Usability Test Based on Co-creation in Service Design

Abstract

Service design often solves complex system problems. The diversity of users’ requirements and uncertainty of “interaction” in the service delivery process lead to the uncertainty of service usability. The focus of usability in service on design and test can avoid or minimize the uncertainty of service experience to the maximum extent. The concept and mechanism of “Service Co-creation” in this paper plays an important role in this process, including co-design in service planning activities and value co-creation in the process of service delivery. At the same time, after considering the definition of service design, specificity of service and usability factors of interactive products comprehensively, service usability can be summarized as 8 elements in the paper, including adaptability, standardization, flexibility, learnability, memorability, fault tolerance, efficiency and satisfaction. And then take the “Hotel Family Services Design” project as an example, it carries out usability design and test involved people (stakeholders), events (processes) and objects (touchpoints) in the service system. On the one hand, “multi-role stakeholders” participating in the “co-design workshop” can identify the precise needs of users and develop useful and usable services with more pertinence in the service planning stage. On the other hand, different forms and approaches of “prototype test” (Discussion Prototype, Simulation Prototype) to verify the usability and experience of service systems and processes in the service development and delivery phase help service designers and providers ultimately achieve their goals to improve service usefulness, usability and attraction through service iteration.

1 Introduction

With the coming of service and experience economy era, the focus of design shifts from “objects” to “behaviors” and then to “experience” [1]. Systems, services and experience have become the essential aim and value measurement criteria of design innovation activities. The usability design in service is a “stakeholder-oriented” systematic design to meet the need of service receivers and providers, to conform to their behavioral habits and perceptions, and simultaneously to fulfil service production and consumption efficiently and pleasantly.

Service design often solves complex system problems. Complex systems inevitably involve “multi-role stakeholders” and various needs of users. Meanwhile there are many factors that influence the service experience, from macro to micro, including environmental factors when service occurs, personal factors of the participants (service providers and receivers) in service touch and the interaction between them [2]. The diversity of the first and second one leads to the uncertainty of “interaction” in the service delivery process, so the service usability is also uncertain. The focus of usability in service on design and test can avoid or minimize the uncertainty of service experience. And “co-creation” plays a very important role in this process, which includes co-design in service planning activities and value co-creation in the service delivery process. The integrated concept of “Service Co-creation” is proposed in this paper, taking the “Hotel Family Service Design” as an example, separately carrying out usability test based on personnel for service planning and service delivery in the two phases of “Co-Design Workshop” and “Prototype Test”.

2 Service Co-creation and Service Usability

2.1 Service Co-creation

The concept of co-creation originates from the value co-creation theory in the field of service marketing and service management, and has been discussed for some time as well as forms a more mature theory system. In recent years, the field of design has concentrated on co-innovation, especially in the field of service design, where “co-design” is one of the basic principles and important methods of service innovation [3, 4]. Therefore, looking through the whole process of service planning, production and consumption, service co-creation can be discussed from two perspectives.

On the one hand, co-creation in most contexts, is also known as co-design and participatory design, that is, in order to achieve a design goal, two or more design subjects (or experts) respectively achieve this design goal with different design tasks together by means of certain information exchange and mutual cooperation mechanism [5]. As a matter of fact, co-design model is the process of information sharing and collaborative decision-making in phases, which is the process of an open and distributed innovation. Collaboration is sharing; synergy is support and coordination is mechanism. The emerging social innovation design [6] in recent years also extraordinarily concerns and emphasizes “co-innovation”, “co-creation” and “co-design”, according to the method, which can be summarized as “professional designer oriented, social organization supportive and public or individual spending their or his own spare time and ideas to make a difference with the purpose of ameliorating the problems that cannot be solved from top to bottom” [7]. Participatory design and social innovation design are “co-design” with the characteristics of “new era”, which are all “bottom-up” designs. Co-design is not a simple design method, but a design concept, process, composition and organization mode.

On the other hand, from the perspective of service, co-creation is to describe the characteristics of services, that is, service providers and customers create value together. Without the resources provided by customers, services cannot be carried out [8]. According to the theory of value co-creation, producers are no longer the only value creators and consumers are no longer pure value consumers, but value co-creators interacting with producers. There are two branches of value co-creation theory: One is based on the value co-creation of consumer experience, emphasizing that co-creating consumer experience is the core of value co-creation between consumers and enterprises and the interaction between members of value network is the basic form to realize value co-creation [9, 10]. The other is on the basis of value-creation theory that service dominates logic, highlighting that the process of value co-creation occurs when consumers use, consume products or services and is the sum of the value created by producers and consumers [11, 12]. The co-creation of service value happens in the process of service delivery and service touch.

Therefore, service co-creation should contain two levels of meaning: one is the co-design of service system, that is, the co-creation in the process of service planning; the other is the co-creation of service value, that is, the co-creation in the process of service delivery (production and consumption). Both co-design and value co-creation need the common involvement of multi-role stakeholders. The overall concept of organic integration and combination between them in the context of service innovation and experience is the real “Service Co-creation” (see Fig. 1). In simple terms, service co-creation occurs among stakeholders; it happens in service planning (design); it comes up in service delivering (touch).

Fig. 1.

Definition and framework of Service Co-creation.

2.2 Usability of Service

Birgit Mager, president of the Service Design Network, points out that from the perspective of customers, service design is dedicated to making service interface more useful, usable, and needed. From the perspective of service providers, service design is to make service that they provide more effective, efficient and distinctive [13]. Utility and effectiveness are the foundations of usability and efficiency, being needed and distinctive is the aim of design.

Service usability is a concept used to describe the extent of if services are available. Usability has been studied for many years in the field of interactive design. Usability expert Nielsen believes that usability covers elements such as learnability, memorability, faults’ frequency, severity, efficiency and satisfaction [14]. The standard of ISO FDIS 9241211 (Guidance on Usability, 1997) proposes that usability refers to the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction of an interaction process when a user uses a product to complete a specific mission in a particular environment. Hartson pointed out that product usability has two implications: usefulness and usability [15]. It can be found that the description of usability factors and meaning becomes more and more general. But in the process of actual operation, the comparatively refined elements proposed by Nielsen are most commonly used because of its better operability. The above concepts are mainly used to describe the usability of products, especially interactive products. There are some differences between services and products, so the description of service usability should have some special attributes of service. Compared with products, services have the following characteristics:

• (a) Unstable Quality. The process of service involves materials and personnel of service providers, which are non-standardized, especially personnel. Even the same personnel cannot guarantee the same service per unit time. So, usability will be affected to some extent. How to reduce this impact is what needs to be considered in the design, that is, try to ensure that the interaction process between customers and service providers is relatively standard.

• (b) External Influence Factors. Uncontrollable external factors such as temperature, weather and signals may affect the process of service, which leads to unavailable service.

• (c) Differences of Customer Resources [16]. Service is the process that service providers act on customer resources. Therefore, differences of customer resources have a significant effect on service efficiency, such as customers’ perception, expression, skills and emotions. Take the differences of customer resources into account, prepare a reasonable plan and react flexibly, which will contribute to improving service efficiency.

• (d) Customer Intensity [16]. During peak service time, the customer intensity is high, the pressure of service personnel is relatively high, and the rate of faults may increase, the satisfaction of customers may decrease or customers may be lost due to the slow speed of reaction. Therefore, measures should be taken to reduce customer intensity during the peak time in the design, like bringing forward or postponing some service steps.

Consequently, after considering the definition of service design, specificity of service and usability factors of interactive products comprehensively, service usability can be summarized as eight elements:

• (a) Adaptability. When external factors change, service is less influenced. Is the service susceptible to uncontrollable factors such as weather and temperature?

• (b) Standardization. Does service process, tangible display and so on have a fairly high degree of standardization? Can materials keep a stable condition for a certain period of time? Is there a relatively low requirement for the comprehensive capability and resilience of the staff?

• (c) Flexibility. Does service has different response scripts for customers with great difference in resources? Is a plan prepared to raise efficiency for peak time?

• (d) Learnability. Does the user (both service receivers and service providers, the same hereinafter) need to learn the steps of service? Is it easy to learn? Does it require users to have relevant knowledge reserve?

• (e) Memorability. Does the user need to memorize the steps? Do they know what to do after completing one step? Do they still remember the steps/procedures of service after a period?

• (f) Fault Tolerance. Can the user continue when a selection/operation/expression error occurs during the service? Is it easy to correct? Is it possible to have irreparable results?

• (g) Efficiency. The efficiency that users complete the steps of service.

• (h) Satisfaction. Users is satisfied subjectively in the process of service (with products, personnel, process, themselves, etc.).

3 Service Usability Test Scheme Design Based on Co-creation

The procedure of universal service design is the “Double Diamond Model” provided by the UK Design Council, including four stages: discover, define, develop and deliver [17]. It specifically contains steps such as competitive products analysis, user position, service value proposition, service system map, customer journey map, touchpoint innovative design, service blueprint, prototype test and so on.

According to the theory of service co-creation, innovative service content is based on the joint participation and co-design of multi-role stakeholders. At the same time, the realization of the innovative service system value requires the participation and delivery of all stakeholders (that is, production and consumption of service). Therefore, there is an inseparable relationship between co-creation and service usability design and test. The usability test scheme for service (design) also needs to be designed and generally consists of three steps:

• (a) In the phase of exploration and definition, enhance the usability of service planning concept through co-design workshop;

• (b) In the phase of development, testing the usability of the specific service design scheme by discussion prototype, making test lists, building test prototypes and arranging staff are basic steps;

• (c) In the phase of delivery, carry out service prototype tests multiple times, including participation prototype, simulation prototype and pilot prototype to obtain service effect and quality feedback through observation records, interviews, questionnaires and enhance service usability via service iteration.

3.1 Co-design Workshop

“User-centered” and “co-design” are the basic principles of service design. However, the “users” in the service system design are not only receivers like consumers or customers, but also providers like staff or suppliers. Compared with traditional product design, service design requires more various stakeholders to participate in the early stage of research and planning. Co-design workshop is a common method used in the early stage of service planning. The pros and cons of co-creation results will have a crucial impact on subsequent service development and design. Thus, in this stage, the effectiveness and reliability of the co-design method also need to be improved through “design” to ensure that the co-creation results can be smoothly educed. The procedures in detail are as follows:

First, invite and select different types of co-creators based on co-creation theme. The first category is service receivers, that is, the target customers, consumers or users; the second category is service providers, including bosses, business or department managers and front-line service staff [18]. Both two types of co-creators belong to “primary stakeholders” that must be invited to co-design workshops. The third type of co-creators that can be invited are “secondary stakeholders”, such as government departments, industry associations, residents, media, etc. [19]. Whether they are invited or not depends on the needs of the co-creation theme. It should be noted that the selection of co-creators should cover factors like gender, age, occupation or position and industry. Because service design thinking and its methods are still relatively new and have a certain degree of professionalism. Co-design teams composed entirely of public (non-professional designers) may sometimes be at a loss faced with some service co-creation tools. As a result, in the co-design workshop with the aim of service innovation, there is a participant with certain specificity, that is, service designers. Most of them are arranged by the workshop organizer to each co-design team, mainly responsible for the interpretation of service design tools, the advancement of the co-creation process and ensuring that each participant can fully express their ideas, that is to say, service designers in the co-design workshop are the guider of co-creation procedure and method. Their existence greatly improves the efficiency and reliability of co-creation.

Second, these stakeholders are grouped according to different combinations of roles and co-design activities are carried out on the same theme with a unified procedure and method. Specifically, the co-creators discuss interactively about “a certain bad experience or experiences in the past” and “a certain experience in the ideal” under the guidance of service designers and “express” their own demands, ideas and creativity with the help of relevant tools for service design. There are many co-design tools that can be used, such as empathy maps, role-playing, personas, customer journey maps, brainstorming, affinity diagrams, LEGO serious play, etc. [3]. Which methods are specifically adopted, depending on the requirements of co-creation content and the individual factors like the educational background, occupation and personality of the involved co-creators. Workshop organizers should make prediction and choice of method after co-creator’s selection. Also, tools need to used flexibly during the course of the workshop and can be changed according to the situation if necessary.

3.2 Discussion Prototype and Service Prototype Test

After completing the major stages, such as “exploring and understanding the precise needs of users”, “defining users, service and products”, “designing service value, procedures and touchpoints”, the last step based on co-creation of service innovation, is a very important step, that is “experience prototype verification and service delivery”.

The objects of service design and co-creation are system, procedures, behaviors and corresponding experience. Hence, service experience prototype test cannot be separated from the construction of service scene or service situation. Situation construction in service design is a tool that used in the future service scenarios in visualized form. It simulates the future situation through a presupposed story, including service users, events, physical displays and the relationships of service providers, to show new service [19]. The purpose of constructing the situation is to provide a scenario for the situation experience, and methods and tools for the test of service co-creation. Through the creation and simulation of service scene, the designer is involved in attitude experience as a user, so as to better understand various service interfaces and touchpoints in the service process, discover service idea and verify whether the idea meets user’s needs or not.

According to the difference of the situation construction’s content, place, and participants, the experience prototypes are usually divided into four categories: semi-structured discussion with low cost (Discussion Prototype), participants’ walk-through (Participation prototype), a more refined simulation (Simulation Prototype), and a comprehensive pilot (Pilot prototype), the latter three are generally called service prototype [20]. Both discussion prototype and service prototype aim to simulate an overview of innovative products or service in a reasonable way and they are used for user experience and test as a way of situation construction. These four types of prototypes are set up for the advancement of service project. The service and service usability can be tested according to the requirements in different stages of the service design procedures with relevant prototype tools.

Discussion prototype defines user’s journey and demonstrates it by empathy, that is, sympathetic thinking and then defines the role and goal of participants, that is, prototype test script or list; situation construction requires the design of real prototypes or touchpoints, and the arrangement of extra tools and facilities; experience the service through role-playing in a real situation, in order to find the bottleneck in the implementation of the service and improve it in the subsequent design stage [19]. Therefore, discussion prototype test is a fictitious process of experience and an indispensable part and a key step to verify service usability in service design process.

The difference between discussion prototype and service prototype is that the former is mainly a method of service designer’s internal test, while the latter generally needs the participation of real users in real place. Discussion prototype test is relatively simple, generally used in the early stage of service co-creation, while service prototype test is complicated, which can usually be done in the later service co-creation process.

How to improve the reliability and persuasiveness of test results and make the test results have a rational meaning? A combination of observational records, interviews and questionnaires is needed. In addition to multi-role stakeholders, prototype test includes intangible service procedures and physical touchpoints such as places, facilities and service instructions. Specifically, the objects of observation are direct stakeholders, such as customers and staff, to record their specific behaviors of the whole participation process (before, during and after the service); the content of the interview is consistent with the observation, but it focuses more on the subjective feelings and experience of the individual as well as the objective and deep reasons behind. The questionnaire is a synthesis of the above contents and feelings. By quantifying the experience through the participants’ scores, superimposing and calculating the data of all participants (in the case of enough data), we can get the comprehensive evaluation of the “service prototype” usability by various stakeholders, including the specific service usability problems designed at different levels, and on this basis, improve the design and improve the service usability continuously.

4 Test Case: Usability Test of the Family Service Design for Hampton Hotel

4.1 Case Background

The hotel providing the service usability case study for this paper is located in Guanxin Town, at the foot of Xiqiao Mountain, Nanhai district, Foshan city, Guangdong province. As the core project of Lingnan Culture & Tourism RBD in Nanhai district, Guanxin Town’s development vision is to create an urban light holiday destination for middle and upper-class people, and integrate the new holiday lifestyle into the natural landscape of Xiqiao Mountain to form an elegant “neighborhood with light resort quality experience”. The hotel is subordinate to Hilton Group’s Hampton brand and it is a business hotel, but because of its location, according to the type of guests and the resources around the hotel, it is necessary to implant family service content and regional culture elements in the hotel’s original service system, and take this as the core to develop service innovation and design.

The entire service planning, design and delivery process of the Hampton’s family service design project and the usability test of the service process will be carried out around the concept of “co-creation” and the appropriate and necessary service design tools will be selected at each stage to advance the procedure of innovation. Because of the need to discuss “co-creation-based service usability test,” this article will simplify the specific design content, and focus on the “co-creation” process and “service usability” test.

4.2 Online Questionnaire Survey on the Hotel Family Service

In the online survey on the hotel’s family service, 395 valid feedback questionnaires are received, of whom 71.1% are mothers, 50.6% the post-80s generation, and 38.0% the post-70s, 49.4% of the respondents have experience of staying at family hotel, which is basically in line with the market big data and the project positioning of people. As for participant composition, one-child family accounts for 65.8% and two-child family 32.7%. The age in average is 0–3, 3–6, 6–9 and 9–12 years old on the distribution; 61.3% of the family is the family of three staying at the hotel. On the whole, the core elements of the family hotel in the minds of the user include the hotel’s own environment and theme features (69.4%), a variety of children’s entertainment facilities (68.6%), well-equipped children’s room supplies (61.3%), etc. Besides, the demand for characteristic children experience courses also accounts for 34.7%. Among these courses, the most popular projects include nature exploration (76.0%), culture and sports (55.4%), art education (49.4%) and science experiments (46.8%). Nearly 70% (68.4%) of the users accept the hotel’s childcare service; the time span that it is from one to three hours (56.0%) is suitable, and the most popular content (69.6%) covers comprehensive education and sports. The above data and conclusions provide a potent reference for user selection in the next co-design workshop.

4.3 The Specific Process of the Co-design Workshop

• (a) Selection of co-creators. The project team invite 15 stakeholders to participate in the co-design workshop, who are divided into three groups. Among them, there are 6 people in group A, including 3 parents in nuclear family (one father & two mothers), 2 hotel operators and 1 service designer; there are 5 people in group B, including 3 hotel operators (one of them is the president of the hotel), 2 service designers (one of them is an art design teacher, who can be assigned to the role of an art course teacher); there are 5 people in group C, including 2 parents in the nuclear family (one father & one mother) 2 hotel operators (one of them is the general manager of five-star hotel with years of management experience) and 1 service designer. The co-creator of group A and group C are almost the same, considering the combination of users, operators and service designers. The difference is that group C has a hotel executive. Group B is different, mainly composed of hotel operators, including an executive.

• (b) Workshop specific steps and output. Before the official start, there is an ice-breaking step (10 min). At first, the host introduces the co-creators to each other through some small games or self-introduction, including family and work background, and then briefly introduces the project that need co-design so that all stakeholders can participate in co-creation based on an initial understanding in the same context. The entire process of co-design is divided into three steps (see Fig. 2). Step one is customer journey map (20 min). Each co-creator writes some of the bad experiences (including behaviors, touchpoints, moods, and pain points) encountered throughout the whole process (including before, during, and after service) of staying at the hotel down on their own or with children on the sticky notes, share it with the team members and post the notes in the diagram. Step two is brainstorming (20 min). Through discussion, the team members select three typical, resonating, or most painful pain points from the previous step. Through brainstorming, analyze the pain points and discuss service innovation direction, attach interesting or meaningful “ideas” to the service creation deduction form and summarize the innovative value proposition. Step three is LEGO series play (20 min). Choose one or several solutions from the previous stage, use LEGO as a tool to tell a small story about family service and share the results.

  Fig. 2.

  

  Three steps of Co-design Workshop.

The specific co-creation results are as follows: Group A uses “story substitution & role-playing” as a breakthrough for family service, with the “task book” as the main line, and develops innovative ideas around game tools, children’s gifts, sense of ritual and family interaction; Group C emphasize the “South Lion IP”, and take this image in-depth into the hotel’s public areas and rooms to create a real sense of “South Lion Country”. It shows that the composition of the co-creators in the group A and C are similar and relatively comprehensive, and the derivative service creation solutions are also based on the perspective of users, grasping the needs of users, however, its implementation will face cost and management challenges in existing service. Group B’s co-creators are partial to operational management, and the results of co-creation are more concerned with the details of service, such as the concept of “heart-to-heart chamberlain” online and offline, for children, especially special children (allergies, vegetarians, patients etc.), offering more detailed service guideline including room supplies and food. The innovation of this part of service is optimized on the existing service, so the usability is better, but creativity and imagination are not enough.

• (c) The results of co-design workshop test. Through the comparison of co-creation results among groups in the workshop, we can find that there are significant differences between the results of different combinations of co-creators. The key factors include co-creator selection method, the formation and performance of the opinion leader in co-design team, the ability of service designer as the coordinator who controls the co-creation process. Therefore, before organizing a co-design workshop, the project manager, director or service designer needs to have sufficient thinking and discussion on user selection and grouping, and make relatively reasonable arrangements according to the needs of specific project.

From this case, the initial “co-design workshop” phase is mainly to complete the task of service planning, and there is no detailed content of service procedures. Some elements of service usability may not be reflected at this stage. However, due to the involvement of multi-role stakeholders, its usability will inevitably improve, such as service providers and customers’ awareness of their own resources, which will help them to judge the results. Therefore, each group has different considerations on adaptability, standardization and flexibility, thus leading to different directions of development. In general, due to the participation of multi-role stakeholders, service designers can accurately grasp the focus and feasibility of service innovation from multiple perspectives, thereby improving the usability of service design.

4.4 Hotel Family Service System Design

The design of service system involves a lot of contents. Take this project as an example, including the proposition of the value proposition of “a wonderful journey with Lion Sum”, the design of IP image of Lion Sum, the design of a series of family service processes from reservation, check-in, dining, entertainment to check-out, and the design of tangible touchpoints within the whole hotel, etc.

Through the “Service System Map” (see Fig. 3), the hotel’s family service system and how it works can basically be clarified and visualized. First of all, the core of the system is the family service in Hilton’s Hampton Hotel, that is, “what is”; secondly, the user is targeted at the nuclear family, including parents and children, that is, “for whom”; thirdly, the content of this system or service should include specific content or touchpoints in three sections of “food”, “accommodation” and “entertainment”, that is, “what is” or “what it has”, such as family dining area, children’s tableware, family room and children’s supplies, children’s picture books, lion park (outdoor playground), a series of experience courses, etc. Finally, which departments or suppliers need to support the realization of these services, that is, “how to do”, including manufacturers of children tableware and supplies, manufacturers of amusement facilities, software providers for online booking system, providers of experience courses, or full-time teachers. In general, the hotel family service is based on the story of Lion Sum, “learning skills from the master” and taking part in the “lion dance competition”, to enhance the “interaction” between parents and children through the form of “children picture books & task cards” around the “lion park” and various courses, to perfect the experience of staying and to achieve the goal of “education and fun”.

Fig. 3.

The family service system map of Hilton Hampton Hotel.

The design of different kind of touchpoints in the system is also very important. These touchpoints can be divided into three categories: The first category is digital touchpoints, such as the standardization of design for booking hotel and responding to mails, children’s picture books, etc. The second category is people’s touchpoints, including receptionists, room service staff, course teachers and supportive staff. The design content includes service operation procedure, quality standard, words, emergency mechanism, etc., presented by service manual. The third category is many tangible physical touchpoints, such as the lobby environment, room supplies, restaurants, amusement park and facilities, task cards, family courses and tool kits.

4.5 Discussion Prototype Test of the Hotel Family Services

• (a) Making a list for test. The list for test is usually made by the designer of service, including the aim, content, requirement of scenario, materials, arrangement of personnel and detailed procedures of test. The more detailed list is, the clearer guidance for testers is and the smoother test process is. For instance, this project’s list of discussion prototype test clearly points out that five scenarios and specific contents of this round of test. They are hotel reservation and family picture books (by email), the reception in the hotel lobby, lion head building course, lion head painting & decorating course, space and procedures of lion park (see Fig. 4).

  Fig. 4.

  

  Discussion prototype test list.

• (b) Building or making a model for test. First, build a 1:1 model of the scene, such as the living room, lobby, classroom, etc. and simulate the real environment as much as possible. Second, for discussion prototype, some service scenarios are too large or complex and it is difficult to construct and simulate as they are, like the lion park in this prototype test. Therefore, a scaled-down model (1:20) is built to test, and the whole service process is demonstrated by moving the scaled-down model in the scene and combining voiceover.

• (c) The arrangement of personnel during the test. The arrangement of personnel is an uncertain factor in the test. Discussion prototype test is design team’s internal test. Stakeholders in the service process are acted by service designers. Thus, the actor needs to simulate the real user’s thoughts, behaviors, words and so on by means of empathy and role-playing. There are certain requirements for the designer’s role-playing ability (especially deducing the psychology and behaviors of the role). In addition to the role-playing personnel, it is also necessary to arrange people to take photos, videos and records, so that after the test, there is evidence and material for further research and improvement.

• (d) Carrying out the prototype test. After completing previous preparation, the test can be carried out according to the established process of the list, as shown in Fig. 5.

  Fig. 5.

  

  Discussion prototype test of the hotel family services.

• (e) The results and optimization of discussion prototype test. In fact, more or less problems will be found during the above five stages of test. For example, the procedure of check-in is not simple and convenient enough; the procedure for distributing task cards is not reasonable; the rules of the game are not clear enough; the lion head building course is too difficult to inspire the enthusiasm of children; the tools to paint and decorate the lion head is not ideal; the discrepancy between the overall shape of the lion head and the original version is quite evident, and so on. Almost all of these problems arise in the course of test during the co-creation process of service delivery between service providers and receivers and it is quite difficult to find these problems in service system map, the customer journey map and the service blueprint. This is exactly the main reason why service design pays much attention to scenario construction and prototype test.

In the process of discussion prototype, there are enough details about service to specifically examine the factors that affect service usability. This case reflects some problems exist in the aspects of learnability, memorability, efficiency, standardization, satisfaction, etc. And hence the design team mainly optimizes the design of material package, toolkit and instructions for the test results of the above discussion prototype (see Figs. 6 and 7).

Fig. 6.

Optimized manual of lion head building.

Fig. 7.

Optimized manual of lion head painting & decorating.

4.6 Simulation Prototype Test of the Hotel Family Services

According to the content and progress of the project, we carry out simulation prototype test for scene 3 (lion head building course, hereinafter called course 1) and scene 4 (lion head painting & decorating course, hereinafter called course 2) in the test mentioned earlier.

• (a) Recruitment, training and interview of teachers for the course. According to the principle of authenticity in simulation prototype test, the design team recruits an art graduate of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts who has experience in teaching children’s art courses (painting, handcrafting), but hasn’t taken part in family courses that parents and children attend together. The service designer first trains her on the course being tested, including the content of course, procedures and tools. And then interviews her about the results of training. The main content is shown in Table 1.

  Table 1. The record of interview after the teacher of course being trained

According to the training effect and interview content, the design team has obtained the following enlightenment: It is very important to recruit a teacher of course with relevant experience in family course and art or design professional background, which helps to accurately understand, grasp and convey the content of course; the more detailed the manual is, the better it is; from the perspective of the teacher, the course is a little bit difficult; using some props can activate the classroom atmosphere.

• (b) Inviting real users to test on the real site. According to the design of course, we invite four groups of real family users to experience the parent-child course. One of them is a family of four (two children, the brother is younger than the sister) and the others are families with three members. Among the five kids, there are two boys and three girls. The oldest is 7.5 years old, in the second grade of primary school; the youngest is 4 years old, in the middle class of kindergarten; the others are 6.5–7 years old, in first grade of primary school. The mothers of these four families are researchers or administrative staff of Guangdong Museum, while the fathers are from technology companies, universities and news agencies. This type of family activity between colleagues or friends is a common phenomenon in cities of China.

As for the site, the location of course in the plan is the semi-outdoor space (with sunshades) on the eighth floor of the hotel, but on test day, because of the low temperature (7 ℃), the course is transferred to a conference room of the hotel temporarily, which inspires the design team that the weather factor (especially in Guangdong, where it is hot and rainy in summer and wet and cold in winter) is an unpredictable and uncontrollable factor in the process of service delivery, which will have a great impact on service operation. The existing course design is extremely unreasonable to carry out in a semi-outdoor space.

• (c) Making relevant observation records during the test. During the test, in addition to taking videos and photos (as Fig. 8 shows), there is someone (service designer) in charge of observation and recording in details throughout the process. The content includes what the observer sees and hear–the words and deeds of the teacher, service personnel, children and parents and the solution from the perspective of service design (see Fig. 9).

  Fig. 8.

  

  Simulation prototype test of the family courses.

  Fig. 9.

  

  Observation and record of the courses.

From the overall effect of the course, it is smooth, active and joyful; as for the final handworks, they are beyond expectations. On the one hand, almost all families can do their work quite well, even to the youngest child. Of course, we have to give credit to the assistance of parents. On the other hand, some handworks are beyond the imagination of the teacher and the team of project. Users do not completely follow the manual and the guidance of teacher to create, but to add their own ideas, which makes works more stunning and outstanding. It is exactly the value of service co-creation and service uncertainty.

• (d) Interviews and questionnaires for users after the test. Interviews with children and parents after the course are the most direct feedback on the effectiveness of the course. Interviews (see Table 2) and questionnaires (see Fig. 10 and Table 3) focus on the difficulty, steps, tools, children’s interests, satisfaction and other indicators that are closely related to service usability. It should be pointed out here that interviews with children are a little bit difficult. First, they don’t always answer every question; second, their answers may be self-contradictory. But the interview is still able to judge intuitively the children’s feelings about the course as a whole.

  Table 2. Making a record of interviews with children after the course

  Fig. 10.

  

  The questionnaires filled by parents after the courses.

  Table 3. Doing a parent questionnaire survey after the course

• (e) The results of simulation prototype test and advice for subsequent optimizing. Throughout the teacher training and interview before the course, the observation record in the course and the interview and questionnaire after the course, most of the feedback from the users is consistent. In general, the test results and subsequent optimizing advice are as follows:

Poor adaptability. The planned site is particularly vulnerable to weather conditions, which leads to the unavailable service. It is suggested that the permanent site of the course be changed to indoors.

High degree of standardization. Although the course design has certain requirements for teachers’ ability to respond and communicate, the method of teaching the course can be mastered via simple training and all steps are basically controllable on time and effect.

High flexibility. In this case, the customer resources that have a great impact on the results are parents and children’s handicraft skills and ability to understand. In the end, regardless of competence, they all finish the work with satisfaction.

Low index of learnability. According to children’s general feedback, it’s difficult. Considering it is family service, the degree of difficulty can be decreased by cooperation with parents, or the age of children moving up to 9–12 years old.

High efficiency. All users can complete all the steps within time. Even though some children or parents fail to keep up in some steps, they can complete it on their own according to the manual.

High memorability. Basically, there is no need to remember, and in each step, staff or instructions will offer guidance.

Good fault tolerance. The teacher makes a mistake when teaching step 2. Two wires are mistaken, but the work is still completed smoothly. Except that, all children show that no wrong operation occurs and the work is finished well.

High satisfaction. The whole process is relaxed. Despite some difficulties, children and parents are satisfied with the final work and have a high evaluation of the course.

It can be seen that the optimizing suggestions at this stage mainly focus on the course’s objects, place, time control, service quality, etc., and there is no major adjustment in the core content of the course, such as course’s content, procedure and tools. That is to say, the design of the whole system has a good performance at all levels of usability, which confirms that the co-design workshop in the early stage of service planning correctly guides service usability design and the necessity of discussion prototype test in the phase of service design.

5 Conclusion

“Multi-role stakeholders” are the most uncertain factors in service design activities and service delivery process, both in the phase of co-design and process of service contact, but this uncertainty is not completely uncontrollable and unchangeable. Start from two important stages of service co-creation and carry out usability test involved people (stakeholders), events (processes) and objects (touchpoints). On the one hand, “multi-role stakeholders” participating in the “co-design workshop” can identify the precise needs of users and develop useful and usable services with more pertinence in the service planning stage. On the other hand, different forms and approaches of “prototype test” to verify the usability and experience of service systems and procedures in the service development and delivery phase help service designers and providers ultimately achieve their goals to improve service usefulness, usability and attraction.

Finally, it should be pointed out that the process of usability test is dynamic, reciprocating and it can and must be tested multiple times according to the project’s advancement and needs. Each test of discussion prototype or service prototype is a good chance to improve and optimize service procedures and touchpoints. By comprehensively comparing the results of different test methods and testing multiple times with the addition to service iteration, service usability can be effectively verified and improved before carrying out the service. Besides, even though the service is already carried out, the production and consumption of each service can still be regarded as a prototype (pilot prototype) test to collect, to organize and to comprehensively analyze more users’ needs, which can provide the most reliable evidence for a new round of service iteration.