Service Innovation

I found this on the BBC recently and thought it worth a mention. Chiltern Railways in the UK has hired two comedy writers to help assist them with announcements on the train (link). Instead of a surly or purely informative announcement, they are injecting some humour into the messages. As an example, they have added […]

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Quite a lot of people have liked the touch-point cards and have been spreading the word about how useful they are in service innovation projects. I have received several emails requesting sets, but have been unable to deliver. The first two print runs of the cards went very quickly. Now, I’m pleased to say that […]

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I noticed this small article in the New York times the other day about a restaurant that has started to use the iPad as a wine list. To me, it makes perfect sense – wine is an emotional affair and the iPad give emotionally rich experiences – a great match. Not only does it give […]

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Recent research confirms the trend that people regularly combine television viewing and other types of media. Data from online surveys of over two thousand people showed that people regularly update their facebook profiles, send IM messages, send text messages or surf the web while watching TV. This is particularly a part of life for 18-24 […]

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A recent article in the New York Times (link) highlights the frustrations we all have with services. They refer to a consumer reports survey (link) in which people were asked about everyday annoyances, with 10 being the most annoying, and 1 the least annoying. I guess it doesn’t take much to guess that high up […]

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At this years annual innovation conference run by the Norwegian research council, the AT-ONE project was invited to run a two hour workshop to give an introduction to service design and the AT-ONE method. We had 17 participants from a broad range of disciplines and companies and had a busy two hour session. We chose […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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We are all sick of IVR phone menus – the ones that when you call offer you option after option of voice menus to direct you to the right place. Way back, I re-designed a few of them to make them easier to use, but they still are a poor substitute for a person on […]

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After a long Summer pause, and lots of work starting up the new Service-Design course we are running together with the Oslo Business School this fall, I thought I just had to point you to this news item at the BBC (link). Whole Foods, is a company that has 270 stores in North America and the […]

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