At this years annual innovation conference run by the Norwegian research council, the AT-ONE project was invited to run a two hour workshop to give an introduction to service design and the AT-ONE method. We had 17 participants from a broad range of disciplines and companies and had a busy two hour session.
We chose to focus upon using touch-point cards (link) for innovation in primary healthcare. The touch-point cards were used to identify relevant touch-points for different stages in the service journey using the methods that are described on the cards.
The results were very positive and confirmed many of the expectations and earlier experiences  we have had regarding the cards.
1. The visual and tangible aspect of the cards was highlighted as very useful, not only allowing visual orientation, grouping etc, but also as a common reference for all.
2. Participants were enthusiastic, and the idea generation process couldn’t go fast enough. People had queues of ideas to discuss and note down.
3. The role of designers in each group was important. We had placed a designer in each of the three groups, to facilitate the process and to draw out ideas, and this  was seen as a really useful way to continually integrate ideas into experiential solutions and visualise them.
Here are some of the quotes from the evaluation afterwards:
Everyone can use these cards, and they open up the process
The difference between innovating the whole service and its parts became apparent, particularly the interplay between these. The service became more interesting when we moved from the whole to the parts
Makes you both concrete and experimental at the same time. I have found a new way to trigger associational processes
A good way to draw out the overall system, to then dive down later into individual touchpoints
I’m really happy that the cards are receiving such positive reviews. We also identified a couple of new touch-points to add to the list, so will be updating these soon.