Applying Service Design Thinking to UX Research: A Case of Smart Campus Dance Experience Design

Abstract

Smart Campus is an important part of smart city construction, running through the chain of campus education and life services. At present, digital campus services are facing a new challenge that needs to develop from the original B-End business for schools to operation and value-added services for C-End student consumers. However, the current digital solutions ignore the role of user experience (UX) research techniques and tools, lack holistic thinking in the stages of exploration, the definition of user needs, function transformation and service output, and cannot provide a compelling end-user experience. The study proposed a new user experience research process for methodologically integrating service design (SD) thinking into the exploration of users’ psychological aspirations through a smart campus design project, as a complement to the existing usability and human-centered design (HCD) paradigms. The study focuses on improving students’ dance experience, taking the dance studio of the South China University of Technology as an example. Research has shown that taking and sharing dance videos stimulates generative activity in student dancers and makes them feel happy later. Therefore, the project designed a system combining an app and smart mirror and offered a scenario-based solution for the user group. The design process improved and applied in this study explores best practices in service design thinking and UX research and should be of value to practitioners wishing to design positive user experiences.