The design of services with the principle of d.school.

Semi, Kristina ; Dolinsek, Slavko ; Drstvensek, Igor 等

1. INTRODUCTION

D.School is a name given to special educational classes at the Stanford University, in which students with different educational profiles are gathered to form multidisciplinary teams. The teams are using the so called design thinking principle to solve real, manufacturing problems or to realize their ideas. Using the design as a way of thinking is the most recent use of design. It is predominantly aimed to innovation's success therefore it comprises several views of new product's comprehension and not only its basic function. The design thinking is a junction of technology, anthropology and economy (Fig. 1). This consequentially requires the build-up of multidisciplinary teams to perform the design thinking approach as specialists will not be able to find an optimal solution to the problem.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The investigation of real market necessities is the principal characteristic of design thinking. The necessities of the market are investigated from the potential customer's point of view. To that purpose the design team has to address three main design issues: technical feasibility of the proposed solution, usability or desirability, respectively, and economic viability of the solution. Such approach enables conception of solutions that comprise (Nagy, 2007) added value of new products (technological approach), user-friendliness (busyness approach), and usefulness (human values). Up to the present researches has shown that analogy between products and services (immaterial products) exists and that it can be used as a guideline to the design of services that will be based on the same principles as the design of products (Slack et. al., 2004). The research work presented in this paper also shows that methods for the evaluation of service have to be incorporated into the process of service's design in order to guide a service to its main goals. The above claims were confirmed on two examples of non-profit organisations' services design. Nonprofit organisations' goals comprise the promotion, the education and the socialization. For the realisation of these goals the methods of quantitative and qualitative evaluation of services have to be included into the early stages of the design process. The method used in this paper was again derived from the analogy of evaluating production processes of material products. The original method is known under the name Overall Equipment Efficiency--OEE (Drstvensek, 2006), and is used to evaluate three key performance indicators; Availability, Productivity and Quality of production precess. The original method was tailored to accommodate parameters and circumstances when performing services in non-profit organisation. This way a new and innovative method was gained and named Overall Team Efficiency. It evaluates execution team performance according to the planned activities. This means that the performance indicators have to be established and measurement methods provided already during the planning, e. g. designing the service what gives a planning process a new meaning and higher level of reliability and team's self confidence.

2. DESIGN THINKING AND SERVICE' DESIGN

Designs of services dealing with people are pre-commercial or pre-concurrence researches and services of associations and other non-profit organisations. Such services are not aimed to the final economical profit but to the promotion, the education and the socialization. The real service's prototype is the simulation in the environment where the service will take place. During the simulation an execution team (working group) is formed, which in a continuation of simulation tailors the execution plan of the service to its possibilities and needs thus improving the first intention of the "prototype". A result of the prototyping simulation is the final execution plan for the designed service. To confirm the hypothesis that services can be designed using the same principles as for the product design process two practical examples of "public" services have been designed and evaluated. The first example followed the traditional way of service design where one person took over most of the planning and then distributed the workload among the execution team members. The second service planning followed the design thinking paradigm where most of the execution team members gathered in several brainstorming sessions to form a plan that was a team-work from the very beginning.

2.1 Overall Team Efficiency Method--OTE

Similarly to Overall Equipment Efficiency method the OTE tends to integrally evaluate key performance indicators of services and not the effectiveness of an individual execution team's member. The three OTE parameters are: Availability of the Team, Productivity of the Team and Quality of the Service according to the target group's response. The first two parameters quantitatively evaluate the performance, while the third evaluates it qualitatively as well as quantitatively.

The availability of the team, AT deals with the delays in the planed program. It is calculated by dividing the time needed for execution with the required time, where the execution times for each task are differences between the required times and delays of each task.

At = Required time-delays/Required time (1)

The performance of the team considers the completeness of planed programme's execution by dividing a number of completed tasks with a number of required tasks.

PT = Completed tasks/Required tasks (2)

The quality of service is parameter of target group's response, which respects the organisation's aims (the promotion - P, the education--E and the socialization-S). The promotion is long-term aim, which is measured indirectly by two new parameters, active participation of end-users--AP and their satisfaction S. QS is than an average between the E and the S or between the E, the active participation--AP and the target group's satisfaction--SG (S was divided on the AP and the SG).

QS = E + AP + SG/3 (3)

Education was measured directly by performing an indirect examination to test the achievement of planed educational goals. Active participations of the target group--end-users was measured by observing the group and actually counting the uninterested participants. Satisfaction of the group is a qualitative parameter measured by a questionnaire at the end of the service.

The OTE, like OEE is a product of all three parameters, team's availability (AT), team's performance (PT) and quality of service (QS):

OTE = AT x PT x QS (4)

3. RESULTS

To confirm the hypothesis that design thinking as known in the products' design can be used to design services, two case studies in non-profit associations were performed. Investigation required an active participation at early planning stages as well as at execution of the service. In the first case where the service was planned traditionally the investigator played an observation role while in the second case the investigator was an active team's member.

The OET method was applied to both cases with an important difference that at the second case the evaluation of the service was planned beforehand.

One of the most important parts of the research, was the questionnaire for members of execution teams. Using a list of indirect questions the questionnaire answered the question if the execution team operated as a group of individuals or as a "hot-team" with team-work as a part of design thinking principle. The questionnaire was divided into five parts (A to E). Part A indicated the existence of team work, part B tested the successfulness of the execution team, part C evaluated the preparation meetings success, part D tested the existence of the "hot team" characters and part E tested the existence of innovators in the execution team.

The analysis of the questionnaire showed that in the first case study real team work didn't exist at all while at the second case the team was build before the service began. In both cases the necessary characters for hot-team build up were not present (Table 1).

The satisfaction of the target group (end-user) was also measured using a questionnaire, but since both services were dealing with children, the questionnaire was divided into the one sent to parents and another that was indirectly presented to the children--the target group--during the service. The rest of the parameters were measured during the service course by the investigator or the task leader, respectively. The results are presented in the Table 2.

4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The questionnaire indicated important differences between the two case studies. In the first case only a couple of execution team's members attended on preparation meeting. In the second case the whole execution team had 13 preparer's meetings. While one meeting is certainly not enough (the team wasn't build until the end of the service) 13 meetings were not very effective since the team's availability (cooperation) remained at a relatively low level. The parameter of team's productivity clearly shows that the second service was much better prepared, but again the quality of the service in the second case was relatively low. The reason for a big difference is hidden also in the way that criteria were selected and in the qualitative part of the evaluation, which is not as exact as the quantitative one.

The research showed that the principle of d.school can be effectively used for the design of services. Another important result of the research is also an innovative method for evaluation of service execution, which was also derived from the production processes' evaluation. The future research will have to ameliorate the OTE method (only one criterion to evaluate the E and the AP) so that the method will be more accurate. The present research also didn't clearly show the advantages of the hot team's existence, therefore the future investigations will have to deal with the human resource issues to deploy the right characters to adequate tasks.

5. REFERENCES

Drstvensek, I. (2006). Overall Equipment Effectiveness, IRT 3000 Vol.1, No. 6, 52-54

Nagy, T. (2007). Creativity Era: Comparison of role and meaning of design in study programme: d.school and Danish Business School, Diploma work, Faculty of Economy, Ljubljana, 53-60

Slack, N.; Chambers S.; Johnston R., (2004). The design of products and services, Operations Management, Prentice Hall Financial Times, 127-160

Stanford University, Hasso plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, Available from: www.dschool.stanford.edu Accessed: 13-03-2009

Tab. 1. Presence of team work

Param. 1. case 2. case

Part A No Yes
Part B No Yes
Part C No Yes
Part D One person One person
Part E One person One person

Tab. 2. Results of the OTE analysis

Param. 1. case 2. case

AT (%) 83,70 82,53
PT (%) 79,07 94,32
E (%) 89,10 75,05
AP (%) 79,90 57,45
S (%) 80,53 74,14
QS (%) 83,18 68,88
OTE (%) 55,05 53,62