Design Sprint for Urban Innovation

Today, the 75% of the developed countries' economy is in the service sector. Services are made by interactions between people and are influenced by their motivations and behaviours. Understanding people and, at the same time, being able to design processes with their contribution, is the essence of any product/service at any level.

Service Design is an interdisciplinary approach that combines methods and tools from different branches of knowledge to design complex experiences that take place in space and time. In terms of complexity, providing digital services or implementing urban transformations is not so different. Both processes, in fact, have to be cost-effective, value-based and people-centered. Moreover, the difference between the space and the interfaces, physical or virtual, through which users get in touch with it is becoming incredibly thinner. The so-called touchpoints are increasingly complex and more and more integrated into the environment to ensure a consistent and profound user experience.

Urban policies, urban design and service design are therefore playing the same game: guiding the citizen/consumer into the daily life experience, trying to influence his/her behaviour in order to achieve more ambitious results.

In the last few years, we developed our own human-centered & environment-focused methodology, that allowed us to extend the service design approach to the implementation of complex urban policies. In PUSH we design solutions with the ambitious goal of making more livable cities and happier citizens. To do this we start with people, trying to cope with their needs but at the same time proposing collaborative action and decision-making forms in order to generate value and increase the territory potential.

Design Sprint for Urban & Social Innovation is quick workshop on designing innovative high-value services. Starting from real case studies, we will present the methodology and tools of service design to apply them concretely.