Designing audience experiences
Ted Matthews is a Service Designer and Researcher at the Centre for Design Research. He is the chair of service design at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO). His professional and research areas of interest could be broadly framed by the design of experience-centric services. His research has honed in on the study of the sacred as a possible area to glean fruitful practices and concepts for the development of new approaches for the design of experience-centric services. In doing so his research draws from approaches, concepts and practice from sociocultural domains to weave this together with service design practice. Through a transdisciplinary, practice based, Research through Design approach, Ted has worked with professional projects from as diverse as professional football and tourism to financial services and telecommunications. His PhD titled ‘Exploring Sacred Service Design’ was recently submitted for final consideration.
Sacred Service Design focuses on the customer’s needs and customer experience. Hence, it can be understood from the user perspective. The service designers try to visualise the customer perspective and design offerings to provide experiences that happen over time and across different touch-points. When planning service design, emphasis should be given to the plan being experiential, whole, detailed, practical, able to understand and communicate the now, imagine and visualise the future and finally engage.
A sense of belonging is expressed through symbols which are quite meaningful. Each community has some myths and we perform our myths through rituals. These are very much connected with sacred experiences. The rituals give structure and meaning to time and celebration and create flashing memories. They act as passageways through time. Rituals have a common structure with three parts; Separation, Transition and Reincorporation. These rituals have been made into customer journeys.
Culture has played a key role in designing sports and fan experience. Sports like football have become like culture and connect fans and players alike. Matthew’s Service Design Project for Football relied heavily on stories and more. A five act experience/ customer journey came out as the end product. An invitation box was designed which would have a jersey, notebook etc. Gifting of jerseys to invite people for playing has now become a ritual which is enjoyed by the players. People also insist that the DJ play only Norwegian songs at the venue to uplift the spirit of the people and the players. These help in connecting the whole detail. Hence, every time design is used to incorporate new ideas catalogues are made to share it among the community for feedback and inputs. In the end connection to the community is more important- to break barriers and raise people up.