I designed a service innovation for N Stuff music to grow their circle of potential customers by having a popup-style fundraiser event. The performers at the event would be students at N Stuff lesson house, providing them with a platform to showcase their talent and potentially get gigs of their own. This event will introduce N Stuff's services to new members of the community and generate goodwill for the N Stuff brand among this new audience. Incentives given on donating, like free lessons at N Stuff, will attract people to the store and potentially turn them into new customers of N Stuff Music.
N Stuff Music is a local Pittsburgh music store and lesson house. Although being renowned for its quality products and services among its customers, N Stuff faces a challenge in getting new customers for its business. N Stuff is renowned in the local Pittsburgh music community and has repeat customers that have had good experiences with their service. However, N Stuff has lately not been able to attract many new customers apart from the word-of-mouth advertising from their existing customers.
Being the lead service designer, I took charge of deciding which ideas added the most value to the user and the business. I was in charge of creating the various visual models our team employed to communicate how our solution created value for multiple stakeholders. I created storyboards for prototyping our solution, and also made the concept video for the pitch.
I scheduled internal team meetings and organized in-person client visits. I took charge of scoping the project according to available bandwidth and impending deadlines. I involved my team in brainstorming and ideation sessions, consolidated ideas, and divided work among my teammates. I made sure my teammates' needs were met and maintained an amicable work environment.
I took the initiative of educating my client and employees at N Stuff about the design process. I helped personnel at N Stuff understand concepts of service design and answer related questions in user research and testing sessions. I also took charge of developing the pitch for the idea which was presented to the client in person.
We visited the NStuff Music store in Blawnox, Pittsburgh and conducted 4 intercept interviews with customers at the store, students at the lesson house, and parents of the students in the waiting area. We employed a semi-structured interview format for other primary research activities.
The aim for creating a service blueprint was to have a bird eye's view of NStuff's current service ecosystem to be able to identify gaps and opportunities for innovation.
A public fundraising performance would benefit students and promote the business.
The students would get an opportunities for collaboration that would promote band culture at NStuff. Through the event, more people will get to know about NStuff and would potentially be converted to new customers for NStuff.
Natalie is a current student at Little Lesson House, which is NStuff's music school. She does not get enough avenues to showcase her learned skills and wants opportunities to collaborate with other students at NStuff.
Natalie is a able to collaborate with fellow students with the guidance of her music teachers.
Natalie feels confident in her musical skills after performing at the event. She also gets content to post on her social media. She feels empowered by being able to bring about change through her music and share it with people she cares about.
Alex is a high school student who loves listening to music and wants to play someday.
Alex encounters a musical performance while walking in the park and is attracted to it.
Alex learns about NStuff and their service offerings. He loves what they stand for and the good cause they are contributing to. He donates some of his pocket money and gets a free lesson coupon in return. He visits NStuff to try out their lessons, likes it, and gets enrolled in more.
We employed Storyboarding as our prototyping method to be able to visualize and subsequently, test out variations of our proposed service.
How the audience first learns about/ engages with the event.
Resources at the event that would make the audience stay/ engage longer.
Incentives given for the audience for donating to the good cause.
To evaluate the variations of our design, we employed a 7-point Likert Scale to gauge how likely would the audience be tending to attend the event if the said variation was in effect.
To test our prototype, we conducted Speed Dating sessions using our storyboards that were printed and collated so that the participant can peruse them easily. We let the participant read each storyboard and probed them to rate each scenario on the 7-point Likert scale.
We conducted a speed dating session with our client at the NStuff Music store. The aim was to gauge the practicality and feasibility of the design variations while paying attention to the needs of the business.
We also conducted speed dating sessions with participants that could be prospective audience members for the fundraiser event. They comprised of students and music enthusiasts. The aim was to gauge which design variations are preferred by the audience of the fundraiser event.
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A pop-up style fundraiser event organized outside of NStuff Music’s premises would help the business grow its customer base because...
The concept of the pop-up style fundraiser is based on idea that the event is scaled down and made into a "product" - that can be easily transported, is easy to setup and tear down, and hence is conveniently reproducible.
Thus, NStuff can organize multiple small pop-up events in various outdoor locations that would in turn attract diverse audiences in and around these different locations.
The poster visually depicts the customer journey throughout their engagement with the pop-up fundraiser event. The customer encounters the event, is attracted by the musical performances by NStuff's students, learns about NStuff, is inspired by NStuff's commitment to the good cause, donates and gets a-free-lesson coupon in return, and finally comes back to NStuff to redeem their coupon.
This funnel will bring in new audiences to the store and would provide diverse avenues for NStuff's publicity in the community.
Earlier, NStuff’s outreach was limited to the bubble who already know about NStuff through word of mouth. Through this new service, NStuff would be able to expand its outreach to new places where they set up the popup event - the people present at these public spaces become the audience for NStuff’s services.
Before, if students performed in the cafe, the audience was limited to the people who showed up physically to the event at the cafe. The new service exposes students at NStuff to new wider audiences, and through this exposure they can get more opportunities for growth, and potentially even their own gigs.
The different pop-up events generate funds for various NGOs working for different good causes and NStuff’s commitment to these good causes is translated to goodwill among new audiences for NStuff’s brand.
New audiences checkout NStuff’s services through incentives provided at the fundraiser events (such as a get a free lesson if you donate a certain amount). These audiences visit the NStuff store and/or website and get converted to new customers of NStuff's services.
