Using Service Design to reimagining a territory with IoT data
++ Objective
In 2019, a "Métropole" -or an intercommunal territory located in the north of France- published a brief for a public contest. Within the context of promoting the development of AI nationwide, the metropole's brief stated that they wanted to identify IoT sensors that could be installed on their fleet of vehicles and collect large amount of data.
The project started when a telecom company required Service Design to help them create a winning value proposition.
++ The design challenge
The first question that we asked to ourselves was how we could determine the sensors and datasets without first understanding the ecosystem and its citizens’ needs.
Therefore, we decided to reframe the metropole’s challenge from a purely technological approach to a human-centric point of view. If we could identify problems in the territory and unfold citizens’ needs, we would then be able to address them with value-added services that could be built from data.
++ The design process
The double diamond was applied in order to structure the creative process and tackle challenges in four phases: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver.
Discover
During the Discover stage, the objective was to identify problems and unfold opportunities in the ecosystem, as well as gaining an empathic understanding of the different actors. And we did that by, on the one hand, researching and doing on-site visits, and, on the other hand, interviewing different actors from public entities representatives to citizens.
Define
This phase consisted in putting together the insights and observations gathered in the Discover phase in order to frame problems and identify areas of opportunity.
Insights were grouped into different themes such as mobility, sustainability or digital citizenship and then developed in smaller and easier-to-understand problem statements.
Develop
At that point, after the Define phase, we were ready to generate ideas to solve urban and territorial problems with services that could be built on data provided by IoT sensors.
In order to achieve this objective, we organised a design workshop with business and technical stakeholders as participants. The workshop was divided into two main activities, starting with a systematic ideation session and following with an activity to expand the solutions using a purpose-built service design canvas.
Deliver
Finally, the value proposition was presented to the metropole’s representatives. Our proposal consisted of a data capture solution to detect and reduce air pollution which was one of the most urgent environment problems of the territory. Additionally, we developed a program to construct a smart territory ecosystem based on making citizens co-creators of value-added services.
