Sensory walking research in a service design context

This space is dedicated to my M.A. capstone project

I will be publishing content relating to my research across the next 12 weeks (till June 2017), including insights, findings and reflections on the process.

This post is a marker on where I am with my topic at the start of March — what my research question is and some context of where I plan to focus the inquiry.

Please feel free to any thoughts or ideas that might be useful. I’m genuinely curious to hear what you think about sensory walking research as a method to understanding.

Inspiration behind the topic

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My project began with a desire to access and capture deeper insights about customer’s and their experiences. I wanted to know if understanding a persons sensory perception of their service, could be valuable and perhaps enhance a designers work during discovery.

Could sensory research reveal insights that are more powerful because they are base, shared and easily accessed by service stakeholders? Could having access to this type of knowledge, and including it in our work help to create a common understanding?

Sarah Pink describes sensory walking research as “informed by theories of knowing, movement and empathy, walking can be a multi-sensory everyday life practice that may be shared with others to enable researchers to understand their practices, perspectives, experiences and places” (Pink & Howes 2010 p. 331).

I wondered, could sensory research:

• enhance an understanding of the project context?
• create insights that were easier to transmit to stakeholders — consider different types of data capture and visual treatment ie: digital vs tactile?
• assist to create a shared stakeholder understanding of the problem?
• create insights with more impact, and encourage a greater ownership of the power to make change within the organisation?

As a researcher I know the power that customer research has on my own engagement and involvement — it creates a desire to make things better. Yet I also know how difficult it is to bring this to life for people behind walls at desks who have limited involvement in the design process, apart from a attending showcase presentations. And whilst I understand there are wider programs that exist to encourage and support stakeholder involvement with customer research. I’m also curious to know if there is a more human way to convey what we find for greater impact?

• As service designers we’ve started to explore how customers think and feel, but could we go deeper to understand sensory perception for better design outcomes?
• Can we find a better way to capture and communicate sensory insights?
• And could these be key to flick the switch within team members, to help them understand that they have the power to work together to make things better?

Research question

My question has been shaped by the literature review process, I have covered service design and sensory anthropology reading and dipped my toe into visual-digital-sensory anthropology, but still have more to review relative to sensory walking research, and Museum experience design.

How might sensory walking research be applied to the ‘exploration’ stage of service design; and how might sensory insights contribute to a common understanding of Montsalvat’s service experience?

1. How might the characteristics of digital-visual-sensory walking research benefit service design (exploration stage)?
2. How might sensory walking research capture the context, mindset and behaviours of customers and service stakeholders?
3. How might insights be visually treated and communicated to facilitate a common understanding of Montsalvat’s service experience?

Context of inquiry

My inquiry focuses on the effectiveness of sensory walking research within context of a service design project for the artistic community at Montsalvat.

Figure 1 — context of my capstone project

The ‘exploration’ stage of the process

I’ve applied Stickdorn & Schneider’s four stage process to frame my discussion of the service design process. Their book ‘This is Service Design Thinking’ acknowledges the lack of definition and common theory underpinning the practice, but acknowledges the ongoing work of the community to create a common language (Stickdorn & Schneider 2011). For reasons of practicality they distil various multi-stage processes with between four to seven steps, into four, see Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 — Stickdorn & Schneider’s four stage service design process

For the sake of practicality I will use their model, and constrain my focus to the exploration stage. Within this stage, a designer is concerned with understanding context, the right problem to solve, and to creation of a common understanding of the service experience with stakeholders in preparation for the next stage, ‘creation’ (Stickdorn & Schneider 2011).

Research Approach

My approach consists of three phases that like service design’s process are iterative in nature.

The first focuses on understanding literature, considerations and practice with experts via semi-structured interviews.

The second tests the effectiveness of a variety of digital-visual-sensory research approaches to walking research. The process to capture and communicate current service experiences with stakeholders and customers feeds artefacts used during the next.

Stage three reviews artefacts and methods with stakeholders to understand the impact on their understanding and engagement with the service challenges. Outcomes and findings relative to the service experience will also be presented for consideration. The final element is writing it all up!

Figure 3 — Research approach, three phases.

Wrap up

If you’ve got this far, thanks for reading!

My future posts plan to elaborate on elements of the research that I find fascinating and might be interesting or useful to others also interested in sensory service experience design.

My hunch is that by appropriating a method used by anthropologists, to understand the experience of their research participants better, that it might be possible to obtain sensory knowledge that can support the design process.

And perhaps consider how a method rooted in physical knowledge transfer can help us understand the complexity of intersecting touch-points deliver the physical service.

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References

Pink, S and Howes, D 2010, ‘The future of sensory anthropology/the anthropology of the senses’, Social Anthropology, vol.18 no.3, pp.331–340.

Stickdorn, M and Schneider, J 2011, This is service design thinking, 1st edn, Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Brooklyn, New Jersey, pp. 28–178.