the brief
Development of a service for Eni, a multinational oil and gas company, to raise its employee’s awareness on the proven benefits that the new ways of working can bring in terms of personal carbon footprint reduction.
the PROCESS
This project was built following the MEDGI process, which is structured in five phases: mapping,educing, disrupting, gestalting, integrating.
This particular design approach sees designers as creators of culture and not just "ideas".
This particular design approach sees designers as creators of culture and not just "ideas".
"To Design: seeing the world as a field of opportunities for skilled action and Acting on the world with skilled action."
~Jonathan Antonio Edelman
~Jonathan Antonio Edelman
first phase: mapping
By definition, "describing the artifact and the user-interaction". This was an initial phase, that served to understand the company, the topic to address, the users and their behaviors. The brief specifically asked to develop a service related to new ways of working (smar working, remote working, etc.) which could reach either the measurement, the reduction or the compensation of the employees carbon footprint and refer to at least one of the areas between transportation, buildings & personal equipment, waste, personal habits.
After a brief desk research on the company and its existing services, semi-structured in-depth interviews were carried out with 5 current Eni Employees (from the Digital Department).
After a brief desk research on the company and its existing services, semi-structured in-depth interviews were carried out with 5 current Eni Employees (from the Digital Department).
01 | First Session
Mapping the current (smart work) and past (classic work) daily routine to understand the users' habits, with a focus on work, sustainability, feelings and needs.
⧪ GOAL
Find out which, between the given ones, could be the area where intervention is needed the most.
02 | intermezzo
Insight clustering according to the different areas identified: transport, food, well being and work modalities, sustainability.
03 | Second session
Gather new and more detail information and re-map the daily routines with the different experiences of the users.
⧪ GOAL
Go deeper on the three insights generated by the first session.
Finally, a survey was created to be spread to a bigger target in order to gather general information, more on the quantitative side.
second phase: educing
This phase focused on the definition of pain/pleasure points and what works/doesn’t within the area deemed most relevant: the "food".
Most of the research was dedicated to understanding every detail of the lunch break of an employee, gaining insights and defining pain points.
Most of the research was dedicated to understanding every detail of the lunch break of an employee, gaining insights and defining pain points.
Defining the experience to work on proved to be a challenge: the food environment was linked to many problems and trying to address all of them could bring about a less detailed and effective solution.
Thorugh other interview sessions and visualization tools a very detailed eating experience was defined, with different moments highlighted.
THIRD phase: DISRUPTING
Disrupting phase, by definition change user, context, material, form, process.
This was out of all the most challenging phase, but also the most productive and instructive. How we could actually change the situation described by our insights?
To really bring about what the verb "to disrupt" means, the leverage points method was used, in order to face the real need identified (to bring back the canteen) and develop the final solution.
To really bring about what the verb "to disrupt" means, the leverage points method was used, in order to face the real need identified (to bring back the canteen) and develop the final solution.
Step 1
Understanding the leverage point.
Step 2
Find out the parallel in our system.
Step 3
Generate many different "WHI" questions based on the different points.
Taking into consideration the leverage points identified (time, money, sustainability information, company involvement) and the broken-down eating experience, an analysis of the canteen (the main functions, the benefits, the connections, the interactions and the relationships happening there) was carried out.
To support the ensuing phase, a metaphor was built, following simple steps.
⬩ Listing all the aspects related to the canteen benefits.
⬩ Listing all the leverages identified.
⬩ Understanding what stood at the core of the communication, which feeling we were looking to transmit to the users.
⬩ Listing all the leverages identified.
⬩ Understanding what stood at the core of the communication, which feeling we were looking to transmit to the users.
A parallelism was created, between Mary Poppins' story and the Eni case. It described the previous situation with the canteen in the office (Eni people are like kids taken care by a grandma), then the problematic situation due to covid (grandma got sick) and the new situation (the kids need a new special nanny: Mary Poppins).
FOURTH phase: GESTALTING
By breaking down the full movie and studying all the different characters, the object they used, how their behavior changed during the story was the base to define some attributes to work on. These were then traduced into solution features.
Brainstorming, testing and other tools were used to understand how to integrate the metaphor attributes/features to the actual situation and to the real problem.
A video communicating the "Minimum Viable Product" was created as an output for this phase.
FIFTH phase: INTEGRATING
This phase was focused mainly on three aspects:
⬩ How to integrate poetic/magical aspects to change the experience and make it less boring, unexpected and engaging.
⬩ The interactions that guide the experience (i.e. social aspects, journey to go through the overall lunch break).
⬩ How to communicate through storytelling and convey what are the real values of our solution, the real benefits and the goal achieved.
⬩ The interactions that guide the experience (i.e. social aspects, journey to go through the overall lunch break).
⬩ How to communicate through storytelling and convey what are the real values of our solution, the real benefits and the goal achieved.
the CONCEPT
Eni Magic Lunch is a new service designed to allow Eni Employees to live in a new way their lunch break, by providing a sustainable diffused canteen around the city of Milan.
how it works
The idea is to offer Eni Employees a service that can revolutionize and make unordinary their current remote working lunch break experience.
Through a simple application they can be randomly assigned a restaurant, close to their home where to eat that day. Along with a location, a dish to try will be proposed through some hints and the users will also be notified of other collegues drafted to be there as well.
Through a simple application they can be randomly assigned a restaurant, close to their home where to eat that day. Along with a location, a dish to try will be proposed through some hints and the users will also be notified of other collegues drafted to be there as well.
the focus on sustainability
This service facilitates the reduction of the employees carbon footprint in different ways. First of all it avoids users to buy fast and pre-made meals (a first choice that can fit the strict times of lunch breaks), the most of which are not sustainable. Second, the service considers only restaurants with one or more particular sustainability prerequisites:
⬩ Locally Sourced
⬩ Carbon Conscious
⬩ Vegan
⬩ Organic
⬩ Fairly traded
⬩ Vegetarian
⬩ No-waste
⬩ Carbon Conscious
⬩ Vegan
⬩ Organic
⬩ Fairly traded
⬩ Vegetarian
⬩ No-waste
Third, by suggesting the more environmental way to reach the location.
the focus on interactions
The goal of the concept development was to focus on the interactions and the experience the user could have, rather than the interface itself.
Infact, particular attention was given to creating a solution that not only could respond to the main user’s pains and jobs-to-be-done, but could also be unique and engaging. Unusual gestures, such as shaking and snapping, were introduced to allow the final proposition to be almost “magical”.
