Service Design Approach to Develop Design Competence in a Finnish Retail Company’s Development Organization Focusing on the Non-Designers
Potoinen, Heidi (2022)
Potoinen, Heidi
2022
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022121630566
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022121630566
Tiivistelmä
In recent years, there have been significant changes in the market, and companies have realized that they need to respond to the changing world faster to have resiliency and stay in business. It has been suggested that design thinking provides an iterative process, tools, and methods that help respond to the change, with products and services matching human needs.
The purpose of this master’s thesis is to investigate the phenomenon of developing design competence in a company. The goal is to explore the design know-how and use of customer-centric methods in a development organization of a Finnish company operating in the retail sector, understand the learning needs regarding design and create a structure that helps to develop the design competence further.
This development work utilizes earlier research about the topics of design thinking, which is the fundamental topic for this work. Design-driven organizations that provide research outcomes from other companies and their experiences with integrating design thinking. Theory and framework on how to grow organizational competence because that is the goal for the development work. The different design maturity models are introduced as well, and one of them, the Danish Design Ladder, is used to help to understand the different maturities in the company. The service logics are also introduced to understand better how companies have been focusing the work: goods dominantly, service dominantly, or customer dominantly. The development work focuses on the non-designers in the organization.
A research-based development approach guided the development work, and a service design process and methods were applied. This qualitative research used semi-structured interviews to collect data. The data were analyzed deductively because there was an assumption that the development organization includes different design maturities. All the transcribed data were analyzed in the Miro boards affinity diagram.
The research questions for the development challenge are: How is design thinking and customer centricity understood in development organizations, and what practices help the stakeholders understand and apply the customer-centric design thinking process and methods in development organizations. The first research question helps to understand the current know-how and the second question helps to create a structure to develop the design competence in the organization.
This research was done by conducting twenty-six semi-structured interviews altogether. Six of them were interviews to gather background information that helped form the research questions. Twelve interviews were conducted to gather in-depth understanding from participants in different organizations. Eight interviews were done after a solution testing to understand if the solution helped to understand and apply design process and methods.
As a result, three personas were created based on the findings from the interviews and considering the Danish Design Ladder model. Also, a structure was created on how to develop the design competence based on the existing model called Five Learning Cycles and fitted specifically for the needs arising from the personas.
The purpose of this master’s thesis is to investigate the phenomenon of developing design competence in a company. The goal is to explore the design know-how and use of customer-centric methods in a development organization of a Finnish company operating in the retail sector, understand the learning needs regarding design and create a structure that helps to develop the design competence further.
This development work utilizes earlier research about the topics of design thinking, which is the fundamental topic for this work. Design-driven organizations that provide research outcomes from other companies and their experiences with integrating design thinking. Theory and framework on how to grow organizational competence because that is the goal for the development work. The different design maturity models are introduced as well, and one of them, the Danish Design Ladder, is used to help to understand the different maturities in the company. The service logics are also introduced to understand better how companies have been focusing the work: goods dominantly, service dominantly, or customer dominantly. The development work focuses on the non-designers in the organization.
A research-based development approach guided the development work, and a service design process and methods were applied. This qualitative research used semi-structured interviews to collect data. The data were analyzed deductively because there was an assumption that the development organization includes different design maturities. All the transcribed data were analyzed in the Miro boards affinity diagram.
The research questions for the development challenge are: How is design thinking and customer centricity understood in development organizations, and what practices help the stakeholders understand and apply the customer-centric design thinking process and methods in development organizations. The first research question helps to understand the current know-how and the second question helps to create a structure to develop the design competence in the organization.
This research was done by conducting twenty-six semi-structured interviews altogether. Six of them were interviews to gather background information that helped form the research questions. Twelve interviews were conducted to gather in-depth understanding from participants in different organizations. Eight interviews were done after a solution testing to understand if the solution helped to understand and apply design process and methods.
As a result, three personas were created based on the findings from the interviews and considering the Danish Design Ladder model. Also, a structure was created on how to develop the design competence based on the existing model called Five Learning Cycles and fitted specifically for the needs arising from the personas.