Service Design 2017

Don’t just plan it, build it

Service design is a new course which has been set up as part of the UX minor. The class is situated in the main campus building with both Media and Arts students and International Business students collaborating. The class is co-operating with the company, Futurice lead by Mirkka Länsisalo. Mirkka is a lead service designer and offers key insights into service design and how to use their Lean Service Creation process. There are around 50 students in this collaboration working in 13 very different projects, working with real clients and companies in Tampere. The idea is to design new services and experiences for the consumers and new business opportunities for the clients.

So far in the classes, all teams have been working within their groups doing activities related to their project. They have presented their projects to the class and have begun working on different canvases to help develop their ideas.
Each team must have a felicitator who manages the discussion and time of each activity. Using post-it notes, the idea is to fill each canvas with ideas and answers to relatable problems and questions. Completing these canvases helps the groups tackle certain problems related to their projects, and helping the teams realise what the consumer may want from their product.

I am currently involved with this course and I am working on a project for Visit Tampere. It is our task to digitalize their service for tourists and make their website more appealing and accessible. We must find out user wants and needs when it comes to tourism in the city. For our project, we will be doing consumer research and benchmarking and then developing a concept for Visit Tampere which could be picked up and turned into a functioning demo. The service design class helps us develop our ideas in a fast and interesting way and being around a lot of business minded students helps as well!