Global Service Jam London 2017
Team SIMZ
Team members:
Chevonne, Ipek, Sofia, Sergio, Matias
Theme of 2017
Day 1
Our group discussed what this theme meant to us: a breakdown in communication.
As we turned out to have very diverse cultural backgrounds, the focus was initially on:
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Bringing together culturally different people into a more unified society with better
understanding of each other
Different political affiliations and how to bring together opposing voices
Rebuilding communication through education
Using technology
Communication as a means of creating lasting empathy
Bringing strangers together (creating small talk)
How to make ‘small voices’, minorities, heard more clearly
Creating a better platform for feedback
Communication in long-distance relationships (family and loved ones)
Languages
Righting miscommunication
Using the 5 senses to improve communication, such as the evolution from simply
hearing, to hearing and seeing, discussing what the next step could be. What
difference would it make to not only hear and see, but to also touch, feel, smell
them
Children moving to different countries – how they can stay in touch with their
friends – a means to help younger people overcome cultural and ‘moving’ shock
After extensive discussions and sharing our personal experiences, we then began to narrow
it down by clustering the themes from our brainstorming post-its, which resulted in three
final ‘categories’ that we were interested in pursuing:
1. How can we create or increase the possibilities of engagement between strangers?
Potential things to consider would be the generation of more natural/holistic and
safe environment that can help initiate small talk and is applicable to any culture
2. Putting others into their comfort zone to establish an open and comfortable
conversation. This came from several personal experiences in the group when some
intense and difficult conversations could have gone better or been more effective if
both parties had felt that the environment was suitable for that mind-set. This topic
would involve using communication to create empathy.
3. How to create moments of intimacy with all kinds of long-distance relationships. This
was a topic more around creating a more immersive experience that would embrace
the 5 senses.
Day 2
Chevonne, Ipek and Sofia
Due to a mishap, our work from the first day was lost, as well as two of our team members,
but we still had our three final themes. The morning was about consolidating our problem
statement, who it impacts and why.
Through mutual consent, we chose to focus on communication of long-distance
relationships because we was able to really empathise with this situation due to one team
member living in London, but her family all live in Turkey; another team member has a
boyfriend in Arizona, her Mother lives in Russia and other family members in Germany. The
two team members who attended on Day 1, one was from Mexico, and the other from
Brazil. The fifth member, although lived in England, has family in Clacton and Ireland.
Overall it was evidently clear to all of us, this is a common problem in the majority of
families.
We captured all of our personal insights and thoughts about this topic:
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Who was this person in our lives: a parent, sibling, friend, partner
Emotionally, we missed creating fun memories, enjoying laughter and missing them
through nostalgia
Some things already worked well for us, such as sharing videos and photos, humour,
hearing their voice and seeing their facial expressions through todays technology
and physical items via post
Our challenges were predominantly around not being able to physically be with
them at special events, feeling close, needing a reason to call, battling time
differences, consoling intensified emotions, having to share bad news or good news
which would require extensive human interaction, providing and receiving comfort
and having to stare at your screen…
The tools and channels we used were mainly Facebook, Skype, Email, Voicemail,
Whatsapp, Messenger and Telephones
Based on our own experiences, we come up with the following problem statement:
HOW CAN WE MAKE COMMUNICATION EASIER AND MORE ‘NATURAL’ FOR PEOPLE
SEPARATED FROM THEIR LOVED ONES BY DISTANCE?
We made several initial assumptions:
 A home environment is conducive to a better quality conversation
 The core of communication lies in using all of our five sense
 Taking communication from 2D to 3D is the way forward
 Current communication methods offer an incomplete sense of our conversation
partner’s body language
 We want better ways to share our life experiences
To test these assumptions, we compiled as set of questions:
 Is there anyone who lives long distance in your life?
 Who is the most pertinent person in your life that you speak to in long distance?
 What do you miss the most about this person?
 Do you schedule your calls?
 Does this impact your daily routine?
 What ways do you communicate? What channels and tools do you currently use
 How do you celebrate special occasions?
 What does currently work well for you?
 What are your main challenges?
 If you had a magic wand, what would you like to have that would make your
communications of better quality and more meaningful?
We were given some tips on how to carry out user research:
 Get to the core of what the real issue is
 Speak to people, understand their circumstances, what they do and don’t do,
understand why
 When speaking to people, don’t use leading or biased questions or language
 Ask why, and why again, and why again
We interviewed 7 people, aged 23-39
Our key takeaways were:
 The majority used Whatsapp for daily communication, as it provided a platform for
easy, quick and regular communication
 The majority said their mother was their significant long-distance person
 List of tools: Whatsapp, Facetime, Skype,
 On special occasions, they would telephone and send post
 Several respondents said this situation wasn’t restricted to one person, as many
have relatives living abroad
 Even older people had learned to use at least one tech tool
 The majority said that they missed the ‘deep’ conversations
 The distance made them wonder a lot if a loved one, especially those who were
elderly
 Some included their parents in multiple Whatsapp groups to help them connect
further with friends and other relatives
 Sharing photos and videos on skype made our respondents more conscious of
looking for photo opportunities to share
 Whatsapp was the daily choice
 There was an equal balance of scheduled and spontaneous calls
 They wanted the ability to connect quickly and without having to have a season
 Tough: not being able to touch and kiss
 Ability to instantly connect without having to have a reason
 Not being able to have deep conversations
 Whatsapp is quick and
 Would like something that conveys more touch
Based on the insights we identified, we clustered the themes and came out with three key
ideas that we journey mapped:
1) Augmented Reality Communicator: An immersive audio-visual AR experience that
would allow two (or potentially more) people to communicate in an AR location of
their choice. Given that many respondents wished they could be back at home with
their friends and family, or create fun memories together. Ideas flowed between
creating and personalising a room together, this could be the home living room or
kitchen as it was found to be a place of comfort and to relax in whilst enjoying an indepth conversation. The alternatives were maybe a café in Paris, a picnic in the
Grand Canyon, drinks outside the Taj Mahal, a Museum tour or a Movie date to
watch a film together. These experiences will allow us to meet those we love, and
create memories together virtually. Yes, you will have to bring your own food and
drink, but as the environment is live, to allows for live interaction, small talk, indepth conversations, fun and laughter and its all in the privacy of your own chosen
location. You can create a Favourites list, so you don’t need to keep re-creating your
areas, and journey maps so you can see a timeline of events and memories. The app
would enable you to take photo’s, video clips, and leave little notes for next time you
come to visit! The challenge would be creating such an application, but we believe
the core benefits of this product would outshine and would make those feel closer.
We also felt this concept would be the most fun; so we wanted to go ahead with this
idea.
2) Communication Booths: In an attempt to reinvigorate and repurpose London’s red
phone booths which are going out of use, this was a thought for users who are on
the move, either for work or as tourists, and who need a private, sound-proof place
to have an audio-visual conversation with a loved one. The booth will have an
integrated screen and keypad so you can login to your account or register as a new
user. There will be the choice of Pay-As-You-Go, or an App account can be used that
has your personalise credit card details. This will allow you to use the booth if you
have forgotten your wallet, and your personalise PIN number can be used to access
your account. When an account has been created, you will have access to your list
of contacts and personal profile. The booth will be blacked out, so lightening will be
good enough for when using the equipment. The purpose of the blacked out booth
is to allow for Privacy. The challenge with this idea was that it is fairly similar with
some internet cafes or libraries, where you can get private zones/ areas. Therefore
we did not proceed any further with this idea.
3) Wearable Technology: to feel closer to your loved one, a variety of clothes wear
would be created, such as a jacket, gloves, scarf or even a blanket. The clothes
would need to be configured by the loved one so that it can be used by the other
person who is wanting to feel closer to them. For example the blanket would be
configured for child with the Mother reading a bedtime story or singing a lullaby.
Gloves would be configured with the motion of how your partner holds your hand.
The intimacy is to re-create how loved ones touch you personally. The challenge
with this would be getting the configuration set-up, and how well the product would
work when wearing it. Therefore we did not proceed any further with this idea.
Our VR goggle prototype where you would load your phone and use the App:
The next steps we created a Storyboard to help us visualise the scenario in which the
equipment would be used in:
We created the Customer Emotional Journey Map to help identify the high and low points
of needing the product:
To really show the product in use we decided to act out the scenario, to emphasize it’s
emotional requirement and the audience message portraying love, missing those we love
and the craving to feel closer to them.
To begin, we drew up the Scene storyboard for filming:
Then we acted out the scenario:
www.vimeo.com/204763590
Once all research was conducted and the insights of the potential customer was more
defined, we realised the problem had actually transitioned towards a more specific
requirement and was more aligned with the following:
HOW CAN WE CREATE NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS THAT BRING RELATIONSHIPS CLOSER AND
INCREASE THE LEVEL OF CONNECTIVITY WE CRAVE WHEN WE’RE NOT WITH THEM?
We also chose our App name “Jamming”; as the concept came from the Global Service Jam,
and it felt to us the meaning of bringing people together.
Further photos of the event: