Crowdmapping the Passenger Experience

An experiment on inclusive design @ Dutch Design Week

The customer centricity trend has pushed many executives to accept that while numerous reports from research firms and management consultancies serve their purpose, they must be balanced with first-hand exposure and interaction with those whom the organisation is servicing: actual customers.

Inclusive Design

When it comes to complex challenges that impact our society and daily lives, most will agree with the notion that inclusion is a right, not a privilege for a select few.

Historically however, when organisations are faced with such pivotal strategic challenges, it has often been the case of a select few determining the way forward, rather than adopting a more inclusive approach. Recently, this has been changing through the uptake in design as a business tool.

At its core and most authentic, design is meant to be inclusive, providing an effective tool for translating human behaviour and needs into meaningful solutions, and as a result, creating value for customers, society and business.

Yet, unrealistic time frames and reduced budgets can often dictate otherwise and result in the development of new solutions being carried out in isolation.

As such, we believe it’s crucial that the power of inclusivity continues to be demonstrated in order to increase its adoption within organisations and ensure design remains an inclusive practice.

Passenger Experience Exhibition

We decided to use our presence at Dutch Design Week to run an experiment that would demonstrate to visiting business leaders what inclusive design entails and unlocks.

For the general public, we wanted to generate greater awareness for how designing meaningful solutions requires their involvement, by learning from their personal experiences and formed opinions.

For this, we used the topic of ‘passenger experience’ to showcase service design at our stand. This topic was selected due to its wide spread appeal and the frequency by which we experience this in our daily lives. It is also something we at Essense have in-depth knowledge of, having worked with NS, Pro-Rail and Schipol Airport (nominated for a service design award).

Collective Action: During the 9 days, many engaging conversations were held

Crowd Journey Mapping

The stand was designed to have people map their experiences — by bus, train or plane — in order to comment on their personal experiences and ideate on how they would improve the experience (see photos). It also implicitly helped people understand the importance of service design and its holistic approach towards customer experience.

Getting involved: Visitors plot on a scale 1–10 for their passenger journey and then design solutions for their key moment of dissatisfaction.

With over 150 journeys mapped and enthusiastic solutions from kids to grandparents, the appeal was evident. So much so that we had business leaders from healthcare and energy domains taking notes and photos of the results, in addition to their peers from aviation and railway industries.

Visitors openly expressed their concerns and delights throughout the interpretation of their own personal journey

Observations

Above all, the key observation was the high level of engagement achieved with a curious and opinionated audience. The interactive nature of the experiment created an environment that enabled participants to open up and articulate deeper feelings, while also inspiring them to ideate solutions.

For the visiting business leaders, observing the publics’ desire to be involved clearly struck a chord, as they recognised that while the public may not always have the next big idea, they do have valid, first-hand experiences which provide valuable insights.

Every journey has its up & downs! Your service is only as good as its weakest link. Waiting for departure looks like it needs some attention :)

Take Aways

Not all experiments need to take place at such a prestigious setting as the Design Week. Nor do they need to be carried out with high fidelity props or costly solutions. The important thing is that organisations become more open and inclusive in their efforts to design compelling and valuable solutions.

For Essense, DDW as always was an inspiring experience. Aside from the inspiring exhibitors and speakers, the event provided a great platform to further demonstrate how service design is critical for creating holistic value — In other words, that business value is achieved through increasing customer and societal value.

To learn more, our company’s founder Harald Lamberts gave a talk during DDW on this subject and can be viewed below. (starting at 43:15)