Expert Interviews
We conducted additional expert interviews to further refine our concept, including with experienced trip planners and a representative of VisitPITTSBURGH, a local nonprofit promoting Pittsburgh tourism. 

From experienced trip planners, we learned that they often have downtime during trips, and that spontaneous interactions with local businesses could create memories and connections.

From VisitPITTSBURGH, we learned that many visitors to the city come for non-tourism reasons and generally stay within the boroughs nearest to downtown. 

Because of these findings, we decided to pivot to focus on helping Pittsburgh visitors spontaneously and rapidly find local businesses nearby.

Diagramming
We had an idea, but it needed structure. To build that out, we crafted a customer journey map, a service blueprint, and a value flow diagram.

These helped guide our ideation conversations

Service Prototyping
To test our design, we invited two fellow students to a part of the city they don’t usually visit to prototype our service. We guided the participants through engaging with a cardboard prototype kiosk, getting a destination, and using app navigation to get to a local ice cream shop. 

Interface
Next, we designed a higher-fidelity UI for mobile and kiosk screens. This included a simple animation with several icons on the first screen, to signal that 1) the screen was active, and 2) the service could take you to a variety of businesses or attractions. Dashed lines were used as a decorative motif to suggest the idea of walking to a destination. 

What's (Actually) Next?
‍‍Following our final presentation, our professor advised us to deepen the bend of the “S” in the logotype, so it would look more like an “S.” We agreed and made the change. We also further refined the UI and the visual style of the various diagrams we had created. 

Process & Teamwork
It took my team a while to narrow down a solution. I suspect this was because we did not know each other previously and were not quite on the same wavelength. If I were to do this again, I’d try to do more with the team outside of the project to help us understand one another better faster. 

Local Disconnection & Design for Those Most Like Us
We initially imagined potential users as people like us (young people new to Pittsburgh), or people like others in our lives (our parents). It seems to me that most of the student body had this problem; easily half of the design projects I saw aimed to serve educated people in their twenties. I suspect this diconnection with local residents and places is shared by many professionals traveling to new places for work (unless it’s a major city like New York or San Fransisco). This points to a broader public disconnection problem with the tech, service, and design industries. 

The Problem With Service Design: Being Actually Useful
A question looming throughout this project was, "Why not just use Google Maps?" We attempted to answer this by using physical kiosks and targeting spontaneous activity to circumvent the choice paralysis one might get from seeing lots of options in a maps app. However, people already have these apps on their phones, and they already habitually use them for finding local businesses. This raises a broader question in service economies: how might we design new services when so many problems are already solved? Is the burden on us to find new problems (or to invent them)? What happens to a service economy when service systems are sufficiently robust, accessible, and automated with AI?

Attributions
Some icons sourced via Phosphor Icons
Some images sourced via Unsplash
Special thanks to Sarah, Alec, and Daphne