Evaluating the impact of co-design: Building a co-design evaluation framework for service development projects starting from buddyschool case study
Loading...
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
Location:
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Author
Date
2020
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Master's Programme in Collaborative and Industrial Design
Language
en
Pages
107 + 6
Series
Abstract
While metrics, indicators and parameters are certainly not missing from current design practices, little research has been conducted to investigate the opportunities for co-design evaluation. Previous literature (amongst others: Kujala, 2003; Steen et al., 2011; Suominen & Pöyry-Lassila, 2013) has focused on identifying the beneficial effects caused by undertaking a co-design approach in a service development project, but at the moment there are no comprehensive studies investigating the impact that such benefits create in the service delivery and performance. Nevertheless, the lack of further research on the topic is becoming more widely acknowledged and several authors are highlighting the need for addressing co-design evaluation opportunities (Steen et al., 2011; Hoyer et al., 2010; Ostrom et al., 2010; Yin et al., 2011). Consequently, the focus of this master´s thesis is exploring the research gap individuated concerning co-design evaluation. Due to the lack of previous inquiries on the subject, a case study is selected to act as a data collection scenario to generate valuable knowledge on the topic. Therefore, this thesis utilizes qualitative research methods in an empirical setting in order to produce further learnings on the research gap identified. The case study chosen is Buddyschool, a peer-to-peer learning support service co-developed by Migrant Youth Helsinki and relevant actors in the education environment. Buddyschool aims at helping children who are struggling in coping with school by pairing young pupils with older student tutors. At the moment of the research, Buddyschool is implemented in 38 comprehensive schools in the Helsinki region, offering a perfect occasion for researching both the co-design process and the service results, including potential impacts that the co-development process had on the final outcome. By crystallizing the findings gathered from the background research and the case study´s fieldwork, this master´s thesis proposes a framework for co-design evaluation in service development projects. The framework organizes several metrics recognized throughout the research and clusters them into meaningful categories. Moreover, this thesis argues for the possibility of evaluating co-design both during the development phase and after the implementation of the service. Building on the works of Voss (1992) and Foglieni, Villari & Maffei (2018), the current design proposal can be a tool for achieving consequential learnings through outcome-focused metrics, as well as making adjustments in itinere thanks to process-focused metrics. In fact, during the development phase the focus of the framework´s indicators is assessing the collaborative performance and the co-design process, whereas the metrics featured in the implementation phase aim at evaluating the effects of the co-development process on the service performance. Finally, the value that the framework adds to the practice is compiling a list of relevant indicators, taking a step towards the realization of a comprehensive co-design evaluation framework. In addition, the current design proposal aims at sparking thoughts and reflections on the subject, as well as fostering interest in further researching it.Description
Supervisor
Solsona Caba, NúriaThesis advisor
Solsona Caba, NúriaKeywords
co-design, co-design evaluation, service design, evaluation framework, service development, evaluation
