Service Design: Dusty&Co., presented by Gordon, Seren and Feifey. A lime and white cover with geometric pottery shapes and the Dusty&Co × SVA IxD marks.

Dusty & Co.: Designing “Soft Clarity” for a Pottery Studio

Role: Service Designer
Team: Gordon, Seren, Feifey
Partner: Dusty & Co. Studio
Program: SVA MFA IxD

Turning a warm but confusing first visit into a clear, supportive journey, from booking a Try Class to picking up a fired piece weeks later.

Service DesignCo-designField Research

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At a glance

20–30%of Try Class guests convert to membership today
3–4 wksof silent waiting between class and pickup
5studio stakeholders interviewed
2 hrco-design workshop with the founders

Context

Who is Dusty & Co.?

Dusty & Co. is an independent, community-driven ceramics studio in NoMad, Manhattan. It is not a one-time “take photos and leave” kind of place, and it is not a serious, scary art school. Instead, it aims to be a friendly and energetic creative community for all.

The Dusty & Co. studio: long work tables, stools and shelves of drying pottery

A playful handmade ceramic creature among tools on a tiled counter

Unglazed bowls and lidded pots on a studio shelf

The “Dusty” vibe

The name “Dusty” has two meanings, and together they shape the soul of the brand.

Physical meaning

It comes from the real dust and clay marks that appear when making pottery, a reminder that this is hands-on work.

Emotional meaning

A “non-commercial” attitude. The founders don’t want the studio to feel like a factory or a super-clean showroom. They keep a rough, relaxed feeling so people can create freely, as if they were in a place they already know and love.

The “Dusty” opportunity

Current customer base

Students taking classes→ Try / Experience Class→ Semester Class
Corporate professionals (software engineers, architects) looking for a creative “third space”→ Meditation→ Social connection

Opportunity spotted

“Current conversion rates from Try Class to membership hover around 20–30%.”

Source: Dusty & Co. founders interview

Research

Listening to both sides of the counter

We combined interviews with the studio team, conversations with customers, and shadowing of the full Try Class journey, then brought the founders into a co-design workshop.

Stakeholder Interviews

2 founders, 1 instructor and 2 front-desk staff.

Identify the operational pain points.

Customer Interviews

Deep dives with long-term customers and observations of Try Class participants.

Sense the customer’s pain points.

Shadowing

Documenting the end-to-end journey, from booking to pickup.

Sense the customer’s pain points.

Co-design Workshop

A 2-hour session with the founders to map journeys and validate concepts.

Co-create solutions that bridge the conflicts.

Problem

Three gaps in the first-time journey

Interviews and shadowing pointed to the same moments where the studio’s warmth gets lost: before arrival, while waiting for a piece, and in what beginners expect to take home.

The “Invisible” Onboarding

New guests arrive without knowing what to expect, where to go, or what the rules are.

“Invisible” digital confirmation
“Invisible” physical wayfinding
Confusion after arrival

The “Black Box” of Waiting

The 3–4 week firing period is obvious to the founders, but for customers it becomes an anxious information gap.

Process invisibility
The digital disconnect
Operational burden

Expectation Mismatch

A beginner’s imagination is very different from the real experience of making pottery.

Difficulty gap (the TikTok effect)
Result gap (buying vs. creating)
Time gap (instant vs. 3–4 weeks)

How might we

…design an environment that feels clear, informative, and supportive for customers?

Co-design Workshop

Designing with the founders, not for them

In a 2-hour session at the studio, we walked the founders through a real first visit and worked through the problem together in four steps.

Workshop cards on the table reading “Defer Judgment”, “Be visual” and “Go for quantity”

01Collaboration Ground Rules

Seren presents photos from a real Try Class while participants write pain points on sticky notes

02Seren’s Real Try Class Experience & Pain Point Writing

A participant smiles while drafting How Might We questions

03HMW Design Challenges

Sticky notes sorted on a value-versus-complexity matrix

04Crazy 8 & 2×2 Matrix

Founder reviewing the workshop ground rules with the group

Blue sticky notes of pain points clustered on a journey sheet

Participants placing pain points along the Try Class journey

The team discussing HMW questions around the table

Participants writing pain points during the workshop

The conflict

Situation	Founder	Newcomer
Low structure	Trust Intimacy “Like a friend’s house”	Confusion Exclusion “I don’t know the rules”

The studio is designing for insiders (loyal customers) but selling to outsiders (new customers).

Problem statement

How might we prioritize the information customers need to know, so the instructor gets fewer redundant questions?

Value vs. complexity matrix of workshop ideas. High value, low complexity: video instructions, short TikTok or Instagram videos, orientation emails, a photo log. High value, high complexity: a guide book, an information board, building community. Low value: QR forms, contracts, chatbots, answering machines.

Co-designing “Soft Clarity”

Through the workshop, we aligned on a new design principle: Soft Clarity. It means providing structure through human connection and engaging media, rather than bureaucratic rules.

We called it “The Dusty Way.”

Insights

Warmth that newcomers can’t feel yet

Dusty & Co. wants to give people a warm, relaxed, non-commercial space. But because information is not clear, many visitors do not feel this value. They feel lost, nervous, and unsure instead.

A guest trimming a clay piece at a studio work table during a Try Class

Anti-Commercial Hospitality

New customers feel frustrated when they don’t have clear signage, emails, or rules.

The Anxiety Loop

After class, customers wait 3–4 weeks with almost no updates, so they call again and again. Silence creates anxiety, and anxiety creates more work for the studio.

Product vs. Experience

Many customers think a Try Class means buying a perfect final product. When their piece is not perfect they feel sad or angry, and teachers spend extra time and emotion to fix it.

Solution

Three touchpoints, one Dusty Way

Each recommendation adds clarity at a moment where newcomers felt lost, without turning the studio into a rulebook.

Solution #1: The Ritual Commitment

A physical card presented at the start of class.

Not a legal contract, but an emotional one. A beautifully designed card sets expectations about the process, the result and the wait, and turns them into a shared ritual between guest and instructor.

Cover of the Dusty&Co Contract card: bold white title on black with soft curved light streaks

Solution #2: Visual Vibe Guides

Short video loops sent with the booking confirmation.

Aesthetic clips hosted on Instagram and linked from the confirmation email or SMS show guests how to find the studio and what really happens to their clay over four weeks.

Video frame: hands shaping a vase on the wheel, captioned “the hottest pottery class in NYC just entered the chat” — How to find us

Video collage of a pottery class, captioned “Take a pottery class” — The 4-week journey of clay

Solution #3: The Anti-Anxiety Progress Tracker

A QR landing page that speaks like a person.

Instead of generic status updates, each piece shows its stage (form, dry, bisque, glaze, fire) with human-centric language:

“Your piece is drying safely. This takes time to prevent cracking. Check back in 2 weeks.”

Two “My Pottery” screens tracking a Blue Speckled Mug in glazing and an Ocean Wave Bowl drying, each with a friendly status message and a form-dry-bisque-glaze-fire progress bar

Reflection

Clarity doesn’t have to feel cold.

Taking a real Try Class myself made the newcomer’s confusion tangible, and sharing it in the workshop helped the founders see their studio from the outside. The most useful outcome wasn’t a single feature but a shared principle, Soft Clarity, that the team can apply to every future touchpoint. Thank you to the Dusty & Co. team!