Innovating the Rundāle palace. Service design toolkit and recommendation for a visitors experience improvements

Author:
Līga Lindenbauma
Supervisor:
Krista Korpikoski
University:
University of Lapland

Design thinking has long been associated with innovation - both in business and in the public sector. Service design, a design thinking-based and user-centered practice, has been used for strategic innovation in organizations in recent decades. A sresearch shows, innovation, which can be the result of both design thinking as an approach and service design as a methodological framework, is closely related to organizational culture. In order for a norganization to be able to innovate, it must be ready to do so, or it must train the ability to innovate.

This design research, which is based on qualitative research methods, focuses on a specific institution - the Rundāle Palace Museum. By conducting observations, interviewing Rundāle Palace visitors, employees and experts, implementing co-creation workshops, the experience of museum visitors, as well as the internal processes of the organization, have been studied. The result was recommendations for improving the visitors' experience, as well as a practical toolkit based on service design methods to enable the innovations of the Rundāle Palace Museum in the future. 

Key words: service design, design thinking ,innovations, public sector, tool kit