Linkedin

Instagram

We apply design research techniques to explore human behaviour and collect stories that inspire future ideas and visions. 

USER RESEARCH AND BEHAVIOURAL INSIGHTS

Collecting insights

We turn insights and data into bespoke visualisations and maps, to better manage complexity and enhance communication, storytelling and participation.

VISUAL MAPPING AND STORYTELLING

Navigating complexity

Through critical thinking and scenario building, we challenge assumptions to reshape design interventions, match needs, and guide decision-making.

SERVICE DESIGN AND STRATEGY

Re-framing visions

Through co-design, testing and prototyping techniques, we transform ideas into tangible products and service visions.

UX DESIGN AND PROTOTYPING

Making ideas tangible

 Unlock a over a decade of service design expertise, tools and resources on our open platform, Service Design Tools.

Touch-base with participants in advance to ease relationship building at distance, during remote research

Light Survey

Orchestrate the work of multiple teams at distance, for effective service design.

Asynchronous co-creation

Make initial service ideas more tangible by illustrating the most important steps of the whole experience

Illustrated scenarios

Doctors Without Borders Italy experienced significant growth in the past decades, expanding from 30 to over 150 employees while engaging with a growing network of collaborators, humanitarian workers, volunteers, and activists. The organization faced even greater challenges when the Covid-19 pandemic suddenly forced them to adopt remote work practices.

This shift highlighted the need for transitioning activities online but also reimagining the entire work structure and organization functioning. The leadership saw this as an opportunity to evolve the organization with three primary objectives in mind: (1) making internal workflows more agile and effective, (2) fostering an innovative and inclusive organizational culture, and (3) enhancing the well-being and work-life balance of their employees. Through in-depth research, co-design processes, and evaluating various scenarios, we developed the "Collaboration Maximiser," a new model and working environment, designed to drive cultural change and foster flexibility and cross-functional collaboration.

The Collaboration Maximiser encourages a hybrid work culture, balancing remote and in-office collaboration through synchronized rituals and activities. Its implementation has required MSF to transform several elements of their existing structure, including the office configuration (in progress), task and goals management, digital tools, individual roles, knowledge-sharing practices and overall organizational processes.
Beyond just adopting technological tools and processes, the digital transformation has represented a profound cultural change for the entire organization. Actively involving the staff in the process has not only accelerated the transformation but also established a solid foundation for continuous innovation, ensuring that Doctors Without Borders Italy could maximize their resources and stay relevant in the future.

The roadmap for digital transformation was divided into four parallel streams of initiatives: definition of an innovation framework, optimization of key business processes, consolidation of shared tools and practices and strategic intervention related to organizational change.

As part of the optimization of key business processes, we focused on the definition of a new employee journey. Thanks to the new onboarding process, new staff members are now greeted with a carefully curated experience, ensuring they feel included and connected to the organization's culture and values since the beginning. Moreover, they are immediately provided with the necessary tools and instructions to effectively carry out their daily tasks and work with their colleagues. This new onboarding approach not only reinforces sense of belonging of the new joiners, but also improves the efficiency and workflow of the HR staff involved in the front-end and back-end processes.

To create alignment on tools and processes in the new hybrid work environment, we co-designed the New Ways of Working Playbook. The playbook is a shared repository of best practices, co-created with the staff and explained through examples and use cases. It offers guidance on how to effectively communicate, collaborate and organize work at MSF Italy, as well as on how to innovate and plan tasks. A cross-departmental working group, known as the Digital Ambassadors, has played a crucial role in disseminating these practices internally, and serving as a reference point for staff members in case of questions or doubts. Their support helps identify emerging needs and keep reflecting on how to improve or adopt new practices.

In addition to transforming internal tools and processes, we have also worked on establishing an innovation model able to collect ideas and contributions from anyone within the organization, encouraging the constant development of new initiatives. By following an agile and human-centred approach, the innovation management process empowers staff member to prioritize and frame the challenges to focus on, conduct research to refine their understanding of problems and ideas, and ultimately experiment potential solutions and interventions.

As a result of this transformative journey, Medici Senza Frontiere is currently running over 20 internal and external innovation projects, many of which have already generated positive outcomes. Some initiatives, such as the optimized video content production process and the creation of a Spokepool team, have already been successfully implemented. Others, like the redesign of the volunteer model and of the one-off donor experience, are still in the experimental phase and will soon be realised.

After the pandemic, Medici Senza Frontiere (Italian section of Doctors Without Borders) felt the need to rethink their way of working, in order to overcome their double nature of “institution and “organization”. How to become an innovative, flexible and agile team, able to move beyond pure emergency-response and shape a long-term vision?

Enabling a digital transformation process grounded on people and participation, leading towards the establishment of an innovative working environment

The roll out of the digital transformation process and new way of working led to tangible improvements in terms of efficiency of the team-work, capability to bring innovation to life and enthusiasm for the organization development. Thanks to the effective change process, in 2023 MSF has been carrying out 20+ innovation initiatives.

In 2021, we started a research and co-design process, aimed at first identifying a future scenario for the working environment, and then defining a digital transformation roadmap to get there. Throughout 2022, we worked closely to MSF to tackle all the objectives and initiatives in the roadmap. The main focus was on defining an innovation model, optimizing key processes and setting a shared set of methods, tools and practices.

Collaboration maximiser: new ways of working for MSF Italy

The process of delivering legal documents to citizens represents both a huge cost for the State (for printing and mailing, potentially multiple times), and a painful experience for citizens (who may not be able to access their physical mailbox all the time).

In order to encourage the adoption of a digital-based delivering system of documents with legal value, the government introduced the idea of a new platform able to execute a safe and certified digital delivery from Public Administrations to citizens, initially called Piattaforma Notifiche (ref. Decreto Semplificazione, 2020). In this context, together with a broader team involving external stakeholders, engineers, legal experts and designers, we conducted a detailed functional analysis of the future platform, defining roles, actors and processes needed to execute the new service - and so contribute to consolidate the related policy. The blueprint map has been an essential tool in that phase of work: it helped explore different scenarios, iterate and co-design with various stakeholders, and align decision-makers on the proposed solution and workflow.


Once the process was clearer, we translated all the requirements described in the functional analysis into a low-fidelity interactive prototype, able to show the key functionalities of the future platform and encourage further reflections on the experience itself. The prototype simulated the experience of sending a document with legal value and checking costs, timings and status of delivery (for Public Administration users), and the experience of receiving a document in the personal inbox, checking the details and performing a related payment (for citizens). Both experiences were completed by the mock-up of onboarding, set-up and management aspects - such as registering in the system, modifying addresses or other preferences, defining deputy roles.

The role of the prototypes was to help refining the overall service model and functional analysis, as well as to enable user testing sessions that helped better understanding the perspective of individual citizens and legal entities while interacting with the platform.

Thanks to the user testing, we were able to better understand users’ expectations, and transfer the insights to the broader team of decision-makers. The input gathered during the test informed both strategic directions (e.g. how to conceive deputy roles, how to communicate the service to the citizens, etc.) and specific refinements aimed at improving the whole user experience (e.g. how to convey the delivery timeline, how to label the specific status of the act communicated, etc.).  Overall, a great interest emerged from citizens of all age ranges and backgrounds towards this kind of platform, to be finally able to receive prompt communications from the Public Administration - without being forced to go to the Post Office to retrieve important acts after the failure of a home delivery.

How to conceive a service model to digitize the sending and receiving of acts with legal value, that takes into consideration citizens’ needs and diverse levels of adoption of digital tools?

Designing and testing the concept platform of SEND - the brand new service that allows citizens and Public Administrations to digitally receive and manage documents with legal value.

A detailed description of functional and experience requirements to develop and deploy the new platform, with specifications related to supporting back-end processes as well as front-end features.

We explored different user scenarios and used them to shape a detailed blueprint of the new communication system, in a collaborative process that involved all the main public sectors’ institutions. The blueprint became the starting point to then build the first low-fi prototype of the future platform, showing the experience for citizens, public administrations, system administrators and third parties.

Thinking in depth,
designing with care

We bring innovation to life by

Projects

Learnings

Thinking in depth,designing with care

We bring innovation to life by

Projects

Learnings

Thinking in depth,
designing with care