It was an amazing weekend! A weekend full of surprises, with some doses of emotions and full of fun! 

After a whole week of intensive work, finally Friday arrived. I was waiting for this moment already a long time. I’ve  got a really good feedback from guys attending Helsinki Service Jam (HSJ) earlier and I saw a YouTube videos about other jams. I thought that day that nothing should go wrong, and it didn’t… almost.

1. Friday 16:05 – ready to go!

It was a long day at work. When I returned home surprisingly I felt really good and still had a fresh mind. Normally that time, I would have a short nap before weekend party, but not that day. I knew that there is gonna be something interesting, so I felt really excited. I packed all the things I thought would be useful, and I was ready to go.

I arrived to a place really fast. Immediately, I felt like I am in a right place. Suddenly, I was surrounded by people having the same goal: rock the jam! I felt really happy, that I had chance to be there and do something together with them!

The first task was quite simple. Make your own badge! A funny concept that works. It was amazing to see how easy is to spot people based on their badge colors. It was fun to see how different we were and how many skills we were possessing.

When I finished my badge, there was an official part of the HSJ 2013. As every year, till that moment, the topic of the jam is not known. Suddenly, organizers revealed it and it was a surprise. Everyone felt, that topic was so “wide” and that there is no possibility to achieve satisfying results in just 48h.

“Grow^”, as a subject could mean almost anything. I believe, that this was a whole fun. Simply, everything would fit. Personally, I would prefer to have something more “narrowed” and more precise. Nevertheless, the fun just suppose to start. It wasn’t enough, that you had idea about the issues or problems,  but you had to “pidgin” to find people who shared the same ideas and thoughts. That wasn’t easy task.

It took me sometime to clarify what I would like to explore, however I had luck as  there were 3 more guys interested in the topic. We immediately started discussion about health, nutrition, diet and that’s how our concept got approved and later on expanded. We used sticky notes to find out what issues and problems we were having in mind.

We quickly went through the process and we started to create our first concept logo. After long brainstorm session, we decides upon one sentence: “Eat Right”. It was short, catchy and pointing right the problem we explored.

Having service design processes workshop in SID  studies in Laurea, I knew from where to start. Our first and a last action of the day was to group our ideas into manageable topics, extract from it our focus areas and connect it with target groups we set. We had done it really fast and we were ready for next day challenges.

2. Saturday 9:00 – from euphoria to big emotions

The day started pretty well. Fully confident, I went to start  a second day of  HSJ2013. As we planned the day before, we started from Persona’s analysis, assumptions about our service and from building stakeholders map.

To be sure about the issues we found, we went to nearest shopping center and interviewed over 13 people to know their issues with nutrition, eating and shopping habits. We learnt a lot about customer’s experiences and we verified our assumptions. When we went back to workshop, we immediately updated our Personas and we iterated it several time to be sure we did not miss anything on the way. We created customer journey based on targeted group, and we felt really excited, that we already achieved so much.

The day was heading to the end and then suddenly something unexpected happened. People started to have doubts about the concept. We spend over 2 hours to argue about an approach and how we want to tackle the issues. Group got divided based on two view points and atmosphere become really emotional. There was a moment that we almost split, however skills gained during interpersonal communication workshops, helped me to clarify and calm down situation. We were able to go for compromise and continue our work. It was really interesting moment. After hours of argues and high emotions, we again were one team with mutual goal. That was one of the best moments for me. I couldn’t feel more happy. Before going home, we stretched our prototype application on paper and build our confidence on solution we were going to provide.

3. Sunday – stress, fun, boom wow wow wow boom…

To get mutual agreement about the things, we decided with Petri that we will conduct a Business Model Canvas workshop. It had double meaning. We did not want just to find answers to areas we were exploring, but as well to show the others, that last night argues did not have sense. It was a moment I was really waiting for. We’ve achieved a common understanding, and even those guys who were against us last night, changed their minds. Everything happened in really enthusiastic atmosphere. It was a good time to start new day!

Our task of that day was to bring our solution closer to people. After several discussions we realized that the best approach would be to make a movie, where we could explain our customer’s story in a visual way.

All guys got excited and we went again to already known shopping center and ask for permission to shoot some scenes. It was high time, as we did not have much of it anymore. We had to squeeze shooting the scenes, editing and compiling in 4h time. It was challenging but manageable. Surprise, but we did not have issues in shooting the scenes, and after 30 min we were back at our desks. It was fun time full of good emotions, empathy and understanding. We knew we were creating something unique, and we were really excited about that. We managed to edit and compile our video on time. I had even opportunity to use “boom wow wow wow boom” technique I learnt during Marc Stickdorn class in our University. It was just extraordinary time!

When the official group work presentation started, we were ready to “rock the boat“. Before us, there were amazing groups with their great concepts. We all felt that everyone had done a great job. We tried to achieve the best results we could under circumstances we had. We were proud of ourselves that we achieved so much in so short time!

I will never forget the moments we had together. It was wonderful time full of inspiration, creativity and fight to achieve the best results. I was really happy to be a part of HSJ2013. I hope I will have possibility to experience it again in the future!

Big Thanks to everyone I had opportunity to work and compete with. HSJ2013 was a great lesson for me and fun I will never forget!

Link to our video presentation:

youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iYrc50UUv8

Link to our App prototype:

http://popapp.in/w#!/projects/51323955b9c7921c34000543/preview

Eat Right team:
Caetano Vidal
Daniel Augustyn
Petri Tiainen
Wang Cong
Bijay Baniya

Thank you HSJ2013 / GSJ13!!
Daniel

Twitter: @pieni_dan

P.S. Sorry for my language. I wrote it at 11PM before and after other studies assignments. I’ve just got inspiration and trigger to write something 😉