Service Design (MA)
Nayoon Lucia Lee
Hi, I'm a service designer from mostly from Seoul, South Korea. I say mostly because I spent a chunk of my youth in the states and am influenced greatly by that experience. I have a background in industrial design from the number one arts and design school in Korea, Hongik University, and have worked as a product designer in a startup company before coming to the RCA to study service design. I have recently started a blog called Future Scoping, where I write book reviews or short snippets of all things related to thinking about the future, as well as introductions to relevant projects I have done.
Contact
https://calendly.com/lucia-lee-meta
https://www.thefuturescoping.com
https://www.rcaservicedesign.com/projects/meta
I'm currently back in Korea for now, but I have been succesfully working virtually with co-creators and colleagues, both in London and China. We found a way to make it work, like everyone has been forced to. Although I do have a soft spot for London, I am open to opportunities anywhere in the world once the whole coronavirus situation has died down.
Meta introduction — How might we create a methodology that uses storytelling through metaphors and speculative design in a business context to help engage employees in large organisational decisions like creation of company strategy, vision, organisational changes, etc?
Engaging employees of all sectors and levels for future thinking — Meta is a methodology that uses the power of storytelling, speculative thinking, and metaphors to enable employees to participate in extremely divergent conversations and to come up with new and creative ideas for organisations to prepare themselves for future challenges. Through carefully designed workshops for the virtual space, we help participants broaden their perspective of the current scenario, and understand and discuss the current and upcoming changes in the organisation. They then agree upon aspects or values for the company vision, or the ‘preferable future’, where the goal is to come up with either implementable ideas and/or create a roadmap for change from immediate to more long-term actions in order to achieve the preferable future in x amount of years.
For organisations of all sizes, various purposes — Through the Meta experience, individuals in large organisations can feel heard and valued by the company, enhancing engagement and motivation from them during organisational changes. On the organisational level, Meta helps rethink or reframe the company vision as well as build an actionable strategy to achieve it. The workshops can be iterated multiple times for maximum participation, as well as be adopted for different purposes like regular catch ups for the leadership team, off-site team building exercises, or yes, we’ve even heard of it being like therapy sessions for employees. As for small or medium-sized companies, Meta will allow the company to clearly set a shared future vision and action strategy that is easily communicated to everyone involved. It is especially useful for those small, fast growing companies who have many newcomers and can iterate the experience as employee bonding exercises.
Why now, and why Meta? — The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing companies to be resilient about the way they work, reform how the company is structured, all the way to reimagining what their goal or purpose is (just like it forced us to be resilient and flexible in the way we do our workshops). These are huge, complex issues and the conventional, top-down approach won’t suffice. Instead, Meta engages various individuals in the organisation, asking them for their input and their stories, and taking a bottom-up approach. It uses stories and metaphors to communicate and deliver messages. Because humans are story-driven, we can help create change that resonates with people, leading to a long-lasting change. Furthermore, by helping organisations think about the various possibilities in the future, we are helping them be more proactive about their future, rather than being reactive.
If you want the experience first-hand... — There are two possible ways clients can access META. The first is to purchase our digital toolkit complete with an instructions manual and relevant resources to facilitate the META workshops themselves. This can be found on META’s official website, www.metaworkshops.com. The second is to hire us to facilitate and co-create with them. We help clients navigate through the metaphor with illustrations and animation clips, create a story that works with their company, and find those key service design opportunities that they can act upon today to achieve the preferable future they set during the workshops. When clients hire us for the META experience, they will be delivered a physical (and/or digital) book at the end of the experience, a visualisation of the conversations that took place during the workshops - captured in a compelling story that can be rotated internally, referred back to, and inspire. They will also have successfully agreed upon a preferable vision of the company that is more resonating and descriptive than a vague mission statement, as well as a strategy roadmap from immediate actions to long-term actions that will help them achieve their preferable future.
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March - May, 2020W&T, A consultancy company of 2030 (concept) — Organisational Structure of W&T, a consultancy company of 2030 (concept) In the future, individuals will have increasingly diverse expectations and career paths that can not be supported by the current business models / organisational system of consultancies. How might we design a consultancy company that does support these diverse individuals’ professional needs? W&T, a concept consultancy in 2030 has a different organisational structure than the conventional two-dimensional, linear structures of today. If we think the poles in the image above as different departments with different levels of seniority, people are not confined to their own departments, but are free to branch out of their expertise to learn from, interact with, and try out other department roles. When this is reflected in the company structure, it becomes a 3-dimensional structure like this. It is also organic- something that changes along with the changes of individuals inside the company.
W&T, design principles
TREASE, an internal information platform used by W&T — Trease is W&T’s internal platform available for all employees and management in the form of a forest as the company, departments as home ground, and trees as professional expertise or relevant soft skills. The video explains the different features of TREASE including company structure visualisation, profiles, communication, company dashboard, etc.