CHAPTER 6. EVALUATION
6.4 D ISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
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statement, according to the formula, we derive that 𝑡!,!!! * s/√n = 0.20763. The sample mean (x bar) is 4.63333 (Table 6.6). Using the sample mean (4.63333) minus 𝑡!,!!! * s/√n (0.20763), we derive a = 4.4257. So, 𝐻! is rejected and 𝐻! is established since 𝜇!(3) < a (4.4257). On the other hand, for the second statement, we can derive the value of 𝑡!,!!! * s/√n = 0.174 by calculating 1.7 (mean difference) – 1.526 (Lower Bound under 95%
confidence interval). And the value of a is 4.526 since the sample mean is 4.7. Also, the statement is agreed because 𝜇!(3) < a (4.526).
Besides, to verify the level of significance, we examine whether the p-value is greater than α (0.05). The p-values of these two statements are 0.00000000000000054387 and 0.00000000000000000169, which are much smaller than α (0.05). As a result, the result of the testing is very significant.
In a conclusion, the proposition 3 – ‘Engaging into the field to do observations and interviews as well as combined the seen phenomenon are both important when doing design synthesis’ is therefore justified. This also echoes what Kolko (2010) argued ‘I saw this + I know this = Insight’.
6.4 Discussion of findings
The purpose of this research is to design an information system and related mechanism to facilitate the insight discovery process in service design. In the previous sections, we exhibited the experiments and evaluated the proposed propositions as well as uncovered some possible explanations for the results of the collected data. Here we have a deeper discussion of the findings.
First, for proposition 1, we examined the competences required to form and process mental imagery and found that all the associations the subjects used fall into the five types of ability we concluded. As a result, the proposition 1 is established. Furthermore, we found that
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non-designers are more subjective and rational. We also can find some support based on the inspiration seeking behavior of each group of subjects. As we mentioned before, non-designers tend to have subjective assumptions after reading the design brief. Therefore, their usages of Google Search in phase 2 are higher than designers since they want to seek for information exactly matching their assumptions.Second, we want to examine whether the designed artifact – Discover+ is able to increase the qualities of derived insights. We evaluated it in both macro and micro views. In macro view, we use insight depth map to compare the depth of the insights derived in phase 1 to the ones in phase 2. We found that more than half of the subjects (17 out of 30) deepen their insights with the facilitation of information technologies. On the other hand, in micro view, we evaluated the perceived satisfaction of insight qualities of the subjects. We conducted one-sample T test to examine whether the subjects were satisfied in three dimensions and the result is positive. That is, the subjects thought their insight qualities went higher in innovativeness, integrity and their own agreements. We also found that the percentage of subjects using Discover+ in phase 2 is 85% comparing to 15% of using Google Search. Furthermore, for the subjects who increased their insight qualities, the percentage of using Discover+ went up to 90%. Hence, we argue that, comparing with Google Search, Discover+ provides a better source of inspirations for insight discovery due to its data and representation are more logical and suitable to support the process which involves a lot of manipulations of mental imagery.
At last, proposition 3 is aim to examine whether engaging in the environment and recall of past experience are both important when doing design synthesis. Again, we used
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insight discovery as we discussed in Chapter 2.
In addition, although we didn’t put emphasis on work experiences when choosing the experiment subjects, we still found an interesting difference between subjects with and without work experiences. There were 10 subjects (7 non-designers and 3 designers) having one to four years of full-time work experience while other 20 subjects didn’t. We found that in most aspects of analysis, subjects with work experiences are in our expectations. They behave more like non-designers (for example, their concept maps are more skewed) since there were more non-designers in the group of subjects with work experiences. Nevertheless, there is one interesting point that is noteworthy. In average, contiguity associations account for 27% of the association usage of subjects with work experiences while the others only for 11%. The disparity is more than the difference between designers and non-designers. We infer that is because once people begin to work in industries, they put more emphasis on feasibility and completeness of their thoughts to avoid unnecessary cost loss.
To summarize, here are some findings worthy to mention:
(1) Engaging in the environment to interview or observe to build up the design context as well as combine the seen phenomena with existing knowledge are the essence of insight discovery.
(2) The designed artifact – Discover+ is able to facilitate the insight discovery process and increase the insight quality. It provides innovative concepts that designers may not think of in a logical way so that designers can make their thoughts more holistic.
(3) Service designers may come from many different fields. In this research, we have two groups of subjects. One is group of designers - people study in design and another is group of non-designers - people study in other field including business and engineering. Since they have different educational background, their behaviors to do design synthesis are different in some aspect. Designers have trained to have more empathy. Therefore, they tend to think of every possible related factors before finding
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possible insights. In contrast, non-designers may be more subjective so that they are likely to discover insights based on their prejudiced assumptions. These two different mindsets lead to different insight qualities. In the micro view there is no obvious difference in perceived satisfaction between these two groups. However, in the macro view we can find that these two groups of users differ from the depth of derived insights. Non-designers with the expertise in business or engineering have more rationality so that they tend to discover the functional value of designs from the customers’ perspectives. In a result, most of their insight depths in phase 1 fell into the dimension of {Functional, Customer}. And then in phase 2, with the facilitation with Discover+, most of their derived insights went deeper to the {Intrinsic, Customer} dimension. On the other hand, with more empathy and diversified perspectives, designers’ derived insight depths were more diverse in many dimensions. Generally speaking, in this research, designers’ derived insights are more innovative while non-designers’ derived insights are more feasible and completed.
Although there is a little difference, these two types mindset are both important in service design. Good service designers should have empathy to view the situation from stakeholders’ point of view as well as subjective assumptions after interpreting the design context with existing knowledge so that they can derive distinguishing insights.
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