Service Innovation

Interesting blog post from Brian Thomson Collins (link) relating the power of design to the increasingly weak power of advertising messages. What makes it relevant and interesting for the service design community is that he repeatedly uses the term experience, and in effect, it is the experience that he argues trumps advertising.

Unfortunately he uses the iPhone as his example (I say unfortunately, because everybody seems to use this as their prime example of the user experience these days). 

 

Some nice thoughts though:

Not the best promise. Not the cleverest copy. Not the Big Idea or the biggest budget. The best experience wins.

He points out 4 reasons why design is displacing messaging:

1. Design has the potency to rearrange markets.

2. Design trumps cosmetics. 

3. Design creates an architecture of participation. 

4. Design determines the conversation.

I think he is spot on with these, and to me, it all boils down to the combination of well designed interactivity as part of a well designed experience. Both equally relevant for products and services.  In the future, we might see a reduced spend on messaging and an increased focus upon design, and I don’t think thats a bad thing.

Tags: Brand, Experience, Interaction-Design, User experience

Razorfish has just released an interesting report describing how moms use digital tools.

 

After interviewing 1500 women, they conclude:

1. 65% of mums use social networking sites, 56% SMS and 52% game online or via a game console. Gaming is no longer a niche activity for adolescent boys but has gone mainstream.

2. Moms over 35 are more likely to use the web as an information tool while moms under 35 are more likely to use social network sites. Also women with children over 12 tend to game more (57%) than women with children under 12 (51%).

3.  In the last three months the surveyed mothers had researched or purchases fashion items or clothing (40%), food and cooking (31%) and baby/parenting (26%), banking (22%), computer and electronics (21%) and medication/medical condition (20%). Part 2 is based on an in-depth survey of 1,750 women active in CafeMum.

4. Digitalmoms spent 18.5 hours per week online.

5. These mums are active in social networking sites not passive consumers.

6. The report develops five segments of digital mums: the self-expressor, the utility mum, the groupster, the infoseeker and the hyperconnector.

View the report here (link) in their snazzy reader.

Tags: Customer, Social media, Trend

Over at Seeking Alpha (link), there is a post about Amazon using “frustration free packaging”, and how this connects well with their customers. This is both a green initiative, but mostly aimed at creating a better user experience. Amazon describes the initiative here (link) and supports the initiative by encouraging customers to upload videos of their own frustrating packaging experiences.

According to the post, they have managed to reduce the unpacking time for a Fisher Price toy from 11 minutes to 44 seconds. Not only that, they have reduced packaging materials enormously, as seen in this video.

What I love about this is that Amazon again are focussing upon the customer experience. What is more frustrating than receiving a great present, then spending ages to unpack it and assemble it?

In addition to this focus upon the experience, they have managed to create collaboration between major actors to satisfy this need. In fact, its scores highly in terms of all of the AT-ONE letters, Actors, Touch-points, Offering, Need and Experience. No wonder they are doing so well, and eating up E-Bay piece by piece.

 

P.S. Wrap rage is a great term for the frustrations we have with packaging. Read more about it here

Concepts describe the direction, content and core offering of a service that you suggest a company develop. They are high level descriptions that are detailed enough for someone to grasp, yet are at such an early stage that they have not consumed a lot of resources in their development. In other words, they are a relatively cheap way to show the future potential of a service.

 

The AT-ONE project takes the view that concepts are an overlooked resource for an organisation, something that organisations should develop more often. Concepts open a window to a potential future and answer the question “what if”. 

 

Concepts are a cheap way to stimulate an organisation to change and we like to use the example of the concept car to explain their importance. Today, concept cars are regularly produced by the motor industry.  Why do they produce them? Firstly, they are a strong branding tool, and reinforce the brand message of the company, Secondly, they are used to explore new directions, without investing huge amounts of money. Thirdly, they are used as  a kind of first level user test, to gauge user opinion for new directions. Fourthly, they are used to influence our tastes and to introduce new trends. Finally, and importantly, they are used internally in the organisation as a catalyst for change, to continually remind the organisation to innovate. Taken together, the concept car gives five good reasons for their existence. They are a cheap way to do this.  We question therefore why service companies don’t embrace the concept car idea and create service-concepts? I think the reason for this is that there is a mindset in service development towards creating low-cost commodity services. The idea of differentiating a service is relatively new, and the tradition of concept- cars has not embedded itself into the service organisation.

The Buick Y was the worlds first concept car. Produced in 1938

There are exceptions though, and some service-companies have started to use the concept-car idea:

• airlines show off new services through concept interiors for business and first class
• supermarkets create future stores that show off new technologies and solutions
• petrol stations create concept stations before they develop them and roll them out

However, these are often more of a prototype for evaluation rather than concepts aimed at achieving all five of the above goals. 

Denis Weil from McDonalds showed some concept store work at the SDN conference recently, and it was clear that the concept-car idea lives on in McDonalds. 

A McDonalds service concept.

If you are interested in finding out more about his work at McDonalds, have a look at the video of his presentation (link)

So, do as McDonalds do, create your  own Buick Model Y, and start a culture of concept service work. If you want to improve your customer focus, design experiences but most of all, change the culture of your organisation, give it a go.

Tags: concept, concept-service, Customer, Evidencing

I have been searching for a good analogy for the workshop process in AT-ONE. The method uses each letter as a springboard for innovation through multi-stakeholder workshops. During each workshop, the focus is upon the theme of the letter itself (Actors, Touch-points, Offering, Need, Experience).

One analogy that I have been using is that of viewing the service through the different lenses of a microscope. This has a nice tangible aspect to it. Everyone has clicked different magnifications into place on a microscope, and seen things appear as if by magic! However, the microscope analogy doesn’t quite fit, because the  different lenses only show variations in scale. The letters of AT-ONE don’t just adjust scale, they highlight different content.

The other analogy I have been thinking about is one of different filters. Putting different filters on a lens, for example, can highlight different things, even though the subject is exactly the same. There is no difference in scale, just different views of the same subject.

This analogy fits better, but isn’t as universal as the microscope one, and doesn’t give the same associations.

Now that you can see both of them, which one do you think is the best (not necessarily the most correct)?

Colleen Jones has written an interesting post about multi-channel strategies over at UX matters (link). As she points out, customers don’t think about multiple channels, they just use the channels that seem natural at each time. However, from a company point of view, multiple channels cause all kinds of problems; organisational, technological and content-wise. Colleen describes these and suggests seven practical steps that can be used including audits accross channels, listening accross channels etc. Its well worth a read.

In the AT-ONE project we use the term touch-points to describe all of the points of contact between the service provider and the customer. We are often asked the difference between touch-points (which represents the letter T in AT-ONE) and channels. In many ways they are similar, but there are some small but important differences. Channels as a term implies difference and independence,and has a broadcast connotation, whilst what is needed is consistency, dialogue and interdependence – we are after all designing a holistic solution where dialogue is central. Channels are mostly considered technological delivery media, web, mobile etc, whilst touch-points include things not generally considered a channel. Recently we have been including indirect contact amongst the touch-points we analyze. For example, a review in a magazine or comments from friends and family are important touch points between a customer and a service. You might think that friends and family are a surprising touch-point, but in many situations, friends and family communicate strong signals about a service or might even initiate contact on behalf of a customer (for example, parents often initiate insurance for their children when they move out). If a company wants to create a consistent user experience, both formal and informal channels need to be taken into account.

This might be semantics, but in my opinion taking a channel approach often puts the company in focus as a broadcaster instead of putting the customer in focus as a navigator trying to relate and contribute to the multiple signals they receive. And that is, for me, what makes Touch-Points a much better term.

Tags: Touch-point

Those clever bods down at the SAID business school have been following closely how Service Design consultancies do their work as part of a project funded by several British research councils (link). A kind of Service Design safari.

And they have done a great job. Not only do they have loads of photographic evidence, they have videos and documentation too. What I find most interesting are the articles/essays in which they reflect over what they have experienced (link). This is where the real cross-over value shows best – business meets design with open agendas.

If you are interested in finding out how service design consultants work, then take a look.

Tags: Method, Process, SAID, Service Design

Over at good experience (link) Mark Hurst has an interesting twist on usability testing, calling it listening labs. His point is that usability testing is often too goal directed and tests what the company wants to test, often excluding the opportunity for the customer to comment what they want to say. This fits in with the recent realisation in design and marketing that a lot of market research asks what a company wants to hear (valuable as it is), rather than what customers want to say (often even more valuable).

source: flickr

Marks suggestion is quite simple. Keep the usability set up, but instead of being led by a task focus, have an open agenda, in which the user can comment upon how they relate to the company, its offering, its touch-points and experience. Then, once they have commented upon this, suggest that they show you how they use the web-site or service.

As Mark states:

most websites are a strategic representation of the *business*. How can you presume to know how customers relate to the business, unless you ask them first?… in the listening labs we had respondents from all their major customer segments. By the fourth respondent in each segment, we were seeing the same tasks, the same feedback, the same results – created voluntarily by the customers themselves.

I think this is a nice combination of methods and allows for both a period of open-ended comment and a session of goal-directed testing. One negative aspect is that the method might take a direction away from the module or part you have created and want to have evaluated. If you have just updated the sign-up process, the user might not choose this themselves as a task to show you. I don’t think this is a problem. My experience is that if you establish a good relation with the customer and are a good moderator, it is possible to ensure that the customers will carry out the task you need to evaluate too. It is after all a dialogue, and you have the chance to influence the direction of some parts of the discussion.

Ideally you should carry out listening labs early in a project to understand the customers perceived view of the service/its context, and then carry out listening labs later in the project, to evaluate the solution. Mark implies that all of this can be done together, and I think that cuts out one valuable part of user insights. However, I agree wholeheartedly that the traditional “scientific” approach to usability testing constrains the customer more than needed, and that the listening lab approach allows both to achieve their goals – there is nothing better than that.

Tags: evaluation, test, Usability, User experience

Having just posted about project funding in Denmark, I have just found the following from the UK, in which they are investing in Service Design for public services (link).

It looks like public services might get the design that they deserve in the future.

At the recent Service Design Conference in Amsterdam (link), organised by the Service Design Network (SDN) the Nordic Countries were very visible. One of the expert panels consisted totally of Nordics, and it seems that the Nordic research councils have been quick to finance research into service design.

This is now being followed up by initiatives in the area of design of public services. A recent call by the Danish Enterprise and Construction Ministry (link) for projects within the area of Service Design is allocating several million Danish Kroner to be used for pilot projects during Spring 2009. We discussed at the conference the potential that lies in improving public services through service design, and how this has the potential to create an export industry of knowledge, solutions and services.

The Danes are putting up money to start this. I hope that the Norwegian government follow up.

Tags: SDN