The Future of Banking & Generation Y by William Brown

The Future of Banking & Generation Y

Will Brown Master of European Design Process Journal

Contents

Introduction 4

Project introduction

Design team & partners

Phase 1: Discover & define 6 7 8 9 10 12 14 16 19

Desk research Sources Framing the research Macro trends New Economies Corporate Social Responsibility Tangibility of Services Research timeline Personal reflection

STEP cards Design tool STEP definitions Highlighted cards Personal reflection

21 22 25

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

26 27 28 29

Planning ethnography Mapping potential users Identifying potential interviewees Predetermined format Recruitment Personal reflection

39 40 41 42 46 2

Ethnographic research Stakeholder graph Formatting ethnography findings Expert interview Video ping pong If my password was an object... Personal reflection Workshop at RBS office Defining the project scope Trojan horses Increasing the designersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; share Persona generation Concept ideation Concepts Site visits Personal reflection

Phase 3: Deliver

Communication artefacts Using artefacts to test research Trace Voice Vault BioLayers Scenarios Prompt cards Capture cards Personal reflection

82 83 84 85 86 87 88

User testing Setup Introduction & warm up Trace Voice Vault BioLayers Personal reflection

Insights & design recommendations Synthesis Finding the thread Insight booklet & cards Design recommendations Reflection

96 97 98 100

Final presentation Project Process Poster Presentations Personal reflection

76 77 78 79 80

Phase 2: Develop 48 49 50 52 55

Tribes & chiefs Synthesis Niche to mainstream Formatting Most relevant personas Personal reflection

56 57 58 60 61 63 64 67

Future world Importance of worldbuilding The CultureBerg method Personal reflection Future world of Safe & Secure Postnormalism Future world poster Personal reflection

Concept creation Framing the ideation Products as provocations Local Lab Trace Voice Vault BioLayers Personal reflection

69 70 71 72 73 74

Reflection 102

103

Project reflection Group work Facilitating change My role as a designer

Introduction

Project introduction This is a 3 month collaborative project to share and develop design methods between the client, Royal Bank of Scotland’s design team, and ourselves, the GSA design team. Both partners brought their own methods to the table to find an experimental and new process that works well for a research and strategic project. As a deliverable for the client, the reflection on process equally important as the design deliverables themselves. The collaboration explores the future behaviour and attitudes of young people aged 16-25 (which shall be referred to as ‘millennials’ / ‘Gen Y’ throughout this process journal) towards banking in 10 years and beyond. Within the overarching topic of the future of banking for millennials, the GSA design team will explore the themes of new values, safe and secure, saving and spending, and data. The intention is to use a user-centred design approach to achieve this, primarily trend research, ethnography, future mapping and user testing with provocation artefacts. The resulting deliverable to the client will be a series of recommendations for designing within the themes for these millennials in the future.

Design team & partners

Safe & Secure Will Brown Eloise Smith Foster Ola Kozawska

MEDes student MEDes student Graduate support

New Values Lizzie Abernethy Rosie Trudgen Ottavia Pasta

MEDes student MEDes student Graduate support

Saving & Spending Josefine Leonhardt Josh Woolliscroft Amber Jones

MEDes student MEDes student Graduate support

New Values Ole TĂ¸rresen Robyn Johnston Struan Wood

MEDes student MEDes student Graduate support

Project Manager Kirsty Ross

GSA Lecturer

Client Leads Rebekka Bush Martin Dowson

Creative Director Service Design Lead

Discover & define

Desk research Collaboration*

Desk research

Share to team

Focus topic + desk research

Objectives - Immersion into the domain topic - Research into trends around Gen Y and domain of Safe & Secure - Frame what to research within domain topic - Structure research into micro and macro trends as a domain - Structure research on a timeline as a team. *Key At the beginning of each subsection (that is categorised into the activities of the project) is a diagram of the collaboration style over that activity. Individual

Domain Group

Team

Split team

Collate research on timeline

Desk research

We began the desk research in our domain groups by casting a wide net of topics within our domain of Safe & Secure. This was split into two categories of trend research relevant to our topic, and general research into Millennial (Gen Y) attitudes and behaviours as a demographic.Â

Safe & Secure

Gen Y

research centres

Gov stats

academic research

innovative projects

books opinion articles trend analysis

case studies new technology

think tanks

Quantitative

visions of the future

Qualitative

Sources For sources, we looked into a mixture of quantitative data (statistics from government, think tanks, research centres, and academic researchers), qualitative data (innovative projects, case studies, articles, new technologies, books, visions of the future), and everything in between (mainly opinion articles based on statistical data mentioned in the qualitative data). The qualitative data in particular

requires a bit of interpretation to see what it represents as a trend, often useful as a way of getting a feel for a topic before finding specific quant data to back that assumption up. Whereas some of the quantitative data such as statistics is good indication of a snapshot of now, which can be used as a starting point to project where we might be going when compared to the past.Â 7

Discover & define

Throughout this project this framework will be used to view certain elements, in an effort to make them comprehensible and therefore actionable. Meta-matter framework

Meta High level Gut feeling

Brand

The role of banks in society

Branch

Exploring new purposes for bank branches

Interaction

Customer experience of product and interactions

Matter Interaction level Reactionary feeling

Framing the research In the context of banking, we asked ourselves: “What does it mean to feel safe and secure?” Through the research, we found that two approaches that were interesting to us emerged. The first was on a technical level of what it means to feel safe and secure when interacting with financial services. The second was what it means to feel safe and secure as we progress through life stages, within the context of the larger economy. Through the diatomic relationship between these emerging interest areas of one representing a macro lens on the domain topic, and the other being a micro lens on the topic, we formulated a tool to frame this project. For this, I was inspired by the thinking of Dan Hill, from Helsinki-based strategic design agency, Sitra, in his book ‘Dark Matter and Trojan Horses’. In which he

proposes that the designer should adopt a way of zooming in and out of the details of the project to increase the potentiality of the outcomes. Hill creates the terminology ‘Meta’ and ‘Matter’ to describe these levels of perspective on a design project. The Meta level is essentially a macro view of the systemic challenges. At the lower end of the scale, the Matter level is micro view of the interactions and details. The importance of establishing these lenses is so that the designer can switch between them, and create links between them, to reinforce concepts on either side with the other. In terms of collaboration, this was a useful tool in creating a shared visual framework and set of vocabulary to talk about the project. 8

Desk research

Meta High level Gut feeling Corporate Corporations react to consumer-led Social shift in social and environmental Responsibility values.

Matter Interaction level Reactionary feeling

Macro trends As we gathered research on the topic of Safe & Secure, three macro trends emerged that were interesting to us: New Economies (pages 10 - 11), Corporate Social Responsibility (pages 12 - 13), and Tangibility of Financial Services (pages 14 - 15). Whilst these macro trends emerged naturally as we looked for correlations in our research, since the domain is so broad, it was important that we picked areas of research that were interesting to us as a team, building on our existing expertise and skills. In addition, we picked areas that covered the different levels of the meta-matter framework, which complimented each other so that we might be able to increase the potentiality of our eventual design outcomes.

New economies

The combination of connectedness and a backlash against neoliberal globalisation creates new opportunities.

Tangibility of services

Advances in technology and connectedness lead to new ways of perceiving and interacting with money.

were the generational attitudes present, what was going on in the world of banking and/or what was going on more generally in parallel industries. These are represented by the micro trends within each macro trend. A macro trend can be defined as a trend that evolves over a very long timeframe of around 15+ years, affecting large parts of everyone’s lives. It is composed of many micro trends that might range in duration between a couple to 10 years. Micro trends are often industry-specific or affect just a certain group of people. These micro trends are composed of signifiers, which can be events, case studies, statistics, as mentioned earlier in the ‘sources of research’ section.

For each macro trend we explored at what 9

Discover & define

New Economies The combination of connectedness and a backlash against neoliberal globalisation creates new opportunities. This area sets the context for what life will be like in 10+ years and explores how a networked society is changing the way we live, work and function within society. Through understanding the general trends that affect life and work, it is possible to understand what the future economy might be and how it will impact on people’s sense of security as they progress between life stages. The End of Plenty Life will never return to the abundance of the late nineties and early noughties. As we begin to recognise the human impact on the planet, the fallibility of financial systems and the notion of GDP as an indicator of growth, and the scarcity of resources, careless consumerism will no longer be possible for the average person. Signs of this are already present, such as the dire housing market that faces Millennials, who have been dubbed as Generation Rent. According to Pew Research Centre, one in eight Millennials will ‘boomerang’ back to living with their parents, due to a combination of stagnating wages, unsteady job contracts and exorbitant mortgages. This is likely to worsen due to increase job insecurity due to the automation of jobs to AI. It is estimated, in a recent report by Oxford researchers, that 35% of current UK jobs are at risk of disappearing to artificial intelligence over the next 20 years. Localism There will be a continued growth in the kickback against neoliberal globalisation. This will be a combination of the recent failings of globalisation to improve the living standards of citizens world wide, the disconnect between people and multinational corporations and the environmental guilt of importing products all over the world. An indicator of change towards a new system

Desk research

can be seen in the rise of local currencies to encourage local spending. The largest of these in the UK is the Bristol Pound, of which £700,000 is in circulation. Many other cities, such as Brixton, Lewes, Totnes and Stroud have also adopted a similar local currency. In Scotland there has been a proposal by the New Economics Foundation and Common Weal to introduce a digital Scot Pound alternative currency. Localised food consumption is another signifier of a shift in attitudes. This can be seen in the rise of farmers markets, increased local food in supermarkets and the growing popularity of organisations such as the Slow Food Movement. Internet disintermediation The internet has already disrupted many industries like dominoes. Travel agents, market places, journalism, publishing, media, and more have all been completely transformed and replaced with new companies. On the other hand, the internet has been slower to disrupt banking. However, early warning signs of disruption can be seen already in Peer to peer (P2P) lending and crowdfunding. Peer to peer lending is growing in popularity, Zopa, the UK’s leading lending company has “in the past 6 months alone has lent 100 million pounds, 25% of the total lend since it was founded in 2005.” Similar growth can be seen in crowdfunding platforms: “Active global crowdfunding platforms generated $16.2 billion in 2014—a figure that is expected to more than double in 2015 to $34.4 billion, according to crowdfunding research firm Massolution.” Whilst no internet alternative that acts completely like a bank has arrived yet, many emerging companies that focus on an individual financial service have. Indeed, if alternatives were to come along, Millennials would be the generation most receptive to switching. A study by The Millennial Disruption Index found that banking is at the highest risk of disruption from Millennials. Their results from a 10000 participant strong study showed that 1 in 3 would consider switching in the next 90 days and 53% don’t think that their bank offers anything different from other banks. Whilst this was a study carried out in the US, the results can’t be so dissimilar from the UK.

Discover & define

Corporate Social Responsibility Corporations react to consumer-led shift in social and environmental values. This area explores attitudes in Gen Y, the resulting behavioural shift, and how companies are adapting to fit the needs of this future generation. Informed consumers With the entire world of the internet at the click of a button (or the tap of a screen!), Gen Y is highly informed. These digital natives find it second nature to research into the brands that they align themselves with. The Pew research paper, ‘Millennials: Confident, Connected and Open To Change’, found that Millennials are the generation most likely to buycott a product - buying a product because you believe in their social values - at 34%, compared to 30%, 27% and 18% for Gen X, Baby Boomers, and The Silent Generation respectively. CSR as a marketing strategy In reaction to the consumer demand and the wider issues present in a global context, corporate social responsibility is growing in importance among companies. According to a Time Magazine article, ‘Why Companies Can No Longer Afford to Ignore Their Social Responsibilities’, “... 10 years ago for instance, only about a dozen Fortune 500 companies issued CSR or a sustainability report. Now the majority does. More than 8000 businesses around the world have signed the UN global compact.” Despite this, the cracks are breaking as trust is betrayed through major scandals. The recent Volkswagen scandal was a prime example of this betrayal, when they lied during testing to increase their green credentials. As mentioned in the ‘informed consumers’ micro trend, Millennials are likely to find this information out online, and react to it. Therefore, CSR is increasingly being recognised as a marketing strategy, viewed with skepticism if such claims made do not align with the ethos of the company.

Desk research

CSR as a core ethos The rise of CSR as a core ethos can be traced back to the Body Shop, founded in 1976. The body shop created an uncontested market by offering social and environmental benefits in their products, based on the way that they worked with suppliers and operated the company. Now this can be seen in companies like Fairphone, a smartphone that ensure every part of their supply chain is considered and made transparent, from fair wages, sustainably and ethically sourced raw materials, the design of the product to be recycled, packaging and the communication. Indeed, this desire for transparency is backed up by a Deloitte survey conducted last year where “70% of young Millennials, those ages 18 to 26, say a company’s commitment to the community has an influence on their decision to work there.” Corporation as Educator Whilst some companies have a solid CSR agenda, some have taken a step further to create change in their industry. There is a growing trend of companies that as acting as an educator to help their customers make informed decisions in an increasingly complex world. An example of this is a partnership between IDEO and the insurance firm MassMutual. This new service they launched, called ‘The Society of Grownups’, teaches long term thinking to young adults - such as saving for a house, paying off a loan and investing - that prepares them for adulthood. The success of the project has meant that the service is expanding to 10 locations across US over the next three years.

Discover & define

Tangibility of Services Advances in technology and connectedness lead to new ways of perceiving and interacting with money. This area looks at how the technology that mediates the interaction between people and their services is changing. Digitisation of storefronts A rise in the use of mobile banking is steadily replacing the transactional service of the bank branch. A joint report by BBA and EY, ‘The Way We Bank Now’, found that the number of logins to internet banking has increased 10% from the year before, whilst a “6% decrease in branch transactions across all banks in 2014”. Further signs of a desire for mobile banking can be seen in the emergence of mobile-only banks, such as Number 26 in Germany and Austria. Re-embracing tangibility As everything in life in converted into ones and zeros, there is a small but significant rise in interest for the tangible things in life. The music industry, which was one of the first industries to be truly disrupted by the internet, is experiencing a resurgence in vinyl sales. According to a Times article. ‘Here’s Why Music Lovers Are Turning to Vinyl and Dropping Digital’, “for the first time in nearly 20 years, more than one million vinyl records were sold in the U.K. in 2014. (The last time the milestone had been achieved in Britain was in 1996.)” In banking this can be seen in the Polish mobile-only bank, mBank that recently unveiled plans to establish a network of small ‘Light Branches’ as well as integrated ‘Advisory Centres’. Seamless security Alternatives to the password are being explored with new technology. Biometric verification is being tested by Halifax with a wristband that measures heartbeats, according to an Independent article, ‘Heartbeat signals could replace PIN codes for online banking’. 14

Desk research

Slow security Whilst some new technology being explored is aimed at making access more convenient, some are focused on involving more steps to increase security. The most common example of this is the twostep verification in use by some of the tech giants, such as Google, that send a random pin code to another of the user’s devices as a more secure means of access. A tangible example of this increased security is a USB login in use by Google employees. According to the MIT Technology Review article, ‘Google’s Alternative to the Password’, it syncs with the user’s phone and computer for a secure login.

Discover & define

The next challenge was to collate all of our research that had been found by each domain into a shared framework and format across the team. This would ensure coherency when creating a handover of the desk research for the client. Research timeline To do this, we each wrote down our individual findings as summaries on postits and placed them on a team timeline. The timeline was split into 4 sections: past (2000+), present (2015), near future (2025), and far future (2035+). As we put each up, we shared to the team the key finding, combining with existing findings from other domains to prevent duplication.Â Rather unsurprisingly, the findings formed a bell curve across the timeline, with most data gathering between now and near future.Â Having laid out the research visually, it allowed us to look for groupings of trends within the collection of data. This was done as a team, so that each domain was represented, and had a set of macro trends that they could own.Â Each macro trend was then rearranged so that they were spread across the timeline as a grid of time on the x axis and each macro trend on the y axis. This reduced visual clutter, and more importantly, allowed us to see where there were gaps in the research, allowing us to patch in the gaps with additional research where appropriate.

Desk research

Discover & define

Above: the GSA design team sharing and mapping their domain group research findings.

Desk research

Personal reflection: desk research Within our domain, the desk research was mainly carried out individually. However, we had regular chats as a domain group every hour or two to share the most interesting information found over that time period. This allowed us to try and prevent overlaps in the research and speed up the process of digesting the most interesting content. Through the regular chats, we began to see themes emerging, and so began organising the research into those themes as we went. I felt that this was a highly effective method of collaboration for diving into a lot of content and efficiently covering a wide range of topics. This inspired our method of team working that was implemented recurrently throughout the project. I was inspired by Essi Salonenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Designing Collaboration [designingcollaboration.com] MA Communication Design thesis for Central Saint Martins. I feel that recognising that in order to collaborate, it does not always mean that the group must work directly together, is important to use time efficiently.Â

Discover & define

STEP cards Collaboration

Establish format

Create template / content

Write up content

Share back

Objectives - Visualise the research so that it can be an effective working tool for RBS - Establish a unified format so that cards from different domains can be used together - Allow the cards to be used in different ways for generating ideas

To turn the desk research into a deliverable for the client that can be well understood and used after the scope of this project we created STEP cards. STEP (more commonly referred to as PEST) stands for Social, Technological, Economic and Political - an analysis framework often used in business development to understand how macroeconomic factors will affect a business in the long term.Â Design tool We want to use this framework to understand the future paradigms and challenge their thinking when generating concepts. For this reason, the cards should not only be an understandable summary of our desk research, but also a tool to be used. To do this, we established a format that allowed the cards to be grouped in different ways.

Each card has the following categories of information that can allow different links between cards to be found:Â - Domain - Factor (S, T, E, or P) - Timeframe (now, near future or far future) - Keyword

STEP cards

STEP definitions

Social With the social factor, a business can analyse the socioeconomic environment of its market via elements like customer demographics, cultural limitations, lifestyle attitude, and education. With these, a business can understand how consumer needs are shaped and what brings them to the market for a purchase.

Technological How technology can either positively or negatively impact the introduction of a product or service into a marketplace is assessed here. These factors include technological advancements, lifecycle of technologies, the role of the Internet, and the spending on technology research by the government.

Economic Through this factor, businesses examine the economic issues that are bound to have an impact on the company. This would include factors like inflation, interest rates, economic growth, the unemployment rate and policies, and the business cycle followed in the country.

Political Here government regulations and legal factors are assessed in terms of their ability to affect the business environment and trade markets. The main issues addressed in this section include political stability, tax guidelines, trade regulations, safety regulations, and employment laws. [Source: pestleanalysis.com]

Discover & define

EXPLANATION Reports indicate Millennials are confident, flexible and open to change. They grew up in a digitally interconnected world where start-ups and companies rise and fall fast. This generation are used to foreseen obsolescence and the idea that things are quickly replaced. Millennials believe brands need to work NEAR Open to Change harder to maintain their loyalty and believe they select Millennials expect disruption and change 2020 brands on a different set of criteria than their parents.

SOURCES 1. ‘Millennium Disruption Index’, Scratch Viacom Media Networks, 2015 2. ‘How Millenials’ Money Habits Could Shake Up The Financial Services Industry’, Laura Shin, Forbes, 2015 3. ‘Millennials: The New Age of Brand Loyalty’, Adroit Digital, 2015

KEYWORDS Trust Value Information INDICATOR 1. “... 68 percent [of Millenialls] say that in 5 years the way we access our money will be totally different.”1 2. “...less than half of Millennials (46%) see themselves staying with their current financial services over the next few years.”2 3. “When young (18-25), 23% are less brand loyal than their parents, whereas when they age (26-33), this increases to 37%.”3

Open to Change

NEAR 2020

Millennials expect disruption and change

EXPLANATION The number of people moving into cities is increasing globally at a fast pace, impacting the size of urban spaces. Generation Y have gained sense of civic engagement and aim to support their local community. They don’t want to buy a car or a house and look for walkable communities where green spaces, transport Walkable Communities and shops are in easy reach. NOW Generation Y are more engaged with local community 2015

SOURCES 1. ‘Slow Food: Have we lost our appetite?’, Leo Hickman, The Guardian, 2009 2. ‘Bristol pound is just one example of what local currencies can achieve’, John Rogers, The Guardian, 2013

GROUP Safety & Security

GROUP Safety & Security KEYWORDS New Economies Glocalism Value INDICATOR 1. “Salone del Gusto, the Slow Food movement‘s biennial jamboree, is now one of the world‘s leading food fairs attracting more than 180,000 people over its five days…”1 2. “Councils in the UK and around the world are starting to recognise how local currencies keep money in their areas.”2

Walkable Communities Generation Y are more engaged with local community

NOW 2015

STEP cards

The Password is Dead

EXPLANATION Passwords are the weak point in digital security at the moment. People often utilise the same password for multiple accounts. To improve security companies are increasingly turning to unique generative passwords or to biometrics which relies on unique physiological data to allow access to accounts.

NEAR 2015-2020

The birth of biometrics and generative passwords

SOURCES

GROUP Safety & Security KEYWORDS Identity Security Ethics INDICATOR 1. “Now, biometric technologies are being adapted for consumer devices like smartphones...”1 2. Apple already uses Touch ID in its newest iPhones. Apple has also been increasing the number of patents for biometric and Touch ID technology over the last few years.2

1. ‘Why Biometrics is replacing passwords’, Mark Henricks, Forbes, 2014 2. ‘Apple files patent for Touch ID sensor found in iPhone 5s’, Shane Cole, Patently Apple, 2013

The Password is Dead The birth of biometrics and generative passwords

EXPLANATION The rise in consumer awareness has caused companies to rethink their strategy and vision towards Corporate Social Responsibility. However, the recent Volkswagen scandal showed consumers that for some of the biggest players, CSR is an inauthentic marketing strategy rather than a true company value.

CSR as a Marketing Strategy

NOW 2015

From differentiator to market standard

NEAR 2015-2020

GROUP Safety & Security KEYWORDS CSR Ethics Trust INDICATOR 1. 10 years ago a dozen Fortune 500 companies issued CSR report. Now the majority does.1 2. 70% of Millennials say a company’s commitment to the community has an influence on their decision to work there.2

SOURCES 1. ‘Volkswagen: The Scandal Explained‘, Russell Hotten, BBC News, 2015. 2. ‘Why Companies Can No Longer Afford to Ignore Their Social Responsibilities’, Knowledge@Wharton, Business Time, 2015

CSR as a Marketing Strategy From differentiator to market standard

NOW 2015

Discover & define

EXPLANATION Communities encourage spending in the local area through introduction of alternative currencies. Money spent in local businesses stays in the local ecosystem. This simulates a conversation in the community around the implications of where money goes after it is spent.

Keeping it Local

NEAR FAR 2020-2035 2015-2020

Community currencies grow in popularity

SOURCES

GROUP Safety & Security KEYWORDS Value Glocalism New Economies INDICATOR 1. Bristol Pound is one of 25 communities currently establishing a local currency. 2. Commonweal and NEF propose ‘ScotPound’, a cryptocurrency for Scotland. 3. Kendall introduces ‘clubcard’ to encourage local spending.

1. ‘The innovators: the Bristol pound is giving sterling a run for its money’, Shane Hickey, The Guardian, 2015 2. ‘ScotPound whitepaper,’ Miriam Brett, Commonweal and NEF, 2015 3. ‘Kendal is the first town to embrace its very own gift card’, Kendal BID, 2015

Keeping it Local

EXPLANATION The technology behind bitcoin, the Blockchain, is a highly transparent system; every user can see who owns every block. This will be used to prevent false fraudulent claims, bring transparency to supply chains and create trust around the exchange of goods.

NEAR FAR 2020-2035 2015-2020

Community currencies grow in popularity

Total Transparency

FAR 2040

Blockchain enables transactions to be open for all

SOURCES

GROUP Safety & Security KEYWORDS Transparency Trust Ethics INDICATOR 1. “By use of blockchain, all users know who owns every block, at any time.”1 2. “Block chains can store records of transactions and facilitate the exchange of information and value between people without any middle man needed.”2

1. ‘Blockchain: The Power of Transparency’, Andrew Wood, KPMG, 2015 2. ‘Humans + Bits + Blocks’, Matt Weiss, IDEO Futures, Medium, 2015 3. ‘FutureProofing, The Blockchain’, Timandra Harkness and Leo Johnson, BBC Radio 4, 2015

Total Transparency Blockchain enables transactions to be open for all

FAR 2040

STEP cards

Personal reflection: Trend mapping I found that spending the time to formulate the research into a standardised format was in hindsight a useful task for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the act of distilling the information so that it can be presented on an A5 card, and understood by an outsider to the project team is useful for clarifying to ourselves the core meaning in each trend. Secondly, the standardised format created a shared vocabulary amongst the team so that complex ideas could be easily discussed. Finally, the process of actually making the cards most likely helped embed the knowledge in ourselves, so that it became inherent for the rest of the project.Â My personal thoughts on how there could be an improvement on this stage in the process might be to simplify the framework from STEP to SET (Social, Economic and Technological - see below), since political was the least featured factor. This would allow the trends to be arranged on a triangular axis or venn diagram visualisation.Â Often trends were not easily categorised in such mutually exclusive pigeon holes. A SET trend arrangement would allow for ambiguity.Â I brought this up at the time, but in the end we made a group decision to keep the Political metric.

Discover & define

Planning ethnography Collaboration

Plan

Structure ethnography / STEP card use

Share & build

Recruitment

Objectives - Identify which possible users to speak to for each domain - Ensure that a wide spread of ages, life stages and backgrounds is covered across the team - Establish a shared set of basic questions for each domain to askÂ - Create a discussion guide for our domain - Begin recruitmentÂ

Planning ethnography

Below: a representative from each domain group plans how to cover a broad demographic as a team for the ethno.

Lifestages School

College

Employment

Housing

Public

HND/foundation Graduate

University

Unemployed

Live with parents Married

Family

Private

Apprenticeship

Postgraduate

Internship

Renting

Kids

PhD

Temping

Saving deposit

Divorced

Part time

Mortgage

Full time Self-employed

Mapping potential users I joined a member from each domain to plan the ethnography, whilst the remaining team generated methods for using the STEP cards. Our intended outcome as a team was to give RBS a deliverable of a coherent set of interviews covering a wide breadth of users. To do this as a team required some coordination, so we created a categorisation system

for mapping our intended users across life stages. This was split into the main categories of school, college, university, employment, housing situation and family situation. Within each category was a subset of types. Within these categories, we then placed the types of users we wanted to speak to, trying to ensure a spread across all categories.

Discover & define

Identifying potential interviewees For each domain, we brainstormed around what type of users are relevant and factors in their lives that we might be able to use as a means of identifying them. An example of this might be to explore attitudes to online security by finding someone who is an online shopaholic, or to explore those affected by a turbulent economy through an unemployed, or multi-part-time worker.

Sense of security when using financial services

Relationship with bank

Role of banks in society

For our domain of Safe & Secure, our 3 overarching topics, based on the outcomes of the desk research were: 1. Sense of security when using financial services 2. Relationship with bank 3. Role of banks in society

Aims

To uncover what type of methods do customers like to use to make payments and access their accounts and how comfortable they feel when using these different types of methods. How receptive to new technology are they, and how aware are they of their security from being hacked?

Possible users

nomad, blogger, online shopper, parent

Aims

To evaluate the type of current relationship they have with their bank and what their expectations are from it.

Possible users

unsteady income

Aims

To understand people’s preconceptions about how the financial system works, what banks do with their money, and what an ideal bank might be like.

Possible users

bitcoin user, pre-users, volunteer, local currency user

Planning ethnography

Predetermined format In order to ensure the coherent format for RBS (and ourselves) to digest, we established a core set of questions that every domain would ask during an interview. These covered the basic demographic information, such as age, life situation and background, but also some future focused questions, like imagining oneself in 10 years time. Additionally, if the participant was beyond the 16-25 age range, we were to ask what they were like when they were younger, to understand how user groups change over time. In addition to this, each interviewee should be photographed anonymously, either from behind or from the neck down

- and if possible, in their own surrounding. This is useful in establishing the context of the life of the user, visually differentiating between interviews - yet providing anonymity of the participant. Recruitment With the topics mentioned earlier in mind we looked for users that would span the age range of 16-25, and also some beyond that to see how ages and/or life stages affect attitudes. This was offset on a scale of financial sense of security / stability. As a team, we utilised our network to cover the spread of users.

Personal reflection: Utilising our network For me, ethnography is a key part of human centred design research - because as designers we must represent the human voice in the project. The best method of achieving this is to step away from behavioural studies found online during desk research and get out the building. With the small amount of preparation time available, utilising our network was an effective method of patching the gaps in our spread of users.

Discover & define

Ethnographic research Collaboration

Interviewing

Download & write up

Objectives - Interviewing users and capturing the results - Reflecting on each interview to pull out top insights and quotes - Formatting interview outcomes as a poster format deliverable Stakeholder graph During the ethnography we interviewed 15 people in total: - 9 individuals - 2 experts - 1 group of 4

Share & collate content

Ethnographic research

Formatting ethnography findings The findings were put into a standardised poster format of basic information, top quotes, and top 10 insights. In total as a team there were 43 interview posters. By standardising the format, we were able to quickly digest each other’s ethnographic research, enriching our own topic.

RASCHINE, 39 MOTHER GLASGOW VOLUNTEER MARRIED 4 DAUGHTERS

EDUCATION

“[My daughters] think, what is the easiest way of doing this? They don’t have time to go to the bank. They use technology more readily than I do. “

(three adult and one teenage)

No higher education.

POST-SCHOOL Volunteering at local multicultural organisation.

FUNDING / JOB Only husband working. On child benefits.

HOUSING SITUATION Renting a flat in West End.

FUTURE SELF Stay cautious but use more technology.

Daughters as her advisors on safety and financial matters.

2. Her daughter (19) took a student loan because of the low interest and is saving the money. 3.

Internet security course at school result in her kids being highly aware of online security.

“The best person to ask would actually be 4. In her 20ties she was not so aware of finance my eldest daughter, they are really clued up management and did a lot of false economy. on security… Not banks! I don’t trust them.” 5. Delayed claim not considered by PayPal and “Like one time we split the bill, and normally, I would just pay, but my daughter pulled out her phone, and said <hey mum, I just paid my part of the bill>.”

Below: result of all the interview posters presented at the RBS design office during the workshop.

Amazon undermined sense of trust and safety. 6. Sense of punishment for opting out from an automatic paid service she didn’t benefit from. 7.

Highly conscious of safety and security, due to a previous abusive relationship.

Opinion about banks shaped by media: Talk Talk incident and the Greek financial crisis.

Living within her means is highly important, she passes on these principles to her children.

10. An ideal relationship with a bank is to be able to talk about problems, not be sold things.

Discover & define

Ethnography highlights

Expert interview

John, 30 years old, is a university sociology professor, specialising in youth culture. He has spent 4 years on an ethnography project in Easterhouse, Glasgow, studying life transitions in young adults.

“Young people are experiencing greater precariousness.” “Young scots voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence. They feel more in control of their environment now that before.” “The current banking system is set up for a stable demographic that doesn’t reflect young people.” Highlights: - Inspired by Guy Standing’s book ‘The Precariat’ about a new global class that has job insecurity and often has to live at home with parents for longer. - Describes a rise in a ‘sociological imagination’ where young people are feeling more connected to their wider society, for example, young Scots voting overwhelmingly for Yes during the referendum campaign. - Believes that the banking system has a traditionalist view of their customers that does not consider the ‘precariat’ class, who as a result, feel disenfranchised from the banking system.

Ethnographic research

Ethnography highlights

Video ping pong

To interview the 16 year old age bracket, we devised a method to break down the formality of an interview. This method, dubbed ‘video ping pong’, is a group interview conducted over WhatsApp video. Since young teenagers can be potentially intimidated by an individual interview, chatting as a group allowed them to give each other confidence to speak their mind, and bounce off each other’s answers. To break down the barrier between us, after each time we sent them a question, we allowed them to ask anything back to us - thus why it is called ‘video ping pong’.

Lilly: [on online security] “We don’t read the small print because we just trust that since everyone uses it, we’ll just use it but still…” Beth: “Um... not sure how much I trust them after they messed everyone around in the banking crisis. Interest rates are really low so not much point.” Highlights: - Can not plan ahead for the future beyond the next step of going to university, any suggestions of after that are vague and based on stereotypical expectations in society. - Surprisingly resistant to the idea of digital money, feeling skepticism towards intangible things. - We underestimated their knowledge; they actually know about bitcoins, wetransfer, and 2008 crisis. 33

Discover & define

Ethnography highlights

If my password was an object...

“I really don’t like carry stuff around.”

“It’s always with you.”

“If I lose it would be bad.”

“You are going to carry it everywhere.”

“Because you asked.”

“It could be a password itself.”

“It wouldn’t be a problem for me to carry”

“It’s easy to carry around.”

Tangibility of security is a challenging topic to discuss, so to encourage users, we asked them to imagine if their means of accessing their account what represented by an object, what would that object be? The answers were varied, as some imagined it as something hidden and intangible, like a tattoo or even a place. Others saw it as something convenient and easy to carry with them, such as a piece of jewellery or their house keys. A final interesting answer was a Rubik’s cube, since it could be carried, but generative.

Ethnographic research

Personal reflection: ethnography methodology The highlight for me that pushed the topic of the project forward was the expert interview with ‘John’. The combination of his insights into young people from a sociological point of view, coupled with actual first hand interviews, was quite valuable. In future, I would conduct expert interviews first, to help narrow the focus on the ethnography, which can serve to validate their research. However, the downside might be a natural bias towards the experts’ point of view. In this case, John reaffirmed our assumptions from the desk research, so it wasn’t too leading for the ethnography. Video ping pong was a fun and effective method of breaking down formalities when interviewing young teenagers. It would be interesting when conducting this technique again to compare to individual interviews with similar questions. At this stage in the project, we have gathered the data, but done only a surface level synthesis, since this is going to be one of the activities for the workshop. Therefore, the analysis is not have been as deep as it should be.

Discover & define

Workshop at RBS design office Collaboration

Present to RBS

Persona generation

Concept ideation

Share, vote & map

Site visits

Develop concepts

Present & reflect

Objectives - Present summary of desk research and ethnography to RBS design team - Experiment with techniques to generate personas from ethnography and STEP cards - Generate concepts using STEP cards and Personas - Site visit to 2 newly refurbished RBS branches, headquarters and archive - Develop concepts, present and critique - Reflect on RBS methodology and project thus far

Defining the project scope At this point in the project, we decided that our focus for the topic of Safe & Secure is to be focused on the human reactions and feelings towards security in the sense of financial services and in the wider economy. By this we mean that we are eliminating the exploration of technology, or protocols that enhance security. Technical security will always improve, however, so will hackersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ability to find weaknesses in these systems. The change from the point of view of the user,

is that more of their lives will be integrated into a network of online services, thus increasing the risk if there is a breach at one of those nodes in the network. What we will explore is that relationship that users have towards this increasing integration of their personal self has on their feeling of security.Â

Workshop at RBS design office Trojan Horses Another objective for this project agreed upon at this moment, before the midproject workshop, was the strategic function of this project. Being recently inspired, again, by Dan Hill’s thinking in ‘Dark Matter and Trojan Horses’, I wanted to apply his thinking of sneaking in a wider strategy into the scope of the current design brief - the notion of a “Trojan Horse”. Hill imagines this as how the designed outcome lives on past the timeframe of the project. In his case study of a housing project in Helsinki, Low2No, the project became an example to the Finnish government of an innovative use of timber, to help drive Finland’s dying wood industry (an abundant and environmentally friendly national resource). It also facilitated behavioural change of the occupants and the maintenance of the building over time.

The designer’s share

The real problem [Source: Victor Papanek’s ‘Design For The Real World’]

Increasing the designers share In effect, I am trying to, as Victor Papanek describes in ‘Design For The Real World’, increase our share of the real problem. In the context of our collaboration with RBS, their designer’s share of the problem is quite limited to, in my opinion, incremental improvements rather than fundamental organisational change. For me, the ‘real problem’ is the banking system itself. High levels of public debt, exorbitant house prices, and this boom and bust cycle are symptoms of an irresponsible financial

system. Banks and those that work within them are not the problem, since they only act within the bounds of both industry expectations and government policy. Therefore, I would like to, through this project, challenge the design team to be able to imagine themselves designing problems that would typically be outside of their scope. This might be customer facing, but it might also be internal - a concept that I will come back to during the later concept creation phase after this workshop. 37

Discover & define

Above: using generative methods to create personas from the interview posters.

Right: the four personas that our group generated during the group activity.

Workshop at RBS design office

Persona generation Four GSA team members, who had played with different ways of using the STEP cards in the previous week, facilitated the session of generating personas using the interviews and STEP cards. This was made up of four different 20 minute tasks, which resulted in the creation of 16 personas across the whole team. Whilst the objective was to experiment with different methods, I largely felt the results were too stereotypical and shallow. In the end, our domain used only one persona generated during the exercise, and the other 3 were each an interview poster highlighting the richness in comparison to the generated content. Our four personas generated during this session were: Traditionalist - based on the group interview with the four girls who held a naive expectations of their future, and little experience of banking. Precariat - based on Anna, a patchworker who is still reliant on her parents and sees success as simply “surviving without additional help.” She is unable to see that far ahead in terms of planning her financial life. Communitarian - based on Siobhan, an ethically-driven, active member of her community, who gets satisfaction from civic engagement. She seeks a credit union type of bank that reflects her ethics. Transitional - generated during the persona workshop, is a ‘settled nomad’ that is forced to plan for their future for the first time, instead of just living in the moment. Long term planning and financial services are a new deal for this persona.

Discover & define

Concept ideation This session was a quick ideation sprint, organised by the RBS team. The process involved a combination of STEP cards, a series of adjectives and the personas generated the day before, conducted in our domain groups. From this, we generated ideas that definitely followed quantity over quality mantra, however was good for revealing unexpected concepts. These were then shared back to the whole team, and placed on a matrix of user benefit versus feasibility to accomplish. Concepts were voted on and each domain developed 3 or 4 of the ones most voted on.

Top: Rebekka introduces the GSA and RBS team to the concept generation method. Above left: ideas generated by my domain group using the method proposed by RBS. Above right: close up of the concepts that have been voted on using the stickers.

Workshop at RBS design office

Concepts Out of the concept generation and subsequent benefit/feasibility mapping, our group left the session with three concepts: Trace - an app that shows where your money goes after you spend it to stabilise local economies Advice Cafe - a bank branch that is situated inside a coffee shop, where customers can get advice on financial security. Levels of Security - embracing new technologies to allow users to set responsive levels of security to allow access at increased convenience.

Above: I assist in the mapping of concepts on the user benefit versus feasibility matrix

Discover & define

We visited two newly refurbished RBS branches in the centre of Edinburgh, the Head Office and archives at Gogarburn.Â Site visits The branch visits were insightful in showing me an example of the direction that RBS is thinking about the role of their branches. Already, the customer experience is being tailored towards an advice and relationship building experience, rather than simply transactional. An incidental meeting with a lead on the RBS interior design team showed that even these are transitional, since the affordance of adapting the space has been built in, as

the role of the branch changes further.Â From the visit to Head Office, I discovered that RBS is indeed trying to expose the design team to others within the organisation. For me, this validated our assumption from the desk research of the importance of increasing the role of design within RBS. However, the challenge still lies in how that relationship is facilitated and how much reach the design team have in making systemic changes.Â 42

Workshop at RBS design office

Opposite page: the newly refurbished Edinburgh West End branch, with new focus on customer services like advice.

Top of page: the vaults in the basement of the St Andrews Sq. branch which are being phased out show heritage.

Above: RBS & Natwest piggy banks throughout the decades as seen during the visit to the archives.

Right: the heritage branch in St Andrews Sq. with iconic star panelled ceiling that has been recently reopened after refurbishment.

Discover & define

Workshop at RBS design office

Above: RBS HQ at Gogarburn. Beneath the yellow banner is an open access collaborative working space.

Discover & define

Personal reflection: Workshop week at RBS I left feeling that the content generated during the workshop was still quite surface level or lacked a strong link to the research. This was due to the generative nature of the generation activities without time given for the GSA team to synthesise and reflect on the research together. During a group discussion after, it was agreed that a thorough synthesis will be required after the workshop. The ideation process itself, in my opinion did not allow for preconceived ideas based on assumptions during the research phase. With too much focus on specific tasks and random generation, these more latent ideas weren’t teased out from the research. I believe there is space for both methods within the design process, so not to discount the ideation method used in the workshop. Working with the client to generate ideas, and then present them back to them before they have even been narrowed down or refined was a surprisingly beneficial process. The feasibility mapping of the ideas opened my eyes to some concepts that I might have thought were too radical or hard to accomplish, which instead were more warmly received. I was surprised during the site visit by the newly refurbished Edinburgh West End branch, and the collosal size of the offices at the Gogarburn HQ - which reinforced the organisational challenges involved in suggestions around changing the culture of such a behemoth.

Workshop at RBS design office

Above: a checklist in a meeting room to encourage responsible decision making.

Develop

Tribes & chiefs Collaboration

Synthesis

Create persona template

Create content

Objectives - Synthesise interviews, looking for correlations and patterns - Create a standardised format to present as a understandable and usable working tool for RBS

Formatting content

Below: synthesising the interviews, extracting the top level information from each

Tribes & chiefs

Synthesis We took a step back, in order to move forward, spending a day together as a team to synthesise the ethnography findings into personas. This was done by extracting the high level characteristics of each interview, so that they could be easily compared (see image opposite). Once this was possible, we were able to look for correlations and patterns, resulting in around 16-18 possible personas. Generating more personas than necessary meant that we could pick out the ones that were most relevant to each domain, condensing some together to create more multifaceted characteristics.Â

Present

Future

Niche to mainstream These are not an exhaustive list of all personas of most importance to the present, but of the ones that we feel will remain relevant in 2025, or even increasing in relevance. An important aspect of the rationale behind the personas that we settled on is that they are not stereotypes of commonly used personas - the RBS team can still design

for current persona types, but we felt it was more useful to create challenging personas. Indeed, not all the personas generated are niche or challenging. We settled on a balance between mainstream personas with traditional characteristics, and niche personas that challenge the status quo.Â

Develop

Formatting Myself and a representative from each domain worked together to create categories of content that gives a good idea of the personaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attitudes and behaviours around their financial life and the four domains. A mix of content type was used to create a visually appealing poster, yet also qualitative and informative. Quotes in the poster are either verbatim quotes from an interviewee, or an amalgamation of a couple of different statements. This was important to create legitimacy in the final output, since so often in common practice personas are either too wishy-washy from too much fabrication, or they are too shallow from being based on abstract demographic data.Â With an outline of the kind of content we wanted to include on each persona poster, I made a template for everyone to use. Using a single colour scheme, and rules for how each content should be formatted, this successfully created a unified look. Hopefully this will increase the usability for the RBS team, since they will be able to compare content easily, yet maintain depth of character. Whilst I did this, Ottavia created beautiful illustration portraits for each persona.Â With 12 personas to create content for, and 12 team members, each of us were tasked with creating the content and inputting this into the template. I created the content for the Disruptor.

Above top: illustration for the Analogue persona, by Ottavia Pasta

Above top: illustration for the Tech Savvy persona, by Ottavia Pasta

Tribes & chiefs

Matthew Disruptor

Glasgow Renting from parents Single Programmer £27,000 Life motto

Treat others as you treat yourself and value happiness more than earning.

”

“

Current relationship with bank

“

In ten years I... hope I make enough to sustain my own ideals. In general I prefer to make rough, short term plans.

”

Adoption of technology

Spending & saving attitudes

Innovator

What’s in your wallet?

“ ”

I ended up in debt and was stuck in overdraft for four years so I borrowed a lot from parents to get rid of the overdraft and then I’m paying them back because

it was cheaper. FreedomSpending of choice is important to me, I would never Brand work for aaffinity big Adoption of technology & saving corporation. I don’t thinkattitudes job is the right word, it’s what you’re working on as opposed to the job.

Matthew “ “ Disruptor

Innovator

Matthew “ 24 ” “Disruptor

“

”

“

In ten years I... hope I make ough to sustain my own ideals. general I prefer to make rough, ort term plans. Innovator

Treat others as you Zv234H5tB!r43fn “ “ treat yourself and Fort Knox value happiness “ more than earning.

”

ovator

had £10,000...

“ “

Life stability What’s Brand in youraffinity wallet?

get a credit card.

Apps

”

“

Zv234H5tB!r43fn

hide your data, but this also goes both

Trust

“

We have a difference between social and professional appearances in the real world, so why not in the digital? I like to stay informed and connected to my network through the internet.

Engagement -

Trust

“

” I have a lot

38+20+175 Key

“

”

my phone on me,

quite easily. and

38% Work 20% News 20% Social media 17% Music 5% Dating

Cyclehack community

Music society pals Local political activities

””

I have a lot

We have a difference of apps on my If I ever go betweenphone. social and professional missing andreal I have appearances in the world, my phone on me, so why not in the digital? I like the idea that I like to stay informed and I could benetwork tracked connected to my

Local makerspace Me

I like idea that My biggest worry is...the I’ll get could be tracked tied up with life hereI in Glasgow. I’m committed to living in Glasgow quite easily. and for about 3 years butpeople I don’t want couldtoknow be locked down, I want to try living where I am. somewhere else like Berlin.

Presentation of online Relationship to self phone

Offline Online

Programmer community

Users

”

What’s in your wallet?

”

38% Work 20% News 20% Social media 17% Music 5% Dating

Staff

I use bitcoin as an alternative and as an experiment to try it out. I’m self-employed and I don’t know when the next payment will come so I feel no sense of security with paychecks. When I have money I’m scared to spend it. My credit rating is messed up because I don’t want to get a credit card.

Pay back parents and put the rest into a building society. I would also invite my friends for a big dinner. I value satisfaction more than earning. Money gives me the freedom to express myself and be generous with others.

”

“

“ “

“

to community Relationship toRelationship phone

Stability level: Fluid

Apps

If I had £10,000...

Presentation of online self

lot from parents to get rid of the overdraft and then I’m paying themof back because apps on my it was cheaper. Freedom of choice is important to me, I would never work for a big phone. If I ever go corporation. I don’t think job is the right word, it’s what you’re working on as missing and I have opposed to the job.

” ”

Awareness of security What’s in your wallet?

Pay back parents and put Password: rest into a building society. ould also invite my friends for ig dinner. I value satisfaction re than earning. Money gives Fort Knox the freedom to express It is more suspicious to try and

Saving & Spending New Values Data I ended up in debt and was stuck in overdraft for four years so I borrowed a

Pay back parents and put the rest into aI building society. use bitcoin as an alternative I would also my friendstofor and invite as an experiment try it out. I’m self-employed and I don’t know a big dinner. I value satisfaction when the next payment will come more than earning. Money gives so I feel no sense of security with me the freedom to When express paychecks. I have money I’m myself and be generous scared to spend it.with My credit rating is others. messed up because I don’t want to

Laggard

”

Laggard

option of technologyIf I had Spending £10,000...& saving attitudes

nnovator

My ideal bank I use bitcoin as an alternative would… feel like and as an experiment to try it out. a flow, be fluid, I’m self-employed and I don’t know empathetic and when the next payment will come positive. A bank so I feel no sense of security with that fits around me It is more paychecks. When I have money I’msuspicious to try and and my lifestyle. In hide your rating data, but scared to spend it. My credit is this also goes aboth perfect world it Since already expect all messed up becauseways. I don’t wantpeople to would be a mutual the actors around them to share data. get a credit card. credit union.

“ Laggard

Relationship to phone I have a lot of apps on my phone. If I ever go missing and I have my phone on me, I like the idea that I could be tracked quite easily. and people could know where I am.

Treat oth treat you value happ than e

Spending & saving attitudes

Innovator Cyclehack community

Innovator

Engagement -

Adoption of technology

Local political activities

”

Awareness of security Spending & saving Brand affinity Current relationship attitudes with bank Password:

Innovator

Ten years ago I was... less ective than I am now, although d more of an assumption out where I wanted to go.

”

the world around them, Disruptors challenge the status to seek new solutions.

”

Adoption ofmotto technology Life

“

In ten years I... hope I make enough to sustain my own ideals. In general I prefer to make rough, short term£27,000 plans.

My ideal bank would… feel like a flow, be fluid, empathetic and positive. A bank that fits around me and my lifestyle. In a perfect world it would be a mutual quo credit union.

“

”

Online Users

”

the restothers a building society. Treat as youon Examples ofintoinformation “ I would also invite my friends for a big dinner. I value satisfactionand treat yourself Glasgow more than earning. Money gives persona posters relevant to projects Renting from parents Disruptors are socially driven, and active in multiple the freedom to express valueme happiness more of their main job. Often they use their skills to offer Single myself and be generous with eachoutside a domain social others. benefit to their community. Being highly informed of Programmer than earning.

”

“

In ten years I... hope I make enough to sustain my own ideals. general I prefer to make rough, short term plans. Offline

Staff

Music society pals

What’s in your wallet? Apps Current relationship with bank

Pay back parents and put

Ten years ago I was... less reflective than I am now, although I had more of an assumption about where I wanted to go.

Life motto

“

Key In

Local makerspace

”

to seek new solutions.

Past & future self

Ten years ago I was... less reflective than I am now, although I had more of an assumption about where I wanted to go.

”

Programmer community

committed I’m self-employed andI’m I don’t know to living in Glasgow forwill about 3 years but I don’t want to when the next payment come be locked down, I want to try living so I feel no sense of security with Disruptors are socially driven, and active inelse multiple projects somewhere like Berlin. When I have money I’m outside of their paychecks. main job. Often they use their skills to offer scared to spend it. My credit rating is a social benefit messed to theirupcommunity. Being highly informed of because I don’t want to the world around challenge the status quo getthem, a creditDisruptors card. Laggard

If I had £10,000...

Glasgow Renting from parents Single Programmer £27,000

38+20+175

Stability level: My biggest worry is... I’ll get I use bitcoin as an alternative upitwith and as an experiment tied to try out.life here in Glasgow. Fluid

Trust

“

Life motto

”

positive. A bank that fits around me and my lifestyle. In a perfect world it would be a mutual credit union.

“

ways. Since people already expect all the actors around them to share data.

Age

”

38% Work We have a difference relationship 20% News between social andCurrent professional 20% Social media bank appearances in the with real world, 17% Music so why not in the digital? 5% Dating My ideal bank I like to stay informed and would… feel like connected to my network a flow, be fluid, through the internet. Engagement empathetic and

Treat others as you “ treat yourself and ” value happiness more ” than earning. Relationship to community

In ten years I... hope I make enough to sustain my own ideals. In general I prefer to make rough, Life stability short term plans.

Past & future Age self

“

Ten years ago I was... less reflective than I am now, although Fort Knox I had more of an assumption It is more suspicious to try and about where I wanted go.data, but this also goes both hide to your

Relationship to phone

Apps

outside of their main job. Often they use their skills to offer a social benefit to their community. Being highly informed of Presentation of online self the status quo the world around them, Disruptors challenge to seek new solutions.

Password: Past & future self Life motto Zv234H5tB!r43fn

Glasgow Renting from parents Single Programmer Innovator £27,000

”

Matthew Disruptor

”

“ ”

I have a lot of apps on my phone. If I ever go missing and I have my phone on me, I like the idea that I could be tracked quite easily. and people could know where I am. Disruptors are socially driven, and active in multiple projects

Age

Renting from parents Single Programmer Awareness of security £27,000

Age

”

Brand affinity

Engagement -

”

Laggard

“

My ideal bank would… feel like a flow, be fluid, empathetic and positive. A bank that fits around me and my lifestyle. In a perfect world it would be a mutual credit union.

If I had £10,000...

“

Innovator

“

Disruptors are socially driven, and active in multiple projects outside of their main job. Often they use their skills to offer a social benefit to their community. Being highly informed of the world around them, Disruptors challenge the status quo to seek new solutions.

Past & future self Ten years ago I was... less reflective than I am now, although I had more of an assumption about where I wanted to go.

st & future self

“

Trust

Age

Awareness of security Password:

Zv234H5tB!r43fn

“

Fort Knox

It is more suspicious to try and hide your data, but this also goes both ways. Since people already expect all the actors around them to share data.

Life stability

”

SafeI ended & Secure up in debt and was stuck in overdraft for four years so I borrowed a

“

lot from parents to get rid of the overdraft and then I’m paying them back because it was cheaper. Freedom of choice is important to me, I would never work for a big corporation. I don’t think job is the right word, it’s what you’re working on as opposed to the job.

Stability level: Fluid

“

”

My biggest worry is... I’ll get tied up with life here in Glasgow. I’m committed to living in Glasgow for about 3 years but I don’t want to be locked down, I want to try living somewhere else like Berlin.

”

Develop

Personas most relevant for Safe & Secure We selected a combination of personas for our domain that were challenging, yet relevant. The purpose of this was that we would use personas stimulating for our domain topic, yet not forget about their counterparts, or opposites.Â These personas were used in the following concept generation stage of our design process.

Precariat & Disruptor For us, these two personas are actors in a local economy landscape. The Precariat is subject to the results of turbulence in the economy, whilst the Disruptor is more of an agent of change, challenging the norms.

Tribes & chiefs

Analogue & Tech Savvy When thinking about new service features or technologies, it is important to ensure that they appeal to the tech trend-setting habits of a Tech Savvy. However, it should also avoid alienating an Analogue, punishing them for choosing to take it slow.

Lost Faith & Traditionalist Lost Faith and Traditionalist are relevant when thinking about a future RBS on a brand level. Lost Faith represents those who are skeptical of banks, and would embrace change. On the other side is Traditionalists, who don’t want to rock the boat, and wouldn’t want to go out of their way to interact with their bank’s brand. 53

Develop

Above: working as a team to find commonalities between the interviews to create personas

Tribes & chiefs

Personal reflection: Personas with depth I am happy that we took the time to properly synthesise the ethnography, and create more 3 dimensional personas. Persona building is a time consuming activity, and should be recognised as such. In the end it was a good use of time, as it was well received by the client. The choice of creating illustrations for the faces of each persona was also effective in adding another layer of realism to the content. In the past, I have often used stock photos of real people, however I feel that they do not represent enough of the characteristics of a persona. From the illustrations, I felt better able to identify the different personas, through the exaggeration of characteristics that illustration allows. In my opinion, this was also a part of the project that made effective use of human-power to get things done. The tasks were well split up between the team, with only the whole 12 team members being present to settle high level decisions that represent every group. In addition to that, creating split teams from a member of each domain also helps achieve this goal of representation, without having too many opinions in the mix. I feel that this was because there was not as strong a direct ownership of the personas, since they were an amalgamation of everyone’s interviews, leading to compliance in letting others create the content.

Develop

Future world Collaboration

Cultureberg workshop

Domain worlds

One world

Create content

Objectives - Utilise Odd Studio’s CultureBerg technique for world building - Use the STEP cards to inform the future world - Create a visual representation of the future world as a deliverable for RBS

“‘Worldbuilding’ involves the intentional creation of a speculative setting, meant as a stage on which fictional people can act out a study or story. In contemporary life, we’re surrounded by worldbuilding all the time: in science fiction films and novels and videogames, in futurism, in marketing and advertising, even in journalism, where anticipating and describing fictional outcomes has become a common storytelling method when covering future possibilities.” - Alex Steffen, Designing For People Who Don’t Exist Yet, IDEO’s Tomorrow In Progress, Medium.com

Future world

Now

Future

Time

Preferable futures

Probable futures

Plausible futures

Possible futures

[Source: Nesta’s ‘Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: A Modest Defense of Futurology’, PDF]

Importance of worldbuilding The purpose of the world is not to predict the exact events that will happen, but to give an indication of how paradigms will develop based on current trajectories. UKbased Innovation Agency, Nesta uses a torch analogy when talking about possible futures. The light from a torch is focused in the centre, showing our probable future, whilst dimly illuminating objects around the edges, showing plausible futures. Only by creating a broad image

of our possible future, can we map out a preferable future. Out of the different purposes that futurism can achieve, we build the future world to show the plausible future, so that we can use it as a means to design the preferable future for RBS and its customers. Creating a preferable yet plausible future is intended as both an inspiration for the client, but also a warning of what will happen, with them or not.

Develop

Here & Now

There & Then

Left: Odd Studio’s ‘Cultureberg Framework’

Litany Systemic Causes Worldview Myths & Metaphors

The CultureBerg method Odd Studio’s CultureBerg method of world building involved identifying concrete indicators of reality (Litany), then analysing the wider trends that drive them (Systemic Causes and Worldview), to the symbolic meaning they hold in our culture (Myths & Metaphors). Each stage is an abstraction on the previous, until reality is represented by purely symbolic meaning. From there, we subvert the

Myths & Metaphors and then reverse the process, moving back into the tangible. Instead of indicators of reality, which is where we started from, we create indicators of this future reality in the form of ‘The News of Tomorrow’ - fake newspaper headlines. From the fake news we created mini dioramas, or landscapes, using toys and photo montage.

Top right: ‘News of Tomorrow’ headlines for Safe & Secure domain.

Bottom right: Diorama built out of the fake news using toys and photos.

Left: Santini and Chris from Odd Studio facilitating the session.

Future world

Develop

Personal reflection: Cultural Brand Strategy Using the CultureBerg technique, when looked at from a branding point of view, I see parallels to Douglas Holt’s ‘Cultural Brand Strategy’, in which he advises finding current cultural orthodoxies that exist in the domain of the company. Once identified, this orthodoxy is subverted in what he calls ‘cultural jujitsu’, to create a brand strategy that is subversive to the mainstream. Through speaking from the point of view of the subculture, the brand owns it the space, making it hard for other brands to copy. The branding equivalent to Blue Ocean Strategy. Both the CultureBerg technique and Cultural Brand Strategy involve a flip to create a rich new world of symbols and meaning - essential in creating a convincing brand. As Marty Neumeier puts it, “a brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organisation… defined by individuals, not by companies, markets, or the so-called general public”. Indeed, this means that products, services and organisations that borne out of a specific worldview feel believable. Through identifying a plausible future worldview that is preferable for the customer, the company is able to own that space with its brand. Cultural promenance

Present

2. Identify cultural signifiers

1. Identify cultural orthodoxy Social disruption Historical change [Source: Douglas Holt’s ‘Cultural Strategy’]

3. Apply source material to current strategy

Future world

The Future World of Safe & Secure For use in our own process, we simplified the CultureBerg method to involve only the steps Systemic Causes and Myths & Metaphors. Since we had already identified trends using the STEP cards, we directly abstracted from STEP cards to metaphors.

Above: using STEP cards and the Cultureberg framework to build the future world of Safe & Secure

When translating the metaphors from ‘Here & Now’ to ‘There and Then’, we expanded this into 3 different actions: The Growth, The Fall and The Shift. The Growth What is insignificant or uncommon now grows to become important or more commonplace. The Fall What is easy or benevolent now becomes difficult or malevolent. The Shift Remains mostly the same but adopts a different role or perspective. 61

Develop

From “wolf in sheep’s clothing” To “actions speak louder than words” People distrust brands unless they see actionable proof of core ideals.

From “led zeppelin” To “shoal agility” Large corporations will need to learn how to be as creative and agile as startups in order to compete

From “human is the weakest link” To “human is the password” Advances in encryption uses human signatures to gain access instead of relying on memory of passcodes.

From “omnichannel” To “omnipresent” Due to IoT, access to personal accounts becomes integrated in many devices, challenging the norms of security.

Future world

Postnormalism Postmodernism

Postnormalism

Organisation

Authoritarian, centralised

Egalitarian, decentralised

Point of view

Objective, impartial

Subjective, partial

Belonging

Hierarchy

Network

Family

Nuclear

Neo-tribal

Economics

Globalism, growth

Localism, steady-state

Government

Nation, province, city

Locale, watershed, region, world

Media

Broadcast

Participative

Environment

Exploitative, unsustainable

Restorative, sustainable

Spirituality

Dogmatic, orthodox

Enigmatic, heterodox

Postnormalism When looking at how the future will pan out on a high level, I am deeply inspired by futurist Stowe Boyd’s thinking on what he calls ‘postnormalism’. He defines this as a wholesale shift in perspective to adapt to a future where we need to cooperate to prevent a collapse of our biosphere:

“Whatever else, if we are to conceive of some future – one in which we find options other than boiling the oceans in a runaway greenhouse hell planet – we must start with a new synthesis in our thinking that encompass alternate visions of the future other than collapse and dystopia.” - Stowe Boyd, At Large In The Post-Normal: Beyond Futurism, stoweboyd.com

Develop

1 | Social isolation - Middle aged TO Elderly As the highest demographic affected by social isolation, middle aged, grow older, their problems have the possibility for some to grow worse due to further technological isolation.

7 | Data - Taken TO Given Originally data was harvested from users for a potential benefit, but as the transparency of data use increases, users now actively supply this information in exchange for clear benefits.

2 | Aging population - Problem TO Finding solutions The problem of an aging population becomes an everyday reality, putting a strain on services, especially the NHS. Cultural attitudes to aging shift as we assign new meaning to being elderly.

Data - Yes/No TO levels of data tech The archaic, binary Yes/No model of data supply in exchange for services is replaced with levels of data provision and privacy, building relationships on trust and transparency.

3 | Gap rich poor - Imbalanced TO Towards redistribution After years of discussion highlighting the gap between rich and poor, ‘trickle down’ economics are thrown out the window, with policies that aspire towards a responsible distribution of wealth. 4 | Interactions - 24/7 TO Face-to-face After years of services being stripped down and digitised, people will actually crave face-to-face interaction. Perhaps they will even be willing to approach premium services for this. 5 | Family - Nuclear TO neo-tribal The structure of the family changes from the standard man, wife and two kids, to be more inclusive of sexuality, adoption, and the choice of when (if at all) to have kids. Work / Life - Separate TO merged As the notion of a standard nine to five breaks down, so too will the work-life balance. For example it will be more acceptable to work odd hours, or combine work and childcare. 6 | Distrust/fear of data TO expected The early fearful, hesitant views of data are being replaced as the use and benefits of big data become commonplace. Data solutions are now expected in brand relationships.

soc ECONOMIC INEQUALITY

Employment - Static TO adaptable With a variety of skills and interests, there will be a growth in those who wish to have a patchwork career of small jobs rather than a single source of income.

SOCIAL ISOLATION

AGEING POPULATION

OVER OWNERSHIP

AI - Workforce supplementation TO Workforce automation As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, it replaces large chunks of the middle-skilled workforce in the name of efficiency and competitive costing.

INVASIVE

7 | Tech - Faster than legislation TO Faster than legislation Private sector incentives encourage innovators, leading the conversation in which legislators can only inherently reply without fear of strangling innovation with national consequences.

3 | Cash use - 48% TO <20% Cash will be increasingly be seen as ‘slow’ and will continue to decline in use, with more companies and services becoming ‘cashless’ operations.

8 | Tech - Black box TO Total transparency Trying to understand the inner working technology and system of a company used to be like looking into a black box. Now it will made more open - as a selling point of the brand.

5 | Access - Omnichannel TO Omnipresent Due to IoT and increased presence of the cloud, it will be possible to privately interface with public objects. This will possibly decrease our need to carry our own devices.

OMNIPRESENT

LOTS OF

FASTER THAN LEGISLATION

PAYMENT METHODS

FLUIDITY WITH DATA SWITCHING

NETWORKED

TOTAL TRANSPARENCY

iot

CASHLESS

identity & biometrics

hno

DECENTRALIZED GOVERNMENT

E-RESIDENTS

MOBILITY

1 | Mobility - High barriers TO Widespread More citizens will choose to live and work in other countries. Barriers to this will drop, however there will still be some cross border issues, particularly around taxation.

Locality - Residents TO E-Residents Being able to work and form social identities remotely from each other, the need for a more flexible system for representation and infrastructure will arise that is not dependent on locale.

2 | Trade - Globalism TO Localism In a bid to reduce environmental impact and better secure their local economies, governments will pursue policies that encourage purchasing of local products.

6 | Policy - Austerity TO Preventative economics Faith in austerity as a means of preventing another financial crash will disappear, and a new model of budgeting will arise that is more regulated and less dependent on debt.

3 | Government - Authoritarian, Centralised TO egalitarian, decentralized Recognising local needs, political power will focus more on regional activities, working more collaboratively to generate policy ideas.

1 Government Economics - Traditional model TO Blockchain Governments will begin to explore how they can use blockchain in the management of public infrastructure, legal and currency.

PREVENTATIVE POLICY

LOCALISM

Future World poster Having used the CultureBerg technique to project our trends into a worldview of future signifiers for each of our domains, we gathered our future signifiers together to create one future world. We split teams again, one representative from each domain including myself to create a format for the poster. Because this is a tool for helping make the transition between the present and future, each signifier was described as a “from ____ to ____” statement. Accompanied by a short summary of what the changes are and why, the reader is able to make the links

ica olit

Services - Short term ﬁx TO Long term solution Governments will begin to take a view of planning that exists beyond their next term, particularly to deal with systemic problems like global warming, global economic stability and threat of AI. Councils - Best guess TO Data for social good With increased availability of open data, local councils will be able to use the data of its residents to be more responsive in the face of sudden illness or interest in local activities.

4 | Government - Nation down TO Local up Communities will be trusted more to determine what is good for them. This will allow more responsive action yet creating differences between regions.

logic

9 | Blockchain currency - Small & simple TO Widespread & diverse Gaining mainstream recognition, blockchain projects become widespread, each exploring different forms of added functionality as a means of traded assets.

tec

8 | Currency - National TO local Local currencies will become more prevalent and need to be valued and regulated.This may lead to questions concerning national currency.

BLOCKCHAIN

workforce automation

Private sector - Monopolies TO small, medium sized enterprises. Large companies that are not agile enough will have different facets of their services challenged by adventurous, agile startups and small companies.

P2P

UK IN 2025

Brands - You ﬁt the brand TO brands ﬁt you. When people share more information about them, brands will actively target specific user groups within their larger customer base - instead of a lowest common denominator approach. 7 | Private Sector - Large company TO sub-brands. To adapt to customers’ pick-and-choose approach to services, companies will diversify their brand into the individual services they offer instead of a all-or-nothing approach.

6 | Brand loyalty - Staying put TO ﬂuid switching Barriers for customers to switch companies will drop due to increased data ownership, evident in ‘umbrella’ online identities that store a lot of data the user can take with them.

BRAND LOYALITY:

PENSIONS

ADVERTISING

PATCHWORK CAREERS

Hacking - Details/data TO identity Hacking will evolve with the technology, to change from phishing for details about a person, to imitating their identity and/or biological patterns.

2 | IoT - Emerging and limited TO Widespread and networked The Internet of Things will become more networked. This will increase the sophistication of what products can do, as they can speak to more products in the network.

4 | Payment Methods - Increasing TO saturation point Due to advances in tech and a reluctance to drop old forms of payment, there will have reached a point of saturation where too many payment methods cause difficulties for consumers.

CORE 1 ETHOS

DIY

DATA SUPPLIED BY USERS FOR THEIR 7 BENEFITS

5 | Peer to peer - Niche TO Known The networking effect of the internet encourages peer to peer working and earning, making niche skills and markets more accessible.

SUB-BRANDS 3

6 | Passwords - Memory-based (slow) TO Biometrics-based (fast) The increasing number and complexity of passwords to retain levels of security hindered convenience leading to its replacement with infinitely complex and personal biological “keys”.

COMPANIES DIVIDED IN

5 10

4 | Environment - Exploitative TO Restorative Limiting the fallout of human activity on the world’s ecosystem will no longer be a debate but a humane obligation. Our activities will work with the natural ecosystem - not in ignorance of it.

10 | Assets - Owning TO Accessing With tighter budgets and a squeeze on world resources, it will be more financially sensible and aspirational to have access to, rather than own, a product.

3 | Pension - State planned TO Individual State pensions will die out as National Insurance funds run out over the decade, resulting in a requirement for younger generations to plan entirely their own retirement.

BEHAVIORS

SEEKING

FACE TO FACE INTERACTIONS

EXPECTED DATA SOLUTIONS

1 | AI - In development TO widespread AI has lead to increased customer satisfaction, providing a service second only to human interactions, but this silver lining has taken thousands of jobs from low skilled workers.

LOCAL CURRENCIES

RESTORATIVE & SUSTAINABLE

ACCESS

2 | Retail - Transactional TO Relationship building The digitisation of retail will turn the high street into places where companies build brand relationships. Non-commodity actions like advice and troubleshooting will be the focus here.

8 4

9 | Education - Monomath TO polymath As patchwork careers have become more commonplace, employability relies on cross-skilled professionals leading to a rise in polymaths trained both professionally and academically.

1 | Corporate Social Responsibility - Marketing strategy TO core ethos The core operating ethos of a company will form part of their brand and marketing strategy. This will emerge from the dissatisfaction of companies that said virtuous things but did the opposite.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPs

8 | Advertising - Personal TO Invasive With the increased sophistication of data, adverts will appear more personal and therefore more invasive. This will result in a kickback, and consumer preference for brands that show restraint. Media - Broadcast TO Participative Traditional understandings of spreading media through sweeping broadcasts is being replaced by the active curation of digested media allowing individuals to opt in, out and to add to.

economic

ial

5 | Participation - National representation TO Participatory Digital services will allow a greater involvement in individual issues among the public. The cost of a referendum, or flash poll vote will be greatly reduced.

Illustration: Ottavia Pasta Content: Will Brown Eloise Smith Foster Ola Kozawska

Josefine Leonhardt Josh Woolliscroft Amber Jones

Lizzie Abernethy Rosie Trudgen Ottavia Pasta

Ole Tørresen Robyn Johnston Struan Wood

to how the changes happened. To visually communicate this, we used the metaphors from the CultureBerg process to create a semantic map of the future. Since a lot of the concepts that we are representing are abstract or systemic - such as social hierarchy, policy, employment, or environmental attitudes - it was useful to portray them through visual metaphors. Whilst Ottavia made the illustration, I finished off the “from ____ to ____” statements, and created the layout for the poster.

Future world

Above: gathering and distilling the future signifiers for all the domains into a single future world.

Develop

Future world

Personal reflection: Futurism and design First of all, I realise how much I really enjoy futurism. I believe we, as a civilisation, are going through a transition phase to Boyd’s Postnormal paradigm mentioned earlier. If design is about creating something from a preconceived idea, then design futurism should be about creating a future that we want to inhabit. Only by creating that vision can we decide whether it possible, what steps we can take to get there, or even if we want to take that path at all. Design simply offers the potentiality and a means to discuss. For understanding the context of the concepts that we will generate in the next step I believe the world is a useful tool to serve as an introduction to them. Particularly, the “from ____ to ____” statements I think are effective in achieving this transition in the reader because they make a link back to the insight about the present that needs changing. I believe this is essential in persuading the viewer of such a future world, that it is indeed a world worth aiming for. By highlighting the flaws in the present, it justifies the case for wanting to transition to our future world proposition. However, whilst the future world is useful for getting in the right mindset, I feel it would have been useful for our individual domains to create a landscape specific to each. At times the future world felt general and conflicted. I felt this was because we combined some future visions, and in other cases kept two that were similar yet contradictory. Whilst I understand that speaking to the client with a single voice as a united design team is valuable and conveys confidence, in the end I felt that this resulted in an inefficient use of time trying to merge everything together. Each domain group had such a great future perspective related to their domains, that I would have loved to have seen that come out in the form of these domain-specific landscapes.

Develop

Concept creation Collaboration

Synthesis

Narrow down

Share w/ team

Poster format

Create poster content

Objectives - Generate 2 or 3 concepts that test an element of the research - Communicate outcomes to client in poster format - Support with storyboard Meta

User research aim:

Matter

Framing the ideation Throughout the project, our group has been framing the project through different hierarchies of how the customer interacts with the bank. We used this as a starting point to generate concepts. Selecting the personas that were most relevant to us, we looked at our future landscape through the perspective of a persona at a time, as a means of generating ideas. These were then arranged on the dimension from matter to meta as a means of making

Brand

Explore reaction towards a hypothetical community-driven RBS

Branch

Explore possible new roles of branches

Interaction

Explore how tangibility affects security, and how contextual layers of account access impact on security

sense of them as we go.Â With many ideas generated, we pulled out our favourite ideas, looking for themes or possible groupings. To be able to test out ideas at different scales of perspective, we decided to select one concept that was situated in each level, from granular interaction, to branch experience, to brand association. Each should test ideas from the research that was relevant to that level of interaction.Â 68

Concept creation

NAME OF CONCEPT & GROUP

VALUE STATEMENT Trace is an example of a service launched by a future RBS that is developing and releasing a series of projects that aim to us towards a more stable economic model resilient to the continual boom and bust paradigm of the last century.

TRACE Safety and Security

This is achieved through empowering customers with information on where their money goes after they spend it, to make possible responsible spending - an act that is highly challenging in this current environment. Through the tone of voice, and presentation of information, the app makes no judgement on what is right or wrong, but simply to create transparency and this enabling the user to do what they feel is right. A secondary, but equally important purpose, is that this application would act as a very strong marketing tool to show that RBS is committed to its new ethical considerations. A usable service carries more weight and integrity than words on an advertising campaign.

FEATURES & BENEFITS •

• •

• • • • • •

SKETCH OF CONCEPT

A quick-reference breakdown of how much money spent circulates locally, and how much goes national. Displayed as a pie chart Maps that show movement flow of money on a local and international level. The amount is shown, to give an idea of proportion. Location only is shown on the maps - not who it goes to specifically. Creates transparency around where the user’s money goes after being spent. Intended to encourage informed purchasing, so that producers are paid fairly, and where appropriate, user’s can choose to spend in ways that encourage their local or national economy.

KEY STAKEHOLDERS • • • • •

RBS customers (Customers from other UK banks, see below in Pricing Model ) Anyone who the data is gathered on

PRICING MODEL

TIME & COST TO DELIVER

STEP CARDS

•

Although the software to visualise the data could be now, and displayed on a current typical smartphone as an application, the gathering of the data is the issue. This concept is dependent on the implementation of a blockchain currency. Not just that, but RBS would have to write in functionality into the blockchain to record data such as location of the previous, say 5 for example, transaction flows. With this in mind, the time is restricted to the development of blockchain technology, and crucially, the acceptance of it.

• • • • • •

•

Due to near negligible running costs, this service should be expected to be free. If behavioural change is one of the intended outcomes from using this service, then it should be made as accessible as possible. It is debatable whether this is a feature available only to RBS customers, or whether it is opened up to anyone as a means of raising awareness to competitors’ customers of the ethics of this future RBS - therefore acting as a marketing tool.

To the Core Here come the YUCCIES Corporation as Educator Walkable Communities CSR as a Marketing Strategy Rise in Mobile Banking

Above: example of one of the concept poster for the ‘Trace’ concept.

Products as provocations We decided to take the approach of creating future products, using these as a means of testing two aspects simultaneously. Firstly, to test the research present at that level of interaction between the customer and the bank, and secondly, the overall impression that such offerings might make on their perception of security and trust with the RBS brand.

through financial support, advice or training. An example outcome could be a retraining scheme for a community where artificial intelligence has taken jobs and citizen’s skills are no longer relevant to the local market.

Safety and Security

Develop

FEATURES & BENEFITS

SKETCH OF CONCEPT

•

Sets up experimental context/space for the brand. Tackles local needs in one place with a mostly permanent lab space.

•

Public facing and community oriented labs as a strategy to build trust.

•

Promotes security and sustainability of the local economy and community.

•

Pulls in employees from across RBS so it acts as an internal training tool leading to cultural change across organisation.

•

Dedicated facilitation team.

•

Invites members of public to test/prototype/ propose. Find needs through public consultation or proposals.

•

Feedback loop for evaluation and implementation which engages RBS employees and local community. Places RBS in more of a partner relationship with locals.

KEY STAKEHOLDERS

•

RBS branches

•

Local Lab employees

•

RBS employees (from across the departments)

•

Active players in the community

•

General public who visits the lab

•

General public affected by the lab activity

PRICING MODEL

TIME & COST TO DELIVER

STEP CARDS

•

Reward of giving back to the community, considering shift in values and alternative assets being used as currency.

•

Two full time facilitation staff.

•

RBS staff two weeks to one month involvement.

Free for consumers to participate.

•

Aim to complete in ten years but can start tomorrow. May be developed as a community oriented, trust-building strategy.

• • • • • • •

• • •

Developed alongside funding model over ten years.

Local Lab To the Core Here come the YUCCIES Corporation as Educator Desire for Partner Relationship Open to Change Walkable Communities CSR as a Marketing Strategy

RBS as a proactive and agile brand which builds community resilience and security by responding to local needs. The Local Lab will reinvent itself when necessary to reflect its surrounding community which builds trust and develops a partner relationship with locals. Local lab is an experimental, community centred space run by RBS in 2025. Any citizen may enter the lab with an idea that would benefit their local community. RBS will provide the experts and funding needed to develop it. RBS will also help publicise and maintain the developed idea, through financial support, advice or training. An example outcome could be a retraining scheme for a community where artificial intelligence has taken jobs and citizen’s skills are no longer relevant to the local market.

app makes no judgement on what is right or wrong, but simply to create transparency and this enabling the user to do what they feel is right.

Safety and Security

A secondary, but equally important purpose, is that this application would act as a very strong marketing tool to show that RBS is committed to its new ethical considerations. A usable service carries more weight and integrity than words on an advertising campaign.

Concept creation

FEATURES & BENEFITS •

• •

• • • • • •

SKETCH OF CONCEPT

KEY STAKEHOLDERS • • • • •

RBS customers (Customers from other UK banks, see below in Pricing Model ) Anyone who the data is gathered on

PRICING MODEL

TIME & COST TO DELIVER

STEP CARDS

•

• • • • • •

•

Trace

To the Core Here come the YUCCIES Corporation as Educator Walkable Communities CSR as a Marketing Strategy Rise in Mobile Banking

Trace is an example of a service launched by a future RBS that is developing and releasing a series of projects that aim us towards a more stable economic model resilient to the continual boom and bust paradigm of the last century. This is achieved through empowering customers with information on where their money goes after they spend it, to make possible responsible spending - an act that is highly challenging in this current environment. Through the tone of voice, and presentation of information, the app makes no judgement on what is right or wrong, but simply creates transparency to enable the user to do what they feel is right. A secondary, but equally important purpose, is that this application would act as a very strong marketing tool to show that RBS is committed to its new ethical considerations. A usable service carries more weight and integrity than words on an advertising campaign.

Voice Vault to give permission to someone else to access all or part of the verbal content.

Safety and Security

When the user wants to record they simply tell the Voice Vault to start recording. Recordings are stored indefinitely or until the date set verbally by the user. The Voice Vault may be divided into parts, with each containing different verbal content, it’s up to the user how and where they want to use it.

Develop

FEATURES & BENEFITS

SKETCH OF CONCEPT

•

A physical, dedicated device offered by RBS for storing verbal content. RBS becomes market leader in reliable security for assets other than money.

•

A tangible object responds to digital kickback. Also a response to misconceptions around the cloud and digital storage. A tangible object offers reassurance and sense of security.

•

Voice Vault can be unlocked by voice recognition. Security layers can be added, such as fingerprint access. This makes the user feel in control and their data is safe.

•

It can be taken apart into segments. Verbal data can be categorised into sentimental and business, flexibility around user values.

•

Device can be used to store conversations, will, verbal contracts and voice memos. Theoretically it could store valuable data like DNA sequences or photos.

KEY STAKEHOLDERS

•

RBS digital security team.

•

RBS customers using the service and UK government who use could begin to use trusted banks like RBS as a data security centre for private data.

•

Relevant partners e.g. legal firms who advise RBS on data security.

• •

Potentially has medical use, RBS could partner with medical companies.

PRICING MODEL

TIME & COST TO DELIVER

•

Annual subscription fee for customers.

•

Will be free as a reward for particular accounts where customer is paying monthly for benefits.

More of a far future concept, although it would be possible to deliver it now. Should be released in 2025/2030.

•

Alternatively, a free reward for loyal, long-standing customers.

Take two years to develop product form, channels for data storage and to consider legal issues of verbal data.

STEP CARDS

Voice Vault • • • • •

Owning Your Data Re-embracing Tangibility Data as Currency The Password is Dead Who Knows Who Knows What?

RBS uses its reputation as a safe storage provider to meet • High cost to deliver but high reward, shifting values and secure assets that are recognised as making RBS relevant to new markets. precious in 2025. This includes digital data such as recorded verbal content. The Voice Vault is a physical device used for securely recording and saving verbal content. This is an additional service provided to Royal Bank of Scotland customers in 2025. The device is voice activated and learns its’ owners unique vocal pattern so it will only respond to them. They are the only person who can give the Voice Vault instructions and access the content. They can command Voice Vault to give permission to someone else to access all or part of the verbal content. When the user wants to record they simply tell the Voice Vault to start recording. Recordings are stored indefinitely or until the date set verbally by the user. The Voice Vault may be divided into parts, with each containing different verbal content, it’s up to the user how and where they want to use it.

Safety and Security

Concept creation

FEATURES & BENEFITS

SKETCH OF CONCEPT

•

Convenience of not remember passwords or carrying bank cards.

VoicePay

•

Reduced risk, due to not being able to lose the account access method, unlike current bank cards.

• •

BioPay

Harder technology to hack, due generative password authentication (voice signatures and biorhythms).

KEY STAKEHOLDERS • • •

RBS customers

•

Retailers (users of POS machines)

RBS employees (from across the departments)

PRICING MODEL

TIME & COST TO DELIVER

STEP CARDS

•

• • • •

• •

Both methods would follow the current pricing model for current bank cards. Customers might pay a small fee to keep their data safe from cybersecurity breaches. VoicePay would be a free setup for the enduser - since establishing a database of their voice signature would be easily achieved. A small price for the installation of the BioPay tech. Costs would most likely be mitigated in the sales of Point of Sales machines with which the user interacts with.

•

BioLayers

Voice recognition software is already highly evolved (and over a short time-frame), so for this to become a secure means of access could realistically take 10-15 years. An embedded biorhythm detector is likely to take longer. The main blocker in the development of augmented humans is actually just the battery power available. Estimates for this would be 15+ years Both rely on intensive product development, therefore incurring high costs.

Data Exploitation Paternalistic Technology The Password is Dead Industry 4.0

BioLayers explores the use of future technologies and how • that might feel during everyday use. In particular, it intends to provoke a tradeoff between convenience and security. This is achieved with a comparison of two forms of interaction: paying with a voice recognition, and paying with an embedded biosignature ‘tech tattoo’. VoicePay poses a dilemma around what feels reassuring to the authenticity of a payment when there is no visual feedback. Instead, what happens when we need to rely on audio feedback as a means of feeling secure. BioPay pushes the boundaries of what lengths users are willing to go to get the ultimate in convenience and security: an RBS chip implanted in your arm, communicating with a POS machine with sub-skin RFID tattoo. BioPay deliberately intends to take the form of a technology that is both invasive and permanent.

Develop

Personal reflection: Designing in the fog Being a key moment of generating ideas, as a domain group we acted as a flat level of hierarchy, switching between working individually and as a whole. After a set time period of ideating onto post-its individually, we would share back our ideas to the rest of the domain, discuss and build on each other’s ideas. For group ideation I believe that this is an efficient method that allows for fast and slow thinking, and for introverts to have a democratic voice next to extroverts. I acted as a moderator during this process, in an effort to keep focus to ensure everyone’s idea counts. Throughout this process, we worked with the fact that some of the specifics of the world that we were designing for might be undefined, knowing that what the other groups generate will influence some of the form of our ideas. Sometimes it is important to acknowledge this and just work with ambiguity. This requires acknowledging that there are different types of ‘knowns’. Dan Hill, again in his book Dark Matter and Trojan Horses, uses the metaphor of dark matter to talk about known unknowns to talk about things we know we don’t know and unknown unknowns to talk about things we don’t know we don’t know yet. In any strategic project, it is possible to move forward when you know the unknowns, and important to pause and take stock when you think there might be unknown unknowns. I think it is reflective of the experimental nature of this project that we were often dealing with so many unknowns - it proves that we are entering new territory; unexplored and therefore… unknown. In the case of this project, and specifically this moment, we knew that other domain groups would produce things that might be unexpected - known unknowns. Therefore, I feel it is important to acknowledge this in the design process, and move on regardless. There is a saying that you “can’t edit a blank piece of paper”, and here you can’t look for contradictions between group’s ideas when you haven’t made them yet. I understand that other team members found this moment in

Concept creation

the project frustrating, and in hindsight, I feel it would have been good to use the known unknown metaphor to help ease their anxiety of dealing with ambiguity. This experience has pushed me to think about what it means to be an effective team member. I would say that most strategic design projects will encounter unknowns in the design process. Indeed, “embrace ambiguity” is one of IDEO’s core mindset principles, emphasising the importance of “collectively row[ing] together, not knowing when you will hit land, but knowing that eventually you will. Your job is to support one another, not jump overboard but pull together in one direction.” In order to maintain momentum and motivation, in future I will invest time in highlighting and labelling the known unknowns. It might be cheesy to use such metaphors like rowing a boat, but by doing this, giving labels to our problems, as a team we might talk about them in such a way to try and mitigate some of the ambiguity. Embrace Ambiguity “Imagine you and your teammates are in a rowing boat, on a lake, and it’s foggy. You need to collectively row together, not knowing when you will hit land, but knowing that eventually you will. Your job is to support one another, not jump overboard but pull together in one direction. If our clients were coming to us with anything other than life-changing problems with complicated and nuanced outcomes, we would be bored. This is the other side of that: getting comfortable with the uncomfortable-ness that ensues.” - From ‘The Little Book of IDEO’ www.ideo.com/lboi/peopley.html#embraceambiguity

Delivery

Communication artefacts Collaboration

Plan

Make artefacts

Plan user testing

Make support materials

Objectives - Turn concepts into artefacts for user testing - Prepare supporting material for user testing (question cards, prompts, scenarios, etc) - Prepare discussion guide, with research aims - Create a schedule of timing

Using artefacts to test research A provocation artefact is about creating a feedback loop in design research to test assumptions from desk and field research. It is not about testing good ideas, but making people think. It is challenging to get people to think about the future, so communication artefacts act as a tool to create a landscape that operates differently from how they operate now.Â

Pilot

Communication artefacts

Trace Aims for user research Brand -Â Explore reaction towards a hypothetical community-driven RBS How do users react to RBS offering an overtly ethical service that creates transparency around local spending? Do users make the connection between the object and the ethics where their money goes after being spent?

ducer, high benefit to national distributor Orange - High benefit to international producer, low benefit to national distributor Apple - High benefit to national producer, medium benefit to local distributor Potato - High benefit to local producer, medium benefit to international distributor

Making Part of this was to test whether users recognise the ethical potentiality in the object, and what is important to them. Four different visualisations of value distribution was presented to them: Banana - Low benefit to international pro-

For this reason, the artefact should be interactive, so that it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look like a smartphone app which is too present-day, and so that they can see a correlation between the different objects and where their money goes.

Delivery

Voice Vault Aims for user research Branch -Â Explore possible new roles of branches How do users react to RBS offering to safekeeping digital assets other than money? Making The form is ambiguous to allow interpretation from the user. A light inside flashes when a person speaks, to give impression that it reacts to voice input.

Communication artefacts

Above: BioPay artefact Left: VoicePay artefact

BioLayers Aims for user research Interaction - Explore how tangibility affects security, and how contextual layers of account access impact on security How do users react to different payment methods in public and private, and when making low to high risk transactions? How do users react to a tradeoff between invasiveness and security? How does an AI tone of voice affect a feeling of security?

payment method. The purpose of the UV ink was to give an impression that it would be embedded under their skin, flashing when a payment is made. VoicePay A standalone POS machine that uses voice recognition to authorise payments. A small bluetooth speaker inside makes a series of commands to the user that vary in tone from formal to informal, and neutral to partisan in subject matter: “Okay, receipt sent to your phone” “You are low on rent, are you sure?” “Bad idea, but okay.” “You can have a coffee in half an hour.”

Making BioPay The ‘tech tattoo’ is administered as a stamp of UV ink. This is then illuminated by a small handheld UV light, to simulate a

Delivery

Scenarios These helped us visually introduce the artefacts, to focus the discussion. We decided to make scenarios only for Trace and Biolayers, and not for Voice Vault. This was to evaluate the effectiveness of using scenarios with artefacts, but also to leave Voice Vault open to interpretation of its use. We felt a scenario might have been too leading, since we wanted to explore how users might want to use it.

The activity prompts were used in the BioLayers session to compare the methods. These were a set of cards with financial activities on them, ordered from low risk to high risk - to determine where a user’s threshold is when using that method. The user picks which payment method they would be comfortable to use for each activity. Capture cards The capture cards were created for the end of each artefact station, and a set of overall questions for the beginning and end of each session. The purpose of the cards is to capture the thoughts of each person, to mitigate participants agreeing with the first thing said, or the strongest opinion. The overall questions are to make a comparison of perception towards RBS before and after being exposed to the artefacts.

Prompt cards There were two types of prompt cards created for the testing: questions and activities. The question prompts were a set of optional questions to be used during the discussion in case the conversation goes off-topic or dies out. Since the time spent with each artefact was 15 minutes long, time management and focus was important. 80

Communication artefacts

Personal reflection: Lost in translation I see a lot of value in provocation artefacts as a means of testing research. However during the process of the project I felt a disconnect between the purpose of the concept posters and these artefacts and as a result felt caught between the two. I think that instead of ‘concepts’ we should ideate around directions in a more broad sense to prevent going too granular (for example, creating cost analysis and describing stakeholder for the concept posters), only to take a step back to create user testing artefacts. As a result, our concept for ‘Local Lab’ ended up being laid by the wayside, since it could not be tested with users, and therefore did not constitute a ‘concept’. It would be better to flip the order of this, so that we move from the abstract to the granular, doing activities such as cost analysis after ensuring that the concepts generated will give insights to the direction we wanted to explore. Reflections of the effectiveness of the artefacts themselves will be in the next chapter. The pilot was helpful to establish the timing, however an earlier pilot with mockups of the artefacts and simple post-its of the questions / stimulus would be useful. This would have allowed us to experiment with the setup of the questions without spending too much time making graphic layouts and printing. During this stage, each of us picked an artefact we were passionate about and took ownership over making it. My role was in making Trace, due to previous knowledge of AfterEffects required to make it. I also made the pattern for the ink stamp.

Delivery

User testing Collaboration

User testing (with documentation from other group)

Analysis

Objectives - User testing the provocation artefacts - Reflection and synthesis of results - Writeup of reflection on methods

Format

User testing

Introduction

Activity 1

Activity 2

Trace

Voice Vault

BioLayers

Facilitator

Wrap up

Activity 3 BioLayers

Participant Documentor

Voice Vault

Setup The user testing was hosted in the meeting room of the RBS design office. The team split into two groups, so that each domain group supported each other in documenting the testing. We had the New Values group support us, and our team supported their user testing the next day. We ran the user testing with three separate groups of participants, that were recruited to match the persona groups we were interested in: nomad, lost faith, tech-savvy and disruptor [community oriented].

separate â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;stationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; - Introduction, Trace, BioLayers, Voice Vault and Reflection that each hosted the relevant artefacts, descriptions, scenarios and prompt cards. Participants were introduced to the session and completed the first activity together, then the two facilitators split the participants into a pair and an individual to take them through the next two activities. This was assessed in the moment, depending on the domination of personalities. For example, if there were 2 extroverts and an introvert, then they would be split so one facilitator would spend time alone with that individual introvert and vice versa if there were 2 introverts and an extrovert.

It consisted of three session, each lasting a total of 75 minutes with each group of participants. The room was set up with 5 83

Delivery

Introduction and wrap up The introduction served as a means of easing the participants into the session. In hindsight, this was perhaps not long enough, and a touchpoint or activity that helped them get in the mindset of ‘banking in 2025’ would have made the following activities easier. We encountered some issues where the participants found it hard to engage with the artefacts (particularly Voice Vault), and I think that this was due to the mental leap required of both the paradigm of this future world, and the scenario specific to the artefact. An introduction task might have eased this transition. The introduction and wrap up mirrored each other with questions to assess the before and after effect of having having been exposed to the artefacts. With this we were interested in particular on the effect they had on the participant’s high level sense of trust in the RBS brand. In the reflection, there was space given for a group discussion, to discuss any themes that had arisen during the user testing. I felt that the ‘before and after’ cards were useful for capturing any change in opinion of RBS before and after exposure to the artefacts. However, I felt that the participants answers could have been verbally probed further to find the deeper reasoning behind their answers. This is because some of the answers were just short of communicating the deeper reason that would have directly informed the resulting design directions. In the end, we were able to analyse these comments, with observations of behaviour from the sessions to arrive at an analysis of their opinions.

Above: participants in session one fill out the introduction question cards.

User testing

Trace Trace was focused on exploring the role of the bank in society, especially in stabilising the economy. We were interested in understanding their reaction to whether they find an obvious link between the behaviours of banks and economic stability, and whether RBS would be a trusted provider of this service. Largely I found this artefact to have been perhaps too well refined, as participants focused more on the use of it, rather than the larger concept that drove it. As a result, I feel that we lacked some of the depth of insights regarding participantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; reaction to viewing RBS as a player in helping to bring about a more stable economy in light of the 2008 crash. Due itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s refined nature, the participants found the Trace concept easiest to comprehend. Therefore it made sense to be the first activity to introduce participants to, easing them into the mindset for the more abstract concepts. In the moment, the second and third sessions were switched in order so that Trace was the first activity. Strengths Easy to understand Immersive interaction Confirmed assumptions Created open mind-set Top: close up of the Trace artefact during user testing.

Weakness Lack of provocative context Need to explore business perspective Role of RBS not explored deeply

Bottom: participants interact with the Trace artefact.

Delivery

Voice Vault The prototype was designed to appear defensive and militaristic to generate connotations of content being well protected and valuable. We also thought the angular, geometric form would look more unfamiliar and futuristic, which proved to be the case during testing. However, the assumption that if the artefact looked safe it would also feel secure was invalidated since people were worried about theft and hacking. The militaristic and aggressive form of this object may have biased testing by directing usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; thoughts towards formal, legalistic ways to use Voice Vault. A methodological improvement would be to include storyboards with a variety of scenarios showing how the Voice Vault could be used in different situations, both formal and informal. In addition, experimenting with forms that have different semantic connotations would have tested how much the form affects interpretation of use and feelings of security. Examples of forms would be a white pebble or soft material, these shapes and materials might invoke more sentimental associations. Strengths Thought-provoking, far future concept Highlighted key concerns Provocative form Weaknesses Abstract Difficult to relate to Lack of context and interaction

User testing

BioLayers BioLayers explored the tradeoff between security versus access and invasiveness versus convenience, comparing these qualities in the voice automated (VoicePay) and ‘tech tattoo’ (BioPay) interactions. The participants overwhelmingly preferred the BioPay interaction rather than the VoicePay. I feel this is because the BioPay interaction was not as invasiveness as it could have been. We were trying to provoke them with the concept of the permanence of a tattoo. However, because the artefact used invisible UV ink, that could be easily applied without pain, and technically washes off, it was too convenient and therefore became the most popular. If I would test this concept again, I would replace the UV ink stamp with a real tattoo needle, with a petri dish of microchips (that obviously wouldn’t be used on the user!), and place them in the position of signing up for the service to get it installed. ‘VoicePay’ was one of the most controversial concepts which is what we expected. Although, the extent of embarrassment provoked was more than

we anticipated. We were able to observe and document very genuine, instinctive responses because people didn’t realise the ‘VoicePay ‘ would reply. Testing was also successful because users were so engaged by acting out the payment scenario, they were easily able to imagine how they would feel in a public space. It would have extended our research to test ‘VoicePay’ through a headset device. This would have illustrated whether it was the tone of the Ai or the publicity which is the biggest issue for users. Weakness: More levels of invasiveness needed Users unable to imagine negative implications Difficult to analyse personalisation preferred Strengths: Highlighted user knowledge gaps Revealed importance of social acceptability Visual scenarios and acting helped users engage 87

Delivery

Personal reflection: User testing Overall, I believe that we were largely successful in testing out how the users reacted to the suggestions of the future that we presented, due to the strong reactions evoked and levels of engagement in some of the everyday details which showed strong comprehension of the concepts. However, I do believe that a little less time should have been focussed on the object itself. Instead, using it as a means to talk in more depth about how users would react to an RBS that would offer these services. In particular, I feel that the Voice Vault was too abstract, and Trace too refined. The result was that a lot of attention was focused on either trying to make sense of the artefact, or simply focussing on the positive merits too much to be able to place it in the bigger picture of what it means as an offering from RBS.Â Due to unfortunately not being present on the day of the user testing, Eloise and Ola led the entire session. As a team member, I felt incredibly proud of how effectively they carried out the session - engaging with the participants on a very human level, making them feel comfortable. I feel that because we worked well as a team, I trusted in them that I could be absent. A downside of my absence was that I was not there to represent the Trace artefact. Because we individually â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;ownedâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the development of one of the artefacts, I was the most familiar with Trace. As a result, there were some nuances that were not expressed. The prompt cards were great for visually directing the conversation, especially due to the tight time restraints. An improvement however, I think that instead of numbering the prompt cards and going through each one, keep them as prompts, pulling them out only when a redirection of the conversation is needed. This might keep the dialogue conversational, and perhaps less abrupt.

User testing

The post-reflection and analysis stage actually took a long time to get through, and I think revisiting some previous work, such as the levels of interaction frame and key assumptions/hypotheses from the research would have been useful in the beginning of this process. It might have helped when listening through and analysing the dialogue to narrow my focus onto the quotes and results that tied in directly with the objectives we had when developing the user testing.Â Based on this reflection, good practice might be to create a list of assumptions at the end of the desk research phase, placing it aside, and then using this as a checklist both before and after the user testing. Before, to ensure that the communication artefacts and the setup of the user testing explore the questions raised during the research. Then after, as a means of helping focus when synthesising, as mentioned above.Â

Delivery

Insights & design recommendations Collaboration

Extract insights from analysis

Link back to supporting evidence

Format into deliverable

Pull together

Objectives - Extract insights and distill into a recommendation list for client - Enable client to make link between insights and supporting evidence throughout project - Format analysis and recommendations

Synthesis Synthesis and distillation of the user testing findings was an intensive day of merging, refining and cutting out insights. During this session, since I was not present at the user testing (however was quite familiar due to listening to the audio and sharing quotes and insights), I acted as a moderator to question the ‘why’ behind each idea: “Why did the user say this?” “How does this link to the feeling of trust and security?” “How does this affect the relationship with the bank…?” and so on. I feel that it is important in this stage to subject the data results to harsh scrutiny, delving deep into the meaning behind the quotes and observations. For insights to be informative and useful to an outsider to the project team, it is important to simplify them and clarify them so that they do

not rely on the inherent knowledge that the team members often have to make the links back to the main topic. Finding the thread An important part of this task is to think about the handover of work to the client, and how it might be used after the project is finished when we will not be present to explain the research findings. 1. Firstly the insights and recommendations should be easily understand by someone with an outside perspective on the project. 2. Secondly, they should live beyond this project and be usable for future RBS projects that might explore one of the domains that the four groups have been working on. 90

Insights & design recommendations

document that would have the full analysis backing up the research. Since the cards are intended to be used as a tool to inspire during the RBS design process, I wanted to add another layer to them that would make them more usable and even playful. Inspired by Brian Enoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Oblique Strategy Cards, that feature statements intended to provoke a new perspective on a problem during the creative process, I suggested we add playful suggestions to stimulate thinking in the spirit of the insight.

Therefore, being able to find the threads throughout the project that resulted in the final insights and recommendations is important so that the deliverables work as standalone documents. For each insight, we supported it with quotes from ethnography, STEP cards, personas, and quotes from the user testing. This was an individual activity after having agreed as a group which final insights we would present back to the client. Insight booklet and cards As mentioned earlier, since the findings need to be easily understood and acted upon, we wanted to think about how they might be used in a design process. We settled on the idea of taking a summary of each insight into a card, that would be handed over to the client alongside an

Design recommendations These were compiled into a booklet, to serve as the final part of a suite of documents for the final deliverable: user testing methods analysis, insights and evidence, and recommendations. 91

Delivery

Example design direction

Wider impact Build a trustworthy organisational culture and reputation through a series of projects that impact the local and national economy as well as engage employees. Many small nudges Create nudges within services that encourage users to make small actions that have a positive impact on the stability of the local and national economy. Local Lab Create a greater presence in communities by facilitating projects that encourage local development.

Thought leader Be a thought leader in the development of responsible banking in the UK; communicating to others what you believe in.

Insights & design recommendations

Example design direction

Tangible safety As services become more seamless, make a deliberate effort to visualise aspects of the service that are intangible yet affect the userâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perception of security. Visible feedback Offer the option of a feedback system whenever a transaction is made (as seen with mobile bank Number 26) or even when there is any form of activity on the account. Reassurance & ultimate control Reassure the user that their account is only in use when they are using it. The user should have ultimate control over what is made visible and/or sent to them as a notification.

Delivery

Personal reflection: User testing I found the process of finding the thread through the work was arduous, however also incredibly useful in helping solidify my thinking when rereading the insights from earlier in the project that might have been put to the back of my mind. It is good practice for professional life within a consultancy studio and as part of an in-house design team. Both have to deal with work being used by stakeholders outside of their design team, be that a client like in our situation, or in large corporations to share findings between different office locations, departments and project teams. I feel like some good insights and/or recommendations were lost in translation due to the concerted effort to create a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;unified formatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to handover to the client, such as a requirement of 10 recommendations. This in indicative of much of the challenges faced by the team during the project, that has involved a lot of reformatting work to fit a group cohesion or a specific request from RBS.Â Whilst I understand that it makes comprehension on their part easier so that the findings can live beyond the project, it might not always be so strict. Perhaps to establish a unified format as a set of guidelines rather than prescriptive rules would make our job easier, so that we can focus on the work itself. Since each domain is slightly different in scope, some being more abstract or granular than others, to get the best out of both worlds, there might be a minimum standardised deliverable, then freedom to add another layer on top of that which feels relevant to each domain. That might be recommendations with the additional form of illustrations for example.

Above: printed deliverables in preparation for the final presentation.

Delivery

Final presentation Collaboration

Make presentations / PPP & share progress

Objectives - Pull together deliverables across the whole project into a final handover to the client - Build presentation for client executives that conveys value of design and high level insights - Build presentation for design team that communicates process and insights - Project Process Poster that reflects on process and suggestions to strengthen it

Final presentation

RBS & GSA Design Process Map

GSA DESIGN TEAM

LAUNCH

RESEARCH

PROJECT LAUNCH

DESK RESEARCH

STEP CARDS GENERATING

PLANNING ETHNOGRAPHY

ETHNOGR RESEARCH

The project launch took place on Wednesday 30th September starting with an introductory briefing, giving those from GSA the opportunity to understand the way the bank currently works, their goals for the future and their strategic shift towards user centred design. The newly formed RBS design team presented the 4 research domains for the project; “New Values”, “It’s Your Data”, “Saving for a Rainy Day” and “Keeping you Safe and Secure”. Our team of 12 divided into groups of 3 per domain. Initial brainstorms with mixed teams of RBS and GSA team members drew out interesting starting points for our research topics. It gave both teams the opportunity to get to know each other and established a strong collaborative spirit to be continued throughout the project. We also used this as a chance to question the proposed target demographic of 16-25 year olds as this age bracket covers a vast range of life-stages, lifestyles and living situations. Concerns noted, it was agreed that we would continue to focus on 16-25 year olds focusing on how they would behave in 10 years time.

The project began with each domain group researching their areas to gain a general overview. As a team of twelve we looked at current and emerging trends in banking as well as generation Y, the demographic focus for this project. To carry out this initial research we used various methods and sources such as: articles, Government statistics, academic publications, documentaries, radio programs, think tanks, books, films etc. This was mainly carried out in our studio space at Glasgow School of Art and the GSA library. We identified current indicators that helped us to project future trends for ten years time. The research was brought together in a matrix to create a chronological trend timeline based on what is happening now and our prediction for the future. We did this to share insights and identify any gaps in the research to be further explored. By infinitsing our timeline we developed the matrix with themes down the Y axis to begin organising insights. Here, we used mural.ly as a tool to cluster and share data with RBS. With a broad overview of banking trends, Generation Y and our group domains captured each group selected three or four themes which were most relevant to their domain to research further and develop in depth knowledge around.

To document and work with the two weeks desk research we chose to create STEP cards. Each card illustrated an insight into an influential trend on gen Y or the financial sector. We began categorising insights into social, technological, economic, political areas. The cards also showed at least two sources where we found the information and keywords. They were a great tool for handing over our research to RBS, and worked as a “red thread” to show insights throughout the entire project. Each domain group worked with the cards slightly differently. Some used the set of 100 as a solid reference point for further direction while others used them to begin generating ideas.

To plan our ethnographic research we worked with Dr. Janet Kelly and design ethnographer Brian Loranger. Janet gave us a presentation on Ethics and Design Research, which was helpful as it gave us clear guidelines for ethnographic research in a professional way. Brian gave us a team presentation about methods in ethnographic research, giving us ideas about taking field notes and recording. He also spoke to the domain groups about specific methods that would be appropriate for them. We split into working groups next, with members from each domain group. One working group created recruitment requirements, covering age, lifestyle, subcultures and interest areas. Each of the teams checked personal and professional connections against this so individuals could be contacted and interviewed. Another working group created an interview framework with initial core questions so that we could use to cross compare all interviews. The later questions in each interview would be tailored by each domain group. Domain groups also planned what they wanted to achieve from the interviews and thought about workshop games and methods to get the most out of our field research. The week ended with confirming interviews and meetings for the next week.

Week four of the project was research. Each domain group techniques which included experts and different types of u age group. The field research and photographed in a coheren a unified presentation style onc divided the work and interv domains undertook interviews on particular users. Once a transcript was generated to pu could be easily shared and a working group also planned the team was requested to run at R

Key Stages

ABOUT US The team is made up of twelve designers with different design educations, disciplines and areas of interest. Eight of us are students in our final year of the Masters in European Design (MEDes) program at Glasgow School of Art (GSA). The other four are graduates of either Bachelors or Masters level Product Design Courses at GSA. COLLABORATION WITH RBS This research project between Glasgow School of Art and RBS explored the future of banking in the year 2025, focusing on four key domains of the banking experience: ‘It’s Your Data’, ‘New Values’, ‘Safety & Security’ and ‘Saving & Spending’. The outcomes of the project include research from each of the four domain areas, a set of tested methodologies and related insights, as well as research communicating a tangible vision for 2025 and the values and lifestyle of Generation Y. The project accommodated an exchange of learning between the partnered institutions. Collaboration occurred during workshop sessions in the GSA studio and in the RBS design space in Edinburgh. The progress and learning made in person was reinforced by digital meetings on skype, this allowed the GSA team to update the RBS design lead and gain feedback. Parallel to these digital meetings, the GSA team shared insights and work in progress through digital platforms such as Mural.ly, a blog, Slack and Google Drive.This continuous loop of sharing and feedback allowed project goals to be clarified and managed through the different research phases. Methodologies were shared across teams, leading to engaging discussions regarding techniques, concept generation and approach. However, on a higher level we held intermittent, reflective discussions concerning the purpose of design in user-centred business. This project offered us the opportunity to understand how design practice could have an impact within the banking industry. This was interesting to the team because strategic design has rarely been used to define the direction of a financial institution and embed cultural change. We were able to experiment with a multitude of design directions and approaches during our research. This experimentation revealed a number of domain specific areas for further exploration. These areas were communicated as written design directions alongside supporting evidence and a face-to-face presentation with both RBS executives and designers. These deliverables allowed us to disseminate our ideas through different media, reaching a range of actors within RBS.Ideally this will support us in embedding our insights and learning, as well as evidence the value and potential of design. Designing for the future was explorative and challenging for both partners. While we explored the idea of designing for the banking customer of 2025, the RBS team explored the idea of applying design to create alternative methods of working. We evaluated the emerging design approach of RBS and adapted it to our own requirements throughout the project. As a designer it’s both important and exciting that companies like RBS consider the value of design in their industry. It is valuable for us as students to build our confidence and understanding towards new areas of opportunity for design. This has happened during the project through the dynamic combination of academic and corporate relations which developed. We believe design students have fresh, innovative and forward looking ideas which are both grounded and enriched by collaborating with a partner such as RBS.

Approach

This collaborative project between RBS and GSA allows all the participants to learn from each other. That was also the objective of the workshop with RBS data experts that also took place during this week. They had come to the GSA to present what data they have available. Within each domain group we talked about how our desk research could be backed up with and informed by internal bank data.

Evaluation

This introduction allowed us incite into the organisational culture and history of RBS. We were able to understand the design team‘s perspective and how the core values of the company directed their work. This was important to keep in mind as we progressed so we could manage client goals and expectations alongside our own.

Creating a trend timeline was an excellent method for sharing data between domain groups and creating collective knowledge. Selecting relevant themes for each domain to work with meant we could develop more domain specific knowledge. Researching Generation Y values was a vital, secondary task all the domain groups conducted so that we could apply that knowledge when we projected design opportunities for 2025. Mural.y worked well for sharing data with the RBS design team. However, it was a poor tool for sharing within the GSA design team. We found it to be a secondary, less effective communication tool compared to doing so tangibly in our studio space.

The STEP card design was highly successful in compressing a lot of information into a tangible artefact that could be shared and utilised in our design process. On reflection, there was confusion from the GSA team as to the purpose of the STEP cards. They were required as a deliverable but there was a lack of clarity on who the audience would be. Knowing the end use and purpose of the cards, whether that would be the design team or CEO’s, would have acted as guidelines in our visualisation process. We categorised the data based on what we thought would be useful, which was successful because we used the STEP cards a lot in our process. They were utilised as indicators that guided concept development and acted as evidence for our final outcomes.

Discussing ethics with Dr. Janet Kelly enabled the GSA team to think about how being associated with the bank might influence interviewee behaviours. Recruitment involved extracting useful participants from the team’s network. Visualising the recruitment requirements in the studio allowed us to build a cohesive picture of the contacts available and which niche might be lacking participants. However, we felt this method was flawed because our own network is biased towards people who are a similar age to us, have similar values and living conditions. The comparable question framework worked well as a method. These questions covering the interviewees background and living situation meant the interviews could be compared and any bias evaluated. The exchange with the data analysts was an interesting opportunity to get domain specific information based on internal bank data. Talking to the analysts helped to understand how questions must be phrased in order to filter qualitative data from it. It was also interesting for us to understand how much data the bank has of their customers, as we realised that it is much less than we expected.

Transcribing and listening back of ethnographic research as it on their approach to interviewin opportunity to pick out insig interviews were very success knowledge relating to domain target users were great at pu current concerns, worldview an The workshops were particula depth, domain focused insights conducted a group workshop most wanted to keep private. T workshop was to filter data from We also wanted to test new w combining them with persona d

Group Constellation

Weeks Opportunities to Enhance

0 Clarify the relationship with RBS and establish the collaborative nature.

Use an alternative tool to collaborate that is embedded in the workflow rather than reformatting work that has already been done.

Discuss and collaborate on the best way to share desk research, make clear how it will be used and what for.

Discuss a timeline of deliverables and the purpose of each.

Validate team activities through increased feedback. Utilise the blog as a form of communication and clarify its purpose.

Acknowledge that different projects might require different ways of sharing desk research.

Make clear who will use this project and how it will progress.

Allow more time to research rather than reformatting.

Negotiate and create briefs together.

The number of cards or similar should be determined by quality of research not quantity.

3 Challenge demographics for ethnographic recruitment, by recruiting extreme users. Create a common question framework, including questions related to user‘s background, that overarches different research areas, so that data can be compared later.

Enhance ethnographic res time for further interviews research outcomes. Allow time to collate data be shared within RBS.

Utilise opportunities in the team‘s own network by recruiting colleagues and friends who are relevant to the area of research.

Be honest about the project‘s future even unsure.

Safety & Security domain group Saving & Spending domain group It‘s your data domain group New Values domain group RBS Design team RBS Data analysts Nile consultant Professor Kirsty Ross

DESK RESEARCH Ideal Process

SYNTHESIS & PLANNING

ETHNO RESEAR

eks desk research we ustrated an insight into ncial sector. We began hnological, economic, at least two sources eywords. They were a to RBS, and worked as out the entire project. rds slightly differently. rence point for further n generating ideas.

ssful in compressing a that could be shared reflection, there was purpose of the STEP le but there was a lack Knowing the end use uld be the design team es in our visualisation d on what we thought because we used the e utilised as indicators acted as evidence for

Project Process Poster To split up the work for the final week, Eloise represented our team, along with one other from each domain group, to create the Project Process Poster (PPP), whilst I made the 8 minute executive and 20 minute design team presentations for our group. The PPP consisted of a description of the approach, an evaluation of how it went for each domain group, how

the collaboration between the RBS and GSA design teams were structured, and opportunities to enhance the process. We got together as a whole team at regular intervals to critique its development and add suggestions for content, and to share progress on the presentations.

DELIVER TESTING WORKSHOP

CONCEPTING SYNTHESIS

PLANNING ETHNOGRAPHY

ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

INTERVIEW POSTERS

RBS WORKSHOP

TRIBES & CHIEFS

FUTURE WORLD

ACTORS IN THE WORLD

CONCEPT CREATION

COMMUNICATION ARTEFACTS

USER TESTING

INSIGHTS & ANALYSIS

DESIGN DIRECTION

FINAL PRESENTATION

Week four of the project was spent carrying out ethnographic research. Each domain group developed a variety of research techniques which included workshops, conversations with experts and different types of user interviews according to user age group. The field research from each domain was recorded and photographed in a coherent way so it could become part of a unified presentation style once collated. Some domain groups divided the work and interviewed individually whilst other domains undertook interviews in pairs to gain two perspectives on particular users. Once an interview was completed, a transcript was generated to put the content into a format that could be easily shared and analysed. During week four one working group also planned the persona workshop that the GSA team was requested to run at RBS the following week.

A key deliverable we set for ourselves at this point in the process was a coherent collection of all the field research we had done. To consolidate our field research, we created a poster format for all groups to put the interview content into. We went through each of the interview transcripts and pulled out four or five key quotes that clearly showed the interviewees attitude or opinion. We also created a list of ten insights that we got from each interview, to represent more general insights we came across. With this deliverable we decided to print over 40 of our interview posters and show them at the RBS Workshop we were having the next week. In addition to the field research we were also showing our desk research. At this time we fully finalised all 100 STEP cards and had them printed, to use them as a working tool during the workshop.

The five day workshop at RBS worked as many different things, but most importantly it was a great touchpoint with RBS to show what we had done and discuss what might happen next. We spent the first day setting up and preparing for the persona workshop we were hosting the next day. Displayed were all of the interview posters, the STEP cards and finalised presentations. The morning of day two was spent with each domain group going through their research and identifying a few key insights that would lead the next steps of their process, as there had not been a synthesis phase to present. That afternoon we held a persona workshop for GSA and RBS to do together. The workshop had different stations with different activities with the goal of quick persona generation. Day three was run by RBS, where we used RBS methods to begin quick concepting. We spent day four exploring the “behind the scenes” RBS as well as their flagship stores and busiest banks. The archives allowed us to see RBS through the ages and its strong historical roots, while Gogarburn gave us a clear picture of RBS working environment and what it is like as a company today. The workshop ended with a morning of talking about feasibility of concepts and benefits to the bank, we placed concepts on a matrix of benefits against difficulty. We spent the final two hours reflecting as a whole team on the process so far and the direction the project was going. This was the first opportunity to have this kind of open conversation.

Back at GSA, we started the following week by collating the interview posters in one space. The person who carried out each interview gave a 30 second overview to the rest of the team and placed it on a timeline by age. Alongside this activity we generated a list of “tribes”, which were dictated by common themes we had come across in the interviews. We began with a lengthy list and narrowed it down to 12 tribes. We assigned tribes to each of the interviews, with one interview able to fall into more than one tribe. We chose to create personas, the chief of the tribe, which were the combination of different interviews. We wanted to make posters as working tools that could be displayed in the studio and referred to during the concepting phase of the project. To create the posters each domain group proposed information relevant to their brief that should be included in the persona poster template. We split into working groups at this point with representatives from domain groups to create a template layout that would clearly and graphically show all of the information that had been decided. Each of the team were given a persona to create and put into the person template.

A further stage of synthesis needed to happen from our initial desk research. Our research had focussed on emerging trends in banking and generation Y but we had done very little future forecasting of what this might look like in ten years time. The team took part in a future world workshop where we deconstructed our current world and build a future one. This one day workshop was a fun way to explore the process. The insights which we used were quite surface level, which resulted in a very provocative outcome. We began to think about relationships between stakeholders in our future world by making a stakeholder map to visualise these connections. To get a better and more realistic future world each group went through the process again using more specific insights relevant to their brief. Once done all the domain groups came together as a team to create one unified future world on the same matrix we had used for the STEP analysis (social, technological, economic, political). It was reassuring to see that all of the domain groups worlds fitted together into one, it meant that all of our concepting would be based around the same future world.

The personas we had created from the interviews had opinions and worldviews based on what we found today. Because we were concepting for 2025 we had to project the personas forward ten years. We created their journeys into 2025 to show them in the future context and reflect how their needs and values might change. These journeys identified design opportunities for each of the personas. As well as understanding their needs and values we wanted to understand relationships between personas. We mapped out which personas would interact in the future world on a personal and business level to show influencers and laggards. We did this thinking of a dinner table, who would sit next to who and what would they talk about. We also thought about their position in society, thinking of a human body, who would be the head, the hands and the feet.

The week began with a presentation from Dr. Janet Kelly talking to us about communication and provocation artefacts that would help us to test our ideas. We were also joined by the designer Rachel Sleight and the interaction design specialist Roy Shearer who would help us turn our concepts into communication artefacts. The majority of this week was spent developing concepts and turning initial ideas into real concepts that could be tested during our user testing in Edinburgh. We put the concepts into the format that was given to us by RBS. When all groups had at least three concepts we began thinking about ways to turn them into testing artefacts. Some groups viewed the testing artefacts as direct examples of what their concepts are while others viewed them as a way of testing the idea behind a concept. Additionally we met with RBS for a second data analytics day, which was a good opportunity to check in with RBS and update them on the work we had been doing. Because we had spent the previous two weeks synthesising our research it was important to explain this decision to RBS and talk about our next steps as well as first ideas on concepts. One data analyst was able to come and share some interesting findings with us.

Each domain group created physical or communication pieces to test their concepts during the user testing. These ranged from realistic concept testing, to provocation artefacts to co-creation tools to use during a workshop. Some domain groups utilised the workshop to make physical objects while others worked more with paper and printing. Once these artefacts were finished we were able to run pilot tests to evaluate how well participants understood the test and how long it takes. We were then able to make adjustments to the final testing transcript to be used in Edinburgh. To plan the user testing in Edinburgh we met with the user researcher Marianne O‘Loughlin from Nile to discuss our concepts and talk about possible ways of testing. She helped us decide on important factors such as how many people, how long the testing should take and who we would like to test. Next, we sent Nile our recruitment briefs which specified the types of people we would like to take part in our testing. We also sent them a testing transcript which we received feedback on over a Skype call from a Nile representative. We looked more closely at our objectives and testing process and made appropriate changes.

Over the course of a week each domain group tested their artefacts with participants organised by Nile and held at the RBS Offices in Edinburgh. While each domain group conducted their testing in different ways, the underlying methodology of the team was to test their artefacts on participants while having the sessions filmed and critiqued by members of the team, a representative from Nile and members of the RBS Design team. After each session, a review occurred where themes and key insights from participants could be discussed, as well as behaviours and reactions. This review also allowed for a critique of the domain group conducting the test, allowing for changes and improvements to be made if more tests were occurring.

Returning to Glasgow, we then consolidated all research from user testing such as field notes, audio and video recordings, and photographs. Drawing from these insights as well as comparisons of techniques within the team, we each defined our key insights and deliverables from each domain. With the body of the project completed, all that remained was to pull together all the work that had been conducted by the group and create the documentation for the final handover.

In addition to packaging the entire project for the final handover, this week also required us to produce documentation of our insights from the project as well as reflections on the collaboration. This documentation allowed us to highlight threads that lead from our final insights all the way back through the various stages of the project. The several methods used in the user testing were also documented to showcase the differing techniques used by each domain and their strengths. The key component of the documentation were the series of design recommendations based on, not only our insights from the week of testing at RBS, but the reflection on all pertinent points from throughout the project.

The final handover was an integral step to ensure our findings and outputs can be used by the RBS design team. The various outcomes throughout the process such as personas, the future world, communication artefacts and final design directions are being presented by the GSA team. The majority of the knowledge transfer will be done with the RBS design team, ensuring both sides of the collaboration are clear regarding the project outcomes. Another goal of the handover is to communicate the value of design to RBS as a company, to ensure design plays a central role in future RBS projects. A final reflection and feedback session is important to gain an understanding regarding what we have learned as a team and how well we have been able to hand this over to RBS.

Transcribing and listening back to interviews is an important part of ethnographic research as it allows the interviewer to reflect on their approach to interviewing, as well as providing a second opportunity to pick out insights from the interview. Expert interviews were very successful at reinforcing and clarifying knowledge relating to domain groups’ topics. Interviews with target users were great at pulling out Generation Y’s values, current concerns, worldview and perspectives towards banking. The workshops were particularly successful at pulling out in depth, domain focused insights. The ‘Your Data’ team for example conducted a group workshop which revealed data participants most wanted to keep private. The aim of developing a persona workshop was to filter data from interviews into focused insights. We also wanted to test new ways of using the STEP cards by combining them with persona development.

A coherent interview poster enabled the interviews to be easily accessed by different domains who had not conducted those interviews. They also allowed the RBS team to understand the interviews quickly, rather than needing to comprehend different methods of visualisation. However the interview format implies to viewers that all interviews were conducted in the same manner, it fails to communicate the differing domain focus of each. For example, an interview conducted by the Safety and Security domain group has more quotes relating to security. These differences are difficult to distinguish. The domain groups also found it challenging to continually filter their content into identical formats because we are a team of designers with different backgrounds and specialisms. Not being an agency with defined values and a set style, whether to use unified, domain specific or individual formats for presenting information was a recurring challenge in group work.

It was challenging to discuss and reflect on insights from the field research because we had not had time to analyse our findings. We felt that this was a vital stage of any human-centred research project which was missing. On the other hand, the persona workshop was successful in actively engaging the design team with our interviews and STEP cards. We were able to reflect on different methods, ultimately concluding as a team that the personas generated were not as in depth as the interviews. Observing behind the scenes at RBS allowed us insight into both the constraints and new opportunities for a design team embedded in such a large organisation. This was important to keep in mind as the project developed and we began to think about how concepts or ideas might be embedded in RBS. The feasibility study communicated to us which idea areas would be a challenge from the RBS perspective. The most valuable part of the week was the final, reflective discussion that took place on the Friday. As an explorative project, the nature of the exchange and collaboration was constantly evolving, and this discussion gave us an opportunity to ensure both teams understood the expectations and direction of the other, allowing the project to resume with improved clarity.

Synthesis is vital because it allows each domain to analyse data from all the field research and pull out key themes and insights which will later inform their ideation and personas. This is important to ensure that the final concept is grounded in both credible desk research and qualitative evidence from relevant users. Visualising themes and insights also allows team members to understand each other’s work, discuss contradictions in the research and identify cross-domain themes. Allocating each interview to a tribe meant the domain groups could utilise all the relevant interviews for a particular type of person they wanted to design for. A persona template ensured each domain groups’ crucial insights was present and compatible enough to draw relationships between them, preempting further synthesis. We made personas with the foresight they would become actors within a collective future world in which our concepts could manifest. It was therefore a crucial, collective activity to address the design team‘s meta brief: The future of finance for Generation Y. We referred to personas as tribe chiefs because they represent the archetype and lead user of each tribe. The personas became a very successful and engaging companion design tool to the future world. They represented the people we would design for in 2025. The persona posters used quotes and insights directly from interviews so that they could be used as an in depth, evidence based point of reference. Some data was visualised to allow easy comparison, such as the personas ‘relationship to the bank’. Printing and displaying the personas within the studio united our approach and gave a voice to our silent clients; the users.

The future world workshop allowed us to deconstruct current worldviews, systems and values then reconstruct them and reflect on the type of world that our indicators point towards. It was challenging to position the stakeholders since we had not yet finished generating personas. However, the future world was a successful means of translating our research outcomes about future trends into a tangible, visual format. This world can now be used and shared within RBS in the future. The world collates trend indicators from all the domain groups research into one entity, highlighting themes, overlaps and key contexts for change. As we used the same matrix to categorize trends, the world directly referenced our initial STEP cards, linking the future 2025 to the current day and predictive trends. Should the trends indicated by the world not become manifest in reality, the cause can be traced back to the trend cards allowing the RBS design team to edit the world and vice versa. The world was also important as a context in which personas could be positioned.

Creating the personas in parallel with the future world enabled us to cross pollinate the actors and their future environment. Mapping user journeys within the future world made it easier to spot opportunities and possible scenarios in which the bank could intervene. Projecting to 2025 when social currency will be more valuable, we plotted the relationships between each persona. This presented opportunities to leverage behaviour influenced by others, creating a rich landscape of visualised relationships. Defining the roles each persona had within society allowed us to map the trendsetters and laggards in order to design appropriate focused services for different people.

Rachel and Roy shared their expert making opinion upon the fidelity of each artefact, striking the right balance between provocation and time to make them. Janet‘s perspective on provotypes encouraged us to create artefacts that spoke for themselves resulting in less bias user feedback. Provotypes also gave the testing subjects the opportunity to personally relate to them through interaction invoking gut feeling and personal reflection creating a successful future artefact. We formed our ideas into concept posters as a requested deliverable for concise communication. Hereby we found the use of concept posters as in the format provided, a bit limiting as they are focused around the bank’s interest mainly. We added STEP cards to the concept poster to connect our research of possible problems with a possible solution: the concepts. Working with one data analysts was a chance to validate our concepts with our briefs and created a vital touch point with the client ensuring the ideologies, directions and technology were suitable to RBS. Feedback allowed us to pinpoint more specifically what might be valuable to the bank as a key stakeholder, allowing us to orientate our ideas and manage expectations for the final delivery. The relevance of each concept could be communicated within the context of the future world showing the value to their future customers. It would have been, however, helpful if analytical data we had previously asked for, could have been provided quickly and more specific to the four domains. It would have been interesting for us as well RBS to validate the need for the concepts according to 2015 allowing us to ear mark what to watch. This would have created KPIs that could indicate whether our trend predictions were on track.

Artefacts were designed to orientate design directions for the future. The artefacts acted as a portal to the future, probing generation Y’s feelings according to their own experiences, values and learned behaviours. Planning a schedule with concise objectives was crucial to getting the information we needed whilst affording space for the subject to explore and challenge. Groups were encouraged to pilot their user testing process to strike this balance. Nile gave their professional opinion on what type of testing our concepts and artefacts would be explored best, such as cocreation, group or one to one testing. Creating a recruitment brief for the test subjects allowed us to reduce the amount of variables to the personas we had designed for. This was another great touchpoint to receive outside opinion on the value of our concepts and the method of communication. Sending a transcript early allowed us enough time to iterate on our methods. Varying our methods throughout the testing sessions: writing, interactions, discussions and reflections ensured we gathered a breadth of insights from different perspectives.

We considered it good practice for one domain team to lead the workshop and the other to observe. This provided an alternate and less biased perspective on the subjects response. Nile provided a professional critique on our user testing methods allowing each group to analyse the method with the findings and allowing the later groups to modify their approach. These findings from both testing approach and outcomes could then be communicated to the client as design future directions and methods. By summarising key themes that were raised at the end of the testing session each group was encouraged to confer and document findings whilst still fresh in their mind.

Each group processed the testing material according to their objectives. We correlated and cross referenced different formats of data including, quotes, infographics, photographs referencing body language and co-created documents confirming our insights from many angles. We also linked these insights back to our STEP cards from our desk research and interviews during ethnographic research, to show a clear thread from the early stages of our projects.

Further reflection of the user testing session was necessary to distil and communicate our insights into a hand over for the RBS design team. Insight cards distilled our key findings for further ideation by the RBS design team. To create a link to these findings a supplementary document presented the analysis and processing of primary sources. Within this document final design recommendations were made to support the RBS design team in further development and strategizing future directions. These recommendations, tied directly to research insights, should act as guidelines for the RBS design team in future projects. RBS also sent a deliverable checklist ensuring expectations on both sides were met.

Reaching the conclusion of the collaborative project we feel confident handing over a clear set of design recommendations, thoroughly supported by research across each domain, that the RBS design team can use as a tool in future design projects. This project has caused us to closely examine our process and alter the way we approach things. We feel we have met with our own expectations in handing over the project and showing the value of design. We look forward to seeing the next steps RBS takes with this.

st way to share will be used and

Challenge demographics for ethnographic recruitment, by recruiting extreme users.

ts might require earch.

Create a common question framework, including questions related to user‘s background, that overarches different research areas, so that data can be compared later.

ould be determined

Enhance ethnographic research by allowing enough time for further interviews and in-depth synthesis of research outcomes.

Include time for the team to synthesise, format research and share data to create collective knowledge.

Allow time to collate data into unified format that can be shared within RBS.

Share raw interview recordings across domains by exchanging interviews for transcription. Resulting in less topic specific interview posters and each domain gaining an understanding of each other‘s data.

6 Utilise this week for ethnography synthesis rather than concepting, using the week as a touchpoint to transfer knowledge and insights from GSA to RBS team. Utilise week as a touchpoint to reflect on progress and brief as well as react to insights from RBS and GSA.

Utilise opportunities in the team‘s own network by recruiting colleagues and friends who are relevant to the area of research.

7 RBS could utilise tribes in their own process to develop knowledge of their users. Redistribute persona development and interviews within team to reduce bias and share knowledge. Personas are an excellent tool to communicate insights externally and within a larger design team.

7/8

RBS could create a future focussed workshop themselves with employees from the design team and other sectors of RBS.

Creating a narrative for personas in the future world allows design team to put themselves in the shoes of their users revealing design opportunities.

Utilise communication artefacts as a research tool to test hypothetical design directions with users.

Consider as a team the opportunities of going in a provocative vs realistic direction.

Future world could be utilised during RBS design process as a context for pre-users and personas. Envision insights as a world rather than individual scenarios or user journeys.

This engaging and empathy based design method supports RBS design team with developing an empathetic, human-centred approach.

Receiving feedback from an interdisciplinary team allows the value of concept to be interpreted from different perspectives.

Allow time for pilot runs of user testing to build team confidence and identify potential improvements.

Allow the data analyst more time to collate the data requested. Opportunity to combine quantitative data from already existing databases with qualitative research.

Future world potential as a tool to validate values of new ideas.

Having a range of expertise available enhances development of user testing strategy.

11 Utilise a team of observers to take notes and offer constructive criticism of session facilitators to allow constant improvement. Reflect as a full team on the key themes and ascertain commonalities between different concepts.

12 Create a format / template for quick documentation and analysis of user testing. Allow time for full team evaluation and reflect as a team on what aspects of user testing worked and what didn’t, to share learning and embed knowledge.

Utilise the final user testing room during pilot session to test quality of audio, video and other devices needed for documentation.

Have a reflection session including everyone who has been involved in the project, consider what worked, what didn’t work, what could be improved.

Recommendations act as design directions for future work by the RBS design team, constantly refer to and update them to implement within project work or for further exploration.

Reflect on whether outcomes have met expectations and what different team members learned during the project. Have one more touchpoint after the project to reflect on how the insights, recommendations and directions are utilised within the project work.

One world including overlapping domain insights generates unified vision for design team. Embed more making, visual and tangible methods into RBS process. Utilise STEP card categories in future world, this generates a red thread from initial research to final vision. Base future world on both ethnographic and desk research insights so that the final vision is credible and validated.

SYNTHESIS & PLANNING

ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

CONCEPTING WORKSHOP

USER TESTING

CONCEPT GENERATION

Utilise insight cards as a communication tool to facilitate comprehension with RBS design teams and other business teams.

INSIGHT ANALYSIS

DELIVER

Delivery

Presentations Whilst Eloise represented our team in the crafting of the PPP, I made our domainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s executives and design team presentations and the future users and world presentation. For our domain presentations I created illustrations in the style of the project to add a playful element to it, since a large part of the outcomes were verbal recommendations. The presentation to the executives was only 8 minutes and therefore had to remain high level in content. This was particularly to convey the value of design, with the intention of promoting its use within RBS as an organisation. Therefore, I decided to focus on communicating the attitudinal shift in millennials becoming more ethical and aware, and selected the insight Wider Impact since it was the most macro level insight generated in the project. I wanted to push the RBS executives to reflect on how a more localbased organisational business structure would impact their brand relationship with their future customers. I also wanted to communicate the value that design can have in moulding brand culture and the ability to steer it in new directions.

Above: table of Safe & Secure artefacts set up for the presentation.

Final presentation

Top: Rebekka introduces us to the rest of her design team, for many of whom it was our first meeting.

Bottom: Eloise presents the Project Process Poster with Josi on behalf of the GSA design team

Delivery

Personal reflection: User testing It was surprising and heartening to hear one of the execs react so warmly to our proposals for RBS to become a more community oriented bank, like Sparkasse in Germany. They stated that this direction is similar to what they have been thinking, and therefore it felt reassuring to know that the direction we decided to take our project was validated in its relevance to RBS. It felt like a risk, because I felt like this was our most controversial recommendation - since it challenged the organisational structure of RBS, by rethinking the way they organise projects and market themselves.

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Bottom: one of the RBS executives listening to our presentation.

I enjoyed making the illustrations for the presentation, and felt that it helped create a sense of warmth and character that we were trying to suggest with some of our recommendations. Especially since I was concerned that the presentation might be too text-heavy on a topic that could be perceived as being quite dense - security. A risk that did not pay off was the structure of the presentation. I decided to structure the presentation in the individual recommendations, building up to each one with the research and insights that supported it. I structured it like this because I wanted the insights and research techniques to be directly linked to the recommendations. However, for a verbal pitch presentation, it was perhaps a bit lengthy and repetitive. In future I would stick to a more chronological approach, taking the viewer through Simon Sinek’s ‘Why How What’ technique (as described in his book Start With Why). Another challenging aspect of the presentation was a conflict with the New Values team. When selecting the recommendation to present to the executives, I felt a conflict since the recommendation I selected was encroaching on their domain of values. I spoke to New Values to try and solve this, discussing the communication of it so that our recommendations focuses on different aspects. Indeed, I feel like this overlap of themes happened regularly throughout the project between the all domain groups - especially with New Values being quite a general and abstract theme that could be applicable to all the other domains. This is not a criticism of the New Values team themselves, but a suggestion that the themes selected for the project should be different enough that they don’t overlap too much (some overlap is inevitable).

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Reflection

Project reflection Since the beginning of this project and now, I feel that I have progressed my professional practice in regards to group work, my perspective on ethics towards companies, and developing a design process that reflects my skills and interests. Group work It was challenging to work as a team of 12 designers, however it was equally rewarding to grow together and learn how to make it work. In the beginning I feel that we definitely wasted a lot of whole-team time. However, we quickly realised that 1 hour of a team meeting wasted was equivalent to 12 hours wasted! I found that setting agendas at the beginning of meetings of what we want to achieve was effective in maintaining focus. Also it was apparent that I did not always need to be 100% actively involved or present for a group discussion, due to a built up level of trust in my team mates that they would come to a good decision that was representative of us all. By taking it in turns to be active in the discussion or trusting in others, it kept the complexity of a team discussion down resulting in faster decisions. In the end, we were making decisions quickly, using time effectively to get a lot of work done, and learning how to keep disagreements to a minimum - which was certainly good for morale! In terms of working in our domain team, I feel like we achieved great work flow and

got to learn each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strengths and weaknesses to compliment each other. I have gotten to know myself better as what it means to be a team member, identifying my own role as someone who loves the high level thinking, and occasionally needs challenged to bring it to a granular level of fidelity. This project offered an opportunity to learn from my team mates and from the project structure as a whole how to better switch between macro and micro levels of fidelity. A collaboration method that paid off especially well on this project was carrying out a task intensely as a domain group in a tandem - be that a piece of desk research or concept ideation. As described in the Desk Research chapter, by understanding that collaboration donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mean working together 100% of the time, but instead switching between individual and sharing back as a domain group in bursts. Facilitating change Initially, I disliked the notion of doing a project for a banking client as I felt that this clashed with my ethics. What has been rewarding for me has been a shift

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Project Reflection

in perspective in terms of what my role might be in working with such companies or industries. From this project I learned that the best way to bring about the change you want to see is to actively take part in that which you are critical of. Large corporations are large and have developed a culture over time due to the very nature of the industry they are a part of. Due to their size and complexity, they can often take longer to adapt to a shift in values - especially if such values are nascent and yet to come into bloom. This is why working with such companies is invaluable to understand how cultural values and economies are changing, and sharing this in a way that is accessible and actionable for their future direction. The positive merits of large companies is that they already have influence, and therefore huge potentiality to bring about a future that conducive to social equality, and economic and environmental stability. It was not in the initial brief to explore some of the topic that ended up forming the core of our deliverables, however I feel it is up to us to push the confines of the brief, and apply our own perspective to it. In the end, this is why companies hire new talent or approach external design consultancies - for fresh ways of thinking. Dan Hill’s thinking on the possible strategic nature of design projects has been particularly inspirational and confidence building in challenging the scope of a client’s brief. In this project we did this by broadening the definition of what it means to be safe and secure to include role of the bank in facilitating a stable economy. I felt this was important because in the eyes of the customer “all banks are the same” so the bank that takes measures to engage in responsible banking to stabilise the econo-

my will attract customers because they no longer need to compete in the red ocean of incremental improvements in services, because the driving factor behind every action, service or product should be towards facilitating this stable economy on the local and national level. My role as a designer As touched upon above in regards to facilitating change, I am especially interested in understanding how I might play a role in tackling systemic problems and design futurism. This project was a great opportunity to explore how design futurism has a practical place in professional practice. I have long felt unclear how design futurism can move beyond the much-hyped speculative design, to be of use and relevance and interest to non-designers - thus the people who are in a position to enact change. My criticisms of speculative design are that I feel it is not well grounded enough in solid user-centred research, resulting in fanciful visions of the future that do not feel relatable or actionable. Business and political leaders carry huge responsibility, and to speak their language means backing up design work with thorough research that is well communicated. The real world is more complex than the speculative, and therefore needs this pragmatism to tackle these systemic problems. During this project, I particularly enjoyed the future world building stage as a means of exploring how this works in professional client work. The exploration has provided a foundation of experience that I intend to build upon in my future work on further integrating futurism into my design practice.

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