Everyone of us is extraordinarily busy. At work: meetings, emails, phone calls and more meetings. At home: food, hobbies, housework, perhaps a little bit of travel. Basically, every minute of our day is fully booked.
My first thoughts every time someone pitches a new service concept or our team starts to work on a client project: Where will people find the time for this? If it’s good enough then what is it going to replace?
The one and only marketing and advertising magazine (M&M 3.9.2010) ran an article about the rise of service design in Finland and even hailed the discipline as a potential future star in the export of professional services from Finland.
The grand old man of service design and Palmu Inc. colleague Mikko Jäppinen was interviewed in the article and his list of the five essential tips for better service design are as follows:
1. Familiarize yourself with everyday life
A service designer must be familiar with the normal, standard, run-of-the-mill everyday life of both the company and it’s customers. Conduct research, do interviews, then research and do some more interviews.
2. Know the customer personas
The research will have uncovered several customer personas to help find the focus of the service. Each customer type will have different needs and thus, distinct critical service moments during their service journey.
3. Form a working hypothesis and do a quick prototype
Half designer, half researcher, the service designer’s solution will emerge from the field work. It is crucial to visualize new processes immediately.
4. Test the solution with customers
As soon as you have a prototype of the new service ready, use real customers to test it. For example, Palmu Inc. always rapidly verifies the working hypothesis with customer tests.
5. Measure and analyze
A service is an interaction that changes constantly. The only way to really see if the service is working properly is to measure and analyze the results.
“Excellent service will emerge, when the organization – the people providing the service – are happy with what they are offering”.
Well said, Mikko!
… and hopefully even more. As of today I will be officially joining Palmu Inc. as Service designer. Passi is already a veteran there with a one month headstart.
The last three years at Gyllene Skor were absolutely the best so far. We got to work with amazing clients, a superb team and learn from the top marketing and engagement agencies in the country, Bob Helsinki and Toinen Helsinki.
At Gyllene Skor we had the opportunity to be a part of teams working on major multichannel concepts and joining Palmu will give us a chance to add one more channel to our bag of tricks. In addition to digital channels Palmu has designed real-life services for various clients. Service design with no channel bias, as it should be.
The other learning opportunity for us is Palmu’s strong customer insight competence. Not to say that we have no experience in customer insight, but there is always more to learn.
As for our part, we will bring our strong knowledge of the media industry and content to the table. Spice that up with a strong feeling that were just getting started on the way to something big and a hunger for making things happen. Sounds like a terrific combination to me.
Let the games begin!
People: Esa Rauhala, Peter Barkman, Mikko Jäppinen, Jussi Olkkonen, Reima Rönnholm
Companies: Palmu Inc.
Big Brother 2010 is the sixth season of the popular reality show in Finland. Our team was asked to help in planning the concept and designing the service for digital channels.
We worked in close collaboration with the content, sales, technical, production, web-tv and interactive-tv teams during planning and design to make sure that all business goals and requirements would be met and at the same time fans of the show would be given an online experience worthy of their commitment.
At the core of the online experience is Big Brother 24/7: six simultaneous live streams and interaction with other fans for those who don’t want to miss any of the action. In addition to the live experience, community features have been souped up to cater to the extremely active Big Brother community within the Big Brother domain and all over the web, from personal blogs to other online media reporting on the show.
The customer wanted to significantly increase revenues compared to previous years. To meet the objectives we designed several new advertising products in addition to the standard display and video inventory available. Our goal was to create products that would be an integral part of the overall concept, and bring fans and advertisers closer via a shared experience.
At the time of writing Big Brother 2010 has been live for a little over a week. Compared to last year the first week results have been extremely promising. 586 000 visitors spent time on the site during the first week, compared to a 100 000 less during the same week last year.
Personal comments:
Ripatti: “Love it or hate it, Big Brother 2010 is one of the media events of the year. I’m thrilled that we got to once again be a part of pushing the boundaries of what a media concept is. And this one is a multi-channel monster, with several weekly TV shows, six 24/7 online streams, news, exclusive online videos, a hyper active community, games, IPTV, mobile content, SMS voting and all the online action looped back to the live tv shows.”
Ihmiset: Sami Kanninen, Risto Kyyrö, Markus Piipari, Misha Lagerstedt, Aleksi Leinonen, Heli Kettunen, Vilma Kaartinen
Yritykset: MTV Media
MTV3.fi, one of the biggest media-operated websites in Finland, wanted to redesign their most important asset: the MTV3.fi-portal front page. The goal was to simultaneously create a better user experience (better flow, more visits and visitors) and bring in more revenue with new business opportunities.
Our team was asked to help with the overall concept and deliver a brief for Idean, who would be responsible for the user interface design and testing.
As always, we analyzed user needs, business requirements and technological possibilities to define the opportunities available to MTV3.fi. Web analytics, customer surveys, stakeholder interviews and business area insight led us to present the executive team with several concept scenarios, of which one was chosen as a basis for the final concept.
We delivered the insights and concept to MTV3 and Idean to be used as a basis for user interface design and testing.
Personal comments:
Ripatti: “This is how a project should be done. Thorough analysis, extensive discussions with all major stakeholders, a client with an open mind willing to debate anything and great design by Idean.”
Räikkönen,Häkkinen, Kovalainen, Rosberg… No wonder MTV3, the leading commercial tv-station in Finland, has held on to their exclusive rights to broadcast Formula 1 for nearly two decades. After renewing the contract in 2010, MTV3 wanted to build on the previous commercial success and offer fans the “best way to enjoy Formula 1 in the world”.
As part of the Gyllene Skor team, Passi and Ripatti worked with MTV3 to create an experience that would attract both early adopters that have already abandoned traditional TV for online video services and for the larger audience that still enjoys watching Formula 1 on their big screens in the comfort of their own living room.
We knew that hard-core Formula 1 fans were very likely to use the service, but wanted also to serve a larger audience that wouldn’t be as active during the season as the core group.
With these viewing and activity habits as our design guidelines we focused on creating an experience that would work as a stand alone online service or as a social TV extension when watching the live broadcast via pay-TV channel MTV3 MAX.
The service is designed in such a way that online viewers can watch the live stream, interact with other fans and follow the drivers data and track-position on one screen. TV+online viewers can focus watching the live stream from their TV and use the online service for additional content that is only available online, like the in-car camera.
In addition to the race viewing experience we wanted to keep the fans engaged throughout the season and even the off-season. Race weekends were used as a base for a content calendar that provides fans with content before, during and after the races and news and exclusive material between races and during the off-season.
Even a great service can fail if you can’t reach your audience and convince them that you have something of value to offer. As the core of the service concept was being finalized we continued working on the service marketing side. The service was designed in such a way that potential customers had multiple possibilities to engage with the content and could effortlessly sign-up or become a member if they wished to do so. Engagement agency Toinen Helsinki and advertising agency TBWA\PHS have worked with MTV3 for a long time and they were brought in to do the campaign also this time around. Several sessions with all teams attending were held to make sure that the service and marketing were in tune with each other.
MTV3 Katsomo Formula 1 is not just a souped-up online video service. It’s a multichannel service built around the fantastic content that MTV3 and Formula 1 have to offer.
Since launching the service Bonnier owned MTV3 and telecommunications company Elisa have expanded the service to Elisa Viihde IPTV-platform.
Personal comments:
Passi: “I’ve always loved to follow Formula 1. It’s a world wide phenomenon that for some reason resonates especially with us Finns. How could any project be better than delivering a new viewing experience to fans F1? A great project with a great result. I’m really looking forward to working on the next version.”
People: Sami Kanninen, Janne Saari, Misha Lagestedt, Teemu Karenius, Minna Ritoluoma, Tommy Mäkinen
Companies: MTV Media , Toinen Helsinki , TBWA\PHS , Elisa
Spektaakkelit mielessä!
The future is not digital. It’s multichannel.
Passi and Ripatti enjoy designing services for everyday life. Passi currently works at service design agency Palmu Inc.
Ripatti is developing new stuff at Sterk.
Use Twitter, LinkedIn or passiripatti [at] gmail.com to contact us.
Visual inspiration by Maestro Leppänen.
