Activities

Activity 01.
Creation of the company

The first thing the team had to do was to register the company through Companies House. Companies House is the United Kingdom’s registrar of companies and is an executive agency, which falls under the remit of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The first obstacles the team encountered were finding a unique name for the company. As the name previously chosen for the app was already in use, they went through a new process of renaming and registered the company as Quirk Money ltd. 

The procedure to create the company also required other administrative steps, such as getting business insurance, partnering with accountancy for tax records, employment and founders agreements, as well as stocks and shares. The most time-consuming aspect of the company set up procedure was negotiating the shareholder agreement. The process required different rounds of negotiation with both the client as a sponsor and InnovationRCA.

This required the provision of unbiased legal advice that they found through a free service provided by a London university, which works in partnership with master students and legal firms. The shareholder agreement allowed the team to settle the conditions between co-founders, employers and investors at the inception of the company, as well as determining the Board of Directors’ participation.

Activity 02.
InnovationRCA mentorship

The mentoring programme provided the team with ongoing support at individual biweekly sessions throughout the entire process, from the creation of the company to fundraising. They also had access to a series of masterclasses on specific topics around how to launch a successful business. Another part of the programme included the Investment Readiness Program. During this intensive period, the teams were invited to pitch their ideas multiple times a week, first to the internal team at InnovationRCA and then to external advisors, practising the delivery of their pitch decks in a short amount of time and refining the narrative. The objective of the programme was to get ready to pitch in front of a network of angel investors during a dedicated event organised by InnovationRCA. 

Activity 03.
Pitching and fundraising

The most time-consuming activity for the team had been the fundraising, which extended for many months across the various stages. They had to refine the pitch multiple times, trying to balance and reconcile what investors think may be a good investment and what users actually want. This tension was especially evident for the monetisation strategy. On the one hand, users favour free services, on the other, investors want reassurance (especially in a time of Covid-19) that the product/service will be profitable in the short term. Investors also have preconceptions about the financial technology (fintech) industry, based on many failed businesses. 

For the team, fundraising posed a big challenge, as they put huge efforts into making the pitch appealing to investors while being conscious that, at the end of the day, it is the consumer need that drives the business forward. Fundraising did, however, also lead the team to get more exposure with people and businesses in the industry who became aware of their company and started to follow the updates.

Activities

Activity 1:
Focused research

The objective of the team’s research, at this stage, was to understand how to transform their concept into a fully functional financial product. The team conducted academic research to explore in greater depth the theories behind their value proposition. In addition to desk research, they interviewed professors with expertise in the field and worked with psychologists to develop a more robust personality test that would help identify ‘money personality’ types.

They learnt how to manage data, which would be one of the core aspects of the service. To do so, the team worked closely with data analysts, who helped them make sense of their data and know more about machine learning models and statistics. Their research also helped them navigate the regulations, the legal considerations, and the privacy and GDPR requirements involved in building a financial app.

Activity 02:
Positioning of the company

Another considerable area of research was on the market, to understand how to better position themselves in the current competitive landscape. One of their early findings was that fintech is an extremely crowded industry; however, there are only a very few big players. The team focused their research on examining and understanding what is already out there, what features are already available to the users, and how much they cost. This research helped the team define where to position themselves as a different and unique offering, both to catch consumers’ attention and for the investors.

Activity 03.
Business model

An essential part of the work done at this stage was around their monetisation strategy and the creation of a business model. This was especially necessary in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to investors being more risk averse. 

Before Covid-19, it was considered acceptable to focus purely on growth during the first years of the business, even without making profits. However, the situation changed so that investors began looking for assurances of company profitability early in the process. 

The team had to create a more robust business model, which increasingly drew more focus on their pitches to potential investors.

Activities

Activity 01.
Update of strategic questions

Following the learnings from the testing rounds of the proposition, and the feedback from the client, the lab team started to refine the strategic question, for the selected concept. In this phase, they planned to build a working service that would be tested with the general public.  Therefore, it was necessary to adapt the strategic questions, considering a more market-oriented approach.Consequently, they shifted their approach and strategic question concerning reducing anxiety —from technologically driven mechanisms, AI characters and chatbots, to more personal and human mechanisms of self-reflection.

Activity 02.
Segmentation and recruitment strategy

In light of what was observed during the previous testing of the EQLS proposition, the lab team considered doing more research on potential user segments. The interviews with users for testing the proposition, had disproved some critical assumptions and uncovered new possibilities for the user hypothesis.

A key finding was that users who experience high anxiety and frequently reach out to friends, family and professionals to reflect on their emotions, were more likely to have overcome stigma associated with self-reflection, and they were therefore less inclined to try new methodologies.

Consequently, the lab team expanded the research to users who had less experience in dealing with their anxiety and would benefit from learning how to practice self-reflection. To recruit these new users, they used an external recruitment agency, providing them with an updated brief and further screening questions to identify the right people to interview.

Activity 03.
Technology assessment

After the discussion with the client about the technical considerations for the creation of the MVPs, the lab team decided to limit the use of AI applications in this phase of the development. Instead, they experimented with other ways to simulate conversations within a digital device. The idea was to be able to test the mechanisms, and once validated, they would eventually build out a machine learning version over time.

So, the lab team researched simple rules-based chatbots, exploring what options were available to use, and how they could integrate them with online platforms and other channels. They also looked at Natural Language Processing and voice detection services that were available off-the-shelf. This technology assessment helped the team understand the limitations of the development, and define the scope for the MVPs.

Activity 04.
Scope of MVPs

Based on the technology assessment, the lab team defined the scope for the MVPs, considering their budget and reach. Since the next objective was to test impact and engagement, there was a clear need to create functional prototypes that users could really experience. This initial prototype could de-risk investment in the building of an actual product, which could go on to  find the correct fit in the market.

Based on these considerations, the lab team eventually decided to have two different MVPs: 

• One to test with recruited users, based on a web app – something more flexible, fast and easy to develop
• Then, depending on how successful the testing had been in terms of impact and engagement, they would invest more money and create a native app to launch for the general public on the app stores.

Activity 05.
Research and prototyping plan

Based on the decisions made regarding the scope of the MVPs, the lab team outlined a plan for the next stages of research and prototyping.

The plan detailed the research needed to adapt the value proposition to the new strategy. This involved more in-depth research into the theories and frameworks of self-reflection, more primary research with the newly defined user segment, expert advice in the field of psychology and behavioural science, and finally research on the competitive landscape to help decide where to position the service in the market.

Additionally, the lab team also planned out how to  conduct the experiments for the two MVPs they were going to build. For the web app, they decided to conduct a week-long trial with the recruited users, to be able to observe their use of the app over an extended period of time. Using recruited users would allow the lab to measure the impact of the service on the users and to track changes in behaviour and patterns through more extensive interviews. Monitoring a small group of users for the entire duration of the interaction with the web app would allow the team to collect meaningful qualitative data.However, for the native app, as they were planning to release it to the public, the focus was more on the collection of quantitative data and on tracking the frequency and types of usage. For this reason, they planned an experiment with detailed and robust data collection from the app and to use an external service to track analytics in real-time.

Activities

Activity 1:
Desk research

Using desk research methods, the lab team explored other frameworks and theories for mental health and happiness. One of the main insights from the testing of the propositions was that there was an excellent opportunity for self-reflection as a way to deal with anxiety and improve wellbeing.

The desk research helped the team to think beyond the technology when designing the solutions and focus more on the mechanisms that could trigger effective self-reflection. They researched by consulting articles and resources to understand the problems of relevant mental health issues and identify the main barriers to mental health services in the UK.

They also explored psychological models for therapy and counselling, both traditional and digital, as well as explored the theory behind self-reflection and how it works. This activity is essential, as the theories behind the development of the concept up until this point were based on assumptions and research with users. The desk research helped the lab team prove or disprove their hypotheses.

Activity 02:
Market research

 In parallel, the lab team also conducted market research and a competitor analysis. This type of research was useful to get a good understanding of what was already in the market and what competitors were doing, identifying potential opportunity areas to differentiate the offer from what was available to the users.

The lab team focused their research on the main competitors that provide services around mindfulness and wellbeing, self-reflection and therapy support. They examined their strategies and features and how they positioned themselves in the market space. They compared the strengths and weaknesses of each service and the types of audiences they were targeting, which helped to uncover the spaces still not filled by the competition.

Another analysis was made about branding. It was important for the lab team to be aware of how  their main competitors branded themselves, to understand trends and patterns around the same topic, but also to make sure to create something distinguishable in the market and easily recognisable.

Activity 03.
Primary research

At this stage, the lab team conducted primary research based on their new user segmentation strategy, which had been defined through the value proposition experiments of the previous phase. During those previous experiments the original users, ‘the self-declared anxious’, revealed that, although self-reflection was useful for them, they did not see the value of an external conversation agent, because they were already able to practice it on their own. Based on these discoveries, the team decided to investigate opportunities for another user segment, which experiences lower levels of anxiety, but is less familiar with self-reflection techniques and would benefit from the service.

The lab team conducted face-to-face interviews with recruited participants. The sample scope was designed to be broader than the previous time, giving the lab the possibility to uncover multiple points of view and new user segments. This time the research focused more on the understanding of the user, and their opinions around self-reflection, giving much less importance to the current concept itself. This research phase was more about exploring the topic and less about validation.

The lab team also interviewed some experts in the field of psychotherapy and behavioural science to delve into the methodologies and tools used in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and counselling. In addition to these interviews, they also conducted another round of guerrilla research (as in the first phase).

This type of research is conducted in public spaces and it aims to get quick feedback from people on the street. The lab team prepared a set of questions about how people feel, behave, reflect and express themselves and then went to specific locations where they might find their desired users and approached them for these on-the-spot interviews.

Through primary research, the team was able to build valuable insights about people’s barriers to, and methods for, self-reflection. This enabled them to form new hypotheses about who faces these problems most acutely, in what way, and how these challenges could be tackled.

This tool helps you to form a persona through key insights collected during your research and highlight their problems, attributes and goals.

Activities

Activity 01.
Review of the organisation strategy

The first step for the studio teams was to figure out how to align their projects to the client’s strategy. During the work with the lab explorations, the interactions with the client were kept to a minimum to let the students approach the problem freely and avoid getting influenced by the work done already by the lab and the client. 

However, for the selected concepts, the intention was to support the students in the validation of their ideas, so that they could collect the evidence needed for a final evaluation, which may lead to a collaboration with the client to launch the services, either through investment or incubation.

Based on their main topic and focus area, the studio teams were given access to some of the existing client research documentation. In some instances, they received support directly from different departments of the company. This helped them better understand the client’s work and strategy and define the next steps to align their projects to the organisation’s way of working.

Activity 02.
Problem area definition

After a deep dive into the client’s work and strategy, each team took some time to decide how to narrow down their problem area. In the previous phase of the project, the students were encouraged to explore and expand the opportunities of their ideas. It was now necessary for them to define a more specific focus area, so that they could test and measure the desirability of their concepts. Each team brainstormed more defined problem areas, looking at sub-themes and topics that might align with the client’s strategy, or they simply turned their focus onto one or two core features from their original concept.

Activity 03.
Primary and secondary research

One of the main activities for the studio was research. The teams returned many times to conduct primary and secondary research to refine their concepts and support them with evidence. Students interviewed users and collected insights about their needs and reached out to researchers, experts and psychologists to validate their assumptions. In parallel, they studied their topics in more depth through desk research, reading articles and finding online resources.

Activities

Activity 1:
Experimentation plan

The activity of planning how to experiment with concepts was not linear. The student teams would frequently redefine their concepts and change strategy based on the results of testing. Generally, the preferred method of prototyping by the students was to test the specific elements of the service individually using quick testing rounds, followed by a refinement of the concept overall. As they drew closer to the assessment, they conducted more extended experiments with recruited users, where they could assess the entire user journey.

Activity 02:
Building of prototypes

The prototypes the studio teams built often focused on getting insights and data on a specific feature or mechanism. Each team creatively came up with different ways to prototype the experience of using the service and test it with users. They experimented with simulated AI bots and web apps, they conducted interviews and surveys, and launched ads campaigns on social media and measured conversions on landing pages. Another important aspect of the prototypes was the branding, each studio team developed branding to represent the concept, and they produced mockups of user

Activity 03.
Experiments in the field

Similarly to the lab team, the studio conducted field research with both recruited users and the general public on social media. However, the teams prioritised testing with these two audiences differently, based on the stage of their projects. One team conducted testing only with recruited users to validate their assumptions on the new problem area, another focused on assessing desirability and building an audience through marketing and advertising, and the third one did some of each strategy.

In general, the first testing rounds were very short and quick, aimed at getting feedback on singular features or elements of the experience. They included presenting the concept to people, having them interact with the prototypes, or collecting sign-ups on the landing pages.

The students experimented with tools they found online to make the experience as close as possible to the actual service they imagined. Some simulated AI chatbots by acting as AI agents on Messenger; in other cases, they used external services to integrate other features into their prototypes.

Active 04.
Synthesis of insights and discussion of learnings

After almost every round of experiment, the students had a check-in session with the client and the lab, to share their insights, learnings and progress and get feedback from a strategic point of view. 

These were opportunities for them to synthesise their insights and transform them into actionable plans for the next round of testing.

The reviews with the client also helped them stay aligned with the company’s strategy and identify new potential critical questions to answer with further experimentation. Using those learnings, the studio teams refined the prototypes and conducted new tests.

Activity 05.
Refinement of prototypes

The way the studio experimented was by having multiple loops of refining prototype assets and then showing them to people or testing them with people. However, after each iteration, the focus slightly shifted to different aspects of the service.

In the first rounds of experimentation, they were more interested in validating their value proposition by testing features and mechanisms. For these rounds, they created simple prototypes that could be tested individually, usually for single features or elements of the experience, sometimes as simple as online surveys. In the next rounds, they started creating more complex prototypes that included multiple features of the service mechanisms in order to test the user journey and the engagement with the service. In subsequent rounds, they tested the user experience: how users liked the branding, the interactions and usability.

Each experimentation phase had its own set of prototypes that the studio teams adapted based on the questions they wanted to answer at that specific stage.

Activities

Activity 1:
Experimentation plan

The activity of planning how to experiment with concepts was not linear. The student teams would frequently redefine their concepts and change strategy based on the results of testing. Generally, the preferred method of prototyping by the students was to test the specific elements of the service individually using quick testing rounds, followed by a refinement of the concept overall. As they drew closer to the assessment, they conducted more extended experiments with recruited users, where they could assess the entire user journey.

Activity 02:
Building of prototypes

The prototypes the studio teams built often focused on getting insights and data on a specific feature or mechanism. Each team creatively came up with different ways to prototype the experience of using the service and test it with users. They experimented with simulated AI bots and web apps, they conducted interviews and surveys, and launched ads campaigns on social media and measured conversions on landing pages. Another important aspect of the prototypes was the branding, each studio team developed branding to represent the concept, and they produced mockups of user

Activity 03.
Experiments in the field

Similarly to the lab team, the studio conducted field research with both recruited users and the general public on social media. However, the teams prioritised testing with these two audiences differently, based on the stage of their projects. One team conducted testing only with recruited users to validate their assumptions on the new problem area, another focused on assessing desirability and building an audience through marketing and advertising, and the third one did some of each strategy.

In general, the first testing rounds were very short and quick, aimed at getting feedback on singular features or elements of the experience. They included presenting the concept to people, having them interact with the prototypes, or collecting sign-ups on the landing pages.

The students experimented with tools they found online to make the experience as close as possible to the actual service they imagined. Some simulated AI chatbots by acting as AI agents on Messenger; in other cases, they used external services to integrate other features into their prototypes.

Active 04.
Synthesis of insights and discussion of learnings

After almost every round of experiment, the students had a check-in session with the client and the lab, to share their insights, learnings and progress and get feedback from a strategic point of view. 

These were opportunities for them to synthesise their insights and transform them into actionable plans for the next round of testing.

The reviews with the client also helped them stay aligned with the company’s strategy and identify new potential critical questions to answer with further experimentation. Using those learnings, the studio teams refined the prototypes and conducted new tests.

Activity 05.
Refinement of prototypes

The way the studio experimented was by having multiple loops of refining prototype assets and then showing them to people or testing them with people. However, after each iteration, the focus slightly shifted to different aspects of the service.

In the first rounds of experimentation, they were more interested in validating their value proposition by testing features and mechanisms. For these rounds, they created simple prototypes that could be tested individually, usually for single features or elements of the experience, sometimes as simple as online surveys. In the next rounds, they started creating more complex prototypes that included multiple features of the service mechanisms in order to test the user journey and the engagement with the service. In subsequent rounds, they tested the user experience: how users liked the branding, the interactions and usability.

Each experimentation phase had its own set of prototypes that the studio teams adapted based on the questions they wanted to answer at that specific stage.

Activities

Activity 01.
Strategic Questions

The first activity was to review the assumptions linked to the explorations to understand which were safe assumptions and which required testing to be validated, i.e. which were ‘critical assumptions’.

For each of the selected explorations, the lab team went back to the original design challenges and scenarios and identified the initial key assumptions that led to the creation of the explorations. They then considered the original project goals and what the client wanted to explore based on their strategy.  Then, based on all this information, they created a specific strategic question for each proposition.

These strategic questions helped the lab to maintain the right direction during the development of the prototypes, as well as further challenge their thinking. Each strategic question was a synthesis of the hypotheses made about the user, the problem and the solution’s mechanisms, combined with the client’s specific strategic interests in each area.

Activity 02.
Options for prototyping

After the definition of the strategic questions, it was necessary to start thinking about how to prototype and test the critical assumptions.

The objective was to structure the hypotheses into something actionable, which could be tested and validated. So, the team explored different ways of prototyping and tried to get an initial  understanding e of the feasibility and timeframe to build the prototypes. To brainstorm those prototyping options, the lab team imagined how the concepts created for the explorations would look like in the present context, while maintaining the focus of the strategic question.

Thinking about ways to prototype at this stage made it easier for the lab team to narrow down the scope for the definition of the new value propositions, by considering what could be developed with limited time and resources

Activity 03.
Backcasting of value propositions

For users to engage with the concepts meaningfully, the lab team needed to reframe them to make them less provocative and less future-oriented, so they would interact with and critique the concept without spending time questioning the plausibility of the idea and instead to reflect on its impact

The way they did this was by following a methodology called ‘backcasting’, which is a practical approach that starts from the definition of desirable and optimal future scenarios and then works backwards to identify the main steps or mechanisms that can be applicable in the present to realise that future scenario. It is more common to see backcasting applied in the context of sustainability strategy; however, the lab team saw the opportunity to adapt the methodology to the reframing of the explorations in what they called ‘value propositions’.

For each selected exploration, the lab team had a strategic question and a series of critical assumptions. These were used as the starting point for the ‘backcasting’ process. While the importance of ethical exploration had always been present, this was a key moment to delve into it because the concepts were about to be taken to a more tangible level, and put in front of real users. It was the moment to examine more closely the these concepts’ impact on people and how the approaches aligned with the ethical principles of the client. 

Considering all these elements, the lab team used the backcasting methodology to work backwards. From the exploration, which was an extreme idea set in the future, they started imagining how the users could genuinely adopt it. They started analysing how the mechanism they identified in the strategic question could be enabled through a service, how this service would look like if it existed today, what types of features it would have and whether the service could evolve into a future service that contained the critical elements of interest.

The resulting value propositions were not all entirely ethically sound. However, problematic value propositions and the responses they may elicit, still enrich our understanding of the plausibility of potential futures and inform current strategy.

The desirable future scenarios were those where a particular service provides users with more agency over their choices and an improvement to their health and happiness. The way the lab team framed each value proposition was to consider those scenarios as the outcome and then design propositions that could lead there, so they could understand if users also saw those scenarios as desirable. 

In this way, each value proposition was simply a disguised and digestible, intermediary stepping stone into the future – these experiments allowed us to understand if users would engage with that first intermediary step, which tells us something about the potential of subsequent steps.  

Activity 04.
Planning of experiments

With the value propositions defined, the lab team started outlining a plan to prototype and test them with the users. 

As mentioned earlier, the objectives of testing of the propositions were to:

1. validate the critical assumptions;
2.  measure desirability; and, 
3. evaluate the strategic alignment with the client.

For the lab team, it was essential to make the testing results comparable, so that they could make comparisons between the propositions and make an informed decision on which ones to bring forward.

Thus, they included three critical components in the planning: 

1. the research questions that needed to be answered through the testing;
2. the methods that they will use to conduct the testing; and,
3.  the type of audiences they would test with.

The research questions were based on the critical assumptions, and they were related to the user, the problem and the solution. In particular, the lab team wanted to understand if the needs and goals they identified for the user segments were accurate, if the problem they defined was the right one to be solved, and if their proposed solution would be desirable to the user segment.

To find the answers to these questions, the lab team decided to collect qualitative data and feedback about the user, the problem and the solution, by speaking directly to the users. They used an external agency to recruit people who  fit in the specific user segment of each proposition to participate in interviews and workshops. This segment was defined based on the identity of the extreme user profile of the first phase.

For each prototype, the lab defined what type of people they were looking for and created detailed briefs for the agency. The agency then used a ‘screening criteria’ for the participants’ selection, based on the information shared by the lab team.

As each user segment and the proposition were so different from each other, the lab had to ‘standardise’ the ways users would engage with the concept, through the creation of interfaces as prototypes, and using the same structure for all the interviews and workshops.

To test desirability, it was also necessary to think on a bigger scale. Therefore, the team used advertising on social media to present the propositions to the general public. They defined a strategy, which started by researching the best practices for the different platforms, identifying what channels and what type of media to use, and all technical aspects.

Finally, to test the strategic alignment with the client, the lab team proposed an in depth ‘Service Safari’ as a method to present all the concepts together with the insights collected from user testing.

Activities

Activity 1:
Building prototypes

By rapidly testing multiple propositions, the lab team could assess the value of the concepts before investing significant time and resources into developing a smaller selection. The model had to create prototype results that could be comparable with each other and be flexible enough to allow quick and frequent iterations in order to tailor the testing with for different audiences

 To test the propositions with recruited users and the general public on social media – the lab team developed some tangible artefacts to facilitate the interaction.

Starting from the core value proposition, they defined the main features of each concept in a way that would expose the critical assumptions. They then created a specific brand identity to convey  the idea, its context, and who it was for. Then using these elements, the lab team proceeded to design the interactions and touchpoints, mostly by designing app mockups and clickable UIs (user interfaces) for each concept. 

The features and interactions were summarised in a website landing page which was to be used as the destination for the adverts. And for the adverts, the lab team also prepared a series of images and copy. These included variations on the target audience and features in order to test multiple elements at the same time. All of these artefacts posed the proposition as a reality. 

Activity 02:
Discussion of implications

After creating the prototypes, the next activity was to show those prototypes to people in the field to collect feedback and observe reactions. In this first round, the lab team worked with two types of audiences: recruited users and the general public on social media.

The lab team recruited a group of users for each proposition with whom they either conducted a workshop or individual face-to-face interviews. Face-to-face interviews were sometimes more appropriate due to the sensitivity of the topic. For other propositions, the lab team wanted to observe how participants would respond to each other and what conversations would be sparked by the interaction, so they opted for a workshop.

For both the workshops and the face-to-face interviews, the lab tried to standardise the structure by using the same 3-stage process:

1. understand the users;
2.  understand their view on the topic; and,
3.  understand their response to the proposition as a solution to the problem

There was also an extra stage for filling in a standard scoresheet, which collected some quantitative data about the appeal, the impact, the influence on happiness, the significance, longevity, likeliness and trust associated with each proposition.

The lab team presented the context to the recruited users by introducing them to the central topic of health and happiness. They explained how the lab was conducting the research and that the objective was to understand how the users would feel about the service propositions. To limit any discussion about the legitimacy of the idea, the participants were told those concepts were in development and would potentially be released into the market soon.

In parallel to this recruited user testing, the lab team also conducted testing through advertising on social media. The objective of these ad campaigns was to generate comparative data on the performance of each different advert to understand which concepts were more desirable. Therefore, each concept has a standard advert structure and received the same funds. At the same time, they ran experiments with different audiences and highlighted different aspects of the service in order to test their research questions, the relevance of the problem, if their user hypothesis was correct, and the appeal of specific features —all simply by comparing the results of alternative adverts.

For each proposition, they had an image and text introducing the service, a call-to-action to find out more on the website – Then, on the website landing page, the users were prompted to leave their email addresses to get early access. The collection of emails was useful as quantitative data, but also to get permission from interested users to be contacted again.

Activity 03.
Synthesis of insights and discussion of learnings

At the end of this first round of testing, the lab team assembled the qualitative and quantitative data and feedback. From the recruited user interviews and workshops, they collected a series of comments and questions that they synthesised into insights. The insights were either about the user, about the problem or about the solution (following the same three categories used in the experiment).

For the more complex social media data, the lab team examined and compared metrics across all the propositions. They collected quantitative data from the performance of the ads and insights about demographics as well as some qualitative feedback through the users’ comments under the adverts. By analysing all the insights and data collected, they were able to validate or invalidate some of their critical assumptions and answer key research questions. This moment of synthesis was an advantageous point to make a strategic decision for each proposition, before entering the next prototyping round.

In the lean startup methodology, the options for this decision moment are called persevere, pivot or kill. For some of the propositions that reported quite successful results, the decision was to persevere, meaning they would enter the second round of testing without major changes in strategy. For others, the decision was instead to pivot, which for the lab team meant considering variations of the concept or hypotheses for further testing, such as a change in target audience or brand positioning, or even combining two propositions. This allowed them to explore and test other possibilities instead of killing the idea entirely because of less successful results. Only a few concepts were “killed” after  a team assessment that determined they were not worth being brought forward, especially if they had not been as convincing from the start.

Active 04.
Refinement of prototypes

Based on the learnings of the first round of testing, the lab team assessed each  proposition to see if there was a need for further testing with users. They took the insights and turned some into new research questions to test. The additional user testing was conducted through adverts on social media, which proved to be a quick iterative method to test alternatives. Some poor-performing propositions were excluded from this round. In contrast, for others, the lab team proposed different branding to test the appeal to different genders, or combined similar concepts to see if the proposition had stronger results. For these alternatives, they created new prototypes, such as interfaces and ads, and they modified the landing pages when necessary, which enabled them to experiment online with the public and collect fresh quantitative data.

Activity 05.
Second round of experiments

The second round of experiments included further testing with users and with the client to assess the strategic value of the propositions.They prototyped and tested some alternatives of the propositions using social media advertising, as they had done in the previous round of experiments by varying branding, features and positioning and then comparing success metrics to answer their questions. They tested only a few concepts, leaving out the ones that had great performance (and were already successful) and those that had poor performance in the first round. This process was intended to decide on ambiguous concepts.

The second type of testing in this second experimentation round was with the client. The lab team prepared for a workshop to present all the propositions and their main insights to allow the client’s team to become familiar with the concepts and discuss how strategically aligned they were with  the organisation’s strategy and current objectives.

The type of workshop they conducted with the client is called a Service Safari, which allows the participants to take the point of view of the users by experiencing the services in first-person and by imagining the contexts in which those services would be used. For this, the lab team created a template to present all the elements of each proposition, such as links to UI prototypes, descriptions, features and insights.that In this way, the client’s team would have an instant overview of the entire service as well as information about the original problem and the strategic question.

The workshop had two parts associated with two objectives: 

1. To share with the client the progress made on the development of the ten selected concepts; and,  
2. to discuss the concepts together to better understand which propositions were more strategically valuable and to vote on which were priorities.

Each member of the client’s core team was asked to express a preference on the propositions by prioritising them using a scale from 1 to 10 and justifying their choices.

Activity 06.
Synthesis and conclusion

The lab team then reviewed the results internally, collecting and analysing all the insights from both experimentation stages and compared the data. The intent was to make sense of the qualitative and quantitative data and the strategic insights they got from the different audiences they had tested with, and therefore identify the potential opportunities for each proposition. They also internally reviewed everything they did during the prototyping stage, assessing what they did wrong and what could be improved, as well as the effectiveness of the testing methods they used.

Activities

Activity 01.
Prioritising workshop

As mentioned in the previous unit, during the workshop for the refinement of design challenges, the client and lab team also discussed the prioritisation and allocation of topics for the student briefs. In particular, they defined a few selection criteria, which they used to review the themes and the challenges.

The lab team and the client initially arranged and adjusted design challenges into two categories.

• The ‘Near Future’: more immediately and strategically valuable for the client
• The ‘Far Future’: more unusual and provoking and needed more explorative work.

The practical work of creating service concepts for the lab team (explained in Unit 1) only focused on the ‘Far Future’ horizon, but would greatly benefit from the diverse perspectives of an entire year group of first year students. The second-year student brief aimed to create robust service visions, which could be deployed in the ‘Near Future’ horizon and match the client’s immediate strategy.

Activity 02.
Briefs write-up

With the prioritisation of topics that the lab team agreed during the workshop with the client, they were able to begin writing the briefs. The briefs began with an introduction to the client’s mission and their approach and strategy, followed by an overview of their primary area of focus: health, happiness and wellbeing.

The lab team then described the various potential contexts and problem areas. They also prepared a synthesis of the research they had conducted on health and happiness and explained the importance of people having agency over their health choices.

 After, the lab team had to take two different approaches that distinguished the brief of  the first-years from the second-years. For the first-years, they created a more explorative brief focused on the ‘Far Future’, using the societal dimensions as the starting point. And then for each one, proposed a particular problem area that the client and the lab team found relevant and interesting to delve into. They were expecting the students to help the lab team and enrich the client ‘s views with a diversity of cultural, ideological, social and disciplinary perspectives coming from any source of inspiration they might find relevant.

For the second-years, they created briefs that were aligned with the research done on the client’s platform, and more focused on the ‘Near Future’. As with the first-year’s brief, they started from the key themes. However, in this case using the persona developed for the scenarios of the ‘Near Future’ (see phase 1), they focused on a specific target user and encouraged them to explore what their needs and challenges would be.

The second-year students were expected to unpack problems and investigate how science, business, technology psychology, and design could be combined to create service visions able to address those challenges.

Activity 03.
Presentation of Briefs

The lab team presented the briefs to the students at the start of the year, before the creation of their teams. Each one of the cohorts was introduced to six different design challenges, one per societal dimension related to health and happiness. These challenges were much broader than the ones they had created for the lab challenges, as they encouraged the students to bring their own point of view.

Once the teams were set up, they asked the students to give a first thought on what approach they would like to take and what theme they wanted to focus on. This really helped them understand what the students were going to cover, and how they could complement their work on the lab explorations with the students’ work.

Activities

Activity 01:
Discovery and definition

The students first activity was discovery and definition. This corresponds to the first half of the Double Diamond, which includes the research (Discover), followed by the definition of the problem and the creation of a refined brief specific to the students project interests (Define).

Their brief was just a starting point, but the lab team was expecting the students to be able to define their own brief by identifying a specific problem statement. Starting from the design challenges that had been proposed to them, the students went through a research phase, exploring the problem by conducting primary research and desk research. These often included surveys, interviews, and reading of articles, papers and books. They then tried to identify the most crucial and relevant issues to consider in their selected area of interest, and they established their point of view on the topic.

As part of the definition phase, the students used the insights they collected from the research, to identify their scenario of action. For this scenario, they outlined who is involved, as well as the organisational and systemic context of the problem to be solved.

While creating their own briefs, each team developed their own personas and detailed the objectives each person may have. They analysed the research findings and developed a set of critical questions and clear design objectives to create solutions that take into account the different stakeholders and their goals, as well as the nature of the overall system into which those stakeholders fit.

Activity 02.
Ideation

Once the students had defined their problem statement and brief, they started what  is called the ‘Develop’ phase in the Double Diamond. This phase includes both ideation and prototyping. Here the two activities are divided, but in reality, it was an iterative process of ideation, prototyping and testing. This way of working is part of the service design process, inspired by the build, measure, learn strategy from the ‘lean startup’ approach.

Following this way of working, students were continually creating concepts and testing them quickly, so they could refine them and then re-test. For the ideation activities, students focused on the generation of concepts, reflecting on how they would be executed, by whom, for whom, and to what end.

To make sure these concepts would generate the value they wanted to create, the students consulted with experts and key stakeholders. They also visualised their ideas through the use of service design tools, such as user journeys and blueprints. Once the concept was defined, the students were asked to prepare a prototyping plan, to test the service fully or partially, and collect feedback from users and stakeholders to help them refine their ideas.

Activity 03.
Test

Students were encouraged to be creative in finding ways to prototype their concepts rapidly. Part of the challenge was to create prototypes that did not require much time and resources, but that would still allow them to validate their concepts with stakeholders and users, get meaningful feedback and understand how to improve them. The other challenge was that for ‘Far Future’ concepts students had to test elements of the service that were in some way reproducible using today’s technology and only with existing users rather than future ones. This meant being imaginative about finding alternative ways to test their hypotheses. During the prototyping phase, the students presented their progress at an interim review. This was a great opportunity for them to receive feedback and advice from the tutors on how to test their concepts further and how. 

Each team developed their own methods to test their services, from clickable interfaces, to simulated AI chatbots and physical prototypes. The students worked autonomously to recruit testers; they set up interviews and workshops and used both physical and digital tools to communicate their concepts.

Active 04.
Present

At the end of their projects, the students had a final review with the programme’s panel of tutors. This was their chance to present their work in its entirety, from the research they conducted to the service they created and the testing with the stakeholders.

Each service was also documented with a detailed blueprint, a viable deployment plan and a comprehensive narrative. The lab team also asked the students to describe a business model to demonstrate that the service could be commercially feasible, either through return on investment or return on social capital. 

It was a great opportunity for the students to collect feedback from the tutors, and to reflect on the details of their concepts. Each team was given 10 minutes to present their work, followed by questions from the tutors and feedback.

Activity 05.
Exhibit

This last activity was not directly connected to the project with the client. But, it is important to mention that at the end of the term all the students were invited to present their work in the ‘work in progress’ show at the RCA.
Each team communicated their service proposition in a way that allowed the audience to understand and experience the service. For the selected projects, it was an excellent opportunity to test their concepts and collect feedback from the general public.

Activities

Activity 01.
Review of design challenges

The lab team started by synthesising all the material they had on the scenarios and challenges. With that, they organised a third workshop with the organisation to assess the design challenges for the lab, but also to prioritise themes and scenarios for the studio briefs, which will be discussed in detail in the Studio Explorations stage. 

During the workshop, the lab team reviewed all the steps of their process, from objectives and methodology, to the research on trends and the outputs of the second workshop. They then presented the work done with the extreme users, and the process they followed to create future personas and extreme scenarios.

 Once everyone had a clear understanding of these scenarios, they gave each participant a sheet with all the design challenges. They encouraged all participants to share their comments and questions about the challenges to help them understand how to refine them.

The last task was to vote on the challenges. The goal was not to  make a selection, but to gauge what themes the client seemed to be more curious about, and what kind of opportunities they were considering.

With this in mind, the lab team asked the client to take into consideration what they found more interesting, what they were not familiar with but had potential to be explored, what challenges would best support their strategy and which scenarios they found more provoking.

Activity 02.
Refine the design challenges

Based on the voting results and discussions with the client, the lab started to adjust challenge questions and reframe the topics. By understanding what the client found exciting and provoking, they were able to be more precise in defining problems to frame the briefs around.

At this point, the lab team made an important observation about the risk of being too simplistic when imagining the future, for example, focusing only on utopian or dystopian perspectives. This concern also encouraged the initial decision to engage with extreme users.

To overcome this problem, the lab team focused the design challenges on the needs and goals of the future personas, as the starting point for creating the explorations, instead of focusing on the technologies or the extreme consequences of emerging trends.

Activities

Activity 1:
Brainstorm and ideation

With the design challenges refined and agreed with the client, the lab team started brainstorming ideas for each design challenge. First, they immersed themselves in the future context, by using their signals and trends research to understand the implications of change. Then, they tried to empathise with the future persona, imagining what needs and goals would emerge in those scenarios. 

 Using their knowledge on emerging technologies and other trends that could affect each extreme scenario, they started to brainstorm simple ideas that consider the needs identified and respond, in whole or in part, to the main design challenge.

The ideas at this stage consisted only of a name and a short description. There was no assessment in this process. It was purely an ideation exercise aimed at imagining what services could emerge based on those extreme future scenarios. In some cases, the ideas were immediately problematic but were kept because there was potential for them to exist in the future and could therefore enrich conversation or influence other service visions.

The lab team created  87 ideas, including the ideas from the Envision Sprint with the client.

Activity 02:
Discussion of implications

Before starting the visualisation of ideas, the lab team had an internal prototyping session. During this activity, they tried to explore the implications of their ideas by discussing them internally. This helped them reflect on which concepts would have more impact for the future persona and whether they respond to the design challenge.

They later realised that a beneficial activity that they could have done at this stage was to use the future wheel to explore the direct and indirect consequences of each idea. This would have helped them cross-reference the concepts and uncover potential interplay between them and possible combinations of multiple ideas.

The team plans to include the future wheel as an activity for this stage in future projects.

Activity 03.
Visualisation and prototyping

With more clarity on which ideas to prioritise for the prototyping, the lab team started with the creation of a simple template that would allow them to communicate the concepts quickly, requiring minimal resources.

 At this stage, they were not looking for high-fidelity prototypes, as they were not interested in the validation of the idea per se, but more in the exploration of the opportunities and impacts behind each design challenge, and more generally, the key theme.

The template included a name and a tagline, a short description, a simple sketch illustrating the idea, the critical elements involved, a storyboard showing how the user experience would look, and a hero image. They used this template to visualise 33 of their ideas, which were chosen based on what seemed strategically significant and those that responded best to the design challenges.

So, for each idea, they completed the template working from the end of the user story, considering what happiness means for the future persona. They imagined the future persona achieving that happiness after experiencing their service. Then, they worked backwards to define the rest of the journey, identifying the critical elements of the service vision, the main features and the benefits.

With this process, they produced clear and straightforward narratives, showing how the concepts can contribute to the happiness of the users.

These ideas, their representation and subsequent discussion constitute what the lab team called “explorations”. They are the imagined service visions that could potentially emerge in the future as ways to respond to future problems and the implications they may have.

Active 04.
Extreme user testing

 The lab team later understood the importance of having a testing phase at this stage where the explorations could be reviewed and reflected on by extreme users. In future projects this step would be included.

Participants would realise these concepts are only provocations that are set in a distant future. However, they would be able to see the kind of impact these explorations may have on their future happiness.

The format of this testing could be interviews, a workshop or even an exhibition. Getting feedback from the general public would be valuable. However, it is preferable to have extreme users engage with the concepts to observe their reactions. These extreme users can be  those that have been already interviewed.

Activity 05.
Evaluation of the explorations

After the prototyping activity, the lab team started to prepare a fourth workshop with the client to introduce them to the explorations. As mentioned previously, the lab team was more interested in an assessment of the topics and areas, rather than specific feedback on the concepts.

They used the ideation of visions as a way to explore and present to the client the potential of each theme and also to uncover the topics that expand, inspire and provoke the client’s thinking — which was the main objective of the collaboration.

In this workshop, they held what they called a Service Vision Safari. This was an activity in which they exhibited their visions by printing them out and attaching them to the walls of the client’s office. They also printed the future personas profiles, so that the client could easily identify what areas they were trying to address for each concept.

Then, they  asked the participants to familiarise themselves with the ideas, reflect on them, and discuss them, by making comments and asking questions. This activity provided them with many insights and suggestions for improvement.

Once the client’s team was familiar with all the concepts, the lab team asked them to vote, either for or against continuing to explore that service vision. The client team were asked not just to consider the viability, feasibility or desirability of the idea, but the opportunities that the idea uncovered and the topics that had the most potential.

Activities

Activity 01.
Internal company research

Concerning the platform, the lab team did some further research into the client’s strategy and work. They tried to identify the client’s core capabilities by looking at the technologies they were using, the ethical considerations they were committing to, and their access to scientific knowledge.

The lab team collected all this information, established the main value propositions behind the client’s strategy, and analysed the key mechanisms they were trying to build within their products and services.

The key mechanisms were the core interventions they had developed to encourage behavioural change in users.

Activity 02.
External industry overview

To complement their research on the company, the lab team also  explored  the context, i.e. the other markets. 

At the time, the client was part of a larger organisation. For this reason, the lab team conducted a study on the other industries the organisation was exploring.

Using desk research, the lab team conducted a sectoral analysis, collecting information on the potential markets the client could address. For each one, they identified the key players, the jobs to be done, and the opportunities for the platform. 

They then assessed these markets and selected the one they identified as the most aligned with the client’s current strategy.

Activities

Activity 01.
Extreme user mapping

To find these extreme users, the lab team searched for early signs of the effects of the societal change that they had predicted.

They focused their search for these people around the UK and through their contacts. They reached out through different communities and individuals to find people involved in these trends and who were perhaps already influenced by the societal dimensions of change.

The objective was to collect as much information as possible about people’s view on happiness, their needs and issues and to catch glimpses of the future people who might emerge in the context the team were exploring.

The lab team implemented a strategy to plan and map their interviews. They took each one of the societal dimensions of change and defined extremes on both sides. For each extreme, they brainstormed groups of people who fit into those characteristics and prepared a plan to reach those people.

Activity 02.
Guerrilla interviews

For most of the interviews, the lab team used guerrilla research techniques. The strategy was to conduct interviews with strangers they had met in critical locations identified through the extreme user mapping. They therefore needed ways to conduct quick but meaningful interviews. 

They prepared a set of essential questions focused on happiness and what it means for the people they were engaging with. Then, they went out and spoke to people. In addition to the guerrilla interviews, they filled in the gaps with online interviews arranged through other connections.

Activity 03.
Insight analysis

During the interviews, the lab team collected valuable insights and expanded their perspective by talking with extreme users.

The next step was to review all the answers they gathered and arrange them into profiles. They mostly kept them very similar to the real people they interviewed or combined some of them. They created more than 40 profiles, each one included the interviewee’s interpretation of happiness and what they associate happiness with, as well as how they see trends affecting them in the future.