Kone Mod Designing for a new modernization consulting experience

Overview

The original brief from Kone was to propose a new modernization consulting channel and a site survey feature to facilitate good communication with customers and improve efficiency in the process. From the research, we defined two experience goals (Xgoals)—relatedness and a sense of ownership—, as we found that the communication channels and the process were scattered and unclear to stakeholders. Having the Xgoals in mind, we designed and proposed Kone Mod, a mobile consulting channel that helps Kone and customers with smooth communication .

  • Date :

    Feb - Mar 2018

  • Client :

    Kone & Aalto Univ. (Espoo, Finland)

  • Team :

    Soyeon Park, Petteri Heinonen, Xiaoyun Wang

  • Role :

    Research planning & practice, research analysis, concept development, prototyping (Adobe Xd), user testing, and refining graphic user interface

INTRODUCTION

Challenge

Modernization is the process of upgrading the elevator or escalator to improve performance, safety, and aesthetics. When the customer makes an inquiry concerning modernization, Kone has so far dispatched a professional to carry out the site survey from scratch to figure out the site condition and created a tender based on it. As this process takes a considerable amount of time and resources, the company felt the need for a better way to communicate with customers to know their needs and hopes beforehand in order to raise efficiency. Taken together, the main challenges given by Kone were as follows:

  • 1. Come up with a new (instant) consulting channel

  • 2. Design a self site survey feature that can be easily carried out by the customer, yet gather valuable information about modernization for Kone

Process

DISCOVER

Understanding the Context

To better understand the initial brief and the context of the project, our team arranged a meeting with the client for debriefing and conducted desk research. As a result, we identified the relevant stakeholders and how the modernization process generally works.

stakeholders map

Stakeholders map

flow chart

Flowchart of the current modernization consulting process

Empathising with Stakeholders

In order to understand the modernization consulting process from different perspectives, we carried out in-depth interviews with experts from Installation Team and customers. From the interviews, we could gain opinions about the current modernization consulting process and discuss the potential contents of a self site survey.

Interview with Installation Team Experts

Indirect experience on professional site survey

Examining one of the interviewee(customer)'s elevator

DEFINE

Analyzing & synthesizing the research data

By combining and anlyzing the research data, we identified following four key insights:

Xgoals: defining experience goals to design for

Based on the key insights, two Xgoals, relatedness and a sense of ownership, were identified, which then we aimed to deliver to customers through the final outcome.

X-goals to be achieved

DEVELOP

Developing Design Concepts & Prototyping

For the ideation phase, we generated ideas based on HMW questions and then selected features for the new channel considering the experience goals and research findings. Finally, we built a lo-fi prototype to evaluate the concept and features of the new mobile consulting channel, Kone Mod.

Ideation session: ideating by answering HMW questions

Information architecture of Kone Mod

Lo-fi prototype created for evaluation

Evaluating the Concept

To evaluate the concept, we organized two evaluation sessions with the client and the potential end-user. They were asked to measure whether the concept that the prototype delivers meets the Xgoals. For evaluation, we identified five items from Attrakdiff that are related to our Xgoals and used them as the measurement items. The final refinements were made based on the feedbacks gained from stakeholders.

Evaluation session

Result of Attrakdiff

DELIVER