DSG Service Proposition
Carnegie Mellon University - Service Design Fall 2022
Team Elephant - Yael Canaan, Sara Lian, Vamsi Subramaniam, Wenqing Yin, Xing (Ali) Wang
A service proposition for an existing business generated through research, interviews, and ideation.
“I don’t really go to Dick’s because it’s just a big box store. I prefer local stores with a community”
The first step to generating a service proposition was to conduct a lot of research. As a team, we explored multiple Dick’s Sporting Goods stores, read through academic sources, and conducted interviews with a variety of people. This research would ultimately generate our proposition of a community space for athletes to try out equipment and play with other athletes.
Affinity mapping
During the research stage, I helped my team through reading academic journals and learning the history of the business. I organized historical data and sales information as well as the growth pattern of Dick’s Sporting Goods. I also conducted interviews with numerous students and adults who do not like shopping at Dick’s. These interviews would greatly impact our service proposition as they helped us explore opportunity gaps and how we could widen the audience that Dick’s can serve. With all this data and research, I helped guide my group through an affinity mapping exercise to determine insights and what the largest problems Dick’s was facing.
We begun by generating different solutions based on "how might we" questions from insights that we were most interested in solving. We brainstormed different ideas through considering different means: technology, people, partnerships, and enablers.
Then, through parallel prototyping, we made some sketches of different ideas and then presented them all to each other. We discussed and chose to combine three ideas into one, picking the best traits of each to make the best service proposition.
Athletes need a chance to build connections with peers, local players, or pro athletes and feel a sense of community in order to get the motivation to visit the store and try equipment.
Sporting Hub - A trendy & welcoming space for the community to play ream sports inside Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Our solution was to create a physical space at Dick’s stores that allows athletes to come and play sports with other athletes. This space would also be for anyone who wanted to try equipment before committing to purchasing.
We were drawn to this idea due to many athletes we interviewed complaining that Dick’s is just a store and they prefer shopping for their sporting equipment at community style stores. The space to play sports with others and reserve space for teams and clubs will allow athletes ample opportunity to make friends with others in the community.
Reflection
On this team, I played a few different roles. As one of the two members with a thorough design background, I often took on design-related assignments, or compiled assignments from google docs into a slide deck. I also played a guiding role, as I was the only student who had taken many other HCI and research courses before. This knowledge allowed me to advise my members on how to conduct research, what types of questions to ask, as well as how to give a pitch. This foundational knowledge that I was able to provide led to me taking on a leadership role for the first half of the project. I was often the one telling the group to circle back during meetings or making the final decision if everyone was feeling indecisive.
I got the chance to practice a lot of skills and learn some new ones while working on this team. Taking on the video allowed me to learn some new software and even dabble in animation as well as sound mixing. I got to practice pitching, leadership, and interviewing. I learned more about academic research sources as well as presenting to a large room of people and answering tough questions from those personally involved. I was challenged at first by balancing the team. Early on, I was worried that we would have trouble agreeing and that I would be the only leading voice, that nothing would happen if I didn’t direct everyone to the next step. But as everyone fell into their roles and what they felt best at doing, the group began to feel much more balanced.
Next time, I would like to give other students more leadership opportunity early on and be more patient. My drive to complete assignments on time was prioritized rather than giving others the time to contemplate and direct each other.
Taking this class alongside Digital Service Innovation, I found myself heavily relying on concepts from both, especially any concepts that were taught in both classes. I feel that my trajectory this project was heavily influenced by Bitner’s Servicescapes. A large consideration for our proposition was for it to become something more than appealing to athletes, but also something for the teammates to enjoy and want to engage in. Based on Bitner’s writing, I sought to create service spaces that not only provide a good environment to users, but also to workers. This also borrows from the idea of co-creation, as I wanted to ensure that the service proposition was compelling due to value being co-created by athletes and teammates.
Evenson’s Directed Storytelling was also very influential for my process early on. I was already familiar with their work, likely through UCRE. The process of directed storytelling was also an interview method that I found myself practicing for this project because it allowed me to hear the perspectives of people who do not shop at Dick’s and why they choose to shop at other stores.
Overall, learning about design critique and visual thinking helped me this semester beyond this class. Learning how to do proper design critique helped me know what questions to ask, learn more about why a person is giving me that specific critique, all without defending my process work. This concept also helped me learn how to give others better critique that is constructive and effective. Visual thinking not only motivated me to draw things out more as I think through ideas, but also helped me encourage my non-designer classmates to draw out their ideas too.