My experience at the Global Service Jam

Global Service Jam is an event celebrated simultaneously around the world, which began in 2011. The goal is to create projects within 48 hours that can change the world through service design.

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to participate as a mentor in one of them in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, the Compostela Jam, which took place at the coworking space of our storyteller Chus Prol.

The event started at 10 am with the reception of participants and a breakfast to recharge ourselves. Then what a JAM is was explained and after a fun exercise, we formed working groups.

After making the groups, the theme of this edition was presented and it was the sound of a liquid interacting with something solid. From that sound, we had to design a service that would help to improve the world.

Although the work was not easy, motivation was high, so our group quickly got to work. At first, the group was showed stiff and hard to get possibilities from that sound and focus the target.

After a few minutes of doubts, it was decided to design a service that would help entrepreneurs woking within the creative sector. But you might say, what does it have to do with the sound of liquid? Well the reasoning was as follows: Sound> liquid> water> fish> freedom> jump into the swimming pool> courage> entrepreneurship.

When we got to the term entrepreneurship we defined a sector, to make it more specific, staying in the creative area.

Once we got to define the problem, we started making a brainstorming in order to get a good volume of ideas in a fast way. We classified ideas and decided to focus on two areas, recycling and knowledge. The result was a platform where they could share both products and used materials, thus giving them a second life, and also knowledge between experienced and novice creatives.

At the end of this phase, we made a small parenthesis and we connected with the Barcelona JAM, coming out of the box and realizing the dimension and the magic of this event, jammers prototyping services at the same time and worldwide!

After an interesting conversation with our colleagues in Barcelona, we went back to work. With the project already on its way, we quickly built a rapid prototype on a papper sheet but when we were preparing to go out on the street in search of our user profile, many doubts arose. Part of the team was afraid of not finding the target audience so they proposed to completely change the project. As a solution, we decided to go to places where this user profile usually goes, so we overcame the crisis of faith in the project and carried on 🙂

(Although in this case, it was only an exercise, these crises of faith are a reflection of what constantly happens when you want to innovate, so it is important to note that we must have confidence in the project and don’t let us to be carried away by the fear of failure. Innovating is not easy, if it was, everyone would do).

After that, we only had 15 minutes so we went down the stairs of Doutroxeito coworking and started running under the rain looking for our user profile. We arrived at the selected site and on the second table we asked to, we obtained two possible users of the platform. After presenting the idea to the target audience, the feedback received was so positive that the confidence of the group grew significantly, truly believing in the project and making it his own.

After a lunch break, we returned to Doutroxeito and we made a series of dynamic exercises to activate ourselves before analyzing our service via a customer journey map. With the use of this tool and the feedback collected in the morning, we found many points of improvement for the project, so the group went back to work and redesigned the service.

When we noticed it was 19:30, start time to load the projects onto the platform, so we ended the finishing touches and uploaded it to share with all the jammers.

To finish the day we introduced ourselves to everyone else and each one gave his opinion of what he liked and what they would improve. Although you can not always apply it, I found very interesting the idea of introducing each other at the end, because you eliminate prejudices and everyone work as equal.

What I liked the most about the experience of this Compostela Jam were several things:

• To share workspace with dynamic and fun people.

• To confirm once again the energy that flows in dynamic groups of this type.

• See the evolution of the group and how it changed from, being rigid and with many doubts, to overcoming a crisis, fully trusting their project and operating autonomously.

What I would like:

That the people who take the big decisions and have on their hands the possibility to change things, participate in events like this and work with others as equals and without labels.

I would like them to understand that working in groups with people who think differently always enriches you and the project, you just have to overcome fears and crises of faith 😉

Photo by Xaime Cortizo