The Harmful Nature of Informed Assumptions
27.1.2023
Tikissä
Bad services are always created on a foundation of bad design, whether these are services in a private company, a public service, or an educational institution. Often times this bad design is based on individuals or groups using their own anecdotal experience or knowledge as the basis of creating their services. It is not a malicious desire to create services that don’t fulfill the end users needs. But it can happen often when services are created in a vacuum or only with the people who provide them.
Service designers, on the other hand, are constantly talking about and using co-creation and looking at the world from the viewpoint of the end-user for whatever service that is being created or improved. The best way to embody this user viewpoint is to gather data, both qualitative and quantitative, from the (future) users themselves using all the means at your disposal. This is how you can build better outcomes that meet the user’s needs.
This doesn’t mean that there is no place for assumptions in this kind of research. Two things need to happen to be able to use them though.
You need to openly acknowledge that they are assumptions and everyone on the team needs to acknowledge that they are assumptions.
The team needs to be willing and able to test these assumptions and be open to be proven wrong. This can be a big ask for experienced professionals.
While being tested, these assumptions can be employed alongside other research that you have done to plug gaps in knowledge so that you can move your work forward through prototyping and testing and back to research and iteration again. Along the way discarding what is proven to be a false flag and keeping what you are able to verify.
The wrong path
It is human nature to think that, through your long experience, you “know” what is wrong. These are what can be called informed assumptions.
There are two differences between the assumptions that we mentioned in the previous paragraph (useful or usable) and informed assumptions:
The level of willingness to accept these as assumptions rather than verified data
The openness to be proven wrong.
These unexamined informed assumptions (basically guessing) hinder the process and will lead you down the wrong path if not properly acknowledged and tested.
Unfortunately, many professional experts succumb to informed assumptions. There are a few standard reasons that especially middle and senior managers use to justify why they made crucial decisions purely on what they know or think they know about user needs. These are almost always a form of informed assumptions and include recognizable examples such as:
We know who our users are
We know what ‘they’ want from our service or product
I know I’m right
I know my users
My part of this process is not broken, it’s others in the process that need to change
and the ultimate shutdown — “This is how we do things around here”
Moving from instinct to information
How to help professionals to shift from "I know what the problem is and how we can solve it" to "I have a general idea what or where the problem might be but let’s test it and discover the real problem". These are two very different mindsets.
In addition to mindset, this shift can be hindered for other reasons:
The professional may well believe that they truly have the answer.
They could be working to specific targets, which can often force to focus on something that will be measured, rather than the what will provide quality and value to the user.
They may be nervous to show vulnerability — ‘I don’t know’ is a difficult sentence in an organisation that encourages a competitive leadership environment.
It’s also not easy to be agile and responsive if your next pay rise is dependent on you reaching departmental or personal targets that are set outside of knowing what you will need to be agile and responsive to. Often, these are agreed with your boss at your annual personal development review in the previous year.
Employing the entrepreneurial mindset is key
So how can we tackle the affliction of informed assumptions in experts? One important way to tackle this insidious affliction is to encourage and use an entrepreneurial mindset or entrepreneurial approach. This is vital to creating a team and work environment that is productive, responsive, and most importantly, focused on creating value.
It is through developing and utilising the tools of the Entrepreneurial Mindset or the Entrepreneurial Approach, important lifewide skills, that experts can truly begin to allow the real answers to unfold according to the research. These skills include:
creativity
tolerance of uncertainty
openness to learning
seeing value in failure
pro-activeness
networking
intrinsic motivation
and confidence that what we do matters.
Luckily for the next generations, education in the 21st-century has a foundation that includes the recognition of these above skills and the entrepreneurial mindset in general. Now we need to help the organisational leadership in higher education to support the value of being open to being wrong, valuing the discovery process, and that "failure" (in reality learning) is really part of the process of creating valuable services.
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.
Embedding Service Design in Higher Education
22.2.2022
Tikissä
Shortly, service design is a method of purposefully designing services through a set process that emphasises co-creation through deep customer research, prototyping, and testing. It is an iterative process that puts the user(s) at the centre at each stage of the process. This is a shift in not only mindset but procedure of how an organisation works. So how does an organisation begin to shift how it designs services and solves problems.
In order for service design to really help an organisation, it must be embedded which, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, means “functioning as part of a larger device rather than as an independent unit or system”. That means that there must be a shared understanding, language, and ability throughout the organisation. This allows people and units to come together when they need to tackle challenges. But how do you get this critical mass of people working and talking in the same direction?
A core team to start
First, an organisation needs to start with a dedicated core team whose job it is to be experts in the process of service design. Ideally, this is more than one service design experts although this is, depending on the size of the organisation, where many start.
The core team’s role is to disseminate through facilitating, training, and consulting about service design t22ls and processes throughout the organisation. This does not mean that this core group of people will be “service designing” or participating in the content of the work. This means that when a challenge arises, they can either help by facilitating the process or to advise on how the process should look. This is a guiding role and those people who are involved in the content of the problem, would lead and work through the service challenge using the tools, methods, and expertise available.
Discover who the champions are
After the core team is in place, their role, in addition to facilitating, training, and consulting, is to look for champions. Within any organisation there will be people here and there that have an understanding and an interest in service design and human-centered design.
Many times, higher education institutions are big and unwieldy organisations. This can lead to people feeling alone or unable to pursue meaningful change through these methods alone. Part of the role of the core team is to identify people throughout the organisation that are interested to understand more and to practice the method more in their everyday work. Once you start looking, it will probably be a surprise as to how many and where you find them!
Training is the key
Training throughout the organisation is also a key feature of embedding service design. There is a need for service design capacity building within all organisations and within all units. What would this look like? It would be internal training on how to use service design to move challenges forward. It would show how to do customer/user research in a more qualitative way, as well as how to properly ideate, prototype, and test various solutions.
The aim is to have a critical mass of employees understand the process involved in problem-solving with service design. This means that no matter where the problem lies, there is the interest and understanding of how to move from point A to point B then to point C, etc. Where different people can come together from different areas to work on one project using the same, familiar, process.
Bespoke project groups
The situation of having a core team, champions, and wider training allows project groups to come together and understand how to work together to solve problems. Each problem will require a distinct group of people to gather – a bespoke approach. But once you have built the capacity of enough people in the organisation to work in a similar way, it will not matter who is needed for the project as they will all be using the same method to move forward. The appropriate tools to be chosen by the group on an ad hoc basis.
These bespoke teams for projects are exactly the kind of flexibility that will make an organisation more efficient and, ultimately, more successful.
Simple but not easy
The process set out above is fairly simple in its structure but this does not mean that it is an easy task at all. What we are talking about is wide organisational change. A change that requires a shift in many parts of a complex structure. But it is also worth it. Using user-centred methods and common processes while including more people in the process, helps everyone to work in an understandable way. It also makes a complex organisation a better place to work by being more flexible and proactive with changes. But most importantly, it allows organisation to be more impactful for both the staff and the students.
One example of deep change that would need to take place is that of how Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are created. Currently, in most organisations in the world, KPIs are set for individuals or units. But this can lead to conflicting outcomes between teams and even colleagues. Whereby one team meeting their KPIs actually leads to another team not meeting theirs or making it difficult to meet theirs. This is because many services are not bound by team boundaries. Usually, many teams are involved in the lifecycle of a service. If you use, as an example, a student starting to study at a higher education institution, that person (even before arriving on campus) touches many different services – marketing, admissions, teaching, etc. So, some of this change would include creating KPIs that go across units rather than within one unit.
Embedding service design methods and mindset is necessary in the pursuit of excellence in service provision in higher education institutions and other organisations alike.
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.
Strengthening youth’s trust in the future
9.12.2021
Tikissä
According to OECD (2021), Finland is a high-trust society, ranking among the top performers among the OECD countries. In other words, trust is a meaningful phenomenon in Finnish society.
What is trust?
Trust can be seen as a simple, but also a complex phenomenon. Trust can be an approach, like an emotion, attitude, cognitive choice or even an unconscious issue, depending on theories. Thus, trust is based on individuals’ emotions, experiences, thoughts and attitudes; it can also be explored from a wider perspective, like from its relational character.
There is evidence that Finnish people trust their families (as an institution) more than other institutions (1). In addition, young people also trust most people who are close to them. Trust in non-family members must be earned (2). However, there is evidence that if people just blindly trust anyone, it is likely that no one probably trusts them (3).
Trust and youth guidance
Improving youth’s trust in the future is important because trust has many positive consequences. It can strengthen young people's self-confidence in their own abilities, but also improve the ability to trust others.
The Finnish Government (4, 5) considers guidance to be very important. It has been pointed out that there is a special need for guidance for those groups who are currently underrepresented in the participation in continuous education. Further, people must be able to trust in the future and their own opportunities, and feel to be part of the environment as a meaningful resource. (6) For example, some studies of adolescents' trust experiences (7) suggest that ‘Relationship Education’ programs can make a difference. They can enhance young people's understanding of and willingness to trust. In other words, trust can be learned, and it is never too late to learn to trust, even if it can be, in some cases, challenging.
For example, Zitting (8) has pointed out that without peoples’ trust in public administration it is difficult to trust other people. This shows that ‘trust’ has its ‘to come full circle' effect. We cannot approach it from only one perspective, when a wider understanding of it is needed.
Who am I? What am I able to do? What am I capable of achieving?
These are the three main questions in the dialogue and guidance with young people in the FUTU project. Those questions are based on the theoretical understanding of the Social Pedagogical Approach to improve participation, agency and life management skills in everyday life practice. There is also an understanding of ‘future research' behind FUTU -projects’ understand of pedagogical guidance. Trust is one of the key elements, also to make the guidance relationship between a young person and an adult stronger. Successful guidance can empower and support participation and the feeling of meaningful belonging.
In the FUTU project, we will improve future-oriented guidance to support the young people to see alternative ways to build a positive and realistic future. The aim is to see one’s own future as something that includes positive options and is worth striving. Additionally, we promote and support youth’s active participation. The pessimistic shortsightedness will be transformed into aims, inspiration and encouragement regarding the future. The young people will be empowered to plan their own future.
According to some experts who took part in the FUTU project’s (9) digital training and workshops, trust as a part of youth guidance can be defined as follows:
“...If the future feels scary ...the facilitator can set goals that can be achieved for the future and make a “plan” to achieve them step by step. The higher the probability that a young person achieves even a small part of the set goal, the more likely it is to build confidence in their own skills and help them achieve even bigger goals in the future.”
“For example, ...do not promise uncertain things. Create a communal, supporting and open atmosphere.”
“Time is actively and regularly allocated to conversations, rather than leaving the client to ‘separately hope for conversation time’."
“Trust in the future can be increased in many different ways. If it is a matter of a young person's disbelief in themselves and their own actions, one can extract successes from the young person's own past and reflect them on the current situation: how have you succeeded in the past? What kind of things has it demanded?”
To sum up, according to the Youth Act (10) the aim is to promote young people’s skills and capabilities to function in society, support their growth, independence and sense of community, and support young people’s growth and living conditions. Nevertheless, studies have found (11) that realization of inclusion of children and young people requires special skills and attitudes from service professionals. Even though there are a lot of experts and professionals with a big heart and strong empathy skills, this challenge cannot be bypassed. Professionals need to have an understanding of trust as an important element of supportive guidance relationships, as well as an empowerment element in youth’s life - ‘trust resource’.
How Finnish society can support young people’s trust in the future?
A successful restructuring of services needs a stronger climate of dialogue and trust between state, regional and local actors. (4, 5, 6). Additionally, OECD (12) supports Finland paying more attention to people who are at risk for ‘feeling left behind’. OECD encourages Finland to understand the expectations and perceptions of different groups of society with respect to transparency and participation.
By understanding trust and its diverse nature, as well as the empowering nature of it, it can be utilized in guidance work to support young people in finding their own trust resources. By supporting young persons’ self-confidence, they can become more visible to themselves. It can make a difference while fighting giving up, hopelessness and pessimism in life. (2).
In the best case, trust can increase trust and improve young people's hope for the future. Trust is a serious element to take into consideration, while developing, designing and creating new services, methods and tools for youth well-being, participation and their quality of life.
References
Simola J., Westinen J., Pitkänen V. & Heikkilä, A. (2021) Luottamusta ilmassa, mutta kuinka paljon? Tutkimus eri sukupolvien luottamuksesta yhteiskunnan instituutioihin.
Raatikainen, E. & Poikolainen, J. (2020) Young men’s experiences of trust and distrust as a framework for their future. The Finnish Journal of Youth Research (“Nuorisotutkimus”) Vol 38, (2), 37–51.
Frowen, I. (2005) Professional Trust. British Journal of Educational Studies 53(1), 34–53.
Finnish Government (2020), 3.6 Fair, equal and inclusive Finland
Government Programme, Finnish Government, Helsinki, 3.6 Fair, equal and inclusive Finland (valtioneuvosto.fi)
Finnish Government (2020), 3.7 Finland that promotes competence, education, culture and innovation, Government Programme, Finnish Government, Helsinki, 3.7 Finland that promotes competence, education, culture and innovation (valtioneuvosto.fi)
McElroy-Heltzel, S.E., Jordan, T.R., Futris, T.G., Barton W.A., Landor, A.K. & Sheats, K.J. (2019) Sources of socialization for interpersonal trust: an exploration of low-income Black adolescents’ experiences, Journal of Youth Studies, 22:1, 124-137
Zitting, J. (2021) Luottamusta voi edistää parantamalla sosiaalista osallisuutta (DIAK.fi).
Creating Positive Future - FUTU project. Creating Positive Future - FUTU | Metropolia UAS
Youth Act (2017). Legislation - OKM - Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland
Peltola, M. & Moisio, M. (2020) Ääniä ja äänettömyyttä palvelukentillä. Katsaus lasten ja nuorten palvelukokemuksia koskevaan tietoon. Nuorisotutkimusverkosto.
OECD (2021) Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions in Finland. OECD Publishing, Paris.
Creating Positive Future - FUTU | Metropolia UAS Means to achieve the project goal are promotion of future-oriented positive thinking, life management skills and ability to take action. In addition, the project can support the young people into further vocational training and transition into the job market.
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