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)
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.
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’.
Lucy Kimbell this week wrapped up her thoughts on where Service Design sits at the end of 2009 and looks ahead to 2010. It taps into something that I’ve been increasingly feeling for a little while…her mention of the need for Service Design to reflect more heavily on its politics, scope and knowledge are as challenging as they are important.
My own feeling, perhaps fuelled by what has been an incredibly busy end to the year, is that I can’t help but feel that some of the vanguard spirit has been exhausted within the Service Design Twitter and Blogger community. Maybe, trying to reflect on that sentiment more positively, the vanguard spirit has just been diluted by the huge surge in interest and comment on Service Design that I think is the resounding feature of 2009.
But that is a danger, if those voices once so regular and prominent in campaigning for the values and politics of Service Design have now retreated to ‘the coffee houses‘ instead of more publicly sharing their thinking, the Service Design community is the worse for it.
If nothing else, it prompts the question:
“Is the surge in interest and enthusiasm for Service Design and Service Design Thinking because of its novelty or because if its integrity?”
My background in studying history as seen me draw parallels between the evolution in Service Design and the Russian Revolution previously in response to articles by other Service Design ‘Thinkers’, Jaimes Nel and Nick Marsh. My concern back then, was that there appeared to be a schism emerging between Service Design practioners and Service Design academics. I tongue in cheek, compared this to the Red/White Russian Bolshevik split, the split between those that believed that their ‘democratic communist utopia’ had to be pragmatically (and by consequence brutally) enforced as opposed to those who believed that remaining true to the ideals of the ‘revolution’ would ultimately see it prosper and flourish. This philosophical stance appeared to be supplemented by Bill Hollins citing Marx and Engels in his presentation on Service Design at a British Standards Institute gig a few weeks ago.
Trotsky by Germeister from Flickr
In reality of course it is perhaps more likely that the Vanguard Reds (led by Lenin) just felt threatened by the intellectualism and ideas of Trotsky’s Whites and sought to establish control (and absolute power) rather than adhere to the values and ideals of revolution.
But what has this to do with Service Design I hear you ask? Well, I hope that the murmurs of discontent following the Service Design Network Conference about it being too academic are not the seeds of a wider and deeper disaffection that might lead to a purge of the intellectuals… Lucy’s response on Twitter on this topic was perhaps one of my favourite tweets of the year (regrettably no longer searchable) but her thinking can also be found in this post.
Personally, it is the politics, enthusiasm and equality of Service Design that attracted me to it in the first place. To continue to string out my metaphor, Industrial Design was the Tsarist Autocracy, ruled by and for the benefit of the elite, subjugating users to a largely passive role in the process of designing products, therefore creating services largely unintentionally and repressing the role of the majority of users in creating value. Irrespectively, taxing them for the use of inadequate public and private services. Service design, social design and the participatory methods that underpin them present a new vision or world order that is different to that.
Were the Trotsky-ist Whites in Russia naive to think that their revolution would occur and be sustainable without militant action, perhaps, but the truth is we will never really know. Am I naive to think that Service Design as a professional discipline might for those involved in it genuinely be about empowering users in the process of value creation, as opposed to the next masquerade of the design industry and corporate culture – perhaps, again, only time will tell.
The fact is that the ‘socialist’ experiment failed in Russia because economically it could not compete with the West, much of the recent 20-years-on reflection on the fall of the Berlin Wall reiterates such a view. Just as equally, Service Design as a philosophy could fail if its economic imperatives become too far divorced from it’s social, humanitarian and political responsibilities. If nothing else history tells us that quick opportunistic grabs of power and control don’t tend to be socially, economically or politically sustainable.
What do you think, does Service Design have enough integrity as a discipline?
As a discipline do you think Service Designers spend enough time reflecting on the politics, history and philosophy behind their processes?
How much can historical and philosophical reflection help simplify modern day complexity?
This is a fairly comprehensive presentation of the underlying philosophy and research behind my masters work in helping designers visualise and support motivation in the design of everyday products and services. I’ve obviously talked about the development of this work extensively on this blog so I’d like to take the chance to thank all of you who have visited and contributed comments and support – its helped me refine and adapt my ideas thus far and I really appreciate it!
I’m hoping to add an audio summary of the presentation at some point, but otherwise the presentation gives an overview of the foundations of my framework of motivation in design, the research behind it and then a few examples of products and services that have either been directed by this conceptualisation or whose success as ‘motivational platforms’ can be interpreted by using the framework.
People may also recognise a few of the case studies from the Nordic Service Design Conference – thanks to the presenters their for their explanations, this presentation also served as an opportunity for me to pass on what I’d learned and enjoyed from that conference to my colleagues at the HCDI at Brunel.
As ever comments and questions are gratefully appreciated and if you are interested in finding our more or understanding how this framework can be applied to your own design or service propositions then please get in touch.
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.
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?
As I’ve reported here before I’m in the middle of an MPhil researching the role of motivation in design and how designers can identify and design to encourage motivated behaviour of a suitable nature. I use the term ‘designer’ loosely as I’m not for one minute proposing that Motivation is something that can be prescribed or even should be. At this stage I am in the process of articulating and visualising from my research to date, what motivation looks like or how people might recognise motivation. Some of you may have seen the Motivational Personas I put up a week or so back – thank you so much to all who commented and contributed their thoughts ideas and experience – I’m very grateful! I’m continuing to develop those.
Motivational Framework v0.1 cc Fergus Bisset (click for larger version)
In parallel to those personas, I’m also keen to develop a “Conceptual Framework of Motivation” and begin to elaborate the different levels on which motivation might be observed in oneself or in others. As most behavioural psychologists would doubtless testify, recognising one’s behaviour is the first step to modifying it.
There appears to be a bit of divide in the behavioural design community as to whether people need to recognise either their existing or desired behaviour in order to change it. Some designers and academics arguing that it may be more effective to change behaviour through design without the user having to be aware of it. I had an animated conversation about this over a beer with Frankie Roberto and Dan Lockton. Like I say this is contentious area, but I’m at this stage putting myself fairly firmly in the camp that believe that if behavioural change is to be sustainable, users have to be aware and undertake deliberate and conscious modification of it. Whilst there are doubtless good arguments for the designer as behavioural ‘god’, and I’m more than happy to hear them and discuss them if you wish to share. I find those arguments somewhat belittling of the people that they aim to ‘help’, the typical line in such circumstances being: “that users aren’t always capable of recognising or understanding their ‘needs’ or ‘capabilities’ “. There was a nice quote via Cassie Robinson on this today:
“Accept me as I am & you’ll make me worse. Treat me as what I’m capable of becoming & you’ll help me to become her”
That is not to say that designer’s should shirk all the responsibility onto the user, indeed with reference to the above it perhaps becomes the designer’s responsibility to help that self-reflective process and aid the user in realising their capabilities. The motivational state should be a shared and negotiated agreement between designer, artefact and user, not a diktat by any of those parties. This also means that the designer has an active role and isn’t just subservient to user demands or “lack of vision or creativity“.
Irrespective of this argument and whether user, designer, user-designer or any other stakeholder in the process you will still need to be able to identify, model and measure motivation or any other form of human behaviour for that matter, if you want to change it. I see my motivational personas as aiding identification, whereas I see the attached model, what I’m calling a Motivational Framework as the next step towards being able to model or synthesise motivated behaviour within the wider context of the product or service lifecycle. This understanding is perhaps fundamental to the process of increasing motivational awareness, capability and thereafter designing to empower users in their motivational capabilities.
I would really welcome any feedback you might have on this, particularly in relation to how this might fit into or overlap with your existing creative practice or world view – and I would especially like to hear from you if it seems incompatible with your own views or established methodology.
Lauren’s Flickr photos also give you an insight into the week. Whilst thoughts on the week, particularly the conference on Monday, from one of the keynote presenters Nico Morelli can also be found here.
I’m going to elaborate some of my own thoughts from the presentations on Monday in subsequent posts, particularly the presentations of Arne and Marc and that of Renato Troncon on the role of aesthetics and philosophy in Service Design. However, in the rest of this post I want to share some pictures and a brief summary of the workshop I was participating in.
The workshop was run by Arne, Marc and Mikko Koivisto co-editor of the book Designing Services With Innovative Methods. Whilst the primary aim of the workshop was to empower attendees in their understanding and use of service design methods, the chosen context in which to do so was a local health care clinic in the town of Kuopio where the workshop was being held.
Patients at the Viretori Clinic
This clinic known as the Viretori, provides elderly people the opportunity to come and receive basic health care checks, administered by students at the University thus serving as a training and educational service for students as well as providing a medical one for elderly members of the community.
Educational and Healthcare Services All in a Oner!!
The identified problem was with a lack of engagement in services offered by the clinic to the elderly people of the town. This of course was having a knock on effect on the students education and motivation to participate in the initiative.
One of the exciting features of the workshop was the opportunity to explore Marc Stickdorn and his colleagues at MCI’s new mobile based tool for logging customer journeys. This Android based software allows you to log and rate touch points as you walk through the journey, then download them and catalogue them when you are back in the studio – really innovative and exciting stuff!
Using MCI's ServiceFellow Mobile Service Touchpoint Logging Software
It wasn’t all hi-tech though, with traditional methods and collaboration very much the point of the exercise. These were a great opportunity to get to know our Finnish hosts better as well as get to know the meriad of nationalities attending the conference courtesy of the Nokia Only Planet project.
Plotting User Journeys the old fashioned post-it note way!
The one and half day workshop culminated with the presentation of the group’s concept, which following interviews and observation of the users and service environment suggested empowering the elderly users with more ownership of the clinic, it’s presentation and activities. Our recommendations and reflections on the process were presented to all the conference participants on the final day and will also be put to the management of the clinic in the near future.
Presenting the Results (courtesy of Marc Stickdorn)
Altogether the week was an immensly enjoyable one, both for the networking opportunities it presented and new friends made, but also for the chance to explore service design within a hugely diverse group and learn from the results. Thanks again to all those involved.
Certified... (Again courtesy Marc Stickdorn)
I’ll be posting some further thoughts from the Kuopio experience in due course.
Rybinsk 2007 Podium - Photo: Pete Vordenberg - www.teamtoday.org
My initial reaction can be seen in the comments section in that last link, for the most part I am a little disappointed at the near unamimous and public way this competition appears to have been rejected by those who otherwise do so much to promote and positively communicate Service Design here in the UK and around the world.
What is it about this competition I wonder, and it seems competitions in general, that these service designers are opposed to? And from my perspective how much might service designers be distancing themselves from huge numbers of the population and public they claim to represent should they reject such ideas?
Jeff Howard and Jonathan Baldwin impressively and compellingly argue in the comments of that last post that such competive structure does not support the co-design process that is such a fundamental part of service design. But another post yesterday from Joel Bailey got me thinking perhaps its a bit deeper than that. Perhaps the very people (whether male or female as Joel contends) who are attracted to Service Design and it’s processes are those that generally speaking might not relish the idea of a competition.
Carol Dweck(2000) talks about Entity and Incremental ‘implict theories’. In otherwords, two distinct ways in which people percieve the world. There are those that believe that knowledge (or design) are static or intellectual entities and constructs. These constructs can be communicated by linear processes and static hierarchical diagrams. These would be ‘Entity‘ oriented individuals, who to generalise, are those more likely to prefer dealing in physical entities. In the case of design this would be the more traditional graphic or product ‘physically’ oriented design approaches.
According to Dweck the other sort of individuals consider Knowledge (and design) to be more fluid and incrementally elaborated and constructed, more open to debate and interpretation. These individuals are more likely to be interested in the process of design than they are in the final outcomes or physical representations of the design process. This is perhaps because they understand that these physical entities are fleeting representations or put another way simply the tip of the iceberg in the design process. I know for a fact I fall into this category, although I still see and have personally experienced huge value from participating in competitions and dealing and manufacturing in physical entities and constructs.
I don’t know about you, but I know which category I would place service designers (and systems thinkers) in. The latter Incremental category and this leads me to another difference that Dweck highlights, the difference in how these two individuals approach to challenges.
According to Dweck Entity Theorists relish competition, whilst Incremental Theorists (Service Designers) prefer collaboration. Dweck in fact places these two on a sliding scale – indicating that by her perception the two ideals are polar opposites. Perhaps, there are also correlations between males and females as to which gender is more likely to fall in which category. Personally I don’t see gender based distinctions as valuable and find Dweck’s a far more useful categorisation of characteristics of those by my interpretation more likely to engage with Service Design and it’s methods.
How are you being competitive? - Photo: Pete Vordenberg - Teamtoday.org
The one concern however that this insight highlights, and it echos my reservations about Service Designers seemingly being so quick to dismiss this competition this week is, that whilst Service Designers might be Incremental Thinkers and theorists I would bet the vast majority of the population at least in the ‘old world’ are not. This would explain why so many of us participate in competitive sport and value physical objects. Thus, whilst Jeff would still maintain that the service design community should not support this competition. I would encourage the community to do so, as a chance to better understand and resolve the challenges involved and of which we are all aware in communicating Service Design to those with different (Explicit) ideals and perspectives. After all, is holistic and flexible thinking not truely the purpose of co-design and the value that service designers are capable of offering?
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.
