We can spot service fails, gaps and different business problems all around us. Your and my everyday problems are someone else’s business problems. This also includes us not being able to figure out how to engage with different organisations. Understanding design thinking and service design certainly helps identify and unpack variety of problems.
Proactively acknowledging and pursuing societal problems is the role that the higher education sector should be playing. And it, of course, isn’t only about creating long, drawn-out processes; it is about using our immediate expertise to facilitate moving forward. It isn’t necessarily about doing something for somebody but with them or next to them as they do the work. So, this is also important capacity-building work.
Lack of humanity or something else?
I read an article on Yle News about the Finnish Blood Services and their challenge of a shortage of young men willing to donate various forms of human biological matter on October 18th 2021 . I was concerned by the assumptions used in the article, ”today’s young people do not have the same enthusiasm for helping as those who have already retired”. This article sparked a visceral reaction in me because I knew that there was an actual process and method that I could rely on to find out the real reasons why young men are donating less than in the past.
Assumptions on the demographic will drive all kinds of internal decisions to reach the preferred audience. These include marketing messages and channels, expectations or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and so on.
There is any number of reasons why the demographic mentioned in the news article might not be donating. As a service designer, I know that the reasons could be a range of issues such as:
- not knowing there is a need for donations
- not knowing where such donations take place
- a fear of the biological matter donation process
- that the donation centers are not in any of the locations that these people frequent
- or any other issue we have not identified
Basing decisions on insufficient assumptions is never a good strategy for success. They will only complicate the process and make it difficult to reach the target. Which, in this case, can be life-threatening.
A need to go deeper
The first part of any design approach must contain identifying the real problem, which is the only way to have a successful outcome. Service design, which is characteristic of deep
- customer research
- co-creation
- prototyping
- and testing
can find the real problem in this situation. Assuming you know what the problem is (in this case, a lack of enthusiasm for helping), will make you only address this problem. But what if this isn’t the real problem?
When deep customer research is conducted, you will find out the real problem, not the assumed problem.
This paragraph in the article proves my point, ”Attempts have been made in recent years to increase the enthusiasm of more young men to donate blood, stem cells and sperm. The issue has been brought to the fore at various public events, trade fairs and educational institutions, including the use of celebrity influencers and even a heavy metal band.” By making assumptions about the problem before investigating it, they can be setting themselves up to be disappointed when any actions they conduct do not work.
Role of higher education institutions
This is the kind of problem in society that we, as a higher education institution, can help with.
We have the knowledge, the tools, and the methods to help create real and lasting (and possibly life-changing) change. This is our role.
In this case, I felt that I needed to figure out how I might help in this situation in a professional capacity. So I reached out to other institutions’ experts to see how we might approach Blood Services (and possibly the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, THL) to propose a process that would help them identify the more profound issues.
From this, we reached out and started a dialogue about how we might work together to tackle this significant local problem. This, I believe, is what we are here for – deepening connections between education, research and the wider society.
Author
Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university admin focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. With a Bachelor’s from Canada, a Master’s degree from Sweden, an MBA in Service Innovation & Design from Laurea, and her AmO from Haaga-Helia, she is interested in purposefully designed experiences that are centred around the user. Don’t be surprised if she knocks on your door to talk about learning co-creation methods through intensive learning experiences.
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