The course introduces candidates to research and insight from a service design perspective. It provides knowledge of central theories, methods, and tools for gathering and analysing different types of information. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are taught, emphasising ethnographic tools to identify important stakeholder, client, and user aspects such as the customer journey, service blueprinting and stakeholder mapping.

The course will focus on user research as applying relevant techniques and methods to understand users’ struggles, routines, behaviours, and expectations. Candidates are provided with the knowledge and skills to understand and document user behaviours, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. Problem identification and defining key challenges are at the core of the training provided in the course. Candidates are taught to visualise and document key insights from the research and insight phase.

Candidates are further provided with knowledge about ethical principles and restrictions of user research and standardised procedures for personal data conducting and storage.

The course gives an in-depth understanding of how to break down and analyse problems in light of relevant information, which is the first stage in the double/triple diamond approach to problem-solving. Diving into research, insight methodologies, and ethnography enables students to obtain relevant information for all service design cases independently.

The students will train in moving from much information into having exact, concrete, and relevant insight to get deeper knowledge about the customer’s real needs and concrete knowledge about what challenges must be solved to develop a good service design solution.