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3G Knowledge Transfer – Dr Annette Boaz, London School of Economics – Lessons for Service Design?

Fergus Bisset — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:18:04 +0000

On the morning of the 7th of December 2010, I attended with Dr George Julian, Director of ripfa, a seminar by Dr Annette Boaz who works in the Health and Social Care Research Department at the London School of Economics. The seminar sought to “draw on Allan Best’s work on the different models of thinking with regard to knowledge transfer. …Describ[ing] ten exploratory case studies conducted in Europe to better understand the approaches that are currently used to assess the impact of research in practice and the conceptualisations of knowledge transfer that underpin them. It…conclude[d] by focusing on some of the conceptual challenges facing us in promoting and evaluating knowledge transfer.”

Whilst undoubtedly related to social care, and environmental policy from which many of the case studies were drawn, I perceive that much of what was covered in this seminar as also of relevance to the issue of Knowledge Transfer within the discipline of Service Design, or perhaps as it was described in the headline of the Nordic Service Design Conference last week, pertinent to those interested in ‘Knowledge Exchange within the field of Service Design’.

Dr Boaz is a specialist in translational research which Wikipedia can tell you more about here. The resonance of such translational approaches and thought to service design should at be immediately apparent, largely for the strong participatory approach that both such research approaches tend to adopt and for the action research perspective that they embody. Action Research in relation to Service Design is mentioned in Sarah Drummond’s recent post on her ServDes experience as indicative of her own designerly training and education, but I suspect her experience is atypical, it certainly is not representative of my taught design education. The point, that traditional ‘basic’ and ‘applied’ research perspectives and methodologies no longer cut the mustard when it comes to supporting responsible and sustainable design practice (and for that matter informing social care and environmental policy) is a point that Don Norman has also recently argued here. Norman’s point being, much like Boaz yesterday and Sangiorgi and Holmlid last week, that we now live in times where previous ways of thinking and previous approaches to professional practice and knowledge transfer are not robust or reliable enough, in the case of design and service design in particular, to respond to the real world challenges they face or knowingly or unknowingly take responsibility for.

No more could this be exemplified than in the case of some of the responses to the conference published so far on Twitter (see the the hashtag #servdes) and here, from practitioners bemoaning the conference being ‘overly academic’ and, as they alleged, an absence of business people and the business imperative to apply the learning from the ServDes Conference. This provoked a healthy discussion on Twitter this afternoon. A discussion that begs the question that Lucy Kimbell and others have begun to address (and here), before now, of how if attempting to facilitate effective knowledge exchange between academics and practitioners, as the ServDes Conference last week was, should future organisers of this conference or any other in a practitioner-centric discipline seek to facilitate effective knowledge exchange? And how do we measure this?

In a bid to start such a conversation, and to continue that which started on Twitter this afternoon, I want to share the mechanisms that Boaz identified as key knowledge transfer activities that she, and the work she references, currently perceives we have out our disposal to implement effective knowledge exchange. They are grouped into the three-generational model of research that underpins the work of Best that she leveraged throughout the presentation:

First Generation Modes of Knowledge Transfer (Linear)

- Seminars

- Presentations

[- I percieve that the ServDes Unconference falls into this category although I concede that as a two-way discussion forum it is closer to a second generation mode of knowledge transfer]

Second Generation Modes of Knowledge Transfer (Interactive)

-Research briefings

-Policy networks

[Social Network (web 2.0) Exchange - I've added this myself but the emphasis in this generational approach is on two-way communication]

Third Generation Modes of Knowledge Transfer (Systems)

-Practitioners and researcher collaboration (joint research)

-Co-locating policy makers and researchers (embedding service design)

So does Service Design as a discipline have any other Modes of Knowledge Transfer at its disposal? Have any Service Design Consultancies entered into Knowledge Transfer Partnerships with Universities or commissioned an academic department to bolster their work with more rigorous approaches? If not why not? By my perception ServDes was far from an ‘academic’ conference and a great effort and achievement by the committed team at Linkoping University, whilst like anything it could of course have been improved in certain areas, it is on the other hand a concern to see and hear that as far as some attendees and practitioners are concerned, it was ‘too academic’. I’m obviously not in a position to defend individual presentations and the first person myself to get frustrated if something is unclearly communicated, as is the stereotype with many ‘academic’ presentations, but the fact remains that Service Design is a discipline that is built on years of scientific and academic research. To give an example, Vargo and Lusch’s Service-Dominant Logic so freely banded around amongst practitioners at ServDes and within the discipline these days was 25 years of ‘academic’ research and rigour to get it to the point conceptually and technically that it now is.

As Service Design as a discipline seeks to explore new areas where it can add value and help address more complex social and ecological problems, it needs academic and scientific research if it is to remain credible and trustworthy. If traditional conferences, and other forms of first generational Knowledge Transfer are (as alleged) no longer acceptable or preferable to practitioners where does that leave us and what, if anything, can the research of Boaz outlined above do to help us structure our thinking… something when you stop and think about it wouldn’t itself have been possible without the academic process which underpins and supports it?

In my next post, I’ll continue my recap of ServDes and further set this debate within the context of established Service Design Research as discussed at Holmlid et al’s workshop on the third day of the programme.

UPDATE: IDEO’s Tim Brown talks about his belief that designers need better checks and balances incorporated into their design process to protect them from systemic failure here and Adaptive Path talk about the challenges of sharing information here, in a way that makes it useful. I think these are useful, design practitioner-centric contributions to the ongoing discussion about Knowledge exchange within Service Design.

Reflections from Servdes

Fergus Bisset — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:15:24 +0000

Last week I spent an enjoyable few days in the company of some of Northern Europe’s leading service design practitioners and researchers, the excuse, the ServDes Conference in Linkoping, Sweden which followed last year’s conference in Oslo, thoughts from which I blogged about here.

There are myriad possible forms a summarising post from these three days of structured and unstructured workshop and discussions on the practice and process of designing for services could take. Rather than attempt to cram too many thoughts and observations into one post I will structure my reflections across a few posts that I hope will do justice to the pertinent themes and challenges of last week.

I’ll aim to cover the unconference workshop that myself and George Julian ran for research in practice for adults (ripfa) on the first day of the conference, which sought to explore the role of evidence informed practice in the design of services, and without a focussed agenda, sought to reflect on the current approaches taken by service designers to evidence their thinking, processes and outcomes. The theme of this session sought also to generate insights that might inform the design of ripfa’s own products and services that support the use of evidence informed approaches, by frontline practitioners, in the provision of adult social care services in England.

This post will be followed by another containing some reflections on a number of the standout presentations from day one of ServDes, set within the context of a workshop run by Stefan Holmlid, Fabian Segelstrom and Johan Blomkvist that led discussions on the future of Service Design Research. I will conclude with a post later this week that reflects on a presentation by the Swedish design consultancy Doberman and Apoteket, a Swedish highstreet chemist who presented together towards the end of day two, on their service design work supporting health outcomes and behavioural change and which in turn specifically relates to my recent research on designing for motivation.

Initially however, and in the subsequent post, I wish to report on an event at London School of Economics yesterday, Tuesday 7th of December, from Dr Annette Boaz that discussed the role of Knowledge Transfer within environmental and social policy organisations. I set this thinking out initially as I believe it sets in context many of the discussions from last week both from our unconference session and from the ServDes Conference as a event for the transfer of knowledge related to the discipline of service design and as a conference with the theme ‘Exchanging Knowledge’.

Theories of Planned Behaviour

Fergus Bisset — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:22:14 +0000

Thanks to Andy Polaine for sharing this tremendous insight in response to my post yesterday. It’s fair to say that those students studying Service Design at Luzern are in great hands.

In his comments he wrapped up a lot of the wider tensions within the Service Design community about the relationship between academia and practice that I know are hot topics of discussion at London events such as Service Design drinks and Service Design thinks at the moment, as well as clearly the Service Design Network Conference held this week.

Indeed, a lot of the background to this post and my own work is fuelled by an urge to bridge some of this tension – between theory and practice as Andy put it – this is synthesis in the truest sense of the word.

For anyone interested further background to these issues can be found here and here.

If I created a strawman yesterday in my discussion of what was said at the Service Design Conference then I apologise. I suppose the essence of what I was attempting to highlight was that despite any personal philosophical or pragmatic differences of opinion that might exist within the community, there appears to be two prevalent ways in which designers classify users. One is to see users as reactive i.e. responsive to extrinsic constraints and the other is to see them as proactive i.e. energised by internal ideas and ambitions (goal oriented).

The reality seems to be that we as humans fluctuate between these states probably faster than we’ll ever be able to measure or generalise accurately (its not going to stop me trying ) and thus we as Service Designers rely on the ethnographic approaches Andy mentions or laboratory based scientific experiments that are well documented in scientific journals to attempt to understand behaviour.

Whether designers are fully concious of the fact that they are making these judgements about users is another issue open to debate and discussion. Indeed, the oft cited definition of Design Research is “to make explicit what is otherwise implicit in the everyday practice of design.” Thus by raising this discussion, I was simply attempting to raise this question within the minds of us designers about how we implicitly view the user we are designing for? As I mention above the answer appears to be as either ‘passive’ or ‘active’ depending on circumstance, context or which particular part of the design or use phase we might be referring to.

Education systems are interesting service examples themselves in how they attempt to balance between encouraging creativity and intrinsically motivated behaviour whilst also controlling these processes with structured curriculum and routines. Indeed, any service we can think of will attempt to strike a balance between generating and controlling value (or creativity, or energy, or money) for all the stakeholders involved.

As Andy clarified in his comment on the last post, Birgit Mager was talking at the Service Design Network Conference about users behaviour being a function of Attitude and The Environment. On further research this would appear to also share perspective with that of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1988) which is also based on Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980).

This classifies user behaviour as a product of:

Attitude (Autonomy)
Social Pressure (Relatedness)
Perceived Behavioural Control (Competence)

What I’m interested in as part of my masters is how we can design systems and services that enhance user perception of these three inherent human psychological capabilities. Doing so successfully or even unsuccessfully will result in behavioural change, but doing so successfully and encouraging users to reflect on these capabilities will result in sustainable behavioural change (at least that’s the theory).

I’m incredibly fortunate that through this platform and as a result of contributions such as Andy’s I can also modify my own attitude and perceived competence as a result of being able to relate my work to you all.

Andy is right though we need to do more to work together and bridge the gaps between academia and professional practice. I don’t plan to stay in academia forever but whilst I’m still here I’d be interested to hear from you all… do you have any questions about Motivation? Is there something that you as a practitioner are working on and feel like you could use a bit of academic insight or research on? Please get in touch here, via twitter or through the comments link below.

User Needs are Outdated, We Should Be Designing User Goals…

Fergus Bisset — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:40:32 +0000

As I have reported elsewhere I have never truly been comfortable with the concept of User Needs, as a justification or hypothesis for why any designer should be designing something. I get really uncomfortable when otherwise perfectly valid design decisions get glossed with the immeasurable concept of “user need fulfilment”. I get annoyed when otherwise perfectly unjustified design decisions get accepted on account of ‘user need fulfilment’.

Greatest Goal II by Scottwills on Flickr (CC)

These concerns have come to the fore, with the news that Birgit Mager was citing a rough approximation of Kurt Lewin’s field theory http://3.ly/BfAE (thanks Dan for the clarification) in her Service Design Network Conference presentation. Her version of it (via @apolaine) apparently read something like:

“Birgit Mager: “B=(A:E) – behaviour is a function of attitude and environment” #sdnc09“

Whilst Andy warned against me taking this too seriously, I have number of concerns at such an idea being used as representative of a Service Design approach (at least as I perceive it). Simply, for the passivity and clinical (read robotic) view it offers of user motives and behaviour. I think my concerns were shared a little later by @iterations:

“@apolaine Don’t we know most of this stuff from Social Psychology? Any special twist of these ideas in relation to Service Design? #sdnc09“

Good question Ralf, particularly in light of the follow up summary of Birgit’s presentation, Service Designers can and should be digging a little deeper than this in their attempt to understand and influence user behaviour.

“Birgit Mager: “Service Design and Behavioral Change: 1. Understand the current behavior, the motives, gains and consequences.” #sdnc09 again via @apolaine

Put simply, these interpretations of Birgit’s presentation infer an incredibly passive view of the user and of user capabilities: That if we dangle a big enough carrot in front of users (the motives and gains) or hit them with a big enough stick (the consequences) we will be able to sustainably and successfully influence their behaviour.

Whilst I’m relying on a few tweets for my evidence and should probably exercise caution against dangerous oversimplification, Birgit does appear to express that the user has “an attitude” and the environment has influence on user behaviour, both statements with which I agree. My interpretation is that as Service Designers we should seek to understand a user’s current attitude and the experiences that have created their behaviour, before unlocking and empowering their experience and capabilities through co-design activities. This is, in my view the so-called ‘service-design twist’.

To quote Dorynei (2001):

“In current research the concept of a need has been replaced by the concept of a goal.” (p.25)

And further to quote Locke and Latham (1990).

“The more specific [that goal] the easier it is to monitor it.”

“The more challenging [that goal] the greater the satisfaction it presents.”

“The more personally relevant [that goal] the more engaged the user participation in fulfilling it.”

“The more attainable [the goal] the more sustained the human behaviour will be towards achieving it.”

This is not a new concept and I wouldn’t claim to be experienced in defining co-creative activity. But the concept of articulating user requirements through goal-oriented activity is more up to date than the idea of the environment being the primary influence on human behaviour – a world view which is 40-60 years old, depending on your interpretation. Interestingly, of a similar era to the concept of ‘user needs’ and Mr Maslow’s Hierarchy. The concept of goals and outcomes cropped up in an online discussion with @designthinkers this morning and helped spur me into sharing this post and some of my on going research into motivation:

@designthinkers: ”Being successful in life is being able to keep setting new goals for yourself, and enjoying the road trying to get there”

Service Design as an approach, is not 40-60 years old and in order to be successful as a profession itself, perhaps needs to continue to evolve the way it visualises and attempts to understand user behaviour and the processes that regulate it.

What do you think, is the environment the primary influence on human behaviour? Or is it a person’s attitude? Are these entities distinct?

As a designer which one would you prefer to focus on with the aim of creating sustainable behavioural change?

Making Design a Concrete Experience

Fergus Bisset — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:58:59 +0000

“Design uses the whole person’s mind & body…”

This as I interpret it in my own recent contribution to the ‘Design Thinking debate is framing Design from a situated-cognition perspective. Again, saying that the activity of Design is inherently bound to it’s context of activity and therefore it is impossible to completely rely on empirical definitions of what design is or how to practice it. This is a controversial statement and one that can undoubtedly take a bit of time to come to terms with. I’d like to briefly use this post to elaborate how this idea has evolved in my mind and through my recent research into skill acquisition – as such it can be considered the full fat version of my previous post. It contains about 700 words and will therefore take about four minutes to read.

Concrete courtesy of Katorisi and Wikimedia Commons

‘Design Thinking’ of the sort discussed in the past months online debate and that first brought to our collective attention by IDEO represents “a community of practice” that is to say a socially mediated or mutually agreed definition of what design thinking is and how design thinkers should practice it. IDEO has very successfully wielded old media and more recently new media savvy to leverage it’s definition upon the world, thus increasing the awareness or ‘social definition’ or it’s Design Thinking ‘community of practice’. IDEO has done this so successfully in fact that like so many successful communities of practice the term ‘Design Thinking’ has become hugely widespread in its usage and definition, with the fringes of the community taking this definition and it’s processes and bending and moulding them to suit there own purposes and requirements. ‘Design Thinking’ has thus developed ‘social capital’ in terms of it’s ability to describe the tacit knowledge and processes of designers. A term that many people within the design and now business community understand and possess their own definition of.

What is clear however, is that the broader that ‘community of practice’ has become so to has the definition of ‘Design Thinking’. As I argued in my previous post it is now such a broad term that it is being rejected by aspects of the community it is supposed to represent. Indeed, judging by the comments to Collopy’s article it is being rejected by a large proportion of the design community, particularly those at fringes of the established design community in the evolving service design industry who are seeking at present to develop their own ‘community of practice’ and distinguish it from what has gone before.

The term ‘design thinking’ is not concrete. It therefore only exists as a social construct and it’s application is entirely dependent upon, influenced by and subject to its context.

This week I want to look at how then to develop ‘social capital’? Or more specifically how to teach or engage others with the essence or definition of what it is that you do as a service designer? How you become an Expert Design Thinker or Service Designer without an agreed definition of what that actually entails? More importantly, even if you or the institution that educates or employs you possesses such a definition, how do you communicate this to the rest of the world in terms that are meaningful and valuable to them? How do you interact with their “communities of practice”?

This is what might be referred to as establishing Legitimate Peripheral Participation, a process of individuals in this case entering the ‘design thinkers’ or ‘service design’ community and developing their skill gradually over time so as to become experts in the domain. In the terms of my recent research in Skill Acquisition and Public Engagement, this can be described as the transition from abstract observer to concrete experience. This process is perhaps better known as experiential learning.

I’m aware of a number of initiatives or individuals working on projects that are simultaneously attempting to develop ways of guiding people through this process towards concrete experience and education of ‘service design’ or design in general, I highlighted Participle’s Loops Initiative and Small Fish already. In the next few posts I plan to elaborate my own thoughts on how using the whole body and mind is key to developing ‘concrete experiences’ and key to successful engagement.

Ferg's Blog » Communities of Practice

3G Knowledge Transfer – Dr Annette Boaz, London School of Economics – Lessons for Service Design?

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Reflections from Servdes

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Theories of Planned Behaviour

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User Needs are Outdated, We Should Be Designing User Goals…

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Making Design a Concrete Experience

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