Service Design Sprint, 19-20th August

On the weekend of 19-20th August, I took part in Service Design Sprint organized by Tribe Tampere in their just renovated space on Pinninkatu 47. Read more about Tribe Tampere here.

My interest towards service design has been developing during this summer and I think that graphic design is closely linked to it. When designing anything visual, we have to think about both the user (client and end user) as well as the placing of the final product, be it a roadside billboard, a light pole advert in the city center or stamp-sized logo in a business card. These are all aspects of service design which also links to User Experience (UX) design too!

Daryna Barsukova had asked me to design and print guide sign posters outside and program posters inside the Pinninkatu building. So I had to think about the users, the environment (including the weather!) and the many possibilities that our visitors might take upon their arrival. Would they come from the left or the right side of the building? Will they check their location on Google Maps and will they find the front door or the back door first? Do they have a number to call in case they get lost? When placing the big A-stands with posters I had to think about the journey from different angles and make sure the data on the posters were visible from up to 20 meters away.
So we ended up with posters sized A3, and smaller guide posters in size A4, that were printed with clear white background and striking pink text with an arrow shape as a directional guide. I also added a few sentences in cursive, that worked as a beckoning personalized message to further guide the attendees.

Once all the attendees had arrived, everyone was divided into teams and given a problem to solve during the weekend, through service design thinking. The question was about methods on how to lower the threshold between companies and internationals in communication and job recruitment.

The Sprint had guest presenters:
Veikko Törrönen from Kreapal gave an inspiring presentation called "Service Design", Reetu Kainulainen elaborated the arts of "How to pitch", and Outi Nokkonen who is a service designer at the city of Tampere, held a presentation on "Service Design for Social Change", and Suvi Helén from Idean gave a really hands-on presentation about "Design Research and Insights" where we learned to prototype our services with different tools, most importantly she showed us that to create a prototype we don't need anything fancy or ready, purposefully factory-made products: we can use pine cones, erasers, pens, thimbles and even crumbled up paper!

The teams' answers were presented shortly as prototypes to an actual jury with people from Business Tampere who were looking for fresh ideas to be implemented within Talent Tampere network. Some presenters from service design companies also stayed to see the last pitches.

This poster "Abridge" is my team's prototype solution. The team consisted of Shakil, me, Dermot and Santeri.
The idea was to design an online service AI that would compile different social media profiles and website content, into one single page. This way the user (be it a talent or a company) would not have to create yet another account and a password to a service. In the poster, the view on the left is user's profile compilation, and on the right is the AI's combined Suggestions page where the user can easily see possible interests.
These interests mean the following:
User (person): check out these companies / courses / events / meetings / channels / blogs / etc...
User (company): check out these talents / events / channels / blogs / etc...

These two pages of the online service would simply present the existing data from several different channels, in an easily viewed and digestible form, and analyze it, comparing it to other users and their needs, showcasing the data on the Suggestions page according to the user's preferences and search inquiries (hashtags).

Let me know what you think of this idea :) if you'd like to take it further, I'm more than happy to help you!