Portfolio of Work by Rebecca Horton

PORTFOLIO Rebecca Horton

Hello! My name is Rebecca and iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a service designer. I sit at the intersection between growth strategy, customer advocacy, and experience design. I have spent the last five plus years working with individuals and organizations of all stripes and shapes-from large educational institutions with massive staffs and entire buildings full of data to up-and-coming musicians who have never written a business plan but know how to sell out a theater. Service design is an emerging discipline centered around designing and reimagining user experiences for the businesses that now make up about 75% of the US economy. Ironically, designers spent much of the last century working in the other 25%, helping companies create game-changing products, tools, and technologies. I believe that the future of the US economy increasingly lies in the services domain and have the education and expertise to help brands become top-tier innovators by turning discovered opportunities into measured outcomes, designing across organizations, customer segments, and distribution channels to drive long-lasting impact.

customer advocate experience designer

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s me!

growth hacker

TABLE OF Contents

TRAIN

AMPED-UP

THE TRAINER pages 6-9

EXPERIENCE MAP page 10-13

ARISTIDES

RE-IMAGINE

LOUNGE pages 14-25

OUR COMMUNICATION SYSTEM WORKSHOP pages 26-29

TRAIN THE Trainer Challenge: Teach a service innovation firm new methods During summer 2012, I consulted with Washington, DCbased Motiv Strategies, a service innovation firm, to organize and enhance the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s service design toolbox. I began the summer by cataloguing the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existing tools and frameworks and then spent a few weeks documenting new tools that I thought the company might consider using. Afterwards, I began applying new tools and methods in project-based work, training my businessoriented colleagues in how to develop service blueprints, create affiinity maps, and generate user insight statements. Documented to the right is a service blueprint that my colleagues developed during one two-hour training session about service blueprinting. The following pages document my key contributions through a non-linear visualization.

Built and fieldtested journey mapping templates

Cultivated a Pinterest board full of design tools

Research and Learn Explored competitor tools and compared against existing capabilities and firmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work to-date

Built catalogue of in-house tools and frameworks

design Developed and prototyped new tools, frameworks and methods Researched competitors by reviewing web, literature, etc.

Developed service blueprint and journey map for client

Created a deck of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;experience cardsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to be used as cultural probes

Designed research screeners

train Enhanced internal capabilities by teaching colleagues service design methods through workshops and informal coaching

Presentation of findings to client

Created discussion guides

Taught a service blueprinting workshop

plan and deploy Informal coaching on emergent design and storytelling

Ran an insights and affinity diagramming workshop

Ran a how-to session on user persona development

Planned and led a customer research study for a major philanthropic foundation

Built customer research plan and timeline

Conducted research on-site with customers

AMPED-UP

Experience Map

MAPPING TOUCHPOINTS

VISUALIZING THE AVEDA SPA JOURNEY

Challenge: Build a better journey map. Throughout my time at SCAD, I took a handful of courses and workshops in service design, an emerging field centered around creating engaging customer experiences. One of the service design techniques that I learned at SCAD is customer journey mapping. Documented below is the process used to create a customer journey map for one such course. Developing this map involved visiting a local spa and documenting my experience through a large-scale wall poster, which went through several iterations before I came to a final version. Offered below are several sketches I made throughout my design process, and then offered on the following page is a glimpse of the final deliverable.

DOCUMENTING MOOD CHANGES ALONG THE JOURNEY

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When ‘Good Enough’ Just Isn’t... Visit to the Aveda Spa Gone Awry A Customer Journey by Rebecca Horton

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Opportunity Space: Enhanced verbal priming for several aspects of the service and a clearer set of instructions would dramatically improve the customer experience and make the service feel more individualized.

communication

Due to the hands-on nature of treatments, Aveda should consider asking employees with colds or other illnesses to stay home from work.

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AFTERMATH Image Credits| Icons: The Noun Project; Massage Photo: Jon Haynes Photography

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ARISTIDES â&#x20AC;&#x153;What if there were a place that celebrated what it meant to be a strong, thoroughbred, classic man...what if there were a salon with premiere perks designed exclusively for men?â&#x20AC;? 14

Challenge: “Design a radically new service offering that is desirable, viable and feasible using a winning combination of innovation approaches” Aristides Lounge is the outpouring of a ten-week course in brand-driven innovation whereby I designed a radically new service offering by pairing design concepts generated through industry research with an existing brand. The project had five basic stages: a research and insights generation stage, a brainstorming stage, a concept exploration stage, a prototyping stage, and a validation stage that involved a mock investor pitch. Each of these project stages are outlined in the diagram below. Meanwhile, the pages that follow show each of the project phases in greater detail, offering photos of process and glimpses of deliverables along the way.

use cases

touchpoint samples

business model canvas SWOT

wireframes

four action framework

industry research personas & service user journeys customer mock investor blueprints research pitch competitor scan emergent lateral design thinking methods workshop light design brand work experience Blue Ocean workshop prototyping execution mock-ups ‘What If’ sensory mood statements jobs to be experience boards storyboarding done journey mapping

scoring ideas

establishing criteria

early-stage affinity service blueprinting mapping

trenddriven

goal-driven design framework

UNDERSTANDING THE MARKET

During the research phase of this project, I uncovered several key insights that drove the development of concepts for the beauty salons industry. Among them, I discovered that beauty salons represent a roughly $20 billion dollar industry. By contrast, barber shops bring in a meager $600M per year. I also discovered that market-leading salons spend significant monies on inventory and maintenance for their retail establishments, which could be avoided through a mobile, place-less salon or a stylist-at-hand type service that offered styling advice using customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own products. Surprisingly, there has been little innovation in the salon industry over the last 1015 years, with the services today remaining markedly similar to those offered in the 1990s. As shown in the four action diagram below, there are many opportunities to place stylists in unique settings like teen fashion stores, gyms or offices to attract new customer segments and drive repeat traffic. Additionally, there are many possibilities to utilize technology and expand the existing services of brick and mortar salons in a way that blends the digital and face-to-face. Market trends such as the growth of DIY/maker communities, the prevalence of bloggers in shaping the fashion and beauty industry, and even the growth of coworking and work from home professions suggests that there is lots of room to create niche or lifestyle-oriented â&#x20AC;&#x153;customer as co-producerâ&#x20AC;? offerings that could drastically expand the market for salon services.

BRAINSTORMING SERVICE CONCEPTS

The second phase of the Aristides project involved coming up with a list of 60-100 service concepts for the beauty salons industry. To elicit a variety of disruptive and ‘quick-win’ type ideas, I designed a one-hour creative session that utilized four different activities with a small group of potential customers. In the brainstorming session, we came up with several ideas that were directly based on recent trends such as “high status stress” and “the end of nature.” We also explored several jobsbased ideas deriving from the salon journey, e.g. “relax and remove self from daily cares and routine” that might transcend I created a workshop that utilized a variety a salon-based experience. Additionally, we of brainstorming approaches to elicit both developed dozens of blue-ocean concepts disruptive and quick-win type design ideas using ‘What If’ statements that drew upon in a one-hour session. my previous market research (see examples below) and explored some extreme design ideas by applying lateral thinking approaches to specific customer segments. The resulting ideas ranged from opportunities to increase the distribution channels for salon services (e.g. in-office hair care and beauty consultations) to out-of-the-box ways to relieve stress (e.g. a Willy Wonka style playcenter and resort where stressed-out moms can drop off their kids while they get pampered and relax in a pool). The next section documents the ways in which I evaluated these ideas once-developed. 18

EXPLORING SERVICE CONCEPTS Sample Design Concepts Evaluated Against Chosen Criteria

Criteria Weights

Service Concepts Developed Using Storyboards, Simple Imagery, And Value Propositions. At This Point, Aristides Was One Of Five Top Ideas.

PROTOTYPING SELECT CONCEPTS

During the prototyping stage, I whittled down my list of service concepts to two and explored ways to partner these concepts with two brands researched by members of our class. The first service that I designed was an ‘immersive mobile salon’ called Favula that drew upon the Starbucks brand. The second service was the Aristides Lounge, which is a Woodford Reserveinspired gentleman’s lounge serving up custom drinks and Derby-inspired style in a sophisticated, speakeasystyle atmosphere. To the left and bottom right you can see evidence of my Aristides prototyping. Meanwhile, at the top right you can see an earlystage blueprint and another SCAD student exploring a digital moodboard that I developed for the Favula concept.

SERVICE CONCEPT

VALUE PROPOSITION FOR

Those with a focused, mature taste for refinement and quality

WHO

are looking to refresh their look and unwind

OUR SERVICE IS

a men’s grooming lounge

THAT

lightens the mood while giving you a polished, timeless appearance.

shampooing close-razor shaves dinner party planning

beard and hair trims Derby-style fare

clothing press drinks and grooming

stress therapy

CORE SERVICE

sporting-event streams cocktail lounge

dating tips monthly excursions

ENHANCING SERVICES

FACILITATING SERVICES

Unlike your average barbershop, Aristides blends craftmade sophistication with of-the-moment style, because while we’ve only been around for a short time our legacy is built upon cultural traditions that date back over 100 years.

POSITIONING THE BRAND Menu of Services Grooming

Food and Drink

CUTS 30 and up

WOODFORD RESERVE PEACH TEA 10

TRIMS 20-50

TROPICAL MINT JULEP COCKTAIL 11

SHAVES 25-40

CLASSIC WOODFORD RESERVE MANHATTAN 9

SHAMPOOING 8 WAXING 20 and up STRESS-RELEASE MASSAGE 60 (30m) or 90 (60m) RE-HYDRATION MASQUE 65

ORIGINAL

UNORIGINAL

SOPHISTICATED

MUNDANE

ACCESSIBLE

INACCESSIBLE

ACCESSIBLE

BOURBON-BRINED TENDERLOIN BITES 16

Great Clips

Aristides

Average barber

COUNTRY HAM BISCUITS WITH SHRIMP 14 MINI CHOCOLATE BOURBON PECAN PIE 6

SOPHISTICATED

MUNDANE

CHEESY CORNBREAD MUFFINS 8

Mid-range salons

CLOTHING STEAM 25

INACCESSIBLE

REFINING THE FINAL CONCEPT: ARISTIDES LOUNGE

These images document some of the final deliverables: service evidencing tools (left) the Aristides value proposition, the Aristides logo, an overview of one of the Aristides personas and a glimpse of one of two blueprints used in presentation materials.

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PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

USER ACTION LINE OF INTERACTION FRONTSTAGE LINE OF VISIBILITY BACKSTAGE INTERNAL INTERACTION 25

REour communication system Challenge: Help Ashoka staff brainstorm ways to improve the organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s communication while demonstrating the value of design thinking skills as a way to promote cross-unit collaboration and organizational change.

In fall of 2012 the leader of one of Ashoka’s internal teams approached me to run a creative

session, optimizing productivity and group flow, that focused on the topic of organizational communication. The primary goal of this workshop was to bring together staff from multiple business units to dream about how to design a communication system that was open, learning, and continually evolving. The secondary goal of the workProblem Statement: How Might We Design A shop was to equip staff with design thinking tools that they System Of Communication At Ashoka That Is could apply in their day-today work. Open, Learning And Continually Evolving? To facilitate this group interaction, I designed a workshop that involved three key phases and lasted for approximately two hours. The session began with a forty-minute exercise exploring the ‘antiproblem,’ designed to take participants out of their comfort zones and stimulate new thinking. After a quick break, the session coninued through a game that explored ways to take the solutions to the antiproblem and put them in the context of the real problem in ways that balanced opposite aims like consistency and flexibility. For this portion of the session, participants were divided into two teams, each with a facilitator and each containing interns and long-term Ashoka staff. After 30 minutes of play, we invited the teams to share their favorite ideas and post them on the wall for dot voting. The event was deemed a roaring success and participants were highly engaged. Participants noted that the activity was “really thought-provoking.” The staff member who brought me on for the workshop said that she was thrilled with the outcomes and excited for the ways in which design thinking methods might add new value to these employees’ work and also empower them with new skills to run their own creative sessions. In fact, shortly after hosting the workshop, the staff member who brought me on to run it duplicated my approach at a well-known conference on the West Coast called SOCAP with similarly fantastic results. 28

to Connect:

rebecca.eliz@gmail.com rebeccaeliz.tumblr.com @southernindie