By Ninja Fedy

After introducing the Service Experience Camp 2018 in a blog post earlier I am now sharing insights from a few open sessions I attended at the event.

Session 1: Design Sprints 

This session was meant for those who had already facilitated design sprints “the Google way” and was hosted by one of SXC organisers, Manuel Großmann. We shared insights from design sprints we had run in very different settings, issues we had faced, how we had solved them and if we hadn’t, others could suggest their solutions to overcome certain challenges with the process.

  

 

I was able to share learnings from design sprints I have run as I have facilitated them in a variety of settings including both public and private sector and many kinds of problem areas. Participants mentioned hacks such as:

• Incorporating relevant data of customer segments and persona cards into the first day of the sprint
• Starting the day with a short presentation on key insights from data (in the original sprint process customer insights are only included in the form of short expert interviews during the first day).
• Doing a podcast after a design sprint to share the learning in an easy way

Other valuable tips can be found in these photos:

Session 2: Fighting mental shortcuts by other mental shortcuts?

This session was a mix of a lecture and group work about three mental shortcuts that cause biases in the design process. These biases were confirmation bias, the bandwagon effect and the Ikea effect.

During the group work we discussed how these biases could be avoided and prepared a short presentation about our topic, the bandwagon effect, for the others.

Photo by Silviu Guiman

Bandwagon effect is a very common bias, often prevalent in focus groups or basically any group decision situation. It’s that “if everyone supports it, then it must be right” thinking that often leads to people sticking to the status quo or choosing an option just because more experienced people around them choose it even though they actually think that another option is better. This is why I personally use a lot of silent brainstorming exercises, silent voting and silent commenting – these facilitation methods are actually also used during the above-mentioned design sprint process.

The presenter slides – including the group work canvases and a few informative slides – can be found on Slideshare.

Here are a few of the workshop cards:

Session 3: Listen like a poet

“If you’re an amazing listener, people will tell you secrets. As a service designer, finding out the secrets of service experiences enables you to craft delight.”

My favourite session was this one by Frankie Abralind, an experience designer from Sibley Memorial Hospital. He was also one of the keynote speakers but in his open session he talked about his passion rather than his everyday work.

Photo by Silviu Guiman

Frankie’s passion is to delight others – especially terminally ill patients at the hospital – with poems that he writes on spot with an old-school typewriter based on stories people tell him. Frankie has already started a movement with this work that once began with a “Free custom-made poems” sign in the hospital cafeteria and a few patients that came to him who were deeply touched by his poetry.

What made Frankie’s session so good were not just his amazing presentation skills but also the fact that we could see that he was very moved by his encounters with the patients and that he wants to share his skills – listening and writing – with people who need them the most.

Frankie urged us all to spend more time listening instead of talking and to give some of our time to listen to those whose voices don’t often get heard.

Frankie has done some videos of good and bad listening to showcase how important it is to really listen, you can watch them on Vimeo.

Read more about Frankie’s movement at: poetsinresidence.org and at: freecustompoetry.org

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Photos by Ninja Fedy if not stated otherwise.