Service Innovation

Monika Hestad over at Plan (link) sent me a link to Kevin McCullaghs thoughtful comments (link) to the design thinking session organised by the Economist (link). This was remarkable for several reasons.

Firstly, that the Economist has organised something big around design thinking (for a detailed view on Design Thinking, look here).  Secondly, Kevin has some very good discussion points about the hype around the term. I particularly like this quote:

In fact, design thinking always meant different things to different players. For some it was about teaching managers how to think like designers; for others, it was about designers tackling problems that used to be the preserve of managers and civil servants; and for others still, it was anything said on the subject of design that sounded smart. To most, it is was merely a new spin on design. All its proponents were, however, united by their ambition for design to play a more strategic role in the world than ‘making pretty.’ Who could argue with that?

But what caught my eye, was this image that was included in the post, of someone visualising a mind map.

This is a great example of one of the skills that designers bring to workshops – the visualisation of process and/or solution. The thing I like about this image, is that it reminds me of a few designers I know who just can’t write words on flip-overs – they have to draw them. Not because they want to look cool, but because the content and form of the image says a lot more than the word alone. Anders from LiveWork is one of these, and it is interesting to see how his visual representations draw people into discussions.

During our interviews validating the AT-ONE method, visualisations are often highlighted by our industrial partners as a major element that designers bring to innovation. This is not a discussion of making things look pretty, its about making shared meaning in a group, something that has incredible value. To visualise an idea, the designer does not just draw a word. Instead, the designer integrates multiple aspects of a solution and finds a visual form that communicates this strongly – often translated into a customer perspective. This allows a team to create a common understanding and is why designers are a central part of the AT-ONE workshop process. When it comes to design thinking, I think this is what it looks like.

Tags: Design Thinking, Visualisation

Today, five years ago, the first Youtube video was uploaded. A very short video of one of the founders at the zoo. Its still online.

Its amazing that in only five years it has become such a central part of our viewing habits on the net and perhaps is the best example of a user generated content based service that we know of. Its also amazing that many companies still don’t consider user generated content when designing new services.

Tags: User-needs, Web 2.0

Mosse, my colleague at work, sent me a link to this interesting discussion regarding the ability of facebook to be a successful persuasive technology with resulting behaviour change. We are both interested in how the combination of ubiquitous technologies, social media and service design can be combined to nudge behaviour, particularly in public services such as health.

The discussion suggests that facebook has the potential to become an important behaviour changer, but that it falls down on one major element – its ability to trigger action from the user. To support the argument, the blog links to the fantastic work of BJ Fogg (link). BJ, has been working in the area of persuasive technology for at least 15 years, and has published well and widely. He also has a nice open approach to sharing his work. He has created a model for behaviour change (link) that has three major elements:

1. Motivation

2. Ability/Simplicity

3. Triggers

Using the model by Fogg, the blog shows that Facebook has weaknesses when it comes to making the applications simple enough to make the transition to trigger activity. In addition, they claim that Facebook does not have the ability to create relevant triggers that are timely. In other words, Facebook has problems with both the ability axis, and the triggers.

This is an interesting analysis, and one that makes me think that maybe the iphone app model is better suited. Not only is the interaction design pleasurable (something not in BJs model), but it has the ability to create more context sensitive triggers. Maybe the ipod app solution fits the bill better.

p.s. BJ Fogg has also some interesting views on what he terms Mass Interpersonal Persuasion (MIP) here.

Tags: Experience, Nudge, Persuasion, User experience

Peter Morville, him of the polar bear book on Information Architecture (link), and later Ambient Findability (link) has just written and interesting and informed piece about Ubiquitous Service Design (link). I’m always amazed about how compact and well linked his posts are, and this one is no exception. He introduces  a great many terms, but starts with Shostacks article about how to design a service from 1982 (link).  The blog entry skirts the differences between products and services before jumping deeply into service design in a period of ubiquitous computing. In one of his images, he suggests that information architecture builds a bridge between service design and user experience, and this is where his story breaks down for me.

I think he views services as information-based solutions, in which information has to be categorised, sorted and presented in specific forms (primarily on the web on a pc). That is fine for some services, but for a great many services this does not take account of the multiple touch-points that a service journey includes. The implication of this, is that the holistic experience is not just a matter of information architecture, but  also about behaviours, objects, interfaces and buildings – multiple touch-points. All of which have to work together to give a holistic experience that supports and strengthens the brand strategy of the company. I disagree with the implication from his diagram,  that user experience and service design are far apart. I think that what he really is drawing is the back-office/front office  divide, or line of service visibility, as Shostack calls it. In which case, there will be multiple bridges, each representing a touch-point (and only some of which are supported by information architecture).

But, the thing that caught my eye is further down in the blog post, his description of experience maps. Here he acknowledges the importance of visualisation as a means of eliciting innovations. He quotes from Dave Gray:

A picture can connect the strategic with the tactical in a way no other communication form possibly can

He presents an example of a book purchasing map, which doesn’t map the experience, but which opens up for exploring innovation possibilities through various ways of using the map. In other words, the map is a tool to elicit innovations, and one that does so in a different way from words.

This, to me, summarises much of Service Design, and the use of design as part of cross-functional teams. The designer not only has a role in terms of innovating/designing the customer experience, but also has an important role in terms of using visualisation as a tool, such that the team as a whole can innovate. Not only this, the designers ability to sketch out resulting ideas, adds a level of closure to an idea generation session. This gives the designer a triple role – innovator, facilitator, documenter, and underlines their importance in the team.

During the AT-ONE project, we have placed a lot of emphasis upon the designers multiple roles in the fuzzy front end of innovation. I think Peter has described this in a roundabout way, which puts him on a nice convergent tragectory with Service Design. It will be interesting to follow his journey.

Tags: Brand, Experience, Interaction-Design, Touch-point, User experience, Visualisation

Spotify managed to tempt me to click on an advert for changing my mobile phone subscription which took me to a nicely simple way to tailor a subscription (link). It uses sliders to allow me to choose precisely the combination I want for phone minutes, SMS, MMS and Internet use.

I have always liked sliders as an input medium because they combine physical movement with real time feedback of results, in this case, cost. This creates a strong interaction loop with emotional benefits. Ben Shneiderman (link), one of the founders of the Human Computer Interaction discipline has pointed out their benefits for about 20 years, but they don’t seem to be taken up often enough.Using these sliders puts me in control, and allows me to explore different alternatives in real time. Not only this, it expresses a direct desire from the company to let me do this, without trying to hide costs or confuse me. I choose, I feel in control, I am responsible and I feel that I have tailored something to my needs. In short, I feel that Chess are serving me and are willing to listen to what I want, rather than suspecting that someone is tricking me into something they want me to have.

Again an example of how interaction behaviours in services influence our experience of the service, and our opinions about the service provider. Simplicity in practice, and brand building at the same time.

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

I recently discovered the fun of bump, an iPhone app to transfer businesscards from one phone to another. Like NFC, which Timo has researched in the Touch project (link), this solution is based upon simple, yet effective user interface basics. The user is in control, a physical action is required by both to complete the transaction, and the interaction process is simple to plan and execute. But what makes this more than a simple app is its magic. I still don’t know exactly how it works, and since the app is not available in Norway yet (although a Norwegian language version is available) I haven’t tried it out. But, the magic of bump as an interaction design solution elevates it from useful and usable to desirable.

Tags: Desirability, Interaction-Design, Interface, Touch-point, User experience

This simple video (simple in terms of technology, not message) gets across two sides of the view about books in paper or electronic form. It works very nicely by adding a twist in the middle which makes you rethink all of the arguments you have followed along the way. This gives you enough of an awakening to then follow the message that DK want to get across.

As a piece of communication it works very very well. A simple message, simply put across, nicely paced where the message is intellectual rather than visceral. Not only that, it allows me to mention the iPad again in a post.

From boing boing

Tags: Brand, Customer, Experience

I am writing a chapter about design for experiences for the AT-ONE handbook at the moment and wanted to check some references. Into my inbox (from Ingrid, doing a really exciting project about health and well-being) came a rave review of this TED presentation by Daniel Kahneman. It’s  about the difference between experiences as experienced and experiences as remembered. This is perfect to get the message across that a lot of experiences just aren’t registered, and that the peaks and ends of experiences are the most important.

I won’t say anything more than WATCH. Its very interesting.

Tags: Emotion, Experience, User experience

Found this site recently (link), not that I am thinking of planning, saving or getting married. What struck me about it was the obvious link and connection between the two actors –  a wedding planning magazine and a savings bank.

The site incorporates the two parts nicely into an integrated whole, and its is difficult to see where the border between the two collaborators goes (always a good sign). In addition, it comes across as customer centred, with a nice customer experience. Its not particularly pushy, for either the magazine content or the savings bank, which I think gives it a nice image. The tone of voice is helpful, encouraging, positive and optimistic, which fits the  marriage plan goal. The collaboration is aimed at making things easier for the user, which it does nicely, and probably leads to nice additional sales of both the magazine and financial services.

This is a typical example of actor collaboration to satisfy customer needs, and I hope that I come across more of these in the future.

Tags: Actor, Customer, Experience, User-needs

One of the mantras of Service Design is that we are moving from a society in which our identity is constructed through consumption of products, to one in which our identity is contructed through the services we use. I know this is a black and white view, and its really a blurry mix of these things. Its not a new view either. However, recently I have begun to realise that this move  is becoming more and more visible, and the weighting product/service is shifting. Maybe it is moving towards a tipping point.

Firstly, social networks are obviously now becoming a major source of our projected and desired identities. Facebook is a great example of this, and it seems to be deepening and strengthening through numerous other sites. Just do a search for somebody on Google, and see how their identity is created for you through the links it throws at you.

Secondly, products are increasingly becoming carriers of services, and its the services that we value. The iPhone is probably the best (and most overused example) of this. What interests me is that the iPhone as a product seems to be less and less important in terms of identity construction, its the apps that are on there that are key. Not the number of apps, but which apps people have chosen to put there, seem to be defining people these days.

Ikea rent out Christmas trees each Christmas and gain a lot of brand value because of it (link)

Thirdly, and the reason I am writing this post, there seems to be a strong rise in replacing product ownership with rental. Car rental, bike rental, animal rental – you name it. I guess this is still object based, but its blurring the edges even more, and it seems that, like apps, the combination of what you rent, and where you rent from is more important than the objects themselves. This links to the emotional value of services and the idealistic values that can be attributed to some aspects of it. I was fascinated to read this post from the putting people first blog (link) describing an article in the Italian newspaper LaStampa (link) last year. It states that Italians are dropping ownership in favour of renting, listing typical things such as cars and property but also some other things such as cameras and…

You can even rent vegetable gardens and land workers who will take care of a small patch of garden for a couple of euros a day, and deliver your vegetables at home.

To me, this seems to fit together to describe a period in history, in which we moved from products to services for not just functional needs, but also emotional and idealistic. If this is true (and I might be wrong here), we can expect to see a strong increase in services as identity bearers in the future. I’m not sure what they will look like, and how we will make them conspicuous, because unless we are conspicuous about them, then they don’t help project identity. Where will they come from and what will they be like? Any ideas?