Design of a framework to co-create applications in a hangar environment

Abstract

New, innovative technologies are important. More and more companies are using digital technologies to their benefit. The act of leveraging such digital technologies to enable organisational improvements in a strategic way is called a digital transformation. In such transformations, the customer experience, operational processes and business models need to be reconfigured in order to get ahead of the forces for change in the digital age. If a company only focuses on technology, the transformation might fail, as also the daily work of people will change due to the digital transformation. Therefore, also human-centric challenges need to be tackled in a digital transformation strategy.

In order to create value with new digital technologies in a transformation program, it is important to understand needs of the people affected by the new digital technologies. The extent to which needs are met determines what value is attached to the digital artefact. Therefore, many strategies exist for uncovering user needs and involving users in the sense-making of the research topics for new product development. However, no strategies exist that tell how to combine such co-creation with software development to better meet user needs with features of digital artefacts.

This provides new opportunities for the development of a co-creation framework for software development. This thesis explores how to incorporate co-creation in agile software development. This is done for the department of a European-based airline. By involving their users in the creation of digital artefacts, the company will better know what users want and increase the value created with the artefacts of the digital transformation program.

Currently, this airline uses the Scrum framework to develop iPad applications. They find user needs but do not manage to translate those needs into the right product backlog items for the software development. Product backlog items are descriptions of user needs that explain to the development team what needs to be made in the application features. This thesis, therefore, answers the following research question:

How can co-creation be used to give support during the translation of user needs into product backlog items?

This research question is answered by following a double diamond design process, that includes both research activities and design experiments to create insights needed to answer the research question.

A detailed literature review is conducted the understand the current context of co-creation, value creation and software development. Moreover, two ethnographic studies are performed to understand the company’s context and problem that is being faced. The research insights are translated in a co-creation framework outline. Based on this framework a co-creation process and several tools that together serve as a design solution are developed. This process and tools are designed based on several creative sessions and experiments that reveal what design principles do and do not work. Finally, a framework evaluation test is performed in the hangar environment, validating the principles of the design solution. Based on the evaluation insights, the design solution is extended, and recommendations for implementation and further research are given.