TechMOlogy Service Design

Between June and September, Ecipa, FINN, and SIEVA organized three meetings to engage businesses, professionals, institutions, and research actors to bring out the needs related to the mobility sector and the target territory.

The three meetings should be seen as a preparatory activity for the creation of a cross-border portfolio of innovative or revised services dedicated to the development of competitiveness and innovation of SMEs in the mobility sector.

During the meetings, each partner - in order to analyse the services offered and to evaluate new ones - delved into specific needs related to the end-users present, putting at the centre of the investigation precisely those who most need innovative solutions to be competitive in the market.

It was chosen to conduct all events using design thinking as a working methodology. This allowed active work in defining problems, addressing the needs of those present, and reasoning about solutions.

Using the double diamond process, the meetings were divided into four phases:

1- The empathy phase, which allowed for a deeper understanding of the participants' context and behaviour.

2- The definition phase, which involves identifying problems and making sense of the data to make the right choices.

3- The ideation phase, in which participants propose as many solutions as possible.

4 - The prototyping and testing phase, in which the best ideas are selected and validated if they actually solve the problem for the intended target group.

During the three meetings, it became clear that the support of entities with the profile of the partners involved is crucial for the cross-border character connection with the research world.

Although the territorial specificity is very strong, it was also possible to identify a common factor among the needs of the various end-users, namely the need for one or more tools to facilitate the sharing of solutions and services for SMEs.