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Archive for the ‘Service Design’ Category

Experience Service Design

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

This past week I have been in Finland attending the Experience Service Design conference and workshop in Kuopio Finland. I’d like to take this opportunity straight off the bat to thank Satu Miettinen and all those at Savonia University of Applied Sciences who helped organise this hugely enjoyable week. It was also fantastic to meet Twitter friends Lauren Currie, Arne Van Oosterom and Marc Stickdorn as well as numerous other new friends and faces – thank you all!

Lauren has in typical fashion done an excellent job of summarising the workshop she was running on Tuesday and Wednesday in the following video:

Experience Service Design from Lauren Currie on Vimeo.

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 ServiceFellow Mobile Based Software

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.

Tags: Design Research, Design Thinking, Human Centred Design, Motivation, Self Efficacy, Service Design, the difference between novice and expert behaviour, User Empowerment
Posted in Defining Service Design, Design Thinking, Fergus Bisset, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments

Designers as Coaches

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

In response to my last post, Jonathan Baldwin asked the following question:

The idea of designers who are interested in the ideas rather than the finished artefact raises interesting pedagogical issues. How are they encouraged and rewarded in current educational environments?

His own thoughts can be seen in the comments page and ask some probing questions of the way that design is currently taught and communicated. My own answer to this question is central to my current MPhil research and indeed current day job. Thus I’ve reposted and rephrased some of what I wrote by way of response. Having had my annual review this week it fits in quite nicely with an update on some of my latest thinking. Any feedback, correction or diversions much appreciated!

As a designer who evolved to be a ‘design thinker’ as much as a ‘design doer’ largely as a result of my parallel life as a ski racer and professional (yes honestly, professional) ski instructor, the issue Jonathan highlights is one of big personal interest to me.

The problem occurs I think in that education seems rather quick to push or support people people into either ‘doer’ or ‘thinker’ camp. Doers, learn CAD and workshop skills, manufacturing processes and off they go resigning themselves to never seeing an end user again. I jest, but purely to make my point!

Holistic thinkers, in my experience undernourished in many ‘product’ or ‘graphic’ courses procrastinate in the face of unfulfilling practical assignments or labour and over intellectualise their more fulfilling graphic and research/ethonographic oriented projects.

Either way both hop from lily pad to lily pad of academic requirements without necessarily reflecting on why or whether their current task is serving some wider (social or personal) goal.

Frog Flickr-CC by Rainforest_Harley

Often sold the idea that coming to university will guarantee them employment (and worse) that they deserve such employment by default and based on their perceived rather than actual skills and skillsets, the education system generally doesn’t seem to be good at opening us up to genuine self reflection.

That is self-reflection that occurs as a result of thinking you are good enough to win a competition and then finding out that actually you are not. Education as I see it should expose students to these real and yes sometimes brutal challenges, guiding them not towards ‘explicit solutions’ but rather the tools and mindset to reflect upon and redesign their approach. It is certainly something that any junior designer will experience as soon as they start working in the real world, or particularly at present, trying to find employment in the real world. For more on the ‘dark side of design’ see this post.

The parallel here, is the professional athlete (or serious amateur) for whom life is one big systematic and seriously demanding long term process. A process punctuated by a series of competitions (or perhaps design briefs) in which they have the chance to evaluate their performance against a set of defined rules or criteria. If they are successful there might be some prize money, a car or a free trip to Madeira. If they are not they instead go away with valuable feedback on their performance.

Educators and Designers should (from my perspective and as I am currently outlining in my my masters studies) be the coaches in this analogy. Helping and supporting the learners and users to reflect and re-evaluate their behaviour against long term behavioural, ecological, social and basic needs fulfilment. Providing them with proven tools and methods and analysing and experimenting with new innovative methods where appropriate to incrementally push the boundaries.

If I wanted to employ someone, I wouldn’t want to see their portfolio so much as I would want to see their ‘training plan’ and performance objectives for the duration of their employment (or study) with me. At present this seems to be something that only happens at a post-graduate or in research based education in this and to my knowledge any other country.

Such a strategic, performance oriented view would in my opinion also help overcome the whole Black Swan / ego / genius design problem of assuming that an individual’s past success guarantees future performance. Instead, allowing individuals to stagger their satisfaction and intrinsic reward for their pursuits in a much more incremental and balanced manner.

Originally posted as a comment by Ferg on Ferg’s Blog using Disqus.

Tags: Competition, Constructivism, Design Research, Dweck, Human Centred Design, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Product Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, Self Determination Theory, Service Design, systems theory, thinking about thinking, User Perceptions
Posted in Awareness, Concrete Experience, Confidence, Defining Design, Design Process, Design Thinking, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments

Competitive Anxiety – Are Service Design Competitions a Paradox?

Friday, August 7th, 2009

This weeks call to boycott the Service Design Network’s (SDN) recently announced competition and general grumblings within the service design community provide a fascinating insight into what makes service designers tick (and seemingly what doesn’t).

Rybinsk 2007 Podium - Pete Vordenberg - www.teamtoday.org

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? - Pete Vordenberg - Teamtoday.org

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?

Tags: Constructivism, Design Research, Design Thinking, Human Centred Design, Motivational Design, Persuasive Design, Public Engagement, Self Determination Theory, Service Design, systems theory, User Perceptions
Posted in Defining Design, Defining Service Design, Design Process, Design Thinking, Fergus Bisset, Persuasive Design, Service Design | View Comments

Making Design a Concrete Experience

Monday, July 13th, 2009

“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.

Tags: Community of Practice, Concrete Experience, Constructivism, Defining Design, Defining Service Design, Design Research, Design Thinking, Experiential Learning, Human Centred Design, IDEO, Intrinsic Awareness, Intrinsic Motivation, Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, Service Design, Social Capital, the difference between novice and expert behaviour, thinking about thinking, User Empowerment, User Perceptions
Posted in Communities of Practice, Concrete Experience, Defining Design, Defining Service Design, Design Process, Fergus Bisset, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments

Design for Regime Change ¦ Expectancy for success?

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Our ATTENTION to and RELEVANCE of a message, determine people’s perceptions of its VALUE whilst an individual’s CONFIDENCE will determine their expectancy for success and their perceptions of CONTROL and SATISFACTION.

Whilst the emotionally charged sharing of news and updates is critical for raising AWARENESS or generating ATTENTION amongst potential supporters, in order to induce motivated behaviour parallel strategies need to be introduced to support both those sending the messages and guiding the individuals responses towards a specific short or long term goal. In it’s simplest manifestation this could include feedback on the number of times a particular piece of news has been linked to / read / retweeted, thus through feedback, motivating users that their voice is being heard.

Indeed, this has had a more literal and physical manifestation in the recent Iranian situation as this haunting and beautiful video demonstrates:

Shouting at the Sky

Such feedback is hugely valuable in combatting feelings of frustration or at their most extreme a feeling of learned helplessness – which is to say the sentiment that “nothing I do is ever going to make a difference.” But in this situation this is not didactic feedback from ‘a system’ to the user. The system in question here both online and offline are ‘social’ and enable users themselves to feedback to, inform and support each other. As Arne Oosterom elegantly put it a week or so back:

@designthinkers: “service designers should provide people with tools to self-organize around a common interest.”

How far can we as designers design in features that combat learned helplessness? As Nick Marsh highlighted yesterday in reference to this article;

@choosenick: ”People don’t think like the state: “I don’t have ‘needs’, I have something to give.”

Again there are a number of strategies for designers addressing ‘learned helplessness’, something that might also be referred to as demotivated behaviour. How many of these can be wrapped up by changing your focus to design dialectic as opposed to didactic systems.

Tags: Democracy, Design for Regime Change, Design Thinking, Dialectics, Didactics, Feedback, Human Centred Design, Iran Election, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, Self Efficacy, Service Design, Socratic Methods, the difference between novice and expert behaviour, thinking about thinking, User Perceptions
Posted in Design Process, Design Thinking, Design for Regime Change, Dialectics, Didactics, Ergonomics and Human Factors, Fergus Bisset, Motivational Design, Service Design | View Comments

Design for Regime Change

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

The process behind this blog has always aimed to be one big post a week that framed a particular aspect of my research, followed by a series of smaller supporting or conflicting posts throughout the week. These smaller posts intending to encourage contribution and consensus by the end of the week and are intended to focus on real world or anecdotal application of that week’s research question. Thus far I’ve shared thoughts and observations from my research into Intrinsically Motivating Design and supported Skill Acquisition in the design of products and services. I’ve also volunteered some of the thinking from my experiences in designing for public engagement.

Ever been left frustrated by a system, product or service that didn't work the way you wanted it to? Photo from: Maryam Kh

This week I’m going to try and do it in more of an active problem solving sort of way, responding to the design brief of designing for democratic regime change. In other words, as a designer of systems, products and services what can I contribute from my research to enable and empower individuals striving to undermine an autocratic regime. Contentious – yes. Interesting – yes. Educational – yes.

Hopefully, if I do a good enough job, this will be a nice theoretical study into motivational design and to positively influencing human behaviour. Indeed, this exercise might provide an insight into understanding contrary behaviour, which is to say systems, products and services that aren’t designed to motivate or empower their users or might be actively implemented to demotivate and dis-empower them. My hope is that this exercise will provide a valuable and unique insight into better designing dynamic systems and services to better support the intentions and will of the majority of it’s users. I hope you will see this as something worth contributing to or at least broadcasting further afield, it is certainly not intended to be prescriptive and as far as it is published here is purely a theoretical discussion, although clearly influenced by powerful recent world events.

The video that inspired this post. What motivates the behaviour that lead to this incident and what can we as designers do to prevent its reoccurance?

Tags: Awareness, Democracy, Design for Regime Change, Design Research, Design Thinking, Human Centred Design, Information, Intrinsic Motivation, Iran Election, Public Engagement, Relevance, Service Design, Social Nudge, User Perceptions
Posted in Design Process, Design Thinking, Design for Regime Change, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments

Is Design a Skilled or Procedural Process? Or Both?

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Following on from recent posts on the nature of design thinking I want to clarify two things. I am not opposed to design thinking or even thinking about design as this blog demonstrates! Simply, my thoughts as expressed here were that if you want people to better understand design thinking, just get on with it an involve them in it or at the very least provide them with a concrete example rather than an abstract diagram of the process you are trying to sell them. This could perhaps be considered a Constructivist viewpoint as opposed to a Cognitivist world view.

Scenario modelling can also be considered a constructivist tool. As a designer you probably use scenario modelling to predict, impose or evaluate user behaviour by ‘constructing’ that world in some manner. This might be virtually or in the form of organised user testing and evaluation. Do you use scenario modelling to anticipate or communicate your own role within the design process?

Rules by Wm Yas on Flickr

The second issue I want to explore and it relates to this earlier post as well. Is the question of whether design is a skill or rule based process?

Systems and therefore ‘systems theory’ in it’s purest form requires human operators whether designer or user to follow a defined path or at least operate within a set of constraints. I interpret the ‘design thinking’ as practiced and encouraged by IDEO, with their method cards etc. as ‘rule based’ at least in the deductive phase (understanding the context) of the design process.

Do you follow a rule based or heuristic approach as part of your efforts to understand or predict the environment and users you are designing for? Does it work?

Other designers of course may rely simply on their own subjective or ‘skill based’ judgements about the environment or context as opposed to following a rule or heuristic approach to design. This is perhaps symptomatic of the ‘ego-design’ process that Molenbrook refers to here, in describing the differing approaches many designers have to ergonomics data.

Most importantly, which of these ways of conceptualising the design process are easier to engage clients, users and yourselves as designers with?

Tags: 'ego-design', Cognitivism, Constructivism, Design Research, Human Centred Design, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Relevance, rule based processes, scenario modelling, skill based processes, systems theory, the difference between novice and expert behaviour, thinking about thinking, User Perceptions
Posted in Cognitivism, Constructivism, Design Process, Design Thinking, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments

The Logic of Design Thinking

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

In an attempt to better disentangle the continued discussion on the role of systems thinking or ‘logical processing’ in ‘design thinking’, as continued here and here yesterday. I’ve had a crack at boiling it down to basic principles – in true systems fashion!

Phrased in Aristotelian terms ‘design thinking’ or more generally any problem solving exercise, consists of three cyclical phases. Depending on the view to which you subscribe, these three phases are not mutually exclusive, but the overall process could be initiated by beginning with any one of the following processes:

Abductive Phase – Idea - The guess or hypothesis, that intuitive or highly creative leap, the game changing, out of the box idea. A highly skilled and intuitive phase of the design process. The quality of this phase is often assessed depending on the quality of it’s rhetoric or presentation (the design pitch). Highly context specific in the sense that you will need to have a good understanding of the context in question in order to make such an intuitive jump.

Deductive Phase – Development – The logical scientific part of the process where it is ascertained whether this creative leap is in fact valid or appropriate. This is the bit where you have to convince the engineers and money men. My feeling is that it is this context independent phase of the design process that is the area where systems thinking may be most valuable.

Inductive Phase - Testing – Another context dependent phase where ultimately the ideas and that processes that you have used to realise it are tested and evaluated. This could either be formal user testing or this could occur informally whilst the product is in the market place.

As it stands above it is probably more akin to a traditional ‘ego-design’ process, whereby the designer thinks that the strength of his idea alone is enough to justify the end result. As I perceive it, many more recent service and human-centred design processes and arguably the ‘design thinking’ approach as practiced by IDEO themselves might run as follows:

Deductive Phase (Rule Based) (Context Sensitive) - Understanding the context and user requirements, what familar ‘rules’ (or methods) are applicable in this domain?
Inductive Phase (Knowledge Based) (Context Independent) – Prototyping and testing of chosen ‘rules’ to assess validity to identified problem as well as other engineering and financial constraints.
Abductive Phase (Skill Based) (Context Sensitive) – Leading to final design proposal or creative leap (with associated user involvement, empowerment and motivation).

Thus it is clear to from this definition how ‘systems thinking’ or Jaimes Nel’s ‘black box’ i.e. the deductive, rule-based phase of the deisgn process can help deduce appropriate design ideas and solutions to design problems – arguably the true value of ‘design thinking’.

My own feeling from this definition however, is that it is purely the deductive phase of ‘design thinking’ to which any form of systems thinking or conceptualisation should be directed. Attempting to apply it to the other context and skill based parts of the process would as Collopy warns undermine the essence of ‘design thinking’.

What do you think?

Tags: Aristotelian Logic, Design Research, Human Centred Design, Service Design, the difference between novice and expert behaviour, thinking about thinking, User Perceptions
Posted in Design Process, Design Thinking, Motivational Design, Public Engagement, Service Design | View Comments

Archive for the ‘Service Design’ Category

Experience Service Design

Designers as Coaches

Competitive Anxiety – Are Service Design Competitions a Paradox?

Design for Regime Change ¦ Expectancy for success?

Is Design a Skilled or Procedural Process? Or Both?

The Logic of Design Thinking

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