It’s time to write about our last study project together with Innovation&Business students.  Writing is such a good way how to save an experience for a reference with a high level of details The course we are taking now is called Participatory innovation - one of major user-driven innovation approaches. And this project was a complementary part to lectures and discussions. We had to 1) find a real company, 2) get an innovation project and 3) fulfill it with methods that we were taught of. Project was meant to be 8 weeks long.

To sum up we worked together with company Dimaps on their route planning software. We made reasonable ideas and scenarios which were based on our user studies. However, there were some problems with inner motivation, communication (different mind-sets) and in our case – presentation of results. There is one of the scenarios above that we have extracted from user studies and co-ideation events.

In this project I have learned:

1. There is  need for one leader in a team, who helps to make teams’ decisions in a way that everyone is satisfied. That person needs to be charismatic, knowledgeable, a fast-thinker (to evaluate everyones’ ideas) and has to have a big picture in a head. Such person must not lose composure. By having many people who are willing to be only the one leader, makes decision making hard. Having bad or no leader in team, results in low motivation and incoherent group-work,
2. Team of 7 was too big in our case, just 4 people were working,
3. Presentation is how others perceive your work, good presentation means for most that group had a good work together (and it is mostly true),
4. It is important to be quick in capturing and interpretating data. Aim could be having 1-2 user-study videos per day, that would help to better and faster co-ideate in a group leading to richer ideas,
5. There is little value in having a shallow look at user-study materials (videos) and interpreting them 1:1. Question why they are doing that is important in order to create good user-centered products and services.
6. I have got a good insight in participatory innovation,
7. Consensus based group-work is slower, especially if members have different mind-sets, that requires to discuss each decision.

I am going into more details below.

Looking for a company

We started by dividing in teams (or groups would be more precise title) of 6-7 that took a lot of discussions. In the end our group consisted of 1 design student (me) and 6 business students.

Then we had a group meeting discussing what expectations/skills we have and what companies we will look for. It ended in a list of 10 companies what we contacted through email. I had to argue that only an email is not effective way of establishing connections that I experienced while working at WSI (only about 3% respond rate).  So we decided to call our contacted companies after couple of days will be passed since sending emails. Well, from 10 companies indeed 2 responded (rejected), that makes 2% respond rate But calling helped to established a contact, as managers seems to be so busy that they delete such emails or in best case – goes through very briefly and then forgets about them.

In the beginning we thought it shouldn’t be difficult to find companies because of many reasons including a cheap labor doing a project in favor of company for free Another reason that we imagined was possible connection with a university, that is a good source of constant innovation. However, in reality not many companies wanted to work with students as such a project in their opinion was for too short time or they didn’t though that such project would give them sufficient benefit. Looking for companies took more time than we expected so a project suddenly shrinked from 8 week project to 4 week long.

I guess our biggest mistake was waiting on one contact until they would give an answer, we should have had at least 1-2 meetings each day in order to find someone who would be more open and interested in such innovation project.

Starting the project

Dimaps GIS route planning (dimaps.com)

We were lucky, because one of the other groups did a better job in finding companies. They have got 5 options that have agreed on project, and they were happy to share with us. I must admit that they have sent e-mails to more than 60 companies. This company we were lucky with was Dimaps, quite small but very flexible software engineering company with concentration on route planning software and geographic information systems.

They were quite open, interested in new ideas how their route planning system could be improved – how users could interact with a map, how people could report if routes were incomplete (hey dude, I have found a better route!) etc.

Soon we have conducted a first group meeting. We decided on a next plan – in having user studies to understand the use of route planning software in practice. We have got some serious disagreements as well – do we have to spend a lot of time in order to understand an existing Dimaps software or concentrate on user studies and their needs. That was a point where I missed another design student who understands a need of studying users. However, both points about software and users were right. We needed to understand sofware that we are making suggestions for and we need to understand users in order to suggest user-centered ideas. However, communication often was not fruitful.

Thing that we missed from a beginning was one strong project leader, because at least three of us wanted to lead and had strong arguments. That made it difficult to achieving consensus and making strong decisions which should have leaded towards specified tasks for each team member and coherent team-work.  How do you pick up only project leader? Everyone has ideas, but who should be the one, who makes decisions while having everybody satisfied?

Conducting user studies

Parcel delivery experiment

In the beginning we decided to conduct a delivery experiment. One of our group mates, Eleonora, had to deliver a parcel to a flat in student dorms. The reason for choosing this building was because it is challenging (many entrances, most of them closed) and that our group mate hasn’t been there before. We followed Eleonora with video cameras capturing real-life experience (being confused, calling, asking, looking). That helped us to get our minds into the project and put ourselves in the shoes of users.

After capturing this video, we made another one. This time our group mate Margus was a main actor, having a route calculated by Dimaps software. This case was straightforward as software showed right entrance and route to the right room. We found out that Dimaps route planning software really helped. However, we have also found out that there are some potential problems – how someone who has a delivery room on a map knows in which floor this room is?

Next there was a delicious idea – to order a pizza and follow their delivery in order to see how local pizza delivery businesses work. The only one local pizza place used to advanced methods of planning a route. Basically they just 1) got an order,  2) made a pizza, 3) delivered by memory (or paper map).

We also conducted interviews with ambulance and truck driver about their route planning systems. Both of them use GPS devices (in ambulance case updated every 2-3 days).

Discussion / tangible stuff

User workshop

We conducted a workshop having a manager of Dimaps (who is also an expert in software engineering), manager of customer department in large media company and three of our group-mates on board. Using tangible, abstract elements and mock-up of building where delivery experiment was done, we provoked discussions about real-life delivery problems, possible solutions and a future of route planning systems. We have got many ideas there.

Challenge in such workshops is to give a specific, reasonable task for participants to solve. Tangible parts is a good way in helping participants to build  solutions. However, as I experienced facilating workshop, there should be a clear introduction of task and parts that should be used. Besides, such seemingly tiny thing as easiness to reach tangible parts, also affects very much participant willingness to

Scenarios

Using knowledge that we had from user studies and a workshop, we generated different ideas of how and where Dimaps route planning software could be used which includes 1) mobile phones, 2) smartphones, 3) special our-made device Obox. We saw these three as cost-effective and mobile environments of having route planning software in. Besides such devices could support feedback from users in order to improve routes. We also saw an opportunity for Dimaps for selling their information for GPS software developers.

Report & presentation

Mock up of Obox & Kweedo

In the end we made a report and presentation. All groups including us got some critics from teachers about a report. Main points are that it should be a joy to be read which includes having graphics not only text. And graphics should be in one common style.

Also presentation of findings is very important. That includes basic things 1) are materials (posters, slides) readable by everyone? 2) is presentation coherent? 3) Does somebody get something out of presentation (information, fun) 4) Does presentation fits in the time allowed?. Some of the teams did a great job in having enjoyable presentation by making it in a form of little theater/storytelling. That makes it easier to be perceived.

All the teams had interesting prototypes, just have a look in my Flickr account or at our courses’ common one.

Scene from a Robin Hood movie project

I had pretty much experience on teamwork while studying and working. And the practical side is much more dirty than just reading books. Understanding teamwork begins from a feeling the power of community, frustration on making decisions, having a laugh together while working, blaming each other for failures and leaving behind own ego to move forward.

Innovation – a fight between different personalities

So a teamwork is a mixure of the pleasant and the unpleasant. This system is unpredictable to some extent just like everything related to people. Some of them wants to lead, some of them doesn’t want to be lead, others have communication issues. Well, and very often – most of the team members have different characters. This is especially the case related to innovations, because innovation is most likely to happen in the mixture of different personalities and experiences. That means – a lot of arguing, crying, fighting, dealing with uncertainity, returning back, creating & trying & destroying ideas. And to actually move somewhere with ideas, everyone should be intelligent enough to understand that there are different personalities sitting around, and that disagreements shouldn’t be taken personality. Of course, there is a need also for a good leader, who can observe what is happening and put everybody on the right track again, if something goes wrong (some people are about to harm each other physically etc. ). Influence of a leader should be delicate – to much authority and creativity is limited, too much freedom and creativity flies around without a common goal. However, it is always a good idea to introduce each other in the beginning, so everybody is aware of other team member’s skills, talents, experience, personality and expecations.

But one is clear in the innovation process, team members shouldn’t afraid of constructive conflicts. These are actually quite natural (and useful) parts in giving a birth to new ideas and perspectives, in spite of that it might be exhausting to get a common sense. To get somewhere with these flying ideas, everybody should have a common understanding of what they want to achieve – do they want solve a problem, decide on concepts (of products), have a kick-start in a project … ?

Having a chance to go this stage over and over again in many projects, I learned that it is critical to learn explaining and presenting your ideas as good as possible. That could include not just story, but also quick sketches, models, mock-ups. It is important to be aware of how you are explaining your ideas, if nobody will understand the point of it, somebody else (who will present more clearly) will bring through his/her ideas.

Time to start working

Burning the brains to get innovation out

Well, after ideas have been thrown on table and common consensus has been found, it is time for actually trying out ideas. That includes building mock-ups to test on users, bulding prototypes, conducting surveys and observing users. If in the first phase there was relatively plenty of freedom and everybody were the same, then now it is a time for actually having different roles (some are good writers, some are great at listening, someone at building electronics) and responsibilities. From my experience, when there is a lack on agreement of who is doing what, then plenty of work overlays. A frustration comes out because usually the work of just one person is being chosen in such cases. And what is important, every member on team wants to feel that he/she has contributed in the success of a team.

Some personalities appear in this stage as well. There are people who prefer to work alone, and there are people who prefer to talk with other people, discuss problems etc. And of course, we can’t forget people who like to supervise everything – to worry about whole project and be sure, that everyone is doing right things.