Getty Images

I spearheaded a 10-month initiative to introduce and scale service design at Getty Images. Through a case study innovation project focused on iStock.com, I led a cross-functional team to learn and apply service design and human-centered design methods from research to delivery. My role involved project scoping and leadership, designing and conducting research, and supporting the end-to-end experience team to improve the customer experience across the entire customer journey of Stock.

I am currently still supporting the project as an advisor, helping oversee implementation and testing for the case study project.

I WORKED ON

Project leadership, service design/innovation, research planning & execution, stakeholder & team management, training, workshop facilitation

I COLLABORATED WITH

End-to-end experience team, product design team, UX research team, Head of UX Research, VP of Design

the case study project

When I joined, service design was still completely new to the org: the team had gone through an introductory service design training and had previously hired 2 service designers to create initial journey maps. Since these outputs weren’t being used, we decided to try and introduce service design to the organization via a case study project starting from foundational research, all the way to execution and testing. The focus of the project was decided in partnership with leadership stakeholders:

HOW MIGHT ISTOCK PLAY A BIGGER ROLE IN SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS LIVES?

RESEARCH & SYNTHESIS

Small business was chosen as a focus for the case study based on a quantitative study that showed a huge potential for growth for iStock within this group. We split the research into small business in 2 phases:

phase 1 was focused on small business owners of businesses with 1-10 employees (Seg A)
phase 2 was focused on design decision makers in small businesses size 10-250 (Seg B)

For both phases we conducted in-depth interviews with 10-12 participants, synthesized the insights, presented them to the rest of Getty Images Inc, and created behavioral segments and other shareable visual outputs to summarize the findings.

The outputs of the research were: behavioral segment cards, a behavioral matrix, an end-to-end experience map of small business owners, and a set of prioritized opportunities to deliver more value to this segment.

Behavioral segments cards that emerged from the research

The note taking template we created to quickly download the interviews as a team

IDEATION

After the research and synthesis phase, we moved into ideation and held a 2-day ideation workshop with a cross-functional group of stakeholders from product, research, marketing, SEO, and dev. The interactive workshop was held in Miro and through it we were able to collect hundreds of ideas, which we synthesized into 12 concepts. We then worked with leadership to prioritize 1 concept to move forward with and begin concepting, implementation and testing.

Screenshots from the interactive workshops

TEAM MANAGEMENT & training

As part of my role, I managed a team of 1 product lead, 1 product designer, 1 UX researcher, and later 1 mid level service designer to carry out the project and learn service design methods. Joining as a new contractor, and having to introduce a new discipline to a team that had been working together for years presented a set of unique challenges. Luckily the team was extremely collaborative, open to experimenting and had full buy-in from leadership. Through the 8 months of working together, we experimented with different ways of collaborating and learning remotely.

My work involved:

project scoping and task management, including resourcing
leadership and stakeholder management
team and organizational trainings and share-outs
defining KPIs / OKRs
identifying and executing key project deliverables

Knowing we were (and are) still in the midst of a global pandemic, it was important for me that throughout it all we took care of each other as a team. This meant leading us through weekly open feedback retros, “away-from-your-desk” standups, developing asynch work habits, and exercises to do work/brainstorm away from the computer.

Screenshot of the team Miro space I set up for posterity and cross-functional collaboration

ABOVE SCREENSHOTS: Miro boards were set up so that different team members and people across other parts of the organization could drop in an watch our work, ask questions, and learn as we went. I also led exercises to train the team on how to synthesize data and conduct interviews.

PROJECT OUTPUTS

Throughout the 8 months of the engagement, our team produced a series of artifacts, engagements and presentations that will continue to be modified and evolve as more research is done. Among what we created was:

Shareable research presentations, that included interview research insights, video highlights, industry desk research, and identified opportunities
An end-to-end experience map of small business owners + an experience prototyping template
An opportunity solution tree (see here for background on this method) showcasing all opportunities that emerged so far in the small business segment
Behavioral segment cards showing user goals, pain points, quotes + Behavioral matrix
A shareable research repository on Dovetail
A 2-day experiential ideation workshop on Miro
Service design methods templates on Miro that could be accessed and used across the organization (e.g. for note-taking, setting up a study, running a workshop, journey mapping)

Feedback from product leadership on the ideation workshop we ran

Screenshots of one of the research presentations

The Miro board where the experience map lives - it’s meant to be interacted with and changed

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