Designing a service to resignify the relationship between citizens and their cities

sp.id is an app for walking routes around the city, helping people stay connected to the city's heritage and identity

Year: 2017

Role: Service designer

Discipline: Service design

Industry: Urban services; Academic project

Background

This was my final project for the Product Design undergraduate degree at Instituto Europeo di Design São Paulo (IED - SP). At that time, I was living in São Paulo. The project was born from my personal willingness to explore the city of São Paulo, as opposed to the banality of daily life that may underestimate and depreciate the cultural, artistic and historical sites that are important to the city's identity.

Goal

It all started with 2 main research questions:

- How design could resignify the everyday urban space?

- Why does the city's heritage is frequently not recognized by its inhabitants?

The main goal was to create a digital solution that could answer these questions. Secondary goals were:

- Instigate a new way to think about the city that we live in;

- Use the urban territory as a stage for learning and exploration;

- Reinforce the city's identity among its citizens.

Methods

Service Design Thinking, according to Marc Stickdorn and J. Schneider approach, was used during the whole project.

- Phase 1 - Secondary research: I conducted a desk research around global thinkers and experts about city, urbanism and heritage exploration. It also included new trends on services for city learning and exploration and innovative solutions.

- Phase 2 - Service Discovery: I interviewed 10 residents of 2 historical neighborhoods in São Paulo. I also participated in a 3-hour guided tour experience around the city center in order to experiment the city as a tourist. After the interviews and the tour, all information was clustered and analyzed.

- Phase 3 - Service Definition: The solution was defined after a brainstorming and prioritization according to trend principles found in the desk research and insights found in interviews. First, I made paper prototypes to represent the concept of the app and its main interactions. Then, I wanted to test the service concept. So I asked 3 students to create tour routes in the university to show me the places that they liked the most. It was a very valuable exercise because I was able to capture how people create their routes, select their favorite places and give their own perspectives about each place.

- Phase 4 - Prototype Testing: the concept of the solution evolved. Gamification logics were applied to the app. The first digital prototype was created and tested with 14 people that were potential users. The tests were based on task scenarios.

- Phase 5 - User Profiling: 4 user profiles were created based on the participants of the tests. The profiles consisted in a description of their necessities and aspirations when using the app. I also created a user journey for each user profile.

- Phase 6 - Hi-fi prototype validation: the final user flow and a high fidelity version of the app prototype were created. The problems that were encountered during the previous round of tests were taken into account. Finally, I carried out a service validation and testing of the hi-fi prototype in context. Participants tested the prototype while walking on the streets and followed a pre-determined route. The whole experience was very positive, but I found that the app was a bit complex for users with a lower level of tech fluency.

- Phase 7 - Service Strategy: I developed an implementation strategy that contemplated different stages (starting with a MVP with fewer features), and also used the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas to develop the final product strategy for the service.

Outcomes

The project was materialized as an app named sp.id.

sp.id is an app for creating walking routes in the city, to explore places, share memories and stories about them. Principles of gamification, sharing economy and place branding were adopted.

Although it was developed for São Paulo, I found it's a valuable app to be used in every city of the world, since each city has its own particular heritage, popular memories and stories that reinforce its identity.

This project got the highest grade and is always used as a reference for other Product/Service Design students in IED-SP.