for all your building materials, timber and sheet

By jelmarvanvoorst April 10th, 2013

Designing the concept

Fun fun fun! We arrived in the phase that we’re giving form and colour to our insights. The most important insights that we received from the research:

– The users (craftsmen) are used to learn by doing

– Craftsmen are using smartphones and/or computer to search for more information

– There is a strong Mentor-Mentee and Peer-peer relationship

– The users don’t like to ask questions

– Craftsmen and STIHO employees share experiences and information by telling each other while visiting STIHO (feedback)

– There are no or less workshops given to STIHO employees since two years, the reason is lack of time and people

We are going to put our ideas in a new jacket and give it a skeleton and a look and feel. First we are creating a skeleton. This gives us a clear overview on what features should go where and what is the most usable form. It all started with making a new planning for the upcoming two weeks and assigning tasks and new roles within the project.

Aishwarya is going to focus on the technical features within our concept. She is currently joining a native app workshop where she gets more information on how to program apps. This is important for us to get more in depth on how apps work, what program languages are being used and how what skills you need to master to develop an app. Sabrina is going to focus on the information structure and architecture within our concept. How can we structure and store information that is being tranfsered? This is an important factor of the project because we are going to work with a lot of information and data. This data needs to be structured and easy to use. It is important that the end-user doesn’t drown in all the data that our concept offers. Linda en Jelmar are focussing on the interaction between the user and the system and on the look and feel of the concept. What features should go where and how should this look like?

An impression of Aishwarya’s enthousiasm:

Features

Before we could start working on the design of the concept we needed an overview of what information and features should be in the app. We created a flow chart which provided a detailed structure of the features. The next step was to create a functional concept and give a detailed description of each feature and how they relate with each other. We also looked at other case examples that use a similar system that our concept is using just to get more in depth of what is possible, what it looks like and how it works.

Paper Prototype

After we made the function concept we started creating a paper prototype. The paper prototype is a fast way to start experimenting with different forms and fuctions. It’s cheap, fast, functional and ofcourse fun to do.

The goal is to use this prototype to start doing user tests. What we would like to find out from our first user test is if the paper prototype fits the user needs. Is it a proper concept? Later on we are going to see if the usability of the prototype fits the user needs. Is there a correct flow within the system?

By jelmarvanvoorst March 25th, 2013

Good work pays off!

The past week seemed like a roller-coaster. One moment we were doing great and the next felt like a disaster. Last week we discovered new roads and by doing the workshop we decided to change the assignment a little.

Bruno was very enthusiastic about the three concepts that we presented. Along with Bruno we decided to focus on 1 of these concepts. We were very happy to obtain this feedback and it felt reassuring to know that we took the right route.

This week we will be focussing on developing the concept further and finishing it up. After that we will start with the design phase! Exciting!

By jelmarvanvoorst March 22nd, 2013

Get the concept engine running!

The past 2 weeks seem to have flown by as we were engrossed in creating our concepts.

The brainstorming workshop with Charlie Mulholland helped us gather our ideas and enter the concept phase. To aid our conceptualization we planned to have a co-creation workshop with our stakeholders. With Charlie’s help, Jelmar and Linda prepared for it.

We worked on creating concepts based on our research results from Friday and on Tuesday we peer-pitched 3 raw concepts so that we could get preliminary feedback from our colleagues and managers at the MediaLAB.
On Wednesday, 20th March, Jelmar and Linda visited the Weber company at Eindhoven to learn about how they impart their knowledge and to get insights for our concept.

On Thursday, 21st March, we conducted the co-creation workshop with two contractors, Jasper and Rik, two STIHO representatives, Andre and Dennis, and Andries from Makita, one of the supplier companies for STIHO. The meeting highlighted a few aspects about information received by the end users that we might have to focus on while incorporating into our final concept.

The workshop

Right from the beginning the meeting turned into a large discussion with all the stakeholders and gave us a refreshing view on the case. The relationship between supplier and end-user was different than expected which also gave the manager from Makita new insights. It appeared that Makita thought that they offered a very personal service to the end-user and that the end-user really appreciates this. In practice the end-user is only keen on getting information from the dealer, STIHO, whom they trust.

Another new insight is the fact that the contractors never supply detailed information about the case they are working on to the dealer or the supplier. They do not want to give away their financial and trade secrets to companies.

Consequently, we learnt that it was a logical to focus more on STIHO and less on the end-user for the whole project. We want to present STIHO as trustworthy, efficient and especially as an organisation were a lot of experienced specialists work in the field.

By jelmarvanvoorst March 12th, 2013

Starting with brainstorming & idea generation

Here is a little impression of our first selection of ideas we did generated by using different brainstorm methodes.

By jelmarvanvoorst March 11th, 2013

Finishing up the research

The main objective of this week was finishing up the research. We delivered the first version of the research document. A second thing we had to do was give two presentations. The first was for the other MediaLAB students and the second was for the assigner. We presented our methods and findings.

Research Document [08-03-13]: Final_Research_document

A total view of the whole process:

We had an appointment with Andries from Makita who is one of the suppliers for STIHO. And a second thing we did was driving with Andre, one of the sales representatives for STIHO. Sabrina drove to different work locations to speak with different contractors and gain more insights on their tasks and responsibilities.

Aishwarya clustering the insights

Also we designed some graphics for in the research document which makes our story more clear.

The outcome of our research was represented by different insights, personas, journey maps and a stakeholder & touchpoint map.

Journey Maps

Personas

Stakeholder & Touchpoint Map

The assigner Bruno Giebels was very pleased with the result we deliverd on friday. He loved the presentation and we had a good and useful discussion at the end which will help us in the concept phase.

Workshop
On wednesday we had an preparation workshop for the concept phase by Charlie Mulholland. We’ve mapped which different stakeholders are involved in our project and have taken a closer look at how they see the problem. This was done via different tools and methods. An important insight with regards to the stakeholders was that people who hire contractors and also foreign construction companies may be indirectly impacted by the outcome of our concept.

Upcoming
The upcoming two weeks will be devoted to developing three different concepts and will involve loads of brainstorming and idea generation.

By jelmarvanvoorst March 1st, 2013

Capturing the STIHO Service

Data gathering

Our work this week was predominantly gathering data. We had interviews with the STIHO employees at the bouwplein in Amstel. All these interviews were transcribed and are being carefully looked at. When interviewing the employees we also asked them to fill in their work routine on paper (see the picture below).

With this input we got a clearer perspective on what the tasks and responsibilities of the the employee are. Also we gained more knowledge about what kind of questions clients ask and how STIHO responds to them. We now have a lot of quotes, pictures and interesting stuff!

BeamLab

A second fun thing we did this week was visiting the BeamLab at Pakhuys de Zwijger in Amsterdam. More information can be found here: http://www.dezwijger.nl/page/68639/nl

A little impression:

Light piano

Also very important

Sabrina purchased a new love! Bought at the STIHO Bouwplein. You can see how happy she is.

Upcoming

In next week, we have a meeting with a contractor and a supplier, and we are going to visit construction sites at which STIHO is going to deliver supplies. When we combine all this data we are going to start forming insights, making personas and start working on the service map so we have a better overview of the whole process.

By jelmarvanvoorst February 22nd, 2013

What’s the plan?

We’ve set the ball rolling. At the start we visited the assigner, Bruno Giebels, innovation manager and our contact person at STIHO. This meeting answered a lot of question for us regarding the project. Who are the stakeholders? What is STIHO already doing with respect to the learning process? Who are the STIHO employees? Who are the clients?

After this meeting, we combined all this new data with our own experiences and thoughts, and formed a mindmap to get an overview of all the collected data.

In the next step, we converted this mindmap into a infographic which you can see below.

A third important accomplishment this week was the development of our research plan. This plan is divided into two sections, the gathering of data and then analysing all this data.

Data gathering consists of three parts:

– Observations

– Semi-structured Interviews

– Desk Research

Subsequently, we are going to process this data in the following sections:

– Customer Journey Map

– Stakeholder Map

– Touchpoint Map

The goal of this research is to create an overview of the whole process, to know who the stakeholders are, what their tasks and relationships are and consequently give our concept a form.

In the next week, we’re going to perform the research at the STIHO Bouwplein in Amsterdam and start gaining new insights for the concept phase.

To give an impression of our whole planning:

By jelmarvanvoorst February 14th, 2013

User Scene

The assignment received was to create a user scene of our user. In this video experts talk about their profession, education and specialties. It is important to keep in mind that this is just one group of the many stakeholders in the project.

We chose this form so that we could get a clear idea about who the users are and what the ‘STIHO Bouwmarkt’ exactly is.

By jelmarvanvoorst February 12th, 2013

Let’s get started!

We’re happy to announce we started this week with our kick-off of the project! Our team from left to right: Loes Bogers, project manager from the MediaLAB, Jelmar van Voorst, Sabrina Doornekamp, Linda Janssen, Aishwarya Babu (not in the picture). As you can see we’re all very excited to work on this project for the upcoming twenty weeks.

Our assigner: Stiho

Stiho is a supplier of construction, wood and plate materials. Customers of Stiho are construction companies active in building, renovation and the development of small new building projects. Stiho offers their customers delivery service. They can also collect their materials at one of the sixteen sales points in the Netherlands.

Together with the Giebels formula, supplier of hardware and tools, Stiho offers a complete range of products under one umbrella: the Stiho-building square.

The assignment:

Craftsmanship and knowledge about product and application modes are disappearing rapidly in the Dutch construction industry. Ageing is the main reason for this development. The loss of knowledge and skills is already causing problems in maintaining the quality of project in this industry. The question is how these skills and knowledge can be preserved and circulated to future generations through digital storytelling? The target group that Stiho wants to reach consists of construction companies active in building, renovation and the development of small new building projects.The media application that has to be developed must make this knowledge accessible to craftsmen at the ‘Stiho-building square’ (together with the Giebels formula) and at building locations.

CREATING TOMORROW