From Participant Needs to Service Design: Building a Five-Day Business Camp Experience

Asking people what they want is useful, but it is not always enough to design a good service. This is especially true when the participants are still developing the experience and vocabulary needed to answer the question.

In 2023, I served as General Coordinator and Head of Administration for the 26th National Cheng Kung University Business Administration Pre-college Camp. A 60-person student team had one year to design and operate a five-day residential experience for 120 high-school students. The goal was not to persuade every participant to study business. It was to give them enough knowledge, practice, and firsthand experience to make a better judgment for themselves.

That changed the design problem. We were not assembling a timetable of popular activities. We were building a service that had to connect uncertain participant needs, educational intent, social experience, safety, budget, and minute-by-minute operations.

Participants do not always have the language for their needs

Many high-school students already had an interest in management, finance, entrepreneurship, or business. Some had even tried small projects of their own. What they did not yet have was direct experience of university study or the work that might follow it. Their application answers could tell us what sounded interesting, but not necessarily what experience would help them understand the field.

We therefore treated direct requests as one input rather than a full specification. I reviewed applications and post-event feedback from the previous cohort, received a detailed handover from its coordinator, and worked through archives left by earlier teams. For the current cohort, we studied application responses and gathered informal observations from team members who regularly spoke with high-school students through tutoring or school networks.

Each source had a different weakness. Historical feedback described a past version of the camp. Current applications reflected what students could already articulate. Team experience carried useful context, but also personal bias. Used together, they gave us a more reliable view of the service than any one survey could provide.

Preserve the core structure, redesign the adjustable parts

A recurring programme should not be rebuilt from zero each year. Some parts existed for good reasons: participants needed a coherent introduction to business, a safe residential environment, time to build relationships, and a schedule the organizing team could actually operate.

The design work was to distinguish that stable structure from the parts that should respond to the current cohort. We reduced the number and length of external speaker sessions we had initially considered, then used more interactive formats to introduce business concepts. An investment game, for example, made abstract ideas easier to test and discuss than another long lecture would have.

We also kept social activities, an evening programme, and a dance. A five-day camp made entirely of classes might appear academically rigorous, but it would not match how teenagers sustain attention, build trust, or remember an experience. Learning and enjoyment were not competing priorities. They were two parts of the same service.

Use one real problem to connect five days of learning

The most important change was replacing a fictional case with a live company challenge. We considered companies in human resources, marketing, and information technology before selecting Happy Food 1000 Co., Ltd., a Tainan-based social enterprise working across local agriculture, food products, and intergenerational farming collaboration.

Local agriculture was a prominent issue at the time, and the company connected it to the city where the camp took place. It was established enough to offer a substantive business challenge while remaining close enough to the local context for high-school students to investigate.

Company leaders introduced the challenge on the first day. Over the next several days, teams received time, analytical tools, and coaching from business students. On the final day, they presented their proposals directly to the company. The case became the thread connecting otherwise separate lessons. Every new concept had a practical question waiting for it.

Let participants explore instead of prescribing one future

Another part of the programme, called Virtual University, addressed a different uncertainty. Participants did not only want to know what a business course contained. They wanted to understand what university life might feel like and where it could lead.

Our team built a small web-based course registration system modelled on NCKU's own enrolment experience. Participants chose from several sessions led by senior students and alumni, covering topics such as double majors, clubs, internships, overseas exchange, relationships, university life, and early career experience.

The interface was playful, but the product decision was serious. We did not decide which future mattered most. We created a structured way for participants to choose what they were ready to explore.

The experience depended on an operating system

Service design became operational long before participants arrived. I recruited and aligned the heads of seven departments, then worked across administration, programme design, training, human resources, media, design, and external coordination. As Head of Administration, I also carried direct responsibility for finance, admissions, marketing, venues, logistics, and the integrated schedule. This leadership role is also documented in my public resume.

The schedule was reviewed at minute-level detail. We replayed what could happen across the five days, checked handoffs between teams, and prepared different budget and capacity scenarios. A smaller cohort would have required changes to venues and activities; reaching the target of 120 participants allowed us to deliver the fuller version of the experience.

COVID-19 added another service constraint. The operating plan covered masks, ventilation, seating, temperature checks, sanitation, rapid testing, and escalation procedures. These details were not separate from the participant experience. They were the system that allowed the programme to run safely and retain university approval.

Average rating for the overall programme flow

4.41 / 5

Average rating for course arrangement

4.35 / 5

Rated the overall flow 4 or 5

87%

Rated course arrangement 4 or 5

88%

When asked which course area was most beneficial, 47 respondents selected marketing, 27 selected financial management, and 26 selected human resources. For the learning games, 45 selected the investment game, 36 selected the lottery game, and 19 selected the advertising game theory activity. Open responses also frequently mentioned the dance, showing that the social experience remained memorable alongside the academic content.

These results do not establish causality or justify claims about national rankings or long-term educational impact. They show that this cohort rated both the course structure and the overall programme highly, while open responses also showed that the social experience remained memorable.

Design the conditions for a better decision

Participants could not be expected to specify the perfect camp in advance. Our responsibility was to combine what they said, what past cohorts revealed, what the team had learned, and what the operating environment allowed.

The resulting service did not tell high-school students what to study or who to become. It gave them real problems, informed choices, social connection, and enough reflection to leave with a clearer view of their own interests.

Good service design does not answer for participants. It creates the conditions in which they can form a better answer themselves.