Crazy things we have to do as Service Designers… with a purpose
When you work as a Service Designer, especially for startups, I often like to say that you become like a ‘specialist on a specific subject for a certain amount of time’. I could create a different ‘specialist title’ for each project I had to fully immerse myself into the sector to understand latent needs, behaviours and opportunities: a shoe comfort expert, a profound analyser of mountain bike interactions, a detective of better harvesting habits… and so on.
This immersion is defined by long hours of planning and research: interviews with users and (real) experts from the sector, observation of interactions and analysis of behaviours that are then translated to patterns of information, digested into real insights. During this research phase, in order to become a ‘specialist’ in the subject theme of research, it happens we also have to do crazy things… with a purpose.
In this article I would like to share some of these unusual experiences that me and colleagues had to go through, in order to really gain an in-depth vision of the users we were aiming to understand.
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A sportive shooting experience
During a challenging project for an organization in the sportive shooting industry (I already know what you are thinking, but bear with me a little bit!) we had to better understand the sector.
In order to do so, I had to go to different shooting ranges and actually try it! I thought to myself, I really need to try to understand how the user feels when he is aiming to shoot a plate coming in his line of vision.
So, there was I, holding a 4kg rifle and trying to shoot on a ceramic plate. First try, nothing. Second try, almost. In the third try, I nailed it! And I actually felt this rush of achievement when I heard the sound of the plate shattering to pieces and thought to myself — that’s how the user feels!
Of course, this experience alone didn’t make me a user nor an expert, but it gave me an opportunity to better understand the user’s perspective and provide me further insights to add on my research.
Faking a pregnancy for the sake of prototyping
Over a prototyping test, for which we created wizard of oz approaches to test a new technology that enables tactile communication from far, we had scenarios where real user had to interact with the technology in different contexts.
One of those contexts was having a video call, where the user would talk to a hypothetical pregnant sister and feel the bumping of the baby by using the technology. Guess who played the pregnant sister? Yep, that was me. And between the valuable conversation and insights this interaction allowed, you have no idea how much I had to hold my laugh for the sake of research!
Installing Doors with Italian technicians
During a research phase for a project with the aim of enhancing stakeholder relationships in the automatic doors segment, my colleague Alex did an ethnographic immersion in order to closely understand the whole process of actually installing an automatic door.
He spent a whole day watching installers putting together doors, speaking in Italian dialect and eventually rolling up his sleeves and giving them a hand in assembling the door frame — and even if it sounds exhausting, he left with so many useful insights by seeing everything from a new perspective (literally).
For a researcher, these moments are heaven: you get to interact and ask questions in the user environment while he is feeling comfortable and at ease to really say what it is on his mind.
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Key takeaways
At the end of the day, the main goal of these experiences is to really go out there and do the most we can to gain valuable insights that sometimes are hidden between the cracks of user experiences.
Especially for startups, these immersion techniques at the beginning can be extremely valuable to force the team to get out of the office or lab and into the real world that they are aiming to serve, broadening perspectives and really identifying latent needs and opportunities.
It’s important that you do an effort to really step in your user shoes and by choosing unusual ways of doing so, you not only have more fun, but you engage further with the audience you are aiming to solve a problem for.
What about you? Have you ever gone through an unusual experience to gain valuable insights? I would love to hear from you! :)
Carolina
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