As part of the Oxford SAID MBA Design Leadership course led by Lucy Kimbell, the second Collaborative Workshop was held on May 5th with the London College of Communications design students. The first workshop (blogged on April 26.10) saw the design and MBA students working on a base for a post-operative remote monitoring sensory device.
This workshop focused on service and business modelling for the concept of post-operative care in the home so patients could safely leave the hospital early — recovering better in their home setting and hopefully saving the health care system some $$.
The teams had to choose a country/health care system for the exercise. Then, the first part of the workshop focussed on developing a deeper understanding of both the device and how it might work — and the service infrastructure that would be required. The first step for the teams was to develop a persona — using a template to elaborate on some fictional details that would make it easier to imagine people using the device or caring for someone who is using device. So each group was given a particular actor in the system (nurse, doctor, patient, caregiver) and photos to choose from and questions to help shape the persona.
The next step was to test the personas through a role-play exercise using the persona and some other “actor” in the system. This was intended as an approach that would give the students a much deeper understanding of what the challenges might be that players would encounter in the service workings of the device, given the healthcare system.
It was useful to observe the students through these processes. Not many of them had experience in role-playing and found it difficult to step into roles in a truly empathetic way. The lesson from a workshop structure point of view (and this has been played out in a recent Sauder workshop) is that it is easy for us to assume that students will have the life experience to role-play in a way that is useful to the process. But there probably needs to be more practice on less complex roles/problems, before the technique is effective at the level it could be.
The last part of the workshop was focussed on what Lucy called “the service journey” and on the value co-created by the service. She provided the students with another template which indicated the stages in the service along a time horizon. Again, it seemed that it was difficult for the students to learn a technique (e.g. service blueprint template) and to simultaneously use it as part of the creative process — for actually designing the service model. So good learning for me as I think about how to introduce techniques to MBAs and BComs at Sauder. Have to remember that there needs to be some practice with the technique on a “problem” that is quite familiar. For example, Lucy recalled that last year she had them practice the service blueprint on an airplane — something everyone is familiar with. Then she moved them on to the creative exercise at hand.
The business modelling segment was built upon a greater understanding of the service model. Lucy introduced Alexander Osterwalder’s business model canvas template (author of a book called “Business Model Generation” – http://alexosterwalder.com/) which outlines key partners, key activities key resources, value propositions, customer relationships, customer segments, channels, cost structure and revenue streams.
Unfortunately I missed the “reflection” part of the workshop — but will hopefully catch up with Lucy and see how it went. I learned a lot just observing the students engaged in the techniques.
And the return trip to Oxford provided me with a chance for more shots of the SAID Business School.
Here is the building from the street…one might have wished for a more open presence — but someone did comment that this “is” open compared to most Oxford buildings…
and the main courtyard within the b-school.
