The MEF DSII Living Lab

The MEF LL approach strives for mutually beneficial outcomes based on the different project objectives. Overall, co-creation is understood as a form of 1) needs investigation and 2) as a tool to enhance productivity and stakeholder buy-in. MEF DSII LL’s focus is to have a physical location to invite other stakeholders and to support co-creation innovation. Co-creation activities are undertaken at the exploratory stage, where it is important to identify the needs and the “current state” of stakeholder interest as well as the operational background context. A preferred option to understand user needs is to prepare co-creation activities based on established definitions and understanding of the users and what they represent. This exercise translates into the definition of personas. These are fictional characters that represent specific types of customers. For instance, a persona could be “Marc – IT supplier.” Marc has a background in IT software development, has certain predefined personal and professional needs, he is introverted but has strong analytical skills. Persona examples are created based on preliminary investigation of the themes and common characteristics of the people that will take part of the co-creation sessions. This involves research to produce an overview of the current habits and practices of the targeted users. After understanding the user characteristics, one then engages in the process of discovering the latent needs and wants of the user. A specific focus is placed on the current problems they routinely face, taking into account the specific situations in which these problems occur. Here, sensitizing techniques are used to delve deeper into the users’ levels of knowledge – uncovering tacit and inherent needs and wants. This leads to the development of opportunities for the improvement of the users’ ‘current state.’ These materialize in possible ‘future states’ and originate from collective brainstorming, ideation, and co-creation techniques. Co-creation at the MEF DSII is also understood in terms of productivity. Despite the perception that deliberate and open discussion among all stakeholders may be time consuming, the real productivity gains resulting from co-creation exercises validate these nuanced methodologies.  During and after the co-creation sessions, there were positive outcomes from multi-stakeholder engagement. In fact, it became clear that the discussions organized inside the LL were settled faster and more smoothly simply by giving the opportunity to all the participants to work in a common space during a fix set of time.

To provide an example, in use case n° 1 of the Living Lab as a co-creation space facilitating multi-stakeholders collaboration and knowledge sharing we detail out the operations and outcomes of the Living Lab within the so-called “Cloudify NoiPA” project. The MEF DSII is undertaking a large project that, by 2020, aims to expand the number of public organisations it services to cover the entire Italian public administration staff. It is then paramount to involve the end users, which in this case are the other public organisations that currently depend on the payroll and HR services or are expected to do so in the near future, in the design process. The MEF DSII launched a series of multi-stakeholder co-creation sessions to collect their input. The involved participants were decision-makers from other public institutions (for example, representatives from the Italian police and the army). The goal was to collect their feedback on the functionality of the IT platform they use, including insight on what bugs, errors and other technological issues they would like to see improved and to better understand if their needs were being met. In this respect, the MEF DSII LL put into action a methodology for collecting user needs and produced a physical space that fostered different and varied forms of collaborative interaction to spur innovation. The overarching objective is to ensure that stakeholders from other public administrations buy into the programme. Ultimately, by strengthening their confidence in the process, stakeholders are more inclined to support the transformation programme throughout all phases of the “Cloudify NoiPA” project.

The MEF DSII experiments in semi-real life context and tests its products to collect feedback about usability issues. To provide an example, the MEF DSII has forgone some usability tests in advance of the launch of its updated webpage portal. This portal, on top of sharing informative material to the constituents about the MEF DSII activities, has a specific webpage devoted to “self-provisioning” services. The ”self-provisioning” services are a type of delivery mode that allow the MEF DSII to enlarge the user base of its public administration “clients” in a cost efficient manner. The local and regional public administrations can select, configure, and start services themselves in a cloud environment where they have access to download software from the web portal. Self-provisioning allows users to have rapid access to a customized infrastructure through a self-service portal, thereby limiting installation and maintenance costs, and avoiding costly procedures for requesting and approving new software. Thus, seamless functionality of the portal is critical for incentivizing adoption of the services and the wider buy-in from targeted stakeholders. The MEF DSII carried out usability tests on the portal by inviting a representative set of users to surf the web portal in the “observation room” (pictured on the right). The test subjects were then provided with a personal computer and were requested to navigate the portal by performing a selection of given tasks. In doing so, the users interacted with the test moderator in a consistent and measureable manner. The front line staff employed the “speak aloud method,” advising the users to say out loud what he/she thought were the main obstacles when processing the tasks. This was intentionally used to prevent participants from taking a reflexive approach where they say what they think they are supposed to say rather than their first impression. In fact, by proctoring the usability test in the separate “observation room,” the MEF DSII designers were able to effectively record the natural feelings and reactions of the participants. The metrics used for the web-portal user navigation assessment were, 1) Efficiency, 2) Efficacy, 3) Satisfaction, 4) Learning ease, 5) Memorisation ease, and 6) Error management. Technical tinkering enabled users to diagnose and fix bugs and optimize the customer experience with assistance from engineers and frontline employees.

Throughout the co-creation session, staff observed an initial resistance by the involved stakeholders when having to follow a certain structure and set of rules during discussions and negotiations. For some participants, embracing the discussion in a different way than conventional meeting styles made them hesitant, impatient, or dismissive. However, at the end of the co-creation session a collaborative behaviour emerged and participants gradually acted more like themselves. Seemingly less tangible, but still documented by participants during the co-creation session, was a heightened closeness with the other stakeholders. During the co-creation sessions users were more prone to finding a common ground with others and improved relationships proved to be a critical success factor. Ultimately, involvement and motivation in the process were both a pre-conditions to the co-creation session as well as a succeeding outcomes. Although involving users is only one factor among many that promotes co-creation in a LL, it is considered indispensable. Users at the MEF DSII LL were considered involved to the extent where their ideas were helping influence and develop others’ point of views. The success of such real-life collaboration, which aims to promote learning between different stakeholders, hinges on how the co-design process was orchestrated, facilitated, and managed.

The Living Lab is having an increasingly prominent role at the MEF DSII as Living Lab managers sponsor and promote its usage to external stakeholders. At the MEF DSII, front-end employees take over the role of coordinating the different groups of participants. They also establish and promote the emergence of close relationships between various participants. In this sense, MEF DSII Living Lab front-manager tasks and responsibilities go beyond the physical space of the Living Lab. Positive relationships outside of the lab preclude and guarantee successful co-creation sessions. For the MEF LL to be disruptive, strong alliances should be built with other stakeholders.

The public value and overall satisfaction generated from the MEF LL co-creation methodology is understood as a continuous and iterative value creation of services and products oriented for end users and prioritizes customer satisfaction. Initially a private consultancy provided co-designed and co-created solutions to the MEF DSII. In a context of contamination of approaches, the value seen in these methodologies in fulfilling customer satisfaction made the MEF DSII interested in establishing its own Living Lab at its own premises. This exemplifies the effect of contamination of approaches between private and public service offerings and delivery models crossing and blurring the differences. This is even more apparent in light of the shift, described in the New Public Management scientific literature, in how public services are increasingly inspired and managed according to private sector models. Public service providers are focusing on customer service and understand the centrality of the users as recipients of the services and holders of its public value.

The Living Lab is having an increasingly prominent role at the MEF DSII as Living Lab managers sponsor and promote its usage to external stakeholders. At the MEF DSII, front-end employees take over the role of coordinating the different groups of participants. They also establish and promote the emergence of close relationships between various participants. In this sense, MEF DSII Living Lab front-manager tasks and responsibilities go beyond the physical space of the Living Lab. Positive relationships outside of the lab preclude and guarantee successful co-creation sessions. For the MEF LL to be disruptive, strong alliances should be built with other stakeholders. The facilitation of co-creation sessions requires competences which are highly contextual, anticipate the designer/manager needs and capabilities in stakeholder interactions and adjust to local settings. Due to the novelty of the MEF LL, there is still a need to hire a number of practitioners that possess the right skillsets in order to get the most out of the co-creation sessions. Attracting and retaining a broader range of practitioners that are trained in a varied set of methodologies such as co-design, co-implementation and co-assessment activities should be prioritized. Further, the stockpiling of institutional knowledge on User Research, Usability Testing, Design Thinking Workshop, Business Model Design, Change Management and Service Design is likely to produce skilfull judgments and facilitate meaningful interventions which are much needed.