could use them.

Maybe if we want to come back to them for our bachelor thesis when we're working on that. Here on the side there's some more space for information that's about to come. And yeah, here's a group of our class, all the names. And. Now I'm going to give the stage to Lorena and she's going to explain what we did further with all of those cards that we designed.

The Design Method Mix Canvases

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Lorena: Thank you, Caro. Hi, everyone. Now I'm going to explain to you what you can do with this. What you see here is the library and it's pretty easy basically just to put it into a mixed canvas. You just take them and drag and drop into Your personalized mixed canvas and what is a mixed canvas that's how you want to go go through with your project.

So it's just a plan for organi to organize yourself and you can use different of so many of these methods. For example, you have this one. This is a way to to go by and in this example, it's divided by, by, you take it as a timeline, so basically for example, what I have, the methods that I'm going to use today, if I, today I'm going to do some research I just drag and drop some of them, and I also then organize for the rest of the week and month, and this depends if you have a deadline, And then you can organize this would be one approach to take your project.

What is cool here is that you can once you have them all here you can obviously go back into them. And not only that you have them in a program, but you can see what it's all about, what you chose. And as Cata was mentioning before, this is really useful. This set settings for to do or in progress.

And yes, and then in this example for here, you can see this is one way to take it. You might take some of the design methods at least the ones that you want to do. So this will be the part that you will do. And then you might want to do another one. And then you just drop them there,

and yeah, so this is one of the methods that you can take. But of course, this is just a suggestion, like we will show you after many other ways that you can do this, and we will talk about how also, how we decided to take it for our project. Daniele, you can explain other other 

Daniele: canvases. 

Overview of the methods library and canvases

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Daniele: Thank you so much.

And this is a good moment for me, I think to also do a bit of before we go into these canvases in more detail, I'd like to zoom out a little bit with you. What we have shared until now are two parts. One thing is this design methods library, which is a set of 50 design methods, which are commented, which have elements of information in them that you can then use to go further to learn.

Methods. So that's one part that we have, which is this 50 design methods. And you can either go through them, learn about them, make notes about them. So it's something that is not rigid. It's that you can play with. So this is the first part. And the second part that we have is one part where we answer the question but Daniele, it's good to have design methods, but what the fuck do I do?

Do with them concretely. And that's what we try to answer with another set of tools, which we call the design method mix canvases. And basically the goal of such a canvas is to help you summarize visually how you will use different methods for a specific project. So having one sheet. One, one board of all your project, all the different methods that you will use so that you can plan in a better way.

So these are the two elements that we just shared with you. And these two elements obviously here in the demo live in Miro and which means also that you can. Play with them and go further. So these are the two elements and 

More Design Methods Mix Canvases

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Daniele: I'd like to go a little bit deeper in the design methods mix canvases.

Because you might know a lot of these methods, but you want maybe now to plan how you want to do a project. And what we believe, and that's one thing that we often teach in this class about design methods is, that there isn't one. There are many ways to work with design methods and to interpret them and to mix them.

And the first one that we show here is this timeline where Lorena showed you that, there is a way to organize them by saying, I have a goal, a specific goal for a project. And based on that goal, I want to be a bit in project management. mode, thinking in timeline mode, what do I have to do today?

What do I have to do next week and next month? And I can then rearrange the methods following that goal. And then also here as the students have expressed is it's important when you are in project management mode that you also think a bit about your mental health and separate the things that you will do and the things that you might do.

So this is one approach to do it. to use these methods and summarize a project in a way that is a bit timeline driven. But as Lorena hinted, we don't want to just show one way of using these methods or mixing them, but we want to show that there are different ways and that these are important also for different projects.

So another way of seeing that is to say I want to have a good healthy mix of different approaches in my project. And this is where we come with this ping pong design method mix canvas. And here the goal is basically to maybe have a few methods in there and then to realize that, oh, I have a lot in research and I have a lot of in the ideation.

But I didn't yet think about how I'm going to synthesize and decide. And this canvas then helps you to see how healthy your mix of methods is. And another thing that we add to this canvas is the opportunity for you to think about the fact that even if you're deep in research mode, There is always the opportunity to come back to prototyping.

Even if you're deep in ideation mode, there is always the opportunity to come back and prototype. And so this is the two ways that we believe this specific canvas is helpful is first it's showing where you have a balance and where you don't have a balance in the number of methods that you use.

And, the other thing is, it helps you just to remember that even if you're deep in the trenches in one way of working, you still always can come back to having your hands dirty and getting shit done through prototyping. Last one that we add here in this can, in, in this mirror boat is one which is more about selecting methods based on their impact.

This is something that you might have already seen in different in the in different ways, which is basically sorting the design methods by their effort and their impact. And then it will basically tell you, okay, if the design method that I'm choosing for this specific project, I think, has a lot of effort and no impact, maybe that's not a good method to use.

If it's something that has low impact, but also low effort, maybe I should just use one of the methods that is in there. And. And so on. And what it shows also, and this is also something that the students brought up, was this notion of, again bringing a bit of mental health in, in, in the selection of design methods by saying, even if I have here a lot of design methods, let's say I might have 10 methods in here, which I assume are low hanging fruit, which might have a good impact on my project and and still don't need so much effort.

But if I were to do all of them, I would overload myself with work. And that's why we put here little suggestions like pick two if these are low hanging fruits and if there need more effort, just pick one, if you have the possibility. And when it comes to the candies. There were little ones that don't need so much effort but don't need also don't bring that much impact.

Then we say, if there is one that is so fun that you want to use it, hey, it's okay, just pick one. And that's a bit of the balance that we want to bring here to say when And when it comes to creating a mix of how you're going to use these design methods, there are different ways of seeing it. And here we propose three, which is one which is a bit more project management based with a timeline.

One which is more about thinking Do I have, do I put enough focus on each different stages or approaches in the design in the design process? And another one which is very much driven on, I just want to have the most impact with the least effort. And that's the three one that we want.

to share today a bit in more depth, but the students of the program have designed many more and that's what you will see here is there are some people who made the double diamonds and use that to imagine how they're going to mix their methods. There are people who did loops and showed them their project like that.

So there are different, even more ways. of doing it. And that's what we wanted again to share here is that even if you have 50 design methods we believe you can mix them in a very smart way and the way that you mix them can be something again very creative. 

The Method Mix of the students

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Daniele: And now we'd like to show you how students have how students have thought about this MethodMix canvases, so in short, ways of visualizing in one sheet of paper the whole project, how they have done that in their own way.

And for that we will start with let me check, we will start with Caro, who will share with us her own MethodMix. Caro, you are now on the screen. stage. I will share your screen so that everybody can see your screen and how you interpreted this idea of having a design method mix canvas which shows your whole project and which methods you're going to use.

Karo's Method Mix

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Karo: Thank you again, Daniele. So I always stick with the Timeline layout, because it just makes more sense for me personally in my head. I like to keep it very simple, so that's what I try to do here. Literally just put the different parts of the design process of my bachelor thesis process and visualize them as easily as I could.

And then for now, I'm still in in between research and ideation and I find it hard to differentiate entirely between the two. I feel like it's a lot of back and forth in this part of the process, which is why I chose to make them overlap. And even now I have an idea and then I have to go back into research just to make sure that the idea makes sense or if it's worth pursuing that idea.

And then these are the three following ones are... Parts of the process where I haven't arrived yet. So this is just what I set as my goals. What kind of methods I can imagine myself using in that part of the process. But I cannot tell if those will be the ones that I actually want to use at that point.

Which is really cool that we have the library, because then I can still go back and look at other methods that maybe might be more suitable. And that's really just it. I go with this flow of this timeline, and yeah, that's about it. Thank you. 

Daniele: Thank you so much Carol for sharing that. I think it's very inspiring to see that the way we mix methods is something very personal and your preference is is a kind of like more a linear way, a timeline, and we can now see that Lorena has a bit of an other way To work with that.

And let's see how now Lorena, you have done that. 

Lorena: Thank you, Anila. 

Lorena's Method Mix

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Lorena: My the way that I show I chose to represent my mixed canvas was through a double diamond. I'm sure many of you know this design method the same way like Cara, I also decided to see I saw it more as a timeline and I adapted the double diamond to the faces and the parts of the These sections of design methods, and also, as Daniele mentioned before, this is a very personal canvas.

This is a very personal way of working. In my case, this is for my bachelor thesis, so we'll have a written part and a practical part. I worked as the, right now we're working on the written part and we're in the ideation and research, the same as Caro. And some of these methods actually for example, that I have an ideation like card sorting could be more.

for research. But that's the beauty of this method is that you can use it for your own, you can adapt it to your needs. For example, I have like decision in both of the stages because yeah, I will at some point in the development and part of The process say, for example, that I need to think how I'm going to approach my project, and then I need to decide which methods to take so I've included that there obviously this part is still in the future, so As Caro mentioned before, this is something that could change and it's really handy to have the library there so that we can always change this and go back and it's something that you can continue working on and yeah, so for now, I, as I mentioned, I'm in the first part, so I could continue with this design method and this is the one that worked Thank you.

The best for me, but you can use it it, you're free to even make your own and that's 

Daniele: it. Thank you so much Lorena. I think again, very inspiring to me to see, that different brains come up with different visualizations but that's still, we are all able to summarize in kind of one view The project that we were trying to do, and I think this is something that is extremely valuable.

Before we go in the Q& A session

Summary of what has been shared

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Daniele: I'd like to share again a little bit of a summary of this approach. And to do that, I will show you again this screen. So basically what we shared today are these. Two things. The first one is that we have created a list of 50 design methods that live in a design method library.

This library is categorized by moments. in the design process, and each one is made of a little card that lives in Miro. And each one of these has explanations that brings you further and can help you understand how the method works. But as it's built in Miro, you can adapt everything and turn it even into something which is a planning tool, as you can play with.

the fields like dates and status, and even add your own notes and even own links. For example, imagine while working on a project you're doing interviews, you can add your interview screener in there. You can add a link to your Dolph Tale account page where you are working on the insights about the interviews.

So it can become like a hub of your whole project. And to make that happen, we have created some design method mix canvases, believing that there is not only one way of thinking about how to mix design methods, but that there are many ways. And we present three in more details, which is one, which is

creating a bit of healthy mix between the different moments in the design process and one which is much about creating the most impact with the least effort. That's basically what we shared today. 

Q&A

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Daniele: And we are very excited, obviously, to now have a bit of your questions as I'm bringing up the different people on the stage.

Maybe first of all I'm gonna say a big thank you to you Lorena, Caro, and also Klaus, both for organizing this class, being part of this class, and something which for me is very dear to me is the fact that this is something that I reminded each time to the students, and it is. We're learning something, but we're not keeping it to ourselves.

And this is something that is extremely dear to me, is that with this program, we were able not only to create something which is great for the students, but also for the design community worldwide, and which 230 people already have said they have interested. They are interested in. Awesome. So maybe I'll start with you Klaus because you're discovering also a bit of this today.

What resonated with Klaus

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Daniele: And what's one thing Klaus for you, that you particularly resonated with today? Is there one thing that you find especially interesting in your. for your own practice in here. 

Klaus: Again, thank you, Carvo and Lorena for your presentations. I was very I'm very impressed. We really have to say that That you are studying in the bachelor and yesterday I was in the, I was teaching in the master design and we were also talking about design methods and some of the students that have already a degree, a bachelor degree, know about the methods or kind of the design process or different design process, but what I like very much is the Let's say this flexible approach to let's say the design process and the methods that you use that's, that impressed me very much because I think there is not one there is one general design process and I'm a designer and I say, okay in design we have one general process, let's say it's from research analysis and synthesis and then test and evaluate but there are different models like the double diamond, but there are different more possibilities and every project needs kind of an own process.

And that impressed me very much that you already very into this, let's say, meta level of a project where you think about the process and what methods you can use. And if it, if a method Doesn't work so good that you can go back to a kind of a method library. And I think that's a, yeah, it gives you as a students, but also then in later on in the, in practice.

Yeah, if you work it's a compass, let's say, that gives, yeah, that gives you that makes sure that you don't lose track in the project, let's say. The project itself is different, but what I like also very much in service design is that we talk a lot of, about yeah, the design process and the methods, yeah that impressed me very much.

We have to say you're in the fifth semester of a bachelor and it's and you're on a level that is yeah, it's master level already in this kind of thinking of a project. And I'm very looking forward of I don't know yet what you're doing, what you have in mind for your bachelor thesis, but I'm looking very much forward what is your method mix, especially for your project.

We definitely can hear big 

Daniele: bravo, I think, for Lorena and and Caro and all the other students, obviously. And 

I have a question maybe let's start with Lorena you are a designer since a few years and you've joined this program in spatial design and in the years that you've been practicing and learning design, How has your kind of approach to design methods changed, from you being a, a baby service designer or a spatial designer to now being, an adult spatial designer?

Is there kind of something that has changed in how you approach design methods and the design work? 

How Lorena's view of design methods has changed

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Lorena: Yes. As you mentioned before, my background is in architecture. And I'm really happy to have joined this study in learning about this design methods I've I it's definitely changed because since I, for example, the double diamond, I, since I started learning about them, that was last semester, last year, and I started implementing those methods.

And now we, Previously, we learned about a few and now we did, we took this course that is really intensive. And even just in the course of the while we were taking this course, we, I started using this design methods for, or other projects. And it definitely has changed. And it's really I didn't.

I don't think I had any like organized methods before, I just went through like designing a concept and I think it was very I don't want to say old school, but yeah, it was just a your regular design and architecture and it's really interesting to mix this bring this methods into the program.

Thank you. 

Daniele: Okay, so I'm hearing your what has changed for you is coming from a bit of a more organic way of working to something where you see there are structures that you can use as inspirations, like the double diamond, and that this Yeah. Brings you to a bit of another level of understanding. Did I understand you correctly?

Lorena: Yes, and exactly like I'm, I think sometimes it's nice to have freedom when designing, but sometimes I do a little bit of structure, it helps a lot to have some, something to go to, and when you're feeling stuck, it helps a lot. Because we all go through these moments where we have the blank canvas and they really help to like, to start designing and to start a process and that's something that I didn't have before.

And I just yeah, I find them, I find it really helpful to have these tools, this structured and organized tools, but at the same time, they're structures, but you can. Adapted to your needs. So it's structured and it's flexible and I feel like it's a 

Daniele: good mix. So it's the discovery of adding, different levels of understanding of how design works from going from the very organic to the very structures and then mixing both and being able to play with that.

It's like learning piano like a classic classic music player and then learning jazz. And then you can say, Oh, I can mix both. And this can both be interesting. I love this kind of this attitude where it's then it's not so much about the right way to do it, but it's the right way for the moment and the approach and the project.

And then there are. Sometimes it might be structured, sometimes it might be more organic, sometimes it might be a mix of both. 

Thanks so much for sharing. 

Karo's favorite design method

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Daniele: I'd like to go now to, to Caro and share with you one question for me is there are 15 methods that you, we have covered and obviously there are many mores.

What's one that you, still after the years that you're doing this this program that you, I feel like it's your little favorite, it's your little method where you say, Oh, this is, I like it so much. Can you maybe share about your little love with one of the design methods?

Karo: There's so many to choose from. It's really hard to pick a favorite. But I think one that I remember having like really good memories with was the crazy eight method. Because we did it in groups, and you're supposed to, um, write down as many ideas or just several ideas for a project, and then each person in the group does the same thing.

And so you end up having all of these very different ideas or approaches for a problem or for an idea, and those are just other points of view that you would have never found out if you Just try to come up with ideas yourself and I think it's always very valuable to see how other people view the world and how other people approach problems.

And for me, that was also really fun to do, because it didn't feel like, oh, I have to solve this problem. It was more like, oh, I have this idea, or we are having so many ideas right now, and it's crazy how much output we could generate in such a short amount of time. And... It was also fun at the same time, so I think that one was my favorite one.

Daniele: Thanks so much for sharing. So maybe for those who don't know the crazy eight, which is basically a bit of a time pressure exercise where we say, during eight minutes we have to come up with eight ideas, eight sketches, and you have one minute for each sketch. And it's something that is very it's creating a lot of freedom in some way, this kind of structure, because it removes a lot of the...

Of the thinking and it goes, it helps you to be much more in the doing than the thinking. And yeah. Tha thanks so much for sharing that one. Thank you. Let me come back to you, Lorena. 

Loren'as least favorite design method

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Daniele: So we heard about the favorite method of Karo and I'm interested in what's your least favorite Lorena and why? Because I think it's also something that is important that as designers, we are allowed to have a bit of taste, and say, Hey, there are things that I like to do.

There are things that I hate to do. And I think it's always a bit of revealing what are the methods that we follow. hate the most. So what's your hate method, if we can call it like that? 

Lorena: Wow, that's a bit difficult. You put me on the spotlight there. Right now, I don't know if I can think about the, about one that I hate the most or hate even.

But I could think about I, it just comes to my mind, the the method interview coding is not that I don't so I did a video about this one and while making the video, I realized that it's really time consuming and that was the downside that I found about it. I actually would like to use this method in my research because I have some.

interviews that I might be conducting. I thought that's great. I'm going to do this. But it does have some steps that require taking a bit more time to learn. Say for example, you have to transcript an interview and then I didn't know how to transcript an interview or looking for the the an app or something to do it and this was just for the example and I thought it was going to be really quick, but it's just that, that it takes some time.

So I would say that, but it's not that I hate it. I just think that in this case, it just requires a bit more 

Klaus: time. 

Daniele: Yeah. So the kind of grounded theory approach or coding approach to interviews, qualitative coding can be definitely a pain in the ass in terms of time and and work. And it's, it is interesting to see also that how much there is this correlation this link between it takes a lot of time, but still it's, it might be something that is very interesting, but we still struggle with that.

And that a lot of our work is still also to manage, like how efficient and deep we want to go. And it's a balance, the more efficient, the often the less deep we get, but the more deep, the less efficient we aren't. It's a balance that we as designers have to live with. Thanks so much for sharing.

An example of a challenging design problem

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Daniele: I see that we have a question from Juliana, which I will show here, which says, can you share a challenging design problem? You encountered and explained the process design methods you followed to arrive at a solution.

TAs do you have maybe in, in your long years of. Product Design, Architecture, Spatial Design, Surface Design, and all the other design words. One particular story that you might like to share where you say, oh, This was a specific design problem and this is how I use design methods or the process to come out of that problem 

Klaus: so it's really a small project from the, also from the Bachelor of Spatial Design we did last fall semester. And it was, yeah it's really a four week introduction to, let's say Experience Design and Spatial Design.

And we use different methods there. And it was about the project was about the problem of finding the way from the station of Emmenbrücke. It's a small village close to Lucerne where our university is located. And visitors that have been never been at the university find hardly their way to to a space or even to the to the secretary's office, which is located in the fourth floor.

So that was the challenge for the students to find new concepts, how visitors can find the way more easy. And this is just one example of we had I think five or six projects, five approaches from different teams and, but they use the same methods and it's really a small projects and it's very exemplary what we did there.

And we used different some methods, I think Daniele, you expanded the methods mix or the possible methods then in the fifth semester, but in the first semester we had we I, I guided the students into the use of different methods, for example, step into the shoes so that they immerse themselves in this they know the building, but Not very much.

And they just try to step into the shoe of a visitor that have been, never been at the university and try to find out where it could be the pain points and the value points of the wayfinding through the building. And then we used, visitor Journey Map. This is a tool for analyzing

the step in to the show method, but they also created user stories based on real users they invited. They have to invite, every team has to invite two users that have never been at the university. And they told them, you have to find the front office first, and the front office should tell you then The way to our atelier, so that was the task and it was very funny because mostly the, it was not a visitor journey, it was more a visitor odyssey because in our buildings it's a special thing that we decided once, or not me, we, that are in charge for for setting up the building was that they putting out the corridors and said, if you want to go to one room, you have to cross through other space rooms.

And that's, that is very hard thing for for visitors because it's, you don't know if it's allowed to cross in a space. And that's what also the students find out is it's very hard to find the way for visitors because it's not clear where is the corridor and there's no clear orientation that is given by the by the building itself.

And you have to ask, and if you got an answer, then it's very hard to, yeah, to interpret it because if you, say, use the staircase A, B, C, you don't know, is it then the first one I see or is it the next one? And it's really, yeah, it was really an odyssey that they found out. But they did then a wizard journey map with with pain points and value points.

And they did also, these are the user stories from the wizards they invited to find their way. And that was here in the surrounding of the building. But then inside also, you see this flow of. What they did yeah, it was two visitors they invited. And the main problem that was the touchpoint analysis.

Touchpoint means here all the signs signature or kind of people that show you the way are the touchpoints that give you an an idea where you have to go. And they yeah, they analyzed it based on the interviews and their observations. And finding out finally that they this is one team, other teams find other problems or main pain points.

And they found out that in the in the foyer downstairs, which kind of the biggest space downstairs where also the cafeteria is, there's one, Big info point, which is that orange and every most of the touch points with information are in this color, but they, it's very unclear what is A, B, C, D, and you don't even know if this.

is then the main that you have to put the main focus on this information put on here. And you don't know what is A, B, C, D, you have to really find out. And it's also not logical the order in which it's put, they put the A, B, C, D, it's if you enter the building, then you start with D, which is very unlogical.

But they found out this is very, not very well structured. And it gives you not the information that you really need or that you're looking for at the first time if you see it, and then one thing is also that you have the staircases that are yeah, this is very important which staircase you, you use, but it's not clear yeah, That you have, if you use the wrong staircase, you're really lost in the building.

So you need in the first, in the ground floor, you need to choose the right staircase or the right elevator to find a new way. So it must be very clear. And then they come up with different solutions. Then, um, they said, we want to we set up a low hanging fruit matrix and they choose then low hanging fruit solutions like doing a better orientation in the foyer.

Where you really see and where, what, in which part of the building you are and where do you find what you have different or more information in the building. But also, yeah, making it more clear where you are and also showing with three dimensional types that you are in the right track.

But that was one, just one, one example. It's very simple, but also the topic is, was not so complex. So I think I thought it was a good exercise to using, let's say basic methods. to come to a solution that is based on observations and interviews and insights that you get. So that was it. 

Daniele: Thanks for sharing. And it shows really much that, design methods can solve very practical problems. I don't find my way and that they can uncover the problem and help also imagine solutions and then put them really much. And I think this was a very good example of of this possibility.

Closing words

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Daniele: A big thank you to everyone who has joined. 

Klaus: Thanks a lot for joining this webinar and you Daniele for organizing it and inviting us and having us with with all the great service design people joining the webinar and especially all thank you Caro and Lorena for, yeah, giving this insights to your work. 

Daniele: Have a lovely evening. Bye bye. 

Music: Ciao. Bye.