At Sopra Steria I have been lead designer on a huge scale service design project for the Norwegian armed Forces from 2019-2021.
The first insight user journey blueprint for soldiers.
In September 2018, the Digitalization Strategy for the Armed Forces was launched. In connection to this, the project “The employee story” was established as the start of the restructuring and transformation of its critical social mission. The aim of the project was to provide a better and more meaningful digital service to employees in the Armed Forces and especially in the first-time of service. The project was anchored at a high level in the organization, and it was expected that the project would have a “wow effect”. The results of the work were used, among other things, to communicate the use of agile design processes and the effect of design driven innovation methodology as part of the Armed Forces’ digitalization effort. As a direct effect of the project, the Armed Forces Personnel and Protection Service (FPVS) has expanded the project to several different user groups in the Armed Forces, including: The conscription journey, The manager journey, the NATO employee journey, and the Employee abroad journey. The project lasted for three years and has resulted in a personal scalable digital solution of a personal assistant and “my page” with data-driven decision-making and machine learning, with various services and products tailored to individual needs.
The project “The employee story” aimed to uncover the different people’s actual needs and wishes throughout the first-time service, as well as to outline solutions in the form of concepts that make sense and that they are highly likely to be used.
The project illustrated the potential for gains for the various concepts such as decision support for realization and sustainable solutions that will live for a long time. This process was repeated for the other extended user groups.
The project group consisted of two service designers, one business advisor and one social anthropologist from Sopra Steria, project owner from the Norwegian Armed Forces and the steering group in the Defense Staff Digitization Program and FPVS. My role as design manager from Sopra Steria was tin addition to design being the process manager, responsible for goals and good execution.
The delivery consisted of a number of detailed user journeys on the present state for the different user groups, as well as the future state in which concepts of solutions were included. The concepts were also illustrated and described. As well as a final report where insights, analyses and results were summarized.
The project is currently in a development phase of a digital collaboration tool that facilitates a number of different products that will make the everyday lives of people in the Armed Forces better. The digital tool has been launched as a beta version for first-time service employees in first-time service.
The project has been nominated as one of three for the Norwegian Digitalization Agency’s yearly award for digitalization 2022.
