The client

Agentschap Innoveren & Ondernemen (AIO) is the governmental agency that stimulates and supports innovation and entrepreneurship in Flanders. Servicing hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs everyday — big, small, startup, corporate — they have a huge responsibility to create an attractive climate for everyone starting or running their own business.

The challenge

We were commissioned to carry out a design study to identify the needs of entrepreneurs for a new centralised online service. In a society where customer expectations are rising, governmental services must evolve as well. AIO embarked on a journey to make their service radically digital and more customer-friendly. The big challenge for such a complex organisation always is addressing the diversity of the audience and managing the cultural change.

Magazine titled ‘Trends’ on the cover, lying next to an opened page.

Our approach

By doing field studies and contextual interviews we mapped the activities of entrepreneurs and defined how they triggered interaction within the government. We investigated digital service trends and performed a thorough data analysis. In strategic co-creation workshops we articulated a new strategy and possible scenarios for the digital service. Working closely with a team of entrepreneurs, experts and governmental agencies at every step.

Three infographics hang side by side on the wall, each listing different people.

People stand in a meeting room around a table with papers, post-its and markers. Three people in the foreground are talking and working on a template.

A person sits in front of a laptop showing a screen with the text ‘E-counter for entrepreneurs’ and a picture of a large group of people. Also on the desk is a camera on a flexible tripod.

Image of three papers on a table, each with diagrams and schematics. The papers show visual representations of processes with icons of people, documents and technical symbols.

People in a meeting room face walls full of flip charts and post-its as they deliberate in groups.

The result

After thoroughly testing the potential of different concepts, we built a UX prototype for the ‘to be’ service platform. We designed implementation models to communicate the multichannel approach of it clearly. Thanks to an involved collaboration with the team of AIO and with users and experts we were able to evaluate the feasibility of every idea and functionality in very short cycles.