Fishing lessons - Master's thesis
Designer and project manager in the service design case project for Helsinki City's the Department of Social services and Healthcare
The service design case was the designerly part of my MA thesis. The practical goal in the case was to produce user initiated ideas into public work and daytime activity services for disabled people, with service design. I was supporting change in management and workplace practices towards more self-organizing and customer-oriented organization. The design process included a thorough discovery phase (experiencing services, interviews, survey), crystallizing insights into improvements (affinity diagramming) and choosing an area to focus on and developing a solution for the chosen issue. I lead two 50-participant service development workshops for the whole staff of the services alone.
My design research found that service users could not truly participate in the idea creation for the services or service development though the law required it. The case outcome, the Our Favorite Ideas (Meidän Suosikki-ideat) design game addresses how disabled service users in the public services can participate in the creation of new service content ideas, make choices, and voice opinions. The game is based on a word and image combination technique. The outcome of the project were the game materials that included a customer journey for the game including perspectives of the staff and customers/users, instructional videos about the game and starting packages for game cards, which are all available online.
The game exemplifies MVP (Minimum viable product) thinking: As a lone designer I wanted to provide the customer something practical to use as a low barrier first step, beyond advice on their management practices, which I gathered in a separate vision for their future services. The game is built with materials and manufacturing techniques the service centres are already using. The clint organization is currently using the game to design content for their services together with customers and are planning a new service development event where customers will also be included. News article about the game design here.
“Berg’s study is an impressive achievement for an MA thesis. It includes comprehensive introductions to service design, game design, capability(-ies) approach and autoethnography.”
The whole thesis from the case project photography to the layout is my own work. In the thesis as an academic contribution, I study the relevance and impact of a normative ethical theory, capabilities approach, in the case design process. My thesis has received very good reviews, and has already helped other students working with similar topics. Have a look at my excellent thesis here.