SUBJECT

The project between social cooperative Universes in Udine and Creative Industries Lab in Politecnico di Milano is aiming at supporting the cooperative in the development process of services and improving the quality and effectiveness in communicating their values. Universiis is a nonprofit organization that manages services and facilities in the field of health and care in three different areas: the elderly (RSA), minor and disabled people. The design research team is involving the organisations in the whole design process in order to facilitate both the design-driven innovation and human-centerered process.

MAIN RESEARCH QUESTION

How to use R&D to support innovation in service offering and efficiency of value communication?

Detailed Research Questions:
How to involve different actors (especially the operators in the structure) in the process of improving the quality of services for final users (mainly the elderly people)? What is the strategy to rebuild the communication system of Universiis to support and to maintain the engagement in the future, even without designers’ intervention in the future?

WHAT WE DO

METHODOLOGY

As a design team, we consider the research from observing the existing situation, contexts and people, in order to clearly understand the problem and find the right direction to go; literature review on the topic of service design logic and design for elderly, for wellbeing and for disability; tools related to human-centered design and co-design; case study and benchmarking; interviews and focus groups with different levels of staffs in Universiis; observation about daily activities of operators and participating in operators activities as shadowing observation; using “pilot” to test before propose the design solutions visually analysis of cases to generate design brief;

MAIN ACTIVITIES

Analysis and proposal of new design scenarios for the improvement of services within the structures Universiis; Field analysis of two structures within the cooperative Universiis at Seriate; Develop tools for co-designing with guests and operators; Prototype co-design tools using a process of “gamification” as a technique for improving the experience. Identify ways and effective communication tools and innovative values of Universiis; Activities in the field of quality support growth of the communication of the distinctive values o f Universiis.