Smart Experience Lab is an area of UtLab, dedicated to new virtual research methods, collaboration with the companies, internal teams and final clients.
All the processes like analysis, development and transformation of the products and services, normally carried out in person, are converted into equally innovative and efficient digital systems.
Starting from the immersion stage, carried out in collaboration with the internal teams, to the exploration, prototyping and testing stages, carried out together with the final clients, the whole process acquires a new form.
Digitalisation of these processes makes a thorough data collection possible, yet leaves unchanged the emotional feedback that live activities provide.
The advantages of remote collaboration consist in ubiquitous accessibility, since people will be encouraged to participate thanks to the ease of communication.
The procedure, developed by Smart Experience Lab enables to obtain specific reference, to involve people nationwide and worldwide, to include people that would be otherwise more difficult to involve in the research.
The tools used are direct and synchronous, such as:
- Collaborative meetings
- Workshops featuring activities aimed at definition of the ideas, proposals, decisions
- One to one interviews
- Narrative explorations oriented to collect the stories and personal experience
- Participative interviews
- Collective meetings featuring materials for reflection and stimuli, used for listening to different kinds of experience and their comparison
- Usability tests
- Remote comparison of digital and physical products by means of the augmented reality in order to evaluate all their aspects
- Mapping workshops
- Data processing and transformation workshops with the use of the implementing tools like Personas, Empathy maps, Ecosystem maps, Customer journeys and Touchpoint maps
- Co-design sessions
- Interface, prototypes, architectures and structures processing as well as content and interaction prioritising.
Data can be collected over longer time spans by using some appropriate techniques like:
- Digital diary – Experience collection using written content, photos, videos, carried out by means of various platforms and channels
- Cultural probes – Sophisticated, creative and managed way of gathering personal experience over a certain time span
- Survey – Different kinds of questionnaires provided in various ways depending on the context.