How to use the Melt Frame
Melt Frame is a new design thinking tool for innovators, entrepreneurs and service designers. It helps you to see your resources in a new light and innovate simple ways to fulfill customer needs.
Little bit of background: Melt Frame is based on the idea of perceiving the world as flows of data, emotions, knowledge, repetitive actions, etc. With Melt Frame you can discover and create new flows, gently guide them and melt them together to create new innovative services.
Download the poster-size deck here.
Melt Frame (Version 2) contains 6 individual frames that can be used in any order.
You can start with your elevator pitch!
Fill in the service description. It does not have to be perfect. It’s just a starting point. When you feel like you have discovered something new come back to this frame and see how your new insight changes it.
Next you can focus either on customer needs or your resources. We’ll go with…
PHYSICAL RESOURCES
Aim of this frame is to help you see the pool of available tangible resources and convert them into flows.
1. What Physical objects and actions surround our service?
List things that could be your resources. E.g. How and where people use your service? List objects, places, people, actions, etc. The more the better!
2. What data can we get from them?
If it moves or changes in any way it can be turned into data. E.g. temperature, shopping habits, location data…
3. Is there something we must do to get the data?
What you must do to get access to the data.
E.g. You must buy it. Add sensors. Get people’s permission.
4. What feature of our service uses it?
How does it link to the service.
Now we have created a pool of data sources and guided some of those to our service. Next let’s move on to…
INTANGIBLE RESOURCES
This frame helps you to acknowledge the “invisible” resources and make them more tangible so they can be connected to your service.
1. What knowledge and emotions surround our service?
What emotions, knowledge and talent your customers, employees, wannabe customers do have. List them all here. E.g. A caregiver knows how a patient is feeling. People know if their neighborhood feels safe, etc.
2. What could be their tangible form?
How can you get access to this? E.g. survey, community, rating, purchase history, physical action.
3. Is there something we must do to achieve this?
What can we offer to gain access to these? It can be either intangible like openness, sense of belonging. Or e.g. a platform for discussion.
4. What feature of our service uses it?
How does it link to the service.
Now we have mapped our key resources and found ways to make them part of our service. Let’s next see what we can deliver…
PHYSICAL VALUE
1. Key Customer Groups
Prioritize your customers. Be cruel. You should not have more than 3 groups.
2. Customer’s physical problems
List their problems (or tangible needs).
3. What are the problems our service must solve?
You don’t have to solve all their problems. Pick the most important ones.
4. What does our service provide?
This must match the problem! But it does not have to be exactly the same. E.g. A person needs a job. Service provides “The best job match engine”.
5. What is the Key feature to provide this?
What is the most important feature that your customers see as providing the solution to their problems. E.g. “The service had X (key feature) that helped me to…”
IMMATERIAL VALUE
1. Key Customer Groups
Prioritize your customers.
2. All possible emotional or knowledge needs
List their needs (or problems) E.g. hope, sense of belonging, fame, enjoyment, admiration, curiosity, recognition, etc.
3. What are the needs our service must meet?
You don’t have to fulfill all their needs. Pick the most important ones.
4. What does our service provide?
This should match the need.
E.g. Fear = Sense of security, Curiosity = passionate community.
5. What is the Key feature to provide this?
The most notable feature.
So far we have been looking for new resources and prioritizing them. We have aligned our service with the customer needs.
PROCESS
This frame helps you to think outside the traditional ways of doing business. Playing with the ownership of the service components can unlock new resources and dramatically change your value proposition. Experimenting with ownership is crucial for platform business models and sharing economy.
1. Map the process
First add the most important features and major process components (unbundle if needed). Put them all down to the sector you control.
2. Who could own the components?
Start playing with the ownership. Do you need to control everything? Take your time. Typically this is one of the most difficult tasks as ownership is so firmly deep-seated in business thinking. Customers don’t need to own the service, but their relationship to it changes if they have a sense of ownership.
3. What do we need to do to make this happen?
What we need to change.
4. How do changes in ownership affect access to resources and our value proposition?
Typically handing over the ownership grants you access to new resources. E.g. Users feel they own their own Facebook feed and want to create more content. You may need to go back to Resource frames with this information.
Results?
A simple service design session with the Melt Frame takes about two hours. The best results are achieved when the Frames are used continuously. The ultimate goal is that the team will begin to see the world as perpetual flows.
What’s next?
Melt Frame is constantly evolving set of tools. You can download the frames as pdf or Powerpoint. Please test, tune and share! Your feedback and use cases are very much appreciated.
For more information go to www.themeltframe.com and www.ghostcompany.fi. And please follow me on twitter for more tutorials and cases.
