AI-by-design innovation
– OLX (2020-current)
Every company wants to innovate. But it takes a carefully designed approach and team to translate a high-level goal such as ‘AI-by-design innovation’ into real and valuable product ideas. In January 2020, the Squared Initiative team of OLX was established to work on AI innovation in parallel to incremental AI, to get to a winning idea with the potential to disrupt the business. OLX Group is a network of leading marketplaces present in 30+ countries with 20+ brands.
Our squared approach follows five steps: discover, define, concept, test and inspire. A disadvantage of presenting a five-step approach to innovation is that this might make the innovation process seem like a linear one. In reality, the beginning and end of each phase is usually not clearly defined and requires a highly flexible and iterative approach. Yet having this phased approach avoids a random, potentially never-ending search for a winning idea.
At OLX Squared, data scientists work in close collaboration with UX and Service Designers to make the platform future proof. The team is responsible for the full length of the design process: including initial research, concept validation, experiment design, and preparing for implementation.
My role in this project
I am retained for over a year (July 2020 – currently) to be part of OLX Squared, responsible for all service design-related initiatives. Together with the team, we founded a new way of working, worked on several ai-by-design initiatives, and embraced an experimentation mindset.
INCLUSIVE DIGITAL SERVICES
– MUNICIPALITY OF AMSTERDAm (2019)
Little over 850.000 citizens live in this diverse, beautiful city. From Marc to Mohammed. From baby to granny. From garbage collector to PhD student. Every citizen has their context, needs, wishes and challenges. How to design online services that can be used by everyone?
The objective of the project was to create guiding design principles for the development of inclusive digital services. These design principles will ensure that all citizens can benefit equally. The municipality teamed up Koos Service Design, to tackle this challenge. Together we selected three diverse target audiences of which is expected to have the most issues with digital services: seniors, citizens with a minor mental disability, and citizens with a migrant background.
My role in this project
I was the lead service designer as part of Koos Service Design. It was my job to lead the process, involve the municipality, and move from insights to working prototypes.
This project is nominated as a Finalist for the Service Design Awards 2021.
Helping elderly Moroccans to understand health issues
– Cordaan(2019)
Research shows that in Europe, 40% of the population has difficulty understanding the information provided by health care professionals. This number is even larger for elderly immigrants. In 2019, Koos Service Design partnered with Amsterdam based health care organisation Cordaan to make a change. The goal: provide accurate health care advice in the form of an animation video.
As a Service Designer, I firmly believe every design challenge starts with listening to your customer. So instead of hiring an animator to create a video, we combined Service Design with animation to create a unique approach that ensured human-centred design. We listened to stories of families, speech and language therapists, nurses, patients and doctors. We created a story. Just 4 days into the sprint, we tested our initial idea with a prototype test with three families and two experts. This allowed us to refine the video based on the context of the patient. As a result, we created two animations together with studio Anima. The animations are used by speech and linguist therapists, families and nurses ever since. There is a growing demand for more animation videos about similar health issues.
My role in this project
Lead service designer as part of Koos Service Design. Designing the approach, relying on my working experience at an animation studio. Interviewing, sketching, building the prototype, project management.
In December 2019 we won the CZ Zorgprijs and we got the funding needed to continue this initiative
b2c subscription models
– philips(2019)
Philips is one of the major players of consumer products for personal health: toothbrushes of Sonicare, razors of OneBlade, and more. How can Philips turn these products into a subscription business model? How should the internal organisation transform to support this business model?
In 2019, Philips approached Koos Service Design to become part of the e-commerce direct-to-consumer subscription team and explore the opportunities subscription models can bring.
My role in this project
I was retained for 8 months to be part of the core team, responsible for all service design-related initiatives. Including creating a playbook, doing research into different subscription models, and creating a service ecosystem and blueprint to implement the new model into the organisation.
Auditory storytelling course
– TU Delft (2021)
SPD Media is part of the Strategic Design Master programme of The Technical University (TU) Delft. In this course, students can pick one of several media: data visualisation, sketching, animation, graphic design, and Auditory Storytelling.
The track Auditory Storytelling enabled and supported students to produce an actual episode of a podcast on a topic of choice. In 2021, Podcast Studio Amsterdam was asked to create content and provide lectures to students. During 8 weeks, different topics were discussed. Including making a production plan, storyboard, mixing, mastering, sound design, interview techniques, storytelling, etc.
My role in this project
The lecturers of this course consisted of Sander Mulder of the TU Delft, my Podcast Studio Amsterdam partner Mart Jeninga, and myself. While Mart focussed on the technical aspects, I mainly focussed on storytelling theory and practice and interviewing techniques.