Filed under: amsterdam adventure | Tags: amsterdam, dsv factory, ethnography, insight, observation technique, project
Big thank you to Willem Bosch for letting me take pictures and learn about DSV solutions. When chatting about the Westpoort Bus service “It is great, without it we have no workers here!”. They try hard to keep their workers happy at DSV, when there are deadlines and lots of extra hours worked the staff get extra yummy food.
There is a problem when workers have to go home because they are ill, because there is no way for them to get to the station to get home!
I had to walk to the Starbucks Factory to get the bus home. Thank you to Harm for arranging that for me :) The walk was fairly awkward because I was unsure where I was going and there was no footpath. Had to walk on the grassI
I also had to cross these train tracks which was quite intimidating as there was no pavement at the other side!
All these touchpoints negative and positive have to be clearly mapped out…
Filed under: amsterdam adventure | Tags: amsterdam, insight, narrow casting, project
Adrian Cotterill has a great blog Daily Dooh on all things Narrowcasting – Digital Out of Home – Insight, Knowledge and Opinion. It has lots of great examples of interactive media, I particularly liked this article on Kodo Mobile
“Waiting for the subway in Montreal is a lot more fun these days: a new campaign for Koodo Mobile uses state-of-the-art technology from iGotcha Media that allows commuters to interact with out-of-home advertising displays.“
Adrian mentions how the self branding in this example is interesting – “You are watching Captivating Network”. Why don’t all mediums do this?
This on-screen solutions website also has some good info. “The potential of digital signage as a powerful medium for information, advertising and entertainment is being recognized by a growing number of retailers, which will cause market revenue to nearly quadruple from 2004-2009″
Types of Travelers: ( each of these needs to be explored and analysed further)
- Holiday Makers: These people will travel to their destination as a ‘tourist’.
- Business Travelers: Commuters
- Back Pack and Adventure Travelers: alone or in small groups on self-organised trips.
- Long Term travelers: missionaries, volunteer workers etc. going to stay several years in a country.
- Travelers with special needs:
- Children
- Elderly
- Pregnant women
- Disabled Travellers
Good article about “Electronic Tickets saving time and worry for travellers.”
In my opinion, that’s what this is all about. Understanding the emotions of travellers. Listening to their stories and experiences.
- Observing them in different situations.
- Find out how the different groups of people feel when they are -
- buying their ticket. standing in a que. grabbing a coffee. reading their newspaper. browsing the shops. running to catch the train. waiting to talk to the information desk.
- Look at all the different options of the kind of messages we can give them -
- What do we want to acheive out of this? Make their experience more enjoyable. Introduce them to something new – a hobbie/ a fact/ a theory?
- Give them information – the weather/ the city/their journey/
- The way the message is made up? is it bright and flashy and loud? I know the things that catch my eye are often subtle and simple. Real handwriting in an advert always makes me look twice.
- Something to make people smile:
A question to think about is – Do we want to give them specific messages? For example, we could encourage people to be kind? to each other? to the environment? to themselves.
I like the idea of giving people a message to embrace life. Being in a train station reminds you that the world is a busy place, everyone has somewhere to be, is in a rush…Would they appreciate reading something like this:
”Life is like a taxi. The meter just keeps ticking whether you are getting somewhere or just standing still.” Lou Erickso
“Life is like riding a bicycle. You don’t fall off unless you stop pedaling” Claude Pepper
“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can” Danny Kaye
Kevin Roberts book Sismo looks like it would be worth a read if you are interested in this field…
Sight, Sound and Motion, the combination that made television the most powerful selling tool ever invented.
Filed under: amsterdam adventure | Tags: amsterdam, story telling, travel, user experience
This story written by Samantha Frietas, tells her story of travelling on a over-crowded bus every day in an unfamiliar country. Such honest and genuine accounts of such experiences are often hard to find…
“I sometimes take myself out of the overwhelming and usually exhausting situation and find it very surreal. Like a scene out of a movie, there are people coughing, babies crying and people shouting on their cell phones – it seems like total chaos, yet if you look around at the passengers they are not even phased. The bus ride for them is not a frustrating invasion of space as it is for me, rather it is a time out of their day in which they have to worry about nothing but getting off at the right stop.”
After reading this story, I would like to sum up my journeys in and around Amsterdam, the Harbour and my journey to the DSV factory tomorrow…
“The journey not the arrival matters.” by T. S. Eliot
Filed under: amsterdam adventure, service design | Tags: amsterdam, city, gps, map, navigator, technology
Thank you to my lovely friend Kathleen, for letting me know about this Travel Service the city of Amsterdam offers.
“Amsterdam is a small town compared to most other European capitals. It is really perfect for walking around. It is small, but big enough to get lost.
Even with a city map it can be hard to orientate to find your way around.
We have developed a simple solution for this problem.
Filed under: amsterdam adventure | Tags: amsterdam, customer, emotions, ethnography, experience, insight, journey, mapping, user
Workers of the Ports who live in Osdorp have to travel to Sloterdijk station to reach the Westpoort Bus. I went on this journey today to experience it for myself. The aim of this is to help me understand the emotions of the journey, as well as how easy/difficult it is. Paying particular attention to signage and the time of journeys.
This map clearly shows the distance from the centre of Osdorp plein to the bus stop Ruimzicht ( about 2 minute walk) From this stop, Bus 19 goes to Sloterdijk roughly every 15 minutes. An easy journey!
This website shows a recent campaign involving the Ports. Although the site is all in Dutch, the people featured in the campaign are famous Dutch people who have been covered in tattoos, to represent the industrial, toughness of the Ports;”a romantic view of the ports”…aimed at people like me and you. I saw a billboard featuring one of the actresses, in Osdorp today.
The number 19 stopped at many bus stops around Osdorp and runs very regularly.
How familiar are the stakeholder groups with a Strippen Kaart?
Filed under: amsterdam adventure, service design | Tags: 31 volts, design thinkers, event, experience, picnic, service design
Picnic conference is taking place in Amsterdam, September 24-26. Unfortunately, I won’t be here to experience the event :( but I definitely be following it online.
“A hands-on service design lab at the international PICNIC conference in Amsterdam will bring the service design approach to a wider audience in the Netherlands for the first time on 26 September. The event will be an activity that allows participants to experience the key ideas and processes of service design. Organised by SDN members STBY, 31Volts and DesignThinkers.“
Charles Leadbeater is a guest speaker,the author of We Think – the book I am reading.
Very interesting Labs are taking place – just a sample – The Future of Television, The Future of Social Networking and Creative Technology workshop for teens…
Three inspiring days of ideas, fun and sensory stimulation in media, technology and entertainment!
“Service Design has internationally emerged as a new approach to create integrated multi-channel services. Especially in the UK and Germany, design is called upon in ever more fields to provide a new people-centred vision and practice that can thoroughly humanise and innovate services.
From the very first stages of projects ethnographic research methods ensure that design teams empathize with the perspective of the people they design for. Many design disciplines and media come together in this new field, from architecture to interaction design, from mobile phones to newspapers. To innovate, organisations need to look at their customers more than their competitors nowadays. Service design shows how this can be done in practice. With this hands-on workshop PICNIC brings the service design approach to a wider audience for the first time in the Netherlands.”
Filed under: amsterdam adventure | Tags: amsterdam, culture hunt, design thinkers, moleskine, sketching
Filed under: reading and writing | Tags: a brief message, design, learn, opinion, quick, website
A simple site, full of simple messages. The latest entry is particularly interesting as I have always found it challenging to cut down my word count when writing within constraints. Paul Ford has designed a little tool to assist along the way…
Filed under: amsterdam adventure, service design | Tags: emotion, ethnography, experience, insight, journey, ports of amsterdam
This afternoon Harm and I drove round the Ports. It was interesting to see that there were no footpaths to the factories in a lot of areas and the bus stops are very isolated. The area is very dull and grey. There were no cyclists either.
The workers have to wait here on dark, rainy winter nights. Dangerous and not ideal.
This worker is walking on the side of the road as there is no footpath.
Beautiful sign on Valeriusstraat.
Filed under: service design | Tags: design school stanford, design thinking, napkin sketch
I discovered via Anamorphosis : The San Hose Business reports Stanford University and the Hasso-Plattner-Institute have announced a $16 million research partnership in which they will investigate “design thinking,” a methodology that melds an end-user focus with multidisciplinary collaboration and iterative improvement to produce products, services or experiences.
I like the approach at the Design School at Stanford : “We tackle difficult messy problems that demand interdisciplinary solutions”. It is a place where people use design thinking to solve big problems. I particularly like their descriptions of their prototypes – “imperfect and ever evolving”. The projects and attitude is most definitely inspiring and full of positivity!
Filed under: amsterdam adventure | Tags: amsterdam zoo, artis the partis, web design
This lovely little site for Amsterdam Zoo is simply beautiful. I do hope they make an english version of the site soon. An engaging and delightful example a main touchpoint to a public service : the zoo, capturing the imagination of the young and the old.
Filed under: amsterdam adventure | Tags: experience, insight, nissan, people, study
Today I had the exciting opportunity to observe and meet a key group of stakeholders within The Ports of Amsterdam brief: the current employee in the working environment.
I was a fly-on-the-wall, observing and recording behaviour within its context, without interfering with people’s activites.
I have gone into great detail about my activities in getting to the factory. This is important has it represents in detail all the actions, objects and people involved in the process of my journey.
I intended to travel to the Nissan Factory,Hornweg 32, 1044 AN, Amsterdam using the WestPoort Bus, which leaves from Sloterdijk Station. The Westpoort Bus is a service that has been designed to make transportation to and from work much easier for the workers. I wanted to experience this journey so I can really understand the emotions and perceptions of the workers, and what they would be of a first-time traveller on the WestPoort Bus.
Arriving at Sloterdijk at 12.10 for my bus scheduled to arrive at 12.16, I was confronted with lots of buses and lots of stances. No sign for WestPoort Bus?
I asked this bus driver 
what stance to go to. So I stood at the stance he had pointed to ( which was the wrong area, the correct stance was behind me…) I waited there for ten minutes, I asked a lady waiting beside me, she had no idea about the bus “Does it not tell you on the timetable?”. It didn’t.I was still unsure if I was waiting at the correct place.
So I asked at the 
“I give information on trains, so didn’t know much about buses. But I think it comes every hour and it is a big red bus, looks different from the other buses.” So now I knew I was at the correct stance, underneath the sign
which I had not noticed before!! even though I had been looking at all the stances for nearly an hour! Now all I had to do was wait for the red bus…
Then this bus arrived at the stance. Not red? With no letter A on the front? So I asked the bus driver and she said “No more buses go to Nissan today.Ever. I go to Starbucks”
By this point I was very confused, if I was a worker, I would be extremely late. If I was starting my first day of work at Nissan I would have wanted to run home :(
There is another red bus at the opposite side of the stances, it says ‘Schipol Sternet’ on it, I don’t want to go to Schipol? But maybe that is the right bus if it is red?
At 1.35pm, another bus looking like the picture above, but with no sign on the front arrived. I asked the driver. He doesnt go to Nissan.
My appointment to visit the factories was at 12.30. I was very late and very confused. This exposes a problem! I cannot get to the place and it is only a 6-7minute drive away!
With help from Arne and Harm and many phonecalls later…I was told to get on the bus that comes at 2.10pm with the letter C on the front.
A very friendly bus driver, with ‘Take On Me’ playing on the radio, but no other passengers/workers to photograph or talk to, which was unfortunate. ( and the time on the clock on the bus was wrong….)
I got dropped off on a pavement facing a bus stop? So I had to cross a busy road.
I could clearly see the path to walk to the Nissan building.
The friendly receptionist informed Jan I had arrived for appointment.
Now I had arrived it was time to observe and learn about the workers and work that happens there. A little sample…
Thank you to Jan for giving me a tour around the factory. Chatting about the project , he claimed “This place is very easy to get to from new West.”
Although, I think my experience most definitely proved that it is not! I photographed the canteen, the lockers, the work floor, the offices, the reception and outside the building. The work that happens on the main floor is mostly done by men as it involves heavy lifting. These positions do not require qualifications, as the workers ‘learn on the job’. The admin and computer work requires a University degree.
I learned that people tend to bring a ‘packed lunch’ to work as it is much cheaper than the canteen…
More analysis and lots and lots more pictures coming soon…
This article is definitely worth reading. For those of us who are still a little hazy about service design and for those of us who are doing it and living it…
“The traditional response would be to improve the physical design of the buildings, their contents, and the literature explaining what they’re trying to do. Designers still do that, but they’re also using design thinking to identify what needs to be done to improve the work of those institutions, and how they deliver it. Often they do so by working in collaboration with social scientists, economists, management consultants and anthropologists. Design thinking then helps to invent more efficient alternatives, many of which will be executed using conventional design techniques.
This area of design is so new that it doesn’t have a recognizable name. It’s variously called “social design,” “service design” and “the new design.”
