title. NYC Service Design Jam
date. November 2016 - February 2017
location. New York City
Role: Mentor, Facilitator and Research Lead
Problem: The Global Service Design Jam is a Design sprint that takes place over the course of a weekend, that takes participants through a service design challenge. The event is organized annually across different cities globally. In order to improve the participants' experience year after year, the project needs to be able to draw insights from feedback the previous year and make changes as necessary.
Process: Taking recorded notes from post-jam interviews the year before, the research team synthesized the comments and drew major points and lessons learned. We then took the insights and made them actionable and shared them with each of the teams that volunteered to organize the next jam (2017). We also improved the data collection process for the 2017 Service Design Jam by emailing electronic surveys so that data could be quantified easily and submitted anonymously. The survey included sets of actionable questions that sought feedback from categories of logistics, content, learning, mentorship and overall experience.
Outcome: A post-jam reflection session with teams revealed that feedback from the last jam was mostly incorporated to improve the 2017 year jam, especially in logistics, though improving mentorship still proved to be a challenge. The survey response rate was high - with about half of the participants participating and providing specific feedback in open-ended questions as well.
