Summer School on Service Design Finland

Last week I gave a lecture in Finland at the Akatemia Kuopio. I had a great time and Satu Miettinen has been a great host.

Besides having lots of fun attending workshops I really enjoyed the discussions I had with Greg Richards and Marc Stickdorn about the difference between experience marketing and service design. "Does service design actually exist? Or is it just another name for something we have been doing for years"... I miss these discussions in the Netherlands. They keep me on my toes.

Greg Richards had a great presentation on creative tourism.

Satu Miettinen talked about social design.

In one of the workshops we visited a spa. Here's Mikko Koivisto from Ego Beta doing some fieldwork.

The spa has a public and healthcare service.

One of the workshop with students and Katja Sorvali.

The obligatory sticky-notes.

The obligatory (it's a must in Finland) fire.

Lauren Currie at DesignThinkers

Last week Lauren Currie came over from Scotland to work with us on a couple of projects. Just for a few weeks. And although Lauren has only been with DesignThinkers for one week already she has been a great help and inspiration to us.

Read about her ethnographic field work, experiences in Amsterdam and see some great pictures on her weblog.

Service Design Conference Amsterdam

The Service Design Network is organising a Service Design Conference in Amsterdam at the 24th-26th of November.

Keep an eye on www.service-design-network.org/conference for more information.

Service Center for Cyclists

Great service from bike manufacturer Trek:
the Trek Stop Cycling Convenience Center.



Via Spingwise

Summer School on Service Design

August 27-28 the Kuopio Academy in Finland is organising a summer school on 'service design and well-being'. 

The academy asked me to come over and speak about service design and some of the projects we do at DesignThinkers. I'm really looking forward to meet all the people from the academy and other service design colleagues in Finland.

Here's some more information on the summer school... 

Good design is good for the UK

The Design Counsel (UK) has published the Good Design Plan. "Design can drive a competitive economy, create a more sustainable society and make our everyday lives better. But only if it’s used well."

Download The Good Design Plan



Via Kate Andrews

Case Study: Improving Patient Care

Recently I participated in a case study held by the Irish Times. This is the case...

And here you can read what Ben Reason (live|work), Keith Finglas (Innovation Delivery Limited) and I had to say about improving patient care. The experts' advise...

Service Stories part 6

Service delivery solutions

Grant Lenahan (Telcordia) about how advertisement becomes information.

Thinking like a designer

I just read an interesting article in Harvard Business Review by IDEO’s Tim Brown on Design Thinking.

"I believe that design thinking has much to offer a business world in which most management ideas and best practices are freely available to be copied and exploited. Leaders now look to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and competitive advantage; they would do well to incorporate design thinking into all phases of the process."
Read it here...

Via Buena Vista

The first sdn Insider

And there it is the first issue of 'sdn Insider'. The newsletter published by the Service Design Network.

Read it here...

Service Stories #5

Service Stories #4

Service Stories #3

Bank of America Customer Service

Demos published their new discussion paper Making The Most Of Collaboration: an international survey of co-design, produced in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Public Sector Research Centre.

"In 2006 we published Journey to the Interface - an impassioned advocation of the value of collaborative design principles in public services. In the intervening years, co-design has caught hold as an ideal for transforming services - promising to make them more responsive, fit-for-purpose, and efficient. More broadly, co-design provides an avenue for building social capital, and addressing a disengagement from politics and democracy."

Download...

Via Choosenick

Ezio Manzini on Service Design

Mikkel Rasmussen on Service Design Part 2

Mikkel Rasmussen on Service Design Part 1

Lavrans Løvlie on Service Design

Innovative Solutions For Street Prostitution

The Köln International School of Design (KISD) and especially professor Birgit Mager was invited by the Design Academy of Eindhoven to analyse the problem of street prostitution by addicted women and to find solutions through the method of ‘service design’. The KISD has positive experience in using this approach for developing services for homeless people in Köln.

Take a look (on the left) at part two of the presentation...

Now That's Service

It must be a great service experience using this touchpoint...

Social Media in Plain English

Via Vue Royale

Service Stories #2

This clip about bad customer service by Speedo Australia shows (ones again) companies should wake up to a changing world, an increasingly transparent world.

Service Stories #1

Service Prototyping?

I think we can call this service prototyping...

Designing Services For The Elderly

Increasingly companies start talking service design/ innovation. Lets hope it's not just talking. But in this short commercial IBM is focussing on yet another reason why service design is going to be very important in the near future.

Bill Moggridge Keynote on Service Design

Bill Moggridge at the Service Design Symposium in Copenhagen: "At the same time they only let us design the train..."

A FEW PROJECTS

It's been some time since I posted my last update. It's a thing that happens to me from time to time. It's a good thing though. It means I've been very busy.

Here's a small sample of what I've been up to:

We are researching why people do not go to the ports (air and water) of Amsterdam to find a job. The ports need people to grow. But they can't find employees. Can service design provide a solution? We think it can.

We are developing new ways for a Waterschap to build relationships with it's costumers and making their services visible to the general public. This needs to be done, because no one know what a Waterschap does, but they keep sending us the bill.

DesignThinkers is opening a center for training, workshops, presentations, eating, drinking etc called 'The End Of The World'. It is located in a magnificent building at the old shipyard of Den Helder (Cape Holland) which they restored beautifully.

We started a new agency called SLOEP. This agency will focus on maritime projects. Our first project: Round Texel, the world's largest catamaran race. SLOEP will be based at 'The End Of The World".

There is more. But for now these are my favorites.

The Rising Of Service Innovation

Some great podcasts on service design from Emergence (I enjoyed Oliver King):

Do Listen...

And one from IBM's chief service researcher on Businessweek:

Take a moment...


via Choosenick

There Is No Easy Way Out

Delivering real service doesn't com natural to the Dutch. Companies and governments in the Netherlands are mainly focused on trade. That is what the Dutch are good at. And service-products are treaded the same as commodities.

And I guess, dropping a service-product from high above on an unsuspected target group creates a save distance from that most difficult of creatures, the consumer, the civilian, the persons. Having a target group seems to solve a lot of problems and Dutch marketeers love to talk at length about them.

I just don't like the term "target group". It's just an easy way out and has nothing to do with reality. Of course traditional marketing and advertising can't be successful without focusing on a specific target group. Focusing on individuals is way to expensive and far to complicated. But this approach is a one-way street and therefor a cul-de-sac for service organizations. Thinking in target groups fuels the generalization of personal wants and needs and reduces it to meaningless tag-lines.

People need to be understood. And people are so much more than age, gender, profession or hobby. There is no easy way out. People are complex and full of contradictions. But only while focusing on the reality and complexity of everyday life service organizations are able to ad true value to their services. This approach leads to meaningful and relevant solutions and true service innovation.

But like I said, providing real service doesn't com natural to the Dutch. Maybe the Dutch are afraid it will disturb the process of doing business, making money. Actually having a real two way conversation with costumers never even occurred to most managers and marketeers. Simply because it is time-consuming and expensive. And time and money are a rare luxury. They are usually spend on buildings, hardware, paying employees, discussing internal company issues, producing spreadsheets and having lots and lots of meetings.

It is going to take a whole new breed (or generation) of managers, political decision-makers and maybe even companies to get the Dutch competitive on a international level in the service industries of the future.

World's Largest Innovation Box

Felloforce's Challenge Board & Innovation Box is growing. Currently they have 75+ brands connected, like Shell, Nokia, Starbucks, Unilever, Apple, Virgin, Yahoo, Pfizer etc.

Take a look...

Mobile Banking

Yesterday I went to the Mobile Monday (Momo) meet-up. This time the subject was Mobile Banking. And it turned out to be a very interesting subject. Momo's going to put it all on their website, so you'll be able to watch the whole thing here...

I specially liked the presentation by Ton Wesseling. Take a look at his slides. With only a few words it actually tells the whole story.

10 Ideas That Are Changing The World

Time reveals what's next. "More than money, more than politics, ideas are the secret power that this planet runs on. Here are a few you need to know about"

And since this is a blog on service design one big idea jumps straight out:

The end of costumer service. "[...] Only now are technology and public sentiment aligning to truly shift the responsibility of collecting goods and services to the consumer. Consider the last time you rang up your own purchase at Wal-Mart, checked into a hotel at a kiosk or bought a ticket from a machine in the lobby of a movie theater. Companies love self-service for the money it saves, and with consumers finally playing along, the need to interact with human beings is quickly disappearing."

Read it all here...

One Line of Service Design

Marc from 31Volts asked me for a one-liner on Service Design. Here goes:

Service Design is simply paying attention, talk to each other, listen and dare to be vulnerable.

Service Design, A Pocket Guide

This is old (2007) but I missed out on this one. So for all of you who, like me, did not pay attention:

Last year the Cabinet office (England) made their working paper ‘Service Design Principles, A Pocket Guide'

"In order for public policy to be effective and reflect the needs of the community as a whole, policy makers need to understand and engage the customer the community and other stakeholders. Engagement can improve both the formulation and implementation of public policy"

Download it here...

(via thinkpublic)

International Service Design Network

I just started a Service Design Network on LinkedIn. It's a network of professionals who's aim it is to develop, professionalize an promote the relative new field of expertise called Service Design.

Are you interested? We probably can use your insights and experience. Just follow this link...

UK govt reveals design driven innovation strategy

“Minister for Innovation Ian Pearson believes that design is central to innovation and that innovation is key to improving public services. ‘Building design into the services of local authorities and Government departments is going to be important for the future,’ he tells Design Week. ‘The contribution of design to innovation hasn’t been emphasised enough until now, but user-led innovation always clearly demonstrated the importance of design in developing new products, processes and new ways of working.’”

Read the article on Putting People first...

Innovation in Experiential Services

A report from London Business School

"Service innovation has proved an elusive area for many reasons, including the intangibility of services, the heterogeneity of services, much innovation being of processes rather than products and the lack of an identifiable R&D function. Much research has focused on services where products can clearly be defined (for example financial services), and where technology is being used to change the nature of the service or the business. However, as Salter and Tether (2006) have pointed out, there is an emerging research stream which addresses the particular nature of services such as intangibility, dependence on people and high levels of interaction rather than technologies.

This report examines innovation in experiential services. These are services where the focus is on the experience of the customer when interacting with the organisation, rather than just the functional benefits following from the products and services delivered.

The report is based on a continuing research programme on experiential services at London Business School. In particular it draws on a recent case-based study of eight design agencies and consultancies and nine successful experiential service providers. The report addresses the question of how do experiential service providers innovate, in particular the content of innovation and the process of innovation including organisation for innovation. Studying innovation in experiential services facilitates wider reflection on the subject of service innovation."

Download the report here.....

(via Design For Service)

Service Design: It's a dirty job...

I've been working as a service design consultant at DesignThinkers for some time and I must tell you that service design is not always glamourous. I'm sorry to disappoint you. Service design is about getting your hands dirty. Real dirty. If you are not prepared to go all the way down the long and dark sewers of big organizations, you are not doing the work you supposed to do.

Without compromising a service design project is never easy. Great service is all about building relationships. And in the real world a good relationship starts by getting to know and respect each-other. Listen, learn and know when to compromise. Being vulnerable. Trusting the other person and taking changes. So if you are in the business of delivering a service to your costumer, and you want to join the service revolution, this is the task at hand.

But hold on! Even between the best of friends this is not always easy. Trusting takes a lot of guts. And you must be very strong and secure to really open up and let yourself be vulnerable. Being defensive seems almost second nature to most organizations. And, as a rule, people don't trust big organizations.

So how can large corporations and public organizations design the perfect service-experience? They can't. It is simply not possible. Big organizations, by default, don't care about their costumers. Costumers are just a means to an end. And superficial marketing methods, simplifying reality beyond recognition is the the path of least resistance.

It is not that companies and public organizations are evil. But when you get down to the nitty gritty, organization are no more than a complex combination of ordinary people with their own ordinary wants and needs. Good and bad. Usually there is no big story. No vision or higher purpose guiding management and employees while making decisions. Just a lot of personal agenda's.

And maybe that's the beauty of it. Organizations are not made out of buildings, furniture and computers but from people like you and me. People with all the usual problems a human being has to deal with. Being truly (truly) concerned about the personal happiness of their customers is an unrealistic demand. And we al know this. Most of us have jobs and we don't really (really) care. And the companies we work for don't really (really) care about us either.

As a service designer I don't let this spoil my fun. This is reality and service designers must practice what they preach: embraces the beautiful complexity called live.

This is why service design starts deep inside the bowels of the organization. As a service design consultant you must understand the anatomy and psychology of the company you work for. You'll have to know it's limitations and work with them. Push the right buttons. Persuade, guide and fight for what you believe in. Get management involved permanently, empower front office, create short feedback loops. Then raise the gates, open the doors, lower the bridge and give costumers access to the heart of the organization.

It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.