the blog for experience innovators

Case Studies

two people sitting on a bench, the sun is setting

September 10, 2020

Contextual interviews: understanding employees in their work context

This case study shows how contextual interviews together with other research methods helped to understand people’s work environment, experiences, and pain points of delivery folks of gas cylinders. The study highlights the value of the triangulation of research methods.

Pranjali Pachpute

March 10, 2020

Case study: researching experiences in a restaurant

How is the customer experience in a newly opened restaurant? This article shows how our guest author Anna slipped into the guests' shoes and helped the restaurant managers to improve the service.

Anna Katharina Reisenberger

October 1, 2019

Case study: student journey mapping

This case study reviews the use of journey mapping for improving retention rates at a US university. As the work was completed by students graduating into the healthcare field, it also showed how service design methods can help people working in healthcare to apply creative problem solving and a more user-centric approach in their daily work.

Birgit Bosio

symbols showing activities on an event on a turquoise background

July 17, 2019

How MPI (re)designed their flagship event

This article shows how mobile ethnography has been used to help redesign the World Education Congress #WEC18.

Ruud Janssen

a map with colorful dots visualizing touchpoints of visitors

July 10, 2019

Case Study: experience research in Central Park

In this article the author discusses her insights on using mobile ethnography for a diary study as a design researcher. The project revolves around understanding how people navigate around Central Park. However, for this article she is be focusing on how she used this tool for a diary study as opposed to the complete project that includes exploratory, generative and evaluative research.

Arushi Jaiswal

4 people standing in front of a brick wall, smiling into the camera.

May 29, 2019

Best practice report: how service design methods helped HR managers focus on their employees’ needs

The Federal Association of Personnel Managers together with hkp/// group launched an initiative to introduce design thinking into HR departments throughout Germany, independent of the company size or industry. Participants learned how to apply service design methods to HR to boost their employee experience and increase employee loyalty towards the company.

Katharina Rainer

Mother with a newborn baby, holding it tight.

March 1, 2019

Case study: journey mapping in healthcare

This case shows how the Community Empowerment Lab, a global health research and innovation organization, used Smaply to help design a model for scaling Kangaroo Mother Care in rural India.

Katharina Rainer

vegetables, honey and a college block with the writing "food – health & sustainability"

November 30, 2018

Case study: researching food habits in the Netherlands

This case shows how diverse private and governmental parties worked together in order to better understand the perspectives of Dutch people on health and sustainability of food.

Katharina Rainer

symbols of health care on a light rose background

November 5, 2018

Case study: developing a mobile app through journey mapping

This case study shares how students at the University of Michigan developed user personas and journey maps to create an innovative mobile app to remind teenage chronic patients to take their medication.

Birgit Bosio

symbols for office work on a blue background

September 18, 2017

Case study: researching employee experience

This case study describes a research project conducted by the international design and consulting company USECON in order to investigate its internal employee experience.

Katharina Rainer

July 11, 2017

Case study: journey mapping in a global japanese electronics corporation

This case shares how a global Japanese electronics company used journey mapping to improve its business to business operations, specifically with external partners. Through a number of service design workshops internal staff gained awareness of the problem of poor service delivery and became part of the solution.

Katharina Rainer

symbols showing public services on a pink background

May 9, 2017

Case study: researching public services experience

This case shows how a consultancy agency together with a local governmental institution in Chile worked to understand and improve the customer as well as the employee experience.

Birgit Bosio

March 10, 2017

Case study: how Deutsche Telekom used Smaply to embrace service design

Deutsche Telekom has been one of the earliest customers of Smaply. Now they share their experience with embracing journey mapping as a company.

Katharina Rainer

symbols visualizing things happening in a museum

January 25, 2017

Researching experiences in a museum

Mobile ethnography research can also be used as a tool for winning over new customers as shown by the Royal Ontario Museum.

Katharina Rainer

visualizations of touristic activities that are captured with a smartphone

July 9, 2016

E-book: Case studies of applied research projects on mobile ethnography for tourism destinations

Getting started with mobile ethnography? Here comes an introduction to the method of as well as seven examples on how it was used to research customer experience in tourism.

Birgit Bosio

symbols showing touristic activities on green background

April 11, 2016

Case study: researching tourism experiences in Upper Austria

The Upper Austrian Tourist Board is the only provincial tourism organization in Austria which has installed a Service Designer within its enterprise.

Birgit Bosio

symbols showing touristic activities on yellow background

February 18, 2016

Case study: researching experiences in tourism

The Alpine tourism destination Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis researched their guests’ and employees’ experience to further improve their offer.

Birgit Bosio