Preparation

Without knowing the exact brief, I spent some time reading about the conference theme of “use not own.” A few of the most influential resources for me in this space include Enzo Manzini’s Collaborative Services, BJ Fogg’s Thoughts on Simplicity, Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers’ What’s Mine is Yours, and Edgar Cahn’s No More Throw Away People.

The Problem

Today we have more than 53,000 personal storage facilities, seven times the number of Starbucks in the US. Only 30 percent of the more than 2.35 billion square feet of storage space is used by business, and capacity continues to grow. There is enough storage space in the US for every man, woman and child to have 7.56 square feet of storage. 2009 US storage revenues exceeded the GDPs of 82 countries and equivalent to others. This business has outpaced the growth of McDonald’s, growing 740 percent over the past 2 decades. What if we could transfer a small amount of this or other space for public use?

What if tool share was more like Redbox?

Kiosk hardware and telematics technology have evolved and allowed for many new renting business models. If we could make borrowing a drill, air mattress, rake, ladder, or folding chairs, as easy as it is to rent a movie from a Redbox, then perhaps we could change the relationship we have with less commonly used items. Various swapping services exist, and in some spaces have proven popular. This space has not faired as well. One site, NeighborGood, uses a 50-mile “neighborhood” radius, even in overcrowded, traffic-challenged metro regions. A physical in-neighborhood kiosk is something that people understand, can easily get to, and can quickly build the critical mass needed for success.

Visual Modeling

After being briefed, I went to work modeling service businesses with the rough idea of a vending based solution and enabling sharing of items. I posted my favorite generative service design tools: a customer journey canvas, a service model canvas, a business model canvas, and a service ecology model. I proceeded for the next 5 hours to switch between each of these models with sticky notes, generating a flushed out service model and plan for research the next day.

Rapid Research

Findings

From a quick twitter survey, phone calls, and queries of some conference attendees, I found that the items people want to share goes beyond my original concept of tools and is locally driven. For example, someone living in NYC may want a place to store and borrow luggage, chairs, or an air mattress, where as someone living in the suburbs may want access to large gardening equiptment or camping gear, and students living on a campus want cleaning tools, sporting goods, and/or cooking items. I decided, at this point, to let communities make their own decisions of what to put in the shared BorrowBox space by lending the items themselves.

BorrowBox: core service

Co-Design in Boulder Colorado

Sally has just moved from Savannah, GA to Boulder, CO and was willing to co-design and enact the BorrowBox service with me. Together we ran through the service concept, and found items in her house that she would rather lend to people with BorrowBox. I co-designed the BorrowBox service with her through paper prototyping and enacting the service. We ran through the basic service experiences including discovery, user registration, registering items with BorrowBox, borrowing an item, returning an item, and searching for items.

The BorrowBox Service Model

The Technology Infrastructure of BorrowBox

Startup Kit for BorrowBox

BorrowBox is enabled by 3 key enabling technologies: an android cellular based keypad, 3 RFID readers, and an electronic lock. Items are registered with the system utilizing a combo QR code/RFID sticker. The system can be added to spaces as small as a vending machine or as large as a shipping container. This kit can be installed by anyone who services vending machines or by a electrician.

Mobile Web App

Experience Prototype

Executive Summary

Union, is a non-for-profit
consortium of America’s credit
unions, formed to develop the
technology and service offerings necessary
to attract the next generation of
borrowers to credit unions. These
products and services will make
credit unions both very attractive
and highly competitive with large
banks for consumer services.

Developing and integrating these
technology tools is a financial
burden and hurdle for relatively
small organizations. Currently, personal
financial management tools are
just that, personal, they do not
allow for banks to support
customers in their financial lives.

The first service that Union is seeking to develop is an account called Perspective that combines a platform for financial advising with applied tools that simplify budgeting, saving, bill pay, and even collaborative bill pay.

Credit Unions Struggling for Relevancy with Gen Y

Credit Unions are organizations that by charter are non-profit. They serve a demographic population, whether geographic, religious, or enterprise. They have a responsibility to their charter to try to educate members. Members have a vote on all major issues.

Credit unions have remained stable throughout the economic recession and represent approximately 6% of the 17 trillion dollar industry. Acquisitions have narrowed the banking market and now the top 100 banks own 72% of the market. While these acquisitions have affected small banks, credit union market share has been stable.

Credit unions have not been particularly popular with Gen Y and Younger Gen Xers. This is problematic because this is the age demographic that is in the prime building stage of their lives, when the need is greatest to take on healthy debt to grow. Credit unions are currently flush with cash, and they lend responsibly. However, credit unions do not have enough qualified customers requiring loans; the majority of their members are older, and in the preservation phase of their lives. Gen Y will need to take on debt to grow, and credit unions can help them to do this responsibly.

Tech Spending and R&D

Tech spending in credit unions accounts for 10-15% of their budgets. Developing, selling, and integrating new services and technology is extremely costly for these organizations as there is no economy of scale.

If credit unions banded together, their combined assets of more than a trillion dollars ranks them collectively within the top 100 banks. In fact, it would allow them to compete with the largest three institutions, which now control nearly a third of all U.S. assets. As a collective, they could pool their R&D spending to strategically develop new technologies to significantly improve their competitiveness relative to these dominant financial institutions.

Reframing Banking

Let’s talk, let’s problem solve

By providing simple banking services that allow customers to organize, budget, achieve goals, and develop healthy financial habits, service providers gain loyal and credit-worthy, lifetime customers. Financial advice services are moved beyond the traditional boutique offerings for the wealthy, to become a core service targeting those who need help developing and achieving their financial goals. These customers and empowered brand representatives will eventually purchase homes, cars, build businesses, finance their children’s education and their retirement. Attracting young customers, by providing them with financial counseling, will ensure a mutually beneficial relationship.

Through the development of a multi-sided banking platform that provides a means to connect the consumer and the financial adviser to common data, unique service delivery models emerge. Additional enhancing services that make bill pay easy and collaborative, will position credit unions as stand outs in the market place of mediocre to poor me too products.

RESEARCH & CO-DESIGN

Insights

Two rounds of co-design were performed. The first was utilizing a set of issue and touchpoint cards modeled to build an understanding of how people currently bank and how banking to better serve their needs. The second co-design activity utilized a game to discuss financial behavioral change.
Some of the insights from this research included:

• Discussing financial goals before concerns, successfully exposed problems and aspirations
• Would really like advice and help, but not from “a pencil-pusher that doesn’t get me”
• They want to know what to bring to the conversation before hand
• They want the ability to separate money for bills, spending, specific savings and goals
• They want ATM/Debit cards declined when a purchase would draw on funds necessary for recurring expenses like rent
• They would really like an easy way to collaboratively pay bills with roommates, others

The Perspective Account

Vision

Union’s Perspective Account will combine the power of personal financial management with real advisers and powerful tools to ensure deeper, more satisfying, and productive relationships between customers, advisers, and the respective credit unions. These new tools allow customers to create folders separating spending money from designated folders holding monies to pay monthly and other recurring expenses, and savings by goal (e.g. education, a trip, car, new computer); they also include spending stops, bill pay, and collaborative bill pay (e.g. for roommates, parents assisting children), individualized to meet the customer’s needs.

Competitive Analysis

Current services fall short

Current available personal financial management systems are digital only experiences that do not extend into the brand or core value proposition of retail banking. They are not collaborative or actionable. They are disconnected from the actions related to budgeting, spending control, timely bill pay, and where financial management occurs.
They do not take advantage of and leverage the existing preferred methods of handling larger financial conversations that occur within branches.

REVENUE MODEL

Union will generate revenues based on a referral and user fee model, encouraging Union to develop new and innovative services to increase adoption. Credit unions integrating Union services into their existing infrastructure will pay integration and training fees.

Credit unions will pay:

A $60.00 referral fee per new account generated through union.com.

A $40.00 per customer set up fee.

A $12.00 annual per customer fee for hosting data and web services.

All “profits” will be utilized for R&D. Once credit unions are integrated into the platform, all new services will be ready to roll out to customers.

Credit Union Benefits

Credit unions offering Perspective accounts can expect a 20% increase in Gen Y membership.

Additionally, it will cut attrition of existing members by a minimum of 50%.

Each Perspective customer will generate a profit of $6000, with growth potential, and have an average of 3 more relationships with his credit union.

Savings and checking balances will double to triple in size relative to customers with traditional accounts.

Business & service model

Launch Strategy

ADVERTISEMENT & VIDEO PROTOTYPE

SERVICE EVIDENCE

Warm Up Kit

The warm up kit gives users a place to put all the things required to get on the path to financial freedom with the Perspective Account. This customer gathered information is utilized at the in-person or digital setup appointment.

Perspective Account Sales Site

iPhone App

Fin

SCENARIO: Researching the purchase of a Photovoltaic Solar System

PATH TO PURCHASE: Researching a installing a Photovoltaic Solar Purchase

The path to purchasing solar panels is plagued with fail points at which time consumers have to work too hard to overcome barriers to entry.

Consumers must understand the complexity of home viability, solar panel technology, financing, local utility reimbursement, installation, ordinances, and more.

Peek answers all of these questions as consumers approach the service. Consumers have all of the information at their fingertips, eliminating the previous fail points in the path to purchase.

SENARIO: Researching & Purchasing Sustainable Energy Products

PATH TO PURCHASE: Renewable Energy Products

The path to researching and purchasing sustainable energy products demands both persistence and hard work for the consumer. The many questions to be answered must be gathered from disparate resources, aggregated by the individual, digested, analyzed, and even scrutinized. In some jurisdictions, needed information is unavailable by internet, forcing consumers to resort to calling multiple organizations for answers. Not many can be expected to have the time, patience, and ability to execute all that is required.

Peek aggregates these answers into a multi-step wizard that culminates in a purchase offer based on the needs of the customer.

SERVICE ECOSYSTEM

PEEK RENEWABLE ENERGY BROKERAGE INFORMATION SYSTEMS

This diagram reveals each of the databases and IT systems that make the Peek renewable energy brokerage system possible.

These systems are split vertically by the technical make up of each step of the process evaluation, comparison, and purchase. The diagram further reveals where these systems are located.

PEEK PERSONAL SOLAR SYSTEMS BLUEPRINT

ABOUT WOODVILLE

The community of Woodville was established in 1871, and only in the past thirty years was it incorporated into the city of Savannah. Prior to that, it was a thriving and robust community, largely based around agriculture. However, the arrival of big industry changed the face of the community.

Older residents described eating their lunch picked from trees, while walking down the street. This is no longer the case. The community garden project seeks to not only provide the community with a source of fresh and low-cost fruits and vegetables, but also to help youth develop practical skills and reclaim the community’s history.

Demography

• Average annual Woodville income is
  $35,000, however 39.29% of households
  live on less than $15,000.
• About 400, out of the approximately
  600 residents are over the age of 60.
• The vast majority of residents own
  their homes.
• There are 117 empty lots, about three
  quarters of which are owned by senior
  residents.
• Historically, Woodville was an independent community, with a mayor, and the lots were used for farming.
• Incorporated into Savannah, residents
  must comply with the law requiring that
  grass levels be maintained no higher than
  10 inches.
• This is a huge financial burden on older
  residents, who spend $600 to $1000
  annually to comply.

EPA Grant Opportunity

Prior to our involvement with Woodville, the community had successfully secured an Environmental Protection Agency CARE Level II grant. The grant covered many areas of community environmental restoration.

Working with Woodville on this grant were organizations such as Harambee House and the Chatham Environmental Forum.

EXPOSING THE SERVICE ECOLOGY

We began by mapping all of the existing partnerships, which exposed collaboration and miscommunication between partners.

Stage Holder Interviews

With the foundation laid by the two previous SCAD classes, we explored working with Woodville.

When we first met the community leader, Tyrone Ware, there were already plans to break ground on a community garden. The readiness to begin was the reason we decided to work with Tyrone and Woodville.

CONTEXTUAL RESEARCH

After gaining understanding of the problem space with the stakeholders, we wanted to gain an understanding of the alignment between community members and their leaders.
This involved spending a lot of time in Woodville understanding the dynamics and needs.

Co-Design Activities

We used co-design to begin to uncover the expectations, desires, and motivations of Woodville residents to better direct our eventual design process. We met with many of the residents during an Earth Day event hosted at the Woodville Community Center. We interacted and learned from them via three different co-design activities.

Design Fiction

We brought elements of possible service evidence with which to co-design. One of these was a blank newsletter with a cover that could be of an actual Woodville Garden newsletter in a year or two’s time. Each of the sections was blank and created based on our contextual inquiry.

At the Earth Day event, we discussed what elements would go under each of these headers. My partner and I graphically facilitated the co-design sessions right inside of the blank newsletters. This exposed residents’ desires beyond the limits at the time, to utilize the medium of urban agriculture to influence the community.

Co-Design Findings

During the course of the project we interviewed and talked to all sorts of people connected to the community garden project. We talked to community members, community leaders, and managers of other local community gardens. From our co-design and activities we arrived at a set of findings that guided our design solutions. These findings were:

• The community wanted a true community garden.
• There was a need to track the garden involvement of individuals.
• Current interactions with the garden are ad-hoc.
• Youth involvement was a crucial part of the garden’s success.
• Much information regarding the garden was spread via word of mouth.
• There was more interest than there was involvement.
• Kids want to work in the garden with their friends.
• Creating a sense of ownership in the garden for the community was vital.
• The community’s seniors provided a fountain of knowledge regarding gardening.
• Woodville was (and still is) an independent community that took initiative for itself.
• Teaching kids and education was an important component of the garden many residents wanted to see included.
• Interest spurred from action, not planning.
• The garden was a place to foster and improve inter-generational relationships and communication, preserve and bestow historical memory and tacit knowledge.

Experience Prototyping

To determine the validity of our
proposed designs we employed
experience prototyping. We
paper prototyped our designs and
after a brief self-review, went to
Woodville to try them out. Our
first round of prototyping was on a
Saturday when some of the youth
from the community were
spending the morning tending to
the garden. We conducted a second
round of testing the next week after
making revisions based on our
findings. After a final round of
role-playing and acting among
ourselves, we finalized our designs.

Proposed solutions

Spreading Awareness

Spreading the word about the project was key to priming residents to be recruited for the
garden. To help make sure everyone was aware of what was going on, we developed a set of
iconography to help communicate the values and benefits offered by the community garden. These symbols were placed on church fans to be handed out at local churches, and directly on garden stakes so that these values and benefits could be reflected in the gardens themselves.

Fostering Engagement

The biggest hurdle to any nascent organization or project is recruiting volunteers and participants. Woodville already had an existing community leadership and a system of block captains.

We utilized this structure to hand out both plants and seed packets to residents to initiate their garden participation and get people to the garden so they could see and experience it for themselves.

Tracking and Managing the Garden and Its Volunteers

To create a sense of ownership and
space in the garden, an in-garden
board known as Garden Central
was created. This touchpoint
worked to show who was working
in the garden and housed forms
used by the garden coaches, which
could later be transferred to the
database.

Management of the garden work and its volunteers is essential for day-to-day operations, planning, and project sustainability and growth. We developed a series of forms for logging information to address this, and created an accompanying digital database to easily record all the information gathered, and to make record keeping easy.

Final Presentation and Project Hand-off

At the end, all citizens of Woodville, greater
Savannah, SCAD, and project partners were invited to an open gallery event to see the outcome of this collaborative effort.
This also served as a forum to reinforce the sense of community ownership that we
strived to foster, and to energize Woodville residents to put the newly created tools to good use.