Capturing users’ feedback on early concepts in service innovation

Previous research has shown benefits of user feedback early in the innovation process. An effective way of gathering such feedback might thus accelerate innovation. A case is presented on the use of social media functionality to capture user feedback in early phase service innovation. Through the method of social design feedback, where all participants can see and comment on each other’s feedback in an online environment, 207 users provided their feedback on three innovative service concepts. About one third of the comments contained suggestions for redesign. The case shows that social design feedback is a viable approach to
capturing users’ feedback in early phase service innovation, long before resources are spent on
implementation. Future work is needed on understanding participants' motivation for discussing feedback given by others. Guidelines or functionality stimulating such discussions might help improve the level of detail in the feedback.