Background

I have been a trained classical pianist for 17 years. Music has always been a big part of my life, so it was natural for me to somehow incorporate it into my Masters thesis. After some service design work that I did in my first year of graduate school as well as the work I did with IBM Reserach for an internship, I began to see interesting parallels between the two fields… so much so that I decided to focus my thesis paper on this topic.

The Paper

So, what can services learn from classical music?

In my Masters thesis paper, I discuss the growing field of service design, and parallel it to the well established field of classical music. I argue that services can be thought of as performances, and if so, then many aspects from classical music could be used to provide applicable approaches to service design. The topics that are paralleled in the paper are the following: how services can be thought of as performances, how the roles inherent to music find similarities to roles defined in service design, and how music notation systems are essential in connecting different music roles together and why service design should adopt a notation system of its own.

Process

Presentations

I presented this work at the Design and Emotion 2008 conference in Hong Kong. Flip through it here:

Introduction

Information overload is always a problem for patients at hospitals, especially as medical diagnoses, treatments, and follow up care become more complicated. Having to deal with information is hard enough when you’re the patient, but perhaps a tougher situation is when the patient is a young child and you’re their parent or caregiver.

My masters thesis project aimed to study both the emotional journey of parents with children at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP) as well as the current methods for information delivery, and to develop an enhanced system or service that will hopefully improve the current methods of family education.

Process

I started my exploratory research by talking to CHP staff. I focused on parents staying at the new 7IMC unit, an intermediary care unit housing children that were not critical enough to stay in ICU but still needed constant monitoring. I also talked to various parents who had children staying at 7IMC. Speaking to staff and families allowed me to learn a great deal about the experience.

Common problems
–information is not given to you unless it is critical, or unless you ask
–first visits to the hospital are overwhelming both emotionally, and with the overload of information
–parents need to seek out a lot of information on their own
–parents never remember to ask the questions they want or need when the doctor is there
–parents can’t always remember verbal information
–there are too many staff to interact with; “you don’t remember who you’ve asked what to”

Common positive aspects
–keeping journals was very helpful for parents who did this
–learning and knowing medical terms helps
–most of the nursing staff were friendly and helpful
–guidance and friendliness from social workers

What parents thought would help
–more connection with staff
–knowing about other parents’ experiences
–a more consistent experience
–being made aware of all resources and information

Following the research, I synthesized the findings and distilled them into three concept models (see slideshow above): one showing the current overall journey, one showing the ideal journey, and one showing the overall values that are important to parents during their stay at CHP. These models helped me think about the experience as a whole, and provided me with guidance towards generating concepts.

I generated concept after concept, and brought these back to some of the families at CHP. I created some participatory design activities for families so they could feel included in the design of a solution.

Solution

My final solution, which I called directCare, is a service that comprises of six different components:

directCare|welcome
A welcome kit given to parents upon arrival, containing important information (e.g., contact numbers, location of hospital facilities). For parents whose children require an overnight stay, the kit also includes age-appropriate items for the child (e.g., a teddy bear, or blanket). It also includes a disposable camera; I heard over and over again from parents that despite the situation, there are positive aspects of hospital stays and most have regretted not taking the time to document these.

directCare|mobile
A hospital-lent touchscreen mobile device to help keep parents connected to their child and child’s care even when they need to be away from the hospital

directCare|inroom
A touchscreen in-room display in every child’s room for parents to access information (child updates, current course of action, etc).

directCare|parentBoard
A removable whiteboard in every child’s room for parents to be more empowered about their child’s care. The board is used as a communal communication space; with all the hospital staff shift changes that happen, it helps for parents to have a central and visible place for important information.
directCare|farewell: a gift given to parents upon a child’s discharge. Contains photos taken during the stay, as well as some wallet cards (follow-up appointments, etc).

directCare|atHome
A website parents can visit containing all information that was recorded during the child’s stay. Serves as information for follow-up care and for future reference.

The Gist

Nokia’s annual Innovation Summit in 2008 focused on the use of mobile technology to enhance adherence to HIV/AIDS medications. I was on a small design team at Nokia who was approached by Nokia Corporate and Relations and Responsibility (the group who organized the summit) in early 2009 to help with some ideas they had around creating mobile reminders for HIV+ youth. Our design team ultimately challenged the assumption that a mobile reminder was the best solution for the problem, and designed a service that drew heavily from research we conducted with HIV+ youth, health workers, and those involved in the field. We worked with developers from Nokia’s Institute of Technology (INDT) in Brazil to bring our concept to life, and the project was piloted in Brazil in 2010 with great success.

The Process

Our aim was to improve medication adherence for HIV+ youth. This meant we had to get familiarized with the subject. We did extensive background research, scouring every resource we could find on HIV/AIDS. We talked to various health professionals at hospitals around San Francisco. Through this research, we found that medication adherence is extremely important for those who are HIV+. If medications are taken as directed, people with HIV can live long and healthy lives. Missing doses, however, not only reduces the effects of the treatment, but also leads to the increased chance of resistance to the medication.

We were originally asked to create some sort of mobile reminder system, like an alarm, to help HIV+ youth remember to take their medication. We quickly got ourselves immersed in the field and arranged many in-depth interviews with HIV+ youth to put ourselves in their shoes. We talked to many different types of people; some who took their medication religiously, others who were on and off meds, and some who were still in denial about having HIV. After doing this research, it was clear that simply ‘forgetting’ to take their medication was not the main issue. After synthesizing our research, we realized there were many factors to why HIV+ youth were not taking their medication. All of these factors boiled down to one main issue: motivation. Factors such as not having support from friends and family, to rebelling against people forcing them to take medication, to simply being in denial about even having HIV… these all play a role in demotivating HIV+ youth. Those who were motivated never missed a dose. As one of our highly motivated research participants reflected: “even when I’m drunk, I’ll remember to take my meds”!

Armed with this, we started asking ourselves a new question: how can we motivate HIV+ youth to be healthy (both mentally and physically), which in turn would help them be more adherent with their medications?

We spent several weeks sketching concepts to address a variety of issues. We brought these back to some of the awesome HIV+ youth we talked to earlier. They helped us sort out what worked and what didn’t, and offered insights to make our concepts even better. During this time, we also brought in two developers from INDT for a week to be involved in this concepting process. This not only helped them get a sense of what they would be building later on, but it got them involved and excited about the solution too.

The Solution

In the end, we developed a mobile service with multiple touchpoints. Unfortunately, I can’t share the solution publicly yet, but rest assured that it has gotten rave reviews from the HIV+ youth we spoke to, and also from all the test groups that used it in a pilot study in Brazil! We’ve also received many comments from folks outside of Nokia who were involved with the project that our solution isn’t just applicable for those with HIV+, but for many other areas where motivation plays a huge factor (e.g., diabetes, alcoholism, etc).

Intro

I was the lead designer on a six person multidisciplinary team to help University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) come up with a new business for at-home healthcare with an aim to pitch our business to VCs. This project was a joint venture between UPMC and Alcatel-Lucent.

We decided to focus on the baby boomer market; during some preliminary research we found that this market tends to spend more and consistently save more of their income. With this, we did desk and field research, created dozens of concepts, validated concepts with users, came up with a business model, and finally, presented to investors.

Process

Solution

I can’t divulge too much information, but I can say that we were successful in reaching beyond assumptions that at-home healthcare consists only of fixing medical problems from home. After talking to a variety of people (from baby boomers, to their families, to those who work in healthcare), we realized that there are a variety of factors that contribute to the overall health of baby boomers (e.g., relationships, mental wellness). Our solution, vivid, provides an at-home service that aims to help baby boomers improve all of these contributing factors, giving them a well rounded approach to improving and keeping up with their health.

Introduction

This project focused on designing a digital music player for a target group of our choice. The goals for this project were the following:

—design product interactions that support the emotional connection between people and their music within the given context that make people feel better about the role they enact
—extend the themes previously identified in the design of music players, including contextual integration, social interaction, and the connection between the product and the enacted social role

My group and I decided to take on the challenge of developing a product for the elder population (ages 65–95).

Process

We started by doing user research; observing elders in their everyday life, asking them about their lifestyles and familiarity with technology, and simply listening to the stories they had to share. We also did some competitive analysis, looking in different retail stores and online to see what was being offered to elders in the digital music market.

We proceeded to come up with some meta-level design concepts; what we knew the elders enjoyed, and the forms, shapes, and interactions that they were familiar with. We used different brainstorming methods, including a trip to Target to do some interaction relabeling, as well as trying some bodystorming.

Afterwards, we produced storyboards that included some more specific design concepts, and took these to some elders for feedback. During these initial concept validation sessions we also did more observations at elders’ homes to really try and get a feel of what it was like to be an elder, and to look into their needs.

Solution

The Gist

Service blueprinting is a tool used by service designers to model service processes from the customer’s perspective. Developed a couple of decades ago by Lynn Shostack, the blueprints are primarily used to showcase the customer actions, the backstage actions & support processes, and the physical evidence—all the tangible evidence that the customer comes into contact with throughout their service engagement.

However, the success of services depends largely on customer satisfaction, and how they feel they were treated throughout the service. It only seems natural that if studying and mapping services according to the customer perspective, these aspects—customer satisfaction and emotions—should be included.

My work for IBM Research explored exactly this: how could service blueprints be enhanced so that customer emotions and satisfaction would be taken into consideration?

Process

I knew that service blueprints were the closest thing that designers would use in terms of mapping services in terms of customer experience, but I started the project by studying all sorts of service maps: not only service blueprints, but other types of models and flow diagrams that others have developed to map services.

Next, I started using my own example of a service experience to start doing some mapping. In my case, I called a help desk for help with some computer problems. Throughout this experience, I recorded as much detail as I could; the steps that were taken, the script that the customer representative used, the emotions that I felt during the call, the frustrations I encountered, etc. Once I had all the details, I started visualizing my experience.

After dozens and dozens of visualizations, I started to hone in on specific attributes that eventually made their way into the final blueprint. By no means is the current blueprint final, but we think that we’ve made great steps towards enhancing the blueprint.

Some of the new attributes of the blueprint are the following:
–added customer satisfaction line
–added customer emotion ‘bubbles’
–added service provider script
–made the blueprint more pictorial rather than textual

Out with the old, in with the new

Typical service blueprint:

A slice of my redesigned blueprint:

The Gist

This was an infoviz exercise that challenged me to deal with lots of information. We were asked to document every detail we could of 60 minutes of our lives, and create a 24″ x 36″ poster visualizing this passage of time. I chose to count the number of bricks on the wall in my apartment; I was sitting on my chair on a warm fall day and the sun was pouring into the room… there was no motivation to get up to do anything more involved ;)

What made this project interesting, however, was the challenge of visualizing the fact that I was counting bricks, as well as recounting all the thoughts that were meandering through my mind during this time.

This project really allowed me to focus on typographic details; deciding the perfect placement of the poster title, figuring out the right size for the numbered bricks in the background… attention to all the details were what made this project successful for me.

The Poster

The Gist

In a Product Planning and Development class at CMU, we were asked to create an idea map using some of the concepts we learned in class. I decided to incorporate the stage-gate process (which we learned in class) and branding, while throwing in a bit of the design process too to create the ideal product development process.

A standard product development process, the stage-gate model is very linear in nature. I chose to infuse more of design’s iterative process into the model as the traditional “gates” that separate the different development stages, in my opinion, are a bit too constrained. It is design’s iterative nature that allows the best solutions to be formed, and product development should be no different. I also chose to include branding because of it’s impact it has on not only the product itself but the company that will eventually sell it.

Out with the old, in with the new

Typical stage-gate process model:

My redesign, incorporating branding and the design process:

The Gist

In a quick one week project, light research was done to casually assess people’s behaviors towards throwing away garbage. The aim of the project was to create a conceptual model to visualize the findings. From the data, it was clear that people had “good” trash days and “bad” trash days. I chose to visualize this in an attempt to help us figure out how to make people feel better and more knowledgeable about throwing things away (whether to the garbage, recycling, etc).

Process

Data was gathered in teams of five (so we could get data more quickly… this was a one week project after all!). We then each created our own conceptual model based on how we interpreted the data.

My conceptual model

]]> http://thinkcarrie.com/mapping-trash-practices/feed/ 0 http://thinkcarrie.com/saul-bass-poster/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=saul-bass-poster http://thinkcarrie.com/saul-bass-poster/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:07:29 +0000 thinkcarrie http://thinkcarrie.com/wordpressnew/?p=111

Intro

An 11″ x 17″ poster to promote a fictional event highlighting Saul Bass’ work. I hand cut letters and used my own handwriting to evoke some of Saul Bass’ style.

Process

Final Poster