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Service Design Accelerator - BESPIN Design Studio - STRATFI

AFWERX · AFWERX STRATFI · AFWERX

AI-Readiness Score
17/25
Pathway Speed
5/5
Timeline Realism
3/5
Problem Framing
3/5
AI / ML Fit
1/5
Award + Transition
5/5

Award

$5,607,362
Award ceiling
SKYLIGHT INC.
Awardee
Posted June 25, 2024

Description

Service design is an emerging, but proven method for delivering optimal, end-to-end user experience journeys. Through an STTR Phase I and STTR Phase II, we conducted R&D on how to develop a solution for rapidly scaling the adoption of service design within a large enterprise – called the Service Design Accelerator. Based on these initial R&D efforts, we developed a commercially viable solution and have secured over $60M in Phase III contracts to-date. While our original STTR R&D efforts enabled us to build the foundation for a commercially viable solution, more R&D is required to evolve, scale, and make it a war-winning program of record within the DAF/DoD. In particular, there remains technical uncertainty or emergent needs in a few key areas, such as the degree to which it's enterprise grade and the growing demand for new use cases such as AI-centric design. AFLCMC/GBO/BESPIN, which is one of the Air Force’s premier software factories (along with others such as Kessel Run), has been a long-standing user of our Service Design Accelerator solution. Given a recent directive from Air Force leadership that all software factories are expected to provide enterprise-wide services throughout the DAF, BESPIN is facing the critical challenge of how to scale its service delivery operation (e.g., Design Studio, Digital University, MDaaS) to support hundreds of customers and product teams within the next few years. In order for BESPIN to scale successfully, it needs to optimize critical user experience journeys across its business operations, design operations, and engineering/cloud operations, while building up its own internal service design capacity through Airmen enablement. Given the scale at which BESPIN needs to transform its user experience journeys, a STRATFI presents an opportunity to build an even more robust, scalable, and impactful Service Design Accelerator solution, while enabling BESPIN to achieve transformative results.

Score Rationale

The STRATFI pathway and $5.6M ceiling with explicit Phase III commercial traction ($60M in follow-on contracts) are genuine strengths — this is a well-structured transition story with real acquisition momentum. However, AI/ML fit is the critical weakness: the core work is UX/service design methodology and enterprise scaling for a software factory, with 'AI-centric design' mentioned only as an emerging use case rather than a primary technical problem — AI is clearly grafted on, not foundational. Problem framing is reasonable given BESPIN's concrete scaling mandate but lacks specific success metrics or data availability detail that would make it crisply AI-ready.

Source

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