Innovating the API Economy. Towards a validated human-centered workshop design

Diploma Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Information Management, grade: 5.25 (CHE-System), University of St. Gallen (Business Information Systems), language: English, abstract: The present thesis examines how a human-centered workshop design for finding use-cases for companies in the API economy could look like. For that aim the author used a qualitative exploration process and conducted interviews with 9 experts who have practical experiences in executing workshops and a theoretical background in the field of human-centered innovation to elaborate a first draft. The draft was then tested in four case studies to validate the methods. Based on the analysis of the workshop results and the participants' feedback a final proposal towards a validated workshop design is presented. The thesis proposes that the best results are reached by implementing two workshop modules. The first module is focusing on the data, services and potential services of a company, connecting it with stakeholders. The second module elaborates the specific requirements of the use-case by discovering the needs directly with a potential client (inside out approach). In the first module the main methods are brainstorming activities, progression curves and the stakeholder map; in the second the central elements are an adapted customer journey (API Service Blueprint) and prototyping. As a result, the technical term "API" is transformed to an approachable topic in a human-centered workshop by getting to know the own company, the API consumer, the end-user and using prototyping to visualize APIs in interfaces the user interacts with. The findings are tailored into a workshop proposal which considers not only the specific methods but also further success factors to provide a complete guideline for a human-centered workshop design.