The Process

WORKSHOP WITH FESTIVAL STAKEHOLDERS19.08.11

We held a small get together in August to test out our assumptions around how festival stakeholders would react to service design language and methodology. The participants were interested and enthusiastic so we kicked off by introducing them to the design process, also know as the 4 D’s ( discover, develop, define, deliver )

The aim of the first half of this session was to understand how well the participants engaged with transition from writing to visualising. The results were ultimately positive and almost natural, the team could immediately see the value in drawing their thoughts and ideas rather than writing them. This came into play when I told a detailed account of my last festivals experience - the team interrupted to ask questions and probe for more information whilst they sketched my story into a storyboard template. Afterwards, the problems and touchpoints were highlighted with a red felt tip. In a matter of minutes we had rich stories visualised and analysed…ready to be servicized!

We then introduced Relationship Mapping and tasked the team with mapping their personal lives onto the tool made up of concentric circles. We asked them to draw their networks, the people they interact with on a daily basis and think about how these networks join up.

The team all said they would use the tool again in a personal capacity as it encourages reflection. Although, there were some questions around the level of detail required. For example, drawing your family is more valuable when you break the family down into siblings and parents. We realised that showing examples of completed tools is a great way to boost the confidence of people who are tackling these tools for the first time.

Of course, the real value came from creating a detailed relationship map of one festival in particular. The team choose to work with The Fringe as this was the festival they were most excited about. The result was a physical and visual representation of all the groups, people and organisations remotely linked to The Fringe. By representing stockholders in this way the interplay between groups was analysed and understood; who could the festival collaborate with to improve the festival experience? Who does the festival want to have a better relationship with? What opportunities is the festival missing? It also sparked off interesting debate between team around what relationships should be priority and they all discovered new relationships from each other that they hadn’t been aware of at the start of the exercise.

This tool helps you better manage, and expand the networks particular festivals wants to cultivate. This activity proved that mapping links between people and places and everything in between brings new ideas and new thinking to the surface.

A natural progression from mapping relationships is mapping assets. Asset mapping is the best way to share needs and discover resources. Again, the team created personal asset maps to get a flavour for how this activity unlocks the power residing in current networks to help people harness their assets. For example, in mapping the assets of your best friend you realise that you should be making more of the fact she can speak french fluently!

Again, we decided to create one in-depth asset map of The Fringe considering questions such as; Do venues ever work together? Do hotels and hostels talk to The Fringe? Who is involved? Where are the local resources? What could be better? Where are the networks? Where are the important places?

The result was a visualisation that showed local resources, networks, places of importance. Using felt tips and post-its the team added how the assets could be connected differently.

LEARNINGS FROM THE WORKSHOP

So where does Service Design fit in? People are at the very heart of the Service Design process and we introduced tools that encourage empathy and a user-centred approach. Firstly, we created Personas based on fictional characters that represented the social and demographic characteristics of a wide range of festival stakeholders. Personas have to be created so they represent stakeholders who are engaged as well as disengaged. They describe the needs, desires, habits and cultural backgrounds of people and are designed to help you see a festival experience from lots of different perspectives.

The tool prompted the team to give the persona a name, a photo, age, occupation and tell their background story. The persona should tell us what that person does day to day, what does their life look like, what are their personality traits?

In order to get the information necessary to create personas we tasked the team with phoning individuals and interviewing them on the phone to gain the information they needed. This was a huge success if a little nerve racking for the team - within the space of a short phone call their assumptions were challenged and they had a clear picture of the person at the other end of the phone and what their festival experiences looks and feels like.

The team used a key quote to sum up that person’s thinking, this made the persona quick and easy to understand. The results included young first time performers:“We just want to know what is on the next two hours”, an older couple from USA“We just came here to see The Tattoo and the rest of the city!”, a disengaged professional woman in her 50s “The fringe is all about comedy - is there more happening at the same time” and a local young professional “I want to find hidden gems, just for locals - just for me!”

Then it was time to get bums off seats and into the streets! The goal of this task was to get the team talking to strangers about their festival experiences. This aspect of Service Design is about weaving a rich story! They took to the streets of Edinburgh on a mission to collect stories from a wide range of people. We gave them a list of questions to ask to help them along the way; How would you describe the festival in three words and why? What is the one thing you would change about the festival? Draw a picture that captures your relationship with the festival?

Engaging strangers in a conversation about their service experiences is a difficult thing to do and the results reflected this. The team could see the value in it but found it tricky. Once the conversation starts well everything else flows, the problem lies in getting the conversation to begin in the first place. We realised the output of this piece of work had to include descriptive advice and guidelines to make the process as easy as possible.

We combined the elements of being out in the streets with the personas created earlier to produce a tool that challenged the team to find the answers to questions whilst acting as someone else. For example, you are a single mum in your 20’s who recently moved to Edinburgh and you would like to know where you can take your five year old to eat lunch? We asked the team to document their journey of finding the answer, including who they met and who they talked to. This exercise worked really well in terms of the team shifting their perspective very quickly and realising what some festival experiences must feel like for people very different to themselves.

We spent some time talking about touchpoints and challenged the team to deconstruct several touchpoints such as The Fringe catalogue, help section on website and a phone number. We asked them to draw the touchpoint whilst answering questions such as: What do they offer? What do they look like? What do they feel like? When you phoned the number did you get the help you needed? Can the catalogue help you find out when your last train is?

We then created new storyboard combining these touchpoints and the personas we created earlier. We gave the team homework to think about these tools on their own away from a workshop environment. The results speak for themselves. Homework sent in from the Festival Stakeholders.

Working with collected themes and feelings from users.

Workshop with Festival Stakeholders: the design process.

WORKSHOP WITH THE SCIENCE FESTIVAL TEAM26.07.11

Edinburgh Festivals are some of the finest cultural experiences in the world. Snook have been working with them to explore what they can learn from Service Design. We are working closely with the festivalslab; a unique and exciting programme of work which identifies and develops ways to improve the world’s festival city – for audiences, for artists, for partners and for the festival organisations themselves.

This project kicked off with a basic introduction to how Service Design tools are relevant to designing festival experiences as services. We spent the afternoon with the Science Festival Team – including the development manager, the business director, the marketing manager, the generation science manager and the deputy director.

Initially, the group carried out small exploration exercises focused on seeing the world differently. Participants tried to book a festival ticket online and simultaneously wrote down a list of fifty things to capture this experience.

This was very simple yet revealed key insights into the experience of booking a festival ticket online. Key insights were “the site never shows me an alternative, I want to give up and phone, why do I need to create an account? Why do they need so much information? Why can’t you book tickets through the mobile application?”

Participants described these exploration tools as a “great chance to think virtually”. One tool was designed to encourage thought experiments whilst walking around a public space. This resulted in metaphors around accessibility; the festival offers multiple messages for multiple customers, and this metaphor encouraged thinking around who chooses what at what point. Why do people choose the events they do and how can we understand this better?

WORKSHOP WITH ROHAN 03.10.11

The aim of this work is to assist Edinburgh in maintaining it’s position as world’s leading festival city.

We spent an intense afternoon with Rohan to outline the details of the outputs of this piece of work. The first question we tackled was ‘who’; who will be using this toolkit and who is it for? The answers ranged from festival management to generic arts organisations. Our audience breaks down into two main categories; people who are doing Service Design and those who are interested in it.

There are also two key characteristics that this work has to be embrace; it must be sustainable for obvious reasons and it must also be cross- festival / multi-disciplinary. Of course, there is the important aspect of legacy that an multi- disciplinary output will help us achieve.

A huge part of this work is showing people how and why it is relevant to them and their role in the festival. It was important for us to work with Rohan to really understand these trigger points; “I want to make the delegate / performer / artist experience better” This toolkit can help you form a bid, sell more tickets or improve how your staff access the festivals data.

We will create a toolkit that people can print on demand as well as a diagnostic tool in the form of a website. This will include materials, process, options, case studies and projects. There will be a small, medium and large scale. We spent time delving into a typical festivals calendar and mapping this process alongside it so we could visually see where it fits.

We also want to showcase this approach working in the new context of festivals! We decided up on various events we could hold or tap into. We identified the range of options and product offers for the wide range of the audience by creating both very small and very big challenges. Feedback is also very influential in this context, we want people who use this output to give us feedback and share their feedback with the rest of the cultural sector.

We are sharing all of this, we want it to be accessible and useful and most importantly, help festivals think differently about the service they offer.

Creating the toolkit - stage 1 with Rohan.

LEARNINGS FROM THE WORKSHOP:

We spent time exploring personas as a way to provide the team with different perspectives on the services they offer. After building up clear pictures of typical characters who do engage with the festival the team created their own personas of people who do not engage with the service.

This exercise revealed assumptions around how and why people engage with the festival: “People decide they want to buy a ticket beforehand and then invest a long time in booking”. Creating personas sparked off interesting debate around the barriers to engagement and how people seek advice and recommendations around what event to attend and why.

We then took these personas through a typical customer journey. This revealed many opportunities for innovation within the festivals such as getting to and from events and the contrast between the touchpoints of an adults festivals experience to that of a child.

Relevance is a big theme for the festival staff and they are clearly facing all the challenges that come with moving away from traditional science education to a more modern representation of science. As well as balancing the breadth and depth of their program they are focusing on helping people navigate their festival. We discussed key questions such as: How can we build communities and loyalties throughout the year with all stakeholders? How can we truly combat the stigma of science? How can we actively seek out the voices of our audiences?

Snook are really excited about this project. In it’s small way it may very well be another revolution in how the cultural sector innovates in the UK. We intend to bring design thinking and doing to the festivals and showcase the notion of seeing festivals as service experiences.

Creating Customer Journey Maps with the Science Festival team.

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECTFestival Design DNA is a project produced by Snook for festivalslab. It is both a set of practical tools and an exciting new conversation about what happens when cultural professionals and organisations start to think like designers and work to make the experiences they create better from a person-centred point of view.

Due to its origins the tools and approaches are “festivized” but will be relevant to all types of cultural organisation so we’d love to hear what you think about them and how you might be using them.

FESTIVALDESIGNDNA

SNOOK’S DESIGN PROCESSWhat if we approached festival innovation through the eyes of a designer...and in particular a service designer? This is the central question for this festivalslab project and conversation and one which Snook think is relevant for everyone working in arts & culture.

Snook have a created a series of bespoke tools and templates to help you make festival experiences even better. We’ve packaged these into easy-to-use bundles that can be downloaded in different shapes and sizes.

This piece of work is an opportunity for Edinburgh festivals to re-design services, processes and ways of working. We’re giving you the building blocks. Each project will be unique so we have designed a way for your to find exactly what you need at the right time. For example, if you want to find out how to sell more tickets at a particular time, this toolkit will point you in the right direction.

So how did we do it? We spent time with Festival stakeholders to understand connections and relationships within the Edinburgh Festivals landscape. We asked them to interview members of the public to truly understand how different people perceive the festivals.

We spent time with the Science Festival team in particular, harnessing their expert knowledge to learn the specifics of one particular festival. Again, we ran design-led activities to help the team discover the value of Service Design, and help Snook really understand where this toolkit fits.

We began to create a picture of the different types of questions and projects people would use this toolkit to tackle.

Working with the base-structure of the Design Council’s 4 D’s (Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver) we built a Design DNA for the festivals, focusing on the festival team’s perception of that stage of the process. The purpose of this approach is to break a complex process into small, digestible chunks.

Each stage, for example ‘Discovering Festival Customers’ houses several different design tools to help you do this. It’s up to you as a team to decide which ones fit your project best.

We wanted to design information and guidance on using the tools, as well as the templates themselves. The outcomes are easy to print, store and use.

The design process is not linear, that’s why we represent it as a circle containing the 4 D’s. This means that designs and projects are continuously rotating over time, going through different iterations as they develop and grow. The process we used to design this toolkit was exactly the same. We went through several iterations of producing the design DNA wheel layout, the templates and the tool cards.

This project also involved the production of information about the toolkit, a website and an exhibition space.

This project has been designed to have a wider effect on the cultural sector in Scotland, with the Edinburgh Festivals as a central flagship.

Are you ready to innovate your festival?

Prototyping methods of displaying information visually.

Prototyping versions of downloadable/printable tools.

festivalslab or the Edinburgh Festivals Innovation Lab works with and for the twelve Edinburgh Festivals on how to use new thinking and new tools to the experience of the world’s festival city even better for audiences,creative talent and festival organisations.

Snook is a Glasgow-based service design and social innovation agency focusing on transforming the way services are delivered in Scotland, ensuring people come first.