Problem statement:
Gothenburg Film Festival
A fictional case in service design that involves mapping out the offering of the Gothenburg Film Festival and proposing improvements.
Göteborg Film Festival is Sweden's largest cultural event and the most important meeting place for the Nordic film industry. In 2021, the festival was held digitally due to the current circumstances (COVID-19), which resulted in a record-breaking success. The task was to map out the festival's various service offerings in a current state analysis, and then develop improvement proposals for a new state.
Duration: 10 weeks
Approach: There are many ways to approach a service design task, and we chose to start from four phases in the design process: explore, create, reflect, and implement. Our task did not include the final phase of implementation.
Deliverables: Personas, Customer Journey Maps, Business Model Canvas and a Service Blueprint
Exploring phase
In the exploratory phase, we conducted a deep dive into the Göteborg Film Festival website and had regular conversations with the fictional client to understand the task and clarify any questions or concerns, as well as receive feedback on proposals. We collected data through a web survey posted in the Göteborg Film Festival Facebook group and the "What's Happening in Göteborg?" Facebook group.
The survey provided insights into visitors' expectations of the festival, how they rated their overall experience, their perceptions of the festival's website, and improvement suggestions, among other things.
The survey was formulated in such a way that even those who had not attended the film festival could provide us with valuable information, such as what motivated them/would motivate them to attend the festival. Through the analysis of the collected data, we gained insights into both the current state and a future state, which allowed us to create relevant artifacts.
Personas
From the data analysis, we created two personas. Evy represents the current visitors' experiences and opinions of the festival, while Lovisa represents the desires and needs of potential festival-goers for a future visit to the festival.
Creation phase
During the creation phase, we developed two artifacts to describe the current state of the Göteborg Film Festival. The current state was based on how the festival had looked in previous years with visitors physically present in Gothenburg, but also on how the 2021 digital festival enabled remote visits.
Customer Journey Map
Our Customer Journey Map for the current situation visualizes the customer's user experience. The model shows five stages that the festival visitor (persona Evy) goes through; becoming aware of the festival, consideration, purchase, execution/participation in the festival, and post-festival.
The model also shows which touchpoints the visitor interacts with and the visitor's thoughts, emotional states, and perceived difficulties as well as possible solutions to those difficulties.
Business Model Canvas
In our Business Model Canvas, we aimed to highlight the organization's goals, strengths, weaknesses, and priorities. In our model, we chose to include both the organization's perspective and the visitor's perspective. We marked the company's perspective in red text color and the festival visitor's perspective in blue text color in the artifact.
Improvement suggestions
As the 2021 Göteborg Film Festival was held digitally due to Covid-19, it became possible to stream films all year round with a membership. We suggested that this could continue in conjunction with the physical festival. The proposal was to make it possible to see the same films shown in cinemas directly in a web browser or app. This would give visitors flexibility in choosing how they want to experience the festival.
The improvement proposals were developed through the analyzed data from the surveys, the client's goals for the festival's future, and the deficiencies discovered during the work of mapping the festival's services. The target goals for the festival were: simplicity, flexibility, a sense of wholeness, festival feeling, and community. These goals would be achieved through a digital solution.
The most significant deficiencies we found were difficulties in getting an overview and organizing visits to the festival. Also, there was a lack of activities that create engagement in the festival and a sense of community, and the festival was not perceived as a year-round experience.
The artifacts for the current situation gave a good picture of what worked well in the festival and what could be improved. The persona for the present created a feeling for what would be needed in the future, and a number of improvement proposals were developed and narrowed down to:
An app as a complement to the website.
Create a schedule for your own visits that can be shared with others.
Map of Gothenburg with the various cinemas and event venues. Travel planner could be included.
Chat rooms exclusively for digital visitors during film screenings, as a second screen.
Forum to discuss more in-depth with other visitors.
Teleparty, a way to connect your streamed film with others so that the film starts and pauses for everyone connected at the same time.
Notifications in the app.
Expanded marketing channels to reach those who are not aware of the festival.
Yearly experience surveys in the app to gather insights from visitors.
Reflection phase
he proposed and approved improvement suggestions are described and visualized in the form of current state artifacts below. Through the use of these artifacts, we were able to identify weaknesses in the service, pinpoint possible areas for improvement, and demonstrate how to manage and coordinate a complex service with the goal of optimizing how the organization approaches the service and improves the customer service experience.
Customer Journey Map
We created a new Customer Journey Map for the current situation to visualize the proposed improvements. By adding green boxes for the current situation, the artifact shows how the user's emotions and thoughts have been affected by the changes. Most of the changes were made under the "consideration" and "execution" stages.
Business Model Canvas
The Business Model Canvas was updated with the new improvement suggestions, and to clearly differentiate which parts were added and which parts existed previously, the added points were written in green.
Service Blueprint
A service blueprint was developed to map out the film festival's service, which is multichannel, spans multiple departments, and involves several touchpoints. We started from the current state of our Customer Journey Map and assumed that the festival visitor is a first-time user of the festival app and visits the festival both digitally and physically.