How do you foster a culture of prototyping and testing in your service design practice or organization?

Prototyping and testing are intended to help real users and stakeholders discover, validate, and develop the service concept. An example could be the retail sector, where improving consumer engagement and loyalty as well as boosting revenue may be the goals of developing and testing a new in-store experience. Before implementing the new experience in every store, the goals of prototyping and testing could include verifying the layout and design of the store, evaluating consumer satisfaction and behavior, and finding any problems or areas for improvement. Stakeholders, including users, customers, partners, providers, funders, regulators, policymakers, should be involved in co-creation process through workshops, interviews, and observations.

The prototyping and testing phases involve determining service scope, creating a low-fidelity prototype, testing in small groups, gathering stakeholder input, iterating and improving the prototype, and repeating this process with larger stakeholders or customers. In healthcare, rapid prototyping and testing are used to validate assumptions, improve product-market fit, and ensure regulatory compliance. In manufacturing, prototyping, and testing are used to validate design flaws, usability issues, and potential improvements before investing in full-scale development.

By using facilitation workshops, interviews, or observation, stakeholders and users are invited to co-create prototypes as part of collaborative prototyping. Iterative prototyping is the process of creating something, testing it, and then learning from iterations based on data and feedback. The value proposition, user needs, and proof of testing and learning should all be highlighted in presentations. Using a variety of channels for feedback analysis and synthesis, methods, and technologies that are appropriate for the job should be used to engage and request user feedback and involvement.

Your product is not the hero, "Customer" is! It is extremely important to connect and validate product/journey assumptions with the real users as well as stakeholder. If you are designing for the customers, go and talk to them to understand what is it that they want, take early feedback, iterate based on the inputs. Remember human centred design is not a linear process, it's an iterative loop: build, test and refine. It will not only help you solve a specific design problem but also help identify gaps and uncover opportunities to refine overall journey.

In today's fast-paced environment, the luxury of frequent iterations can be scarce, especially for larger organizations where resources are often stretched. This makes the initial testing and validation phase crucial in any project, as it sets the foundation for success. Prototypes are a valuable tool we must take advantage of. By facilitating cross-communication during testing sessions, we open ourselves to perspectives beyond the project's vision, allowing an understanding of valuable insights. It's essential to strike a balance between enhancing our users experience and aligning it with the broader business objectives. After all, a seamless user journey must not only delight users but also drive tangible results for the organization.

Getting people involved in prototyping and testing can be hard since everyone's trying to stay on top of their own responsibilities. Here are some tips I've found useful: 1. Build a relationship with active individuals. If someone's really happy participating, save their contact details and ask again. 2. Avoid bias by these active individuals by doing hallway testing. Go gather feedback in a public or busy spot, where you can reach people who wouldn't otherwise participate. 3. Make prototyping and testing fun! For example, instead of asking a basic question, ask people to bet on it and the one that comes closest (to eg. overall average) gets a small reward.

Accepting failure and experimentation in service design may result in innovation and growth. Organizations may promote a culture of failure by encouraging new ideas, testing ideas with the expectation of failure, and using consistent methodologies when creating prototypes and tangible artifacts. They can also use service prototyping to test the service and use several tools to design, share, and test prototypes with real users. Service prototyping allows companies to test their services by observing user interactions in the same location, situation, and condition, focusing on external factors affecting user experience.

Testing prototypes can avoid major pitfalls in project delivery. Minor adjustments can save $$$$ for the company. Use your business stakeholder's language to translate: ROI/Time/Cost

I've found that this metaphor really helps teams get into the habit of prototyping and testing. I tell them that our work is a bit like rehearsing a play - we need to try different approaches to get the best result for the least investment. Just as actors/actresses try different ways of delivering their lines during rehearsals, we should feel free to experiment with ideas using prototypes. It's like a 'dress rehearsal' where we test these prototypes in the real world and then make any necessary improvements based on the feedback. Just as a director makes sure a scene is polished for the final performance, we make sure every service element is perfect before it's launched. Quickly and cheaply.

"I strongly believe that what's key in good design teams is a balanced mix between individuals with the urge to strategize and research and those who have the creative instinct to produce and design solutions. At Koos, we observe that these are often two distinct profiles. We deliberately create two teams to maximize these skills but always bring them together on a project to strike a balance between analysis and creation. Simply put, ensure you also have UX designers in your service design team because their creative drive will force you to break free from analysis paralysis and start prototyping, creating, and learning."

Acredito muito no papel da lideran?a para que qualquer elemento de cultura seja manifestado, inclusive a de protótipos. Entender como introjetar a mentalidade na equipe, compreendendo os limites criativos de cada pessoa, papel e área e dando exemplos práticos, em que o próprio líder cria mini evidências e protótipos em seu dia a dia tem um potencial de expandir os horizontes das pessoas e movê-las em dire??o à prototipagem e à colabora??o. Outro exemplo pontual e simples: Em uma reuni?o ou discuss?o, quando um membro da equipe cria algo que ilustre o que o grupo está discutindo, muitas vezes, pode destravar e promover alinhamento entre o grupo de trabalho e retrata uma forma simples de valorizar a cristaliza??o de algo compartilhado.

One of the most important barriers to innovation in Japan is risk aversion. Japanese companies are known for their cautious approach to new projects, often waiting for success stories before investing in them. To overcome this barrier, companies could start with small, low-stakes experiments, gradually expanding the scope and increasing the risks as they become more comfortable with the process. Intelligent failure principles can foster an experimentation and learning culture by defining goals and success and developing a strategy for testing assumptions throughout the project, as well as encouraging employees to take risks and learn from their mistakes by creating a culture that shares, forgives, and even celebrates failure.