Touchpoint Vol. 2 No. 2 - Business Impact of Service Design

volume 2 | no. 2 | 12,80 euro

September 2010

Business Impact of Service Design • Service Design – The Bottom Line Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason

• How Human Is Your Business?

Steve Lee

• Stuck in a Price War? Use Service

Design to Change the Game in B2B Relations.

Lotte Christiansen, Rikke B E Knutzen, Søren Bolvig Poulsen

v

Touchpoint Touchpoint

Proofreading

Volume 2, No. 2

Tim Danaher

September 2010 The Journal of Service Design ISSN 1868-6052 Publisher Service Design Network Editor Birgit Mager

Printing Peipers - Druckzentrum KölnWest Fonts Mercury G3 Whitney Pro Service Design Network Köln International

Editorial Board

School of Design

Hugh Dubberly

Prof. Birgit Mager

Shelley Evenson

Ubierring 40

Mark Jones

D-50678 Cologne

Roberto Saco

Germany

Coordination

www. service-design-network.org

Miriam Becker

Contact

Minka Rössner

Miriam Becker

Design

journal@service-design-network.org

Continuum

Touchpoint Subscription

Miriam Becker

For ordering or subscribing to

Carolina Garzón Mrad

Touchpoint, please visit

Ellen Simmons

www.service-design-network.org/

Cover Picture iStockphoto, sjlayne »Eye of the Tiger« Pictures Unless otherwise stated, the copyrights of all images used for illustration lie with the author(s) of the respective article

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contents

September 2010

Business Impact of Service Design 06 From the Editors 08 News

chapter # 1

11 Methods, Structures and Processes 12 Experiencing Services Before They

Become Real

Monica Bueno, Jonathan Podolsky

20 Community of Service: Designing

20

Stakeholder Learning Qin Han

28 Designing Services as a Knowledge

Creation Process

Maurício Manhães, Gregório Varvakis, Tarcísio Vanzin

50

32 Delivering Return on Service Design

Investments

Petteri Hertto, Mikko Jäppinen, Tuomo Ketola, Reima ­Rönnholm

3

contents

chapter #2 38 Business Insights

54

40 Service Design – The Bottom Line Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason

50 How Human Is Your Business?

Steve Lee

54 Stuck in a Price War? Use Service Design to

Change the Game in B2B Relations.

Rikke B E Knutzen, Lotte Christiansen, Søren Bolvig Poulsen

58 How to Create Outstanding Customer Experiences

for Franchises

Damian Kernahan

chapter #3

64 Background Stories 66 Making it Better! Transforming the SDN Website Ellen Simmons

70 Where Does Service Design Stand in France?

Christophe Tallec

66

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74 Service Design Snapshots From Around the World

74 Creative Waves COTEN –

Service Designing Education

Andy Polaine

74

74 Masters in Service Design: Classes Start

in January 2011

Elena Pacenti

75 Designing Services at the Hotel Kempinski

78

Birgit Mager

76 European Union Funds for Service Design Birgit Mager

77 Service Science Factory Jos Lemmink

78 Costumer Profile Vanja Misic, Mark Strachan and Deng Zhi Tan

82 Dos & Don’ts 86 Member Map

82

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from the editors

Letter from the Editors

Birgit Mager is Professor for Service Design at Köln International School of Design (KISD), Cologne, Germany. She is founder and director of sedes research – the centre for Service Design Research at KISD. Besides she is co-founder of Service Design Network and editor of Touchpoint.

Hugh Dubberly manages a consultancy focused on making services and software easier to use through interaction design and information design. As vice president, he was responsible for design and production of Netscape’s Web services. For 10 years he was at Apple, where he managed graphic design and corporate identity and co-created the Knowledge Navigator series of videos. Dubberly also founded an interactive media department at Art Center and has taught at CMU, IIT/ID, San Jose State, and Stanford.

Shelley Evenson is a principal, User Experience Designer at Microsoft. She has been an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon School of Design, where she was also the director of graduate studies. She teaches in the area of Interaction and Service Design.

Business Impact of Service Design ”I’m always surprised by how nervous designers can be about demonstrating the ‘impact’ of design.

Everything we make is designed. You can’t offer a product or service without designing it. So trying to measure the impact of design on business is a little like trying to measure the impact of wings on an airplane.” says Hugh Dubberly with a glint in his eye.

Still, it is an interesting and much-needed challenge to analyse and evaluate the impact of Service Design.

This effort will help to make a case for the integration and implementation of Service Design practice. It will help to continuously improve the Service Design approach. And it is a creative challenge, because it calls for a new interpretation and definition of terms like ‘measures’ ‘impact’ or ‘return on investment’.

Hugh Dubberly, again: “In business – as in the larger context of systems – the word measure entails goal, comparator, and action linked in a feedback loop. In a factory production line, feedback is often automated, e.g., regulating temperature, speed, density, size, alignment, etc., to keep a transformation within tolerances. Supervisors and managers are often part of second-order feedback loops, controlling the firstorder control processes and even building improvement and learning processes in still more layers. Services pose a special challenge to managers. The core process of a service is rarely a simple transformation or a series of transformations. Often, the core process of a service is a conversation or a series of conversations.

That’s because services involve a person (the ‘consumer’) in creating the service at the point of consumption, very often in collaboration with another person (the ‘service provider’). Even in the simplest services, a conversation is almost unavoidable. Treating a service conversation as a simple transformation to be kept within ‘tolerances’ warps the experience.”

So the challenge is complex. The traditional linear and rationalistic approach to measurement does not fit.

This leads to insecurity: if we cannot measure it in the old-fashioned way, will it be worth the investment?

Mark Jones from IDEO has a lot of experience in this area: ”Most service companies are great at calculating the costs of introducing a new or revamped service, but have a harder time modelling the potential upside from the introduction of a new service. Often they need to introduce a new service without knowing precisely how much revenue will come from it. And even once a new service is piloted, there are many questions about what will happen once a service scales and uptake is mature. All of the uncertainty around how to evaluate success can often stop a new service from being introduced at all, since the costs are so concrete in comparison.”

This is one of the big topics for our young and emerging Service Design community. How can we design certainty? How can we build pillars of trust in a complex and hard-to-control environment of ‘living products’?

It is definitely necessary to broaden the view and to develop knowledge and communication skills on the various positive impacts Service Design processes and outcomes have. This issue of Touchpoint wants to

6

build a first foundation for this hopefully ongoing discussion. And it will build a starting point for constructive conversations with clients, in order to reflect and redefine measures for business impact in a way that make sense.

Roberto Saco has experience of this: ”Many of the challenges are definitional, for example: when do we know that an intervention is indeed Service Design and only Service Design, as opposed to a blended approach?

How can we measure the impact or value of the intervention, and at what time? How is business impact defined? As purely profit or ROI? More than arriving at one universal answer to these questions, the main thing is to ask these questions or put them in the brief at the beginning of an intervention. The dialogue ensuing from these questions will spark a conversation among stakeholders about what is valuable and what is valued for all concerned. This approach may disappoint those who aspire to an objective answer; it is however an inter-subjective answer to a difficult issue. If the design or the design intervention goes a ways into addressing these concerns around value, the Service Designer has met the challenge.”

If we attempt to measure the impact Service Design has on the quality and innovation of service systems, we need to look at effects not only on the scale of entire economies, but also at medium and long term effects regarding service culture, learning systems, knowledge generation and transformation.

Shelley Evenson puts it this way: ”Service Design is, by nature, a system – or even a system of systems – challenge, where the systems include person-to-person interactions, person-to-machine interactions, or machine-to-machine interactions. Isolating any one of the components that has an influence on business impact is difficult at best. It may be that just as more and more businesses have attempted to find new models for valuing intellectual capital over pure ROI, Service Design will need to look for new models for valuing contributions from all aspects of the system that include relational, human, and organisational capital.“

Mark Jones As the lead for Service Innovation for IDEO Chicago, Mark works closely with service companies seeking to reinvent how they serve their customers. Recent projects include banking for Gen Y, mobile health management and bridging physical and digital retailing. Mark also teaches Service Design at the Institute of Design at IIT Roberto Saco is principal at Aporia Advisors a boutique consulting firm specializing in designing for services, business process management, and organizational change. He believes that design practices can help tackle the increasing complexity problemsolvers face today. When not consulting in banking, healthcare, and IT he may be found teaching on the topics of service quality and innovation, or enabling leaders in the not-for-profit sector.

This issue of Touchpoint looks at business impact from different perspectives. It shows cases that directly reveal the positive impact of Service Design interventions. It includes approaches of building the theoretical models. And it also shows that there is a need for more research on innovative ways of building trust in Service Design and demonstrating and documenting its impact. We will look at the topic again in two years, providing methodological approaches and case studies, to spot the progress in this field.

Birgit Mager For the editorial board

7

news

Service Design Conference in Berlin

By Miriam Becker

to the designated conference time,

Service Design Books

there will be a primary focus on ‘open space’ – time to connect, discuss and exchange ideas.

Facts & Figures

Next month the ‘Connecting the Dots’

Student workshops: October 11th – 12th

Formal books on Service Design are

Service Design conference will open

Conference days: October 13th – 14th

few and far between but many of the

its doors in Berlin – a city that pro-

Members’ reception: evening of

skills and values can be found else-

vides great facilities and professional

­October 13th

where, scattered across disciplines.

support for our event.

Members’ day: October 15th

You just have to know where to look.

The goal of this year’s conference

The conference venue, the Kalk­

is to strengthen the relationship

scheune, is a unique location in the

between clients and Service

centre of Berlin right next to Fried-

Designers and support cooperation

richstraße and within walking dis-

and exchange between professionals.

tance of many of Berlin’s landmarks,

It will provide a dynamic mix of

such as the Brandenburg Gate.

varied presentations, workshops and papers in order to provide you with

Find out more and book your tickets at:

academic and practical expertise from

www.service-design-network.org

To consolidate Service Design knowl-

renowned international players in

edge, Jeff Howard has launched

the Service Design field. In addition

Service Design Books – a co-created online library of recommended reading for Service Designers. Check the website to see which books others recommend and add your perspective by recommending books that Service Designers should read, or by seconding an existing recommendation.

Contribute tags, comments, reviews, photos and ratings to help others make sense of an emerging field.

Browse the collection at http://www.servicedesignbooks.org For more Service Design knowledge also look at www.service-design-network.org/ content/definition-service-design

8

Service Design Conference in Cambridge

Moreover, the conference will provide an opportunity to see some of the

ServDes. Service Design and ­Innovation Conference

world’s most successful Service Designers, bring insights from clients

The second Nordic Conference

of different backgrounds and learn

on Service Design and Service

about exciting and successful Service

Innovation, ServDes, will take place

We are happy to announce that the

Design case studies. This event will

in Linköping, Sweden from December

Service Design Network is organising

provide an excellent insight into why

1st – 3rd, 2010.

its 4th international Service

we need Service Design, and how it is

Design Conference in Cambridge

implemented in the real world.

(­Massachusetts), USA. The conference is targeted at service

The event will take place on October

companies, institutions, public

28th, and is hosted by Microsoft.

Service Design agencies.

The event aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners

services, universities, designers and www.service-design-network.org

to discuss, share and evolve the emerging discipline of Service

The focus of the conference is on

Design, and design-related service

how Service Design improves and

innovation.

innovates service in all areas. It will demonstrate how the use of design

The topic for this year’s conference is

makes a difference, regarding pro-

ExChanging Knowledge. Changing

cess, outcome and culture.

Knowledge is about investigating the fundamentals in Service Design and challenging the knowledge inherited from the disciplines from which Service Design has grown.

Exchanging Knowledge refers both to integrating knowledge from other fields and the ongoing conversation between conference participants with their various roles; consultants, students, in-house, clients and academics.

Find out more about the conference on: www.servdes.org

9

news

Norsk Form Competition: Service Design and Health

Design as a problem-solving method-

approach and describing their team.

ology and demonstrate the potential

We will publicise the details for two

for improved efficiency, innovation

design projects on the September 1st,

and customer satisfaction within

2010

healthcare.

An independent jury will evaluate the Our competition projects are focused

project descriptions and choose a de-

The Norwegian Foundation for De-

on the high incidence of type 2 diabe-

sign partner based on their approach

sign and Architecture (Norsk Form) is

tes in the immigrant community and

and understanding of their role in the

about to launch the 8th State Design

rethinking the role and service level

process.

Competition with the title Service

of the emergency services.

The prize is a commission for a pro­

Design and Health 2010. The com-

ject to be completed in 2011.

petition focuses attention on areas of

Given the complexity of the user

For further information about the

public importance where design can

research and the level of interaction

competition, please contact:

make a decisive contribution.

expected between the designers and the healthcare professionals, setting

Leif Verdu-Isachsen

The Norwegian national health

up the right the competition format is

Head of operations

system is rated among the best in the

essential.

world, but is under pressure from

Norsk Form,

demographic changes, changes in

Norsk Form will develop a detailed

DogA Norsk Design- og

lifestyle, increased expectations and

project description in collaboration

Arkitektursenter,

rising costs.

with the Norwegian Directorate of

Hausmanns gate 16,

Health and the specific institutions

0182 Oslo

In collaboration with the Ministry

that will be hosting the design pro-

of Health, the 2010 State Design

cess. The designers are then expected

Competition will introduce Service

to submit a project plan outlining their

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chapter # 1

Methods, Structures and Processes

Photo: AllzweckJack / photocase.com

Theories, Methods and Perspectives in Service Design

11

12

By Monica Bueno and Jonathan Podolsky

Experiencing Services Before They Become Real For years, the innovation and design community has used tools for visualising and evaluating physical products. An arsenal of techniques and technologies have been developed and refined, including advanced 3D visualisation tools and a slew of rapid prototyping equipment. In contrast, we’ve only just begun to formalise tools to evaluate service experiences – the intangible behaviours, such as new organisational structures and staffing models. A service – the design at a system level – is less tangible and more difficult to represent and evaluate. The variables to be considered are not the strength of a material or the glossiness of a surface. Instead, service experiences test human interaction, personal preference and emotion, which introduces a level of variability that is much more complex than materials and finishes.

As service companies continue to account for a growing portion of our economy, we need to develop new ways of visualising service experiences and evaluating them quickly and effectively, so they have the greatest overall impact.

In the following sections, we’ll share a range of methods that Continuum uses for developing and evaluating new services.

The ‘People Equation’ & Envisioning 1. Personas: Understanding the Customer When designing experiences, we need to consider the changing needs and behaviours of consumers. Often designers use market segmentation to help, but in the realm of Service Design, it’s unreliable and often irrelevant. For example, we can’t assume that a person who buys luxury goods wants a high-touch service.

Monica Bueno

Principal with Continuum, Boston, USA

Jonathan Podolsky

Senior Service Designer at Continuum, Boston, USA

13

experiencing services before they become real

By Monica Bueno and Jonathan Podolsky

»Only once attitudes, preferences, and lifestyles are understood can we create experiences that meet people’s needs and mean something to them.«

In our recent work, we’ve found there are considerable behavioural differences within the same segment. Some people want hand holding, while others prefer a more automated and independent experience – even though these two people might have the same household income and live in the same neighbourhood.

We need to consider behavioural segmentation and understand that people have varying needs which can change over time. Personas are one effective tool that helps us address consumer desire. As composites of individual consumers, ‘personas’ capture either an aggregate of different people who we met as we were conducting research or extreme users who help us imagine where a service might go. Personas highlight the differences in attitudes and behaviours between groups. Only once attitudes, preferences, and lifestyles are understood can we create experiences that meet people’s needs and mean something to them.¹ 2. Scripting and Storyboarding: Visualizing the Subtle Aspects of an Experience Scripting helps us organise a Service Design on paper, collect ideas, and capture interactions. While environmental design uses scripting to define the intended results of a user’s interaction in a space, Service Design uses it to define the intended results of a user’s interaction with a service infrastructure. As the design evolves, the service script remains a reference to the ideal experience.

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Below is an excerpt of a service script taken from a recent hotel-lobby design project.

Guest A arrives in cab, enters foyer, notices queue at reception desk.

• Immediately spots the clearly marked Check-in Kiosk.

• Guest A walks to kiosk. He places his bags down on the floor beside him.

• Kiosk prompts Guest A to begin.

• Guest A enters information required to find his reservation.

• Kiosk asks how many keys he’d like.

• Guest A selects (1) key card.

• Kiosk gives a brief description of sitdown breakfast, prompts to breakfast each morning.

• Guest A selects (1) Early breakfast knowing he has an early meeting tomorrow.

• Kiosk asks if he wants wake up call.

• Guest A. Selects a 6:00 am wake-up call.

The example above represents the perfect scenario, which doesn’t always happen when real life gets factored in.

Because scripts can’t predict emotional and behavioural responses, they don’t prove that the experience will work as designed. For example, if ‘Guest A’ was typing an e-mail on his blackberry as he walked into the hotel, he may never have seen the kiosk, would have waited impatiently in the long queue, and left the check-in process disgruntled. The author of a script will never be able to fully imagine all the aspects of a user’s journey.²

methods, structures and processes

»Visualisations are instrumental in portraying the intended services to a client or other stakeholders.«

Here’s where storyboarding comes in. It visually reinforces a script – uncovering unknown variables by highlighting the physicality of a service. Such visualisations are instrumental in portraying the intended services to a client or other stakeholders. Put together like a comic book, storyboarding can begin to insert a sense of time and order that can be overlaid on an environment. Each image represents the next step of a service experience.

A storyboard also has the ability to portray a script from different points of view. Drawn from the point of view of the consumer, a storyboard creates a way to test if points of interaction reinforce a service experience.

Storyboards created from the point of view of an employee can be used to help design supporting infrastructure and iron out inefficiencies.

Prototyping & Evaluating 1. 3D Renderings and Animations: Prototyping and Communicating the Human Component Although an essential tool for many aspects of communication, 3D digital imagery, when used traditionally, makes static renderings that basically serve the function of a storyboard. And we’ve all seen animations that depict action and movement – digital artists could animate a customer interacting with a check-in kiosk with fantastic detail. But what’s missing is choice: we need to insert a real consumer into the mix so we can evaluate whether the service makes sense.

An emerging tool exists which can simulate – with great detail – how a real customer would interact with a proposed space. Game engines with real-time input allow us to test a service

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experiencing services before they become real

By Monica Bueno and Jonathan Podolsky

script. Using emerging software and hardware, we take current 3D models and insert them into real-time game engines. The result: a playable interface using standard game controllers to simulate interactions in an environment. Graphic communication, videos, and recorded audio can all be inserted into this virtual world.

The ‘players’ of this game can be consumers. Their virtual interaction can be recorded and analysed. The flexibility of such systems allows for quick adjustments and iterations. Additionally, this technology allows for interactive game play to happen online, providing a venue to test large numbers of consumer reactions in a short amount of time in the same virtual environment.

Similarly, for service experiences that are more human-to-human in nature,

»Game engines with real-time input allow us to test a service script. One step closer to reality, green-screen sets provide the setting for actors to role-play service experiences.« 16

a green-screen recording with actors digitally composited onto a virtual set is very effective. One step closer to reality, green-screen sets provide the setting for actors to role-play service experiences, emulating consumer personas and true human interactions – all without building a full-scale model.

2. Foamboard Mock-ups: “If you’re­ ­going to fail, fail in foamboard”.

In concepts where elements of the environment are key touchpoints of the service experience, full-scale mockups offer one of the best ways to test their effectiveness. The cost of designing, building and housing a foamboard mockup can be high, but the benefits are worth it. Experience has taught us that failing in foamboard is far less expensive than failing in an actual prototype.

Full-scale mockups allow clients, designers, and targeted users to interact with the proposed experience.

No number of sketches or renderings will reveal all the subtleties of actually being in a real service environment.

Continuum’s fabrication shop makes physically accurate, structurally stable, foamboard parts that closely represent the real world. Having an all-white room removes the distraction of colour and material – forcing the conversation to the basics of the service.

With a full-scale mock-up, we take our actors out of the green screen sets and into a semi-real environment and really test the system. With staff in place and scripts in hand, personas are brought

methods, structures and processes

ÂťFull-scale mockups allow clients, designers, and targeted users to interact with the proposed experience. No number of sketches or renderings will reveal all the subtleties of actually being in a real service environment. ÂŤ

in and scenarios are put through their paces. Will the system work when a busload from a convention arrives all needing to be checked in to their hotel rooms at the same time?

In addition, our clients have the ability to make comments and adjustments in a familiar medium.

A great exercise: have the client play the disgruntled, uncooperative customer. No one knows better how to stress test the service system.Âł

New Approaches to Evaluating Services Ensuring the Service Elements Embody Relevant Value On projects where the deliverable is a physical, stand-alone product, Continuum uses a method called resonance testing as a way to evaluate if an idea resonates with consumers.

Resonance testing evaluates whether the proposed design concept is consistent with the stated design goals. Does the concept resonate with the strategy behind the design, and does the design

17

experiencing services before they become real

By Monica Bueno and Jonathan Podolsky

resonate with the target consumer in the ways we intended? By testing against competitive or substitute offerings, design attributes can be evaluated to make sure they evoke the intended reaction in customers. Concepts can then be refined to better meet goals – and to resonate more strongly.

When evaluating physical products, resonance testing often asks consumers whether or not a product makes them feel a certain way or evokes a certain desired attribute. For example,

consumers might be shown several iterations of a new blender design, and be asked to identify which designs feel more powerful. If the design goal is to create a powerful looking blender, designers can work with consumers’ responses to tweak the design.

In this type of test, consumers respond to these questions fairly easily because the actual embodiment of the product – how it would really look – is being shown to them. However, it is more challenging when a proposed service offering is being designed toward unmet needs, or when it involves making sometimes invisible back-end changes to an entire system, because consumers can find it difficult to project how they might feel and react in a less concrete situation.

To address this problem, we need to find ways of adapting traditional resonance testing to evaluate service concepts.

»By testing against competitive or substitute offerings, design attributes can be evaluated to make sure they evoke the intended reaction in customers. «

18

Some of the methods stated previously, including storyboarding, scenarios, and scripting could be used to present service concepts to potential users, who could then compare the different design variations and discuss how they resonate against the design strategy.

methods, structures and processes

These methods could also be used to introduce variability into the proposed service system, and evaluate how different situations taking place within the same service system might be perceived by consumers.

Moving Forward One of the challenges of testing services is that many of the existing tools do not allow us to evaluate the unpredictability and inconsistency of human behaviour.

We need to continue to evolve methods, such as Service Resonance, to add to the Service Design toolbox. Moving forward, we are challenged to build variability into our evaluation tools.

Understanding what methodologies are required to gain the proper amount of insight is critical. Having a “just enough” attitude towards prototyping is an important mindset when balancing time and costs. Levels of fidelity should correlate with the complexity of a design. When it comes to a human response, added variables increase the level of unpredictability, and guaranteeing a result becomes difficult. We need to anticipate what method will prove a Service Design hypothesis. Selecting that method requires understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each method.

Footnotes ¹ Bueno, M. and Rameckers, L. ‘Research for Innovation, Fitting the design process at Philips Design’ in ESOMAR. Excellence in International Research 2004, Amsterdam, Netherlands. / Grudin, J., and Pruitt, J. Personas, Participatory Design and Product Development: An Infrastructure for Engagement.

In Proceedings of Design conference 2002. / Andrews, A. (2003).

Putting the customer first: Creating “Experience Targets” to mange digital experiences, White Paper of Philips Design. ² Pine, B, and Gilmore, J. (1999), Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage, Harvard Business School Press. / Burns, C., Dishman, E., Verplank, B., and Lassiter, B.: Actors, hair-dos and videotape: Informance Design. In Proceedings of CHI 94, ACM Press, 119-120. ³ Maze, R., Bueno, M. Mixers a participatory approach to design prototyping. In Proceedings of DIS’02, ACM Press, 341-344.

Monica Bueno excels at developing innovative and socially meaningful solutions for clients. An industrial and interaction designer by training, Monica is deeply committed to translating customer, business, and technology research into innovative solutions that are desirable and relevant to clients and their stakeholders.

Jonathan Podolsky has worked on a wide range of retail and service projects.

He has experience in all stages of design, from strategic conceptual design to design build.

He co-founded and is an integral member of the Continuum Green Team, guiding sustainable design practices across the company.

•

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20

By Qin Han

Community of Service: ­Designing Stakeholder Learning Service Design generates not only new service concepts, but also new knowledge about service production and consumption.

It is inherently a knowledge-intensive practice, both in terms of its process and outcomes. The dynamic process of Service Design involves a complex network of stakeholders, who later determine the quality of service implementation and sustain the ongoing self-improving activities in a service system. Designers, as knowledge agents, help to formulate a Community of Service beyond organisational boundaries, alongside ongoing knowledge generation. This learning aspect of Service Design highlights its social value in service innovation. Stakeholder learning evolves beyond design projects into daily work. It enhances the social capacity of an organisation and limits potential problems amongst stakeholders. Therefore, when it comes to evaluate design’s contribution towards long-term business development, it is necessary to recognise designers’ roles in empowering stakeholder learning.

Knowledge Sharing and Service Design Design, unlike art, is never an end in itself. Rather, the design process has to serve as a tool that is part of a bigger system. In the case of Service Design it is often a complex service system with many points of access and

Qin Han

PhD research student, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK.

information sources, as well as multiple social relationships formed by a network of stakeholders from different backgrounds. Such networks can go far beyond an organisation to include customers, front-line staff and even external alliances. For a Service Design project to be a success, it is vital that

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community of service: designing stakeholder learning

By Qin Han

»But how exactly does knowledge flow in the minds and hands of the people we have worked with?«

a

it involve a joint effort from multiple stakeholders who represent different aspects of the service system, through co-creation (Han, 2009).

Most of us, as Service Designers or design researchers, have experience of how co-creation with different stakeholders has been benefiting the practice of Service Design in various contexts. Yet a key component in cocreation, knowledge, seems noticeably absent in discussion of what we do.

It is the embodiment of knowledge – artefacts and information – that we as designers are rather familiar with.

But how exactly does knowledge flow in the minds and hands of the people we have worked with?

a

a

a

Solutions

Challenges

Differences and dependencies between actors are known.

Information process: syntactic capacity, taxonomies, storage and retrieval technologies.

To increase the quality of information rather than quantity alone.

Novelty generates some differences and dependencies that are unclear: difference interpretations.

Learning: semantic capacity, crossfunctional interactions/teams, boundary spanner/translators.

To create common meanings requires creating new agreements.

Novelty generates different interests between actors that impede their ability to share and assess knowledge.

Creative abrasion: pragmatic capacity, prototyping and boundary objects for joint transformation.

To create common interests requires significant practical and political efforts.

Translation a

Transformation

Figure1. summary of approaches to share and assess knowledge, source: Carlile (2004)

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In the particular context of Service Design, what are the equivalents of the concepts of knowledge transfer, translation, and transformation?

Knowledge translation presents a challenge. There is a need to achieve shared meaning, and even agreement, among stakeholders from different backgrounds, with different views, expectations and preconceptions.

Circumstances

Transfer a=A

For this, we may need to rely for inspiration on some studies in Knowledge Management. Carlile (2004) provides a model of how knowledge is shared and assessed across different boundaries in innovation through transfer, translation and transformation (Figure 1).

methods, structures and processes

Learning is the primary purpose of this translation phase and the majority of Service Design activities happen at the semantic level, creating ‘boundary objects’ (e.g. workshops and learning toolkits) that create shared knowledge.

Other design outputs, or ‘touchpoints’, such as websites, booklets and reports provide a basic common ‘visual vocabulary’ for stakeholders to process the information they bring in from their specialised disciplines and practical experiences. This way, knowledge generated from designers’ research and collaboration with various stakeholders can be transferred to instructions for action in more efficient ways and at a larger scale.

In Service Design, designers rely on semiotic means (e.g. narratives and visualisation) to embody meaning and communicate with stakeholders.

For example, the service blueprint is regarded as an important means of representing the service system and how it should be operated. The blueprint explains the mechanical proceedings within a service system according to a timeline constructed on the base of user experience.

There is a social aspect to the blueprint as well; it is a ‘map’ for stakeholders to locate their position and understand their relationship with each other in the system. However, there is a cognitive difference between the blueprint (the map) and the actual practice in service systems (the mapped).

Therefore, designers need to keep in mind the practical situation of different stakeholders in the whole system.

This cognitive difference also explains why many Service Designers find it necessary to build facilitation sessions into their practice, because face-to-face interaction with a particular stakeholder group maximises the possibility of handing over the ownership of the ‘map’ and for encouraging learning in its practical context.

»Knowledge is created through practice; it flows where practice is shared.«

Knowledge transformation, on the other hand, comes at a ‘cost’ for stakeholders who have to give up their current ways of thinking and doing, in order to transform these into new knowledge, new behaviours, and new practices. Overcoming this challenge involves careful negotiation and ­rearrangement of social and political relationships.

Carlile and Rebentisch (2003) argue that to transform knowledge requires not only effective tools, but also a process that allows current knowledge to be integrated and new knowledge to be created. Knowledge is created through practice; it flows where practice is shared (Brown and Duguid, 2001). Negotiating practice amongst different stakeholders requires more than time, resource, trust, and motivation. It asks that all parties involved recognise the knowledge bases that distinguish different groups, and that they practice together as a community.

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community of service: designing stakeholder learning

By Qin Han

»Developing a community around a service innovation, one that consists of the key stakeholders can be an intangible but essential outcome of Service Design.«

Community of Service Developing a community around a service innovation, one that consists of the key stakeholders can be an intangible but essential outcome of Service Design.

These communities can range from a core team of stakeholders who appear in a series of workshops and help make strategic decisions, through to a social enterprise that spins off from a Service Design project.

I call this form of community a ‘Community of Service’ (CoS). This concept of CoS is developed on the basis of Lave and Wenger’s (1991) Community of Practice (CoP) and they share some characteristics. The community emerges among stakeholders who experience a mutual engagement in a shared practice (Service Design) around which they share a common repertoire of knowledge, despite their different occupational communities. Knowing becomes a practical process that interplays between the social standards of competence of the community and the individual experience of life.

At an organisational level, the formulation and disappearance of such a community contributes to the process of organisational learning in an informal way. Sustaining the healthy development of this community relies on many influences. Supportive organisational infrastructure (e.g.

IT systems) and a learning culture provide the foundation for spreading a “common lexicon” (Carlile, 2004), which in turn encourages active

24

learning and innovation in the working environment (Brown and Duguid, 1991).

However, there are differences that distinguish a CoS from a CoP (see Figure 2). Firstly, a CoS is charged with the responsibility of delivering a service, so its purpose is clear. A CoS shares not only common practice and knowledge, but also a vision for what it wants to achieve: a sustainable service system. How the service is created and delivered is a matter of innovation, and it can change in various ways, because the members of a CoS learn in real time how to improve it.

By contrast, a CoP is more general in terms of its purpose, and it may lead to outcomes in certain forms, but it does not necessarily carry responsibility for innovation. Secondly, a CoS does not focus solely on individuals or subgroups from the service provider; it also accommodates external alliances as well as customers.

The CoP meanwhile has developed a focus on Knowledge Management for the purpose of preserving knowledge generation within an organisation and nurturing organisational learning.

Compared with a CoP, a CoS complements the experiential interface between organisation and customers in a broader sense. The formulation of a CoS is a constant process of innovation, and its members are learning all the time.

Service Designers contribute to the emergence of this community in

methods, structures and processes

Community of Service • special interest on service • view customer (prosumer) and extended stakeholders as key knowledge agents • act under a vision and take responsibility for service delivery and consumption

• shared learning and new knowledge generation through practice • emergent community, constantly evolving • no formal boundary, semi-structured nature • dynamic social and political relationships

• primary focus on tacit knowledge in employees and managers and their knowledge exchange and learning • potential outcome, but no clear vision to determine the outputs

• constant innovation

Community of Practice

Figure 2. Community of Service (CoS) and Community of Practice (CoP)

many ways. They provide artefacts to help document the knowledge that is accumulated, and also to express the community’s identity. They organise learning activities that deepen members’ mutual commitment through practice, and broker relationships between individuals. They bring an awareness of formal and informal stakeholder learning, and foster effective and efficient knowledge translation and transformation (Carlile, 2004). Designers introduce concepts

and tools, and they help stakeholders to put together a structure, a vision, a culture, an environment and a collection of people.

But it is this CoS that delivers and consumes services. Let’s borrow a metaphor from beekeeping to describe this: Service Designers utilise different approaches to construct a ‘beehive’, but it is the ‘bees’ that produce (and some of them consume) the ‘honey’.

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community of service: designing stakeholder learning

By Qin Han

»Designers should focus on how to ‘design’ a community to sustain the selfimprovement in a service system.«

Stakeholder Learning as Design Outcome As designers, every thing we create, every workshop we host, every conversation we have with a stakeholder, is all to serve a learning experience. But how can we evaluate knowledge transformation and community formulation as a design outcome?

This leads to the challenge of understanding Service Design outcomes, not only through a shortterm financial perspective, but in the long-term learning perspective.

Through learning, an organisation develops its essential business capacity to face rapid market and technological change, which includes not only its economic and human capacity, but also its social capacity.

A positive stakeholder learning experience benefits service innovation and develops the social capacity of a service provider. It generates an atmosphere where collaboration and communication are encouraged. It allows an organization to become more flexible and more tolerant to mistakes (which is inevitable in innovation).

By formulating a CoS, new knowledge and new practice are more likely to be generated, and political conflicts can be identified and resolved at early stages.

Seeing stakeholder learning as a key design outcome allows us to perceive design practice through new lenses.

The parameters for evaluating stakeholder learning still await further investigation.

However, I would argue that designers need to be credited for solving the problem before it had even happened, because they have already empowered key stakeholders to resolve/prevent the

26

methods, structures and processes

potential service breakdown or interest conflict in the form of a CoS. should focus on how to ‘design’ a community to sustain the self-improvement in a service system.

Conclusion Service Design offers an experience of learning to a wide range of stakeholders involved in design activities. Designers need to go beyond designing solutions for/with stakeholders. Instead, they should focus on how to ‘design’ a community to sustain the self-improvement in a service system. This way, the design project becomes a tipping point for stakeholder learning, which naturally leads to new practice and new behaviour.

•

References • Brown, J. S. and Duguid, P. (2001) Knowledge and Organization: A Social-Practice Perspective.

Organization Science, 12, 198-213.

• Carlile, P. R. (2004) Transferring, Translating, and Transforming: An Integrative Framework for Managing Knowledge across Boundaries.

Organization Science, 15, 555-568.

• Carlile, P. R. and Rebentisch, E. S. (2003) Into the Black Box: The Knowledge Transformation Cycle.

Management science, 49, 1180-1195.

• Han, Q. (2009) Managing Stakeholder Inovlvement in Service Design: Insights from British Service Designers. First Nordic Conference on Service Design and Service Innovation. Oslo, Norway.

• Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Qin Han is currently undertaking a doctoral research project at the University of Dundee, exploring how Service Designers work with multiple stakeholders.

This project involves a systematic investigation of a number of case studies from a number of practicing Service Design consultancies in the UK.

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By Maurício Manhães, Gregório Varvakis, Tarcísio Vanzin

Designing Services as a Knowledge ­Creation Process Integrating the Double Diamond Process and the SECI ­Spiral In Touchpoint Volume 1 No. 3, Tether and Stigliani raised fundamental questions about the future of Service Design: how to build legitimacy, how to control – or lose control of – a profession and how to coordinate efforts between its entrepreneurs, practitioners and academics. They focused on knowledge. We tend to agree that “successful professions are associated with strong bodies of knowledge”. Perhaps we are sympathetic to that argument because we are from a Knowledge Engineering and Management post-graduate program at the Brazilian Federal University of Santa Catarina, UFSC. The Foundation Knowledge management and Service Design have a lot to offer to the processes of service innovation.

The academic literature contains countless citations connecting innovation and knowledge creation and innovation and design.

Some researchers affirm that design is of decisive importance for innovation: “Behind every innovation lies a new design”, say Baldwin and Clark (2005, p. 3).

Moreover, in the economy of knowledge, where the continuous iterations between innovation and competition require an unstoppable flow of new designs, knowledge 28

management has the theoretical resources needed to clarify and assist in understanding innovation as a knowledge-creating process in organisations.

Service Design can play a central role in the processes of service innovation and, thus, generate value for organisations. It is clear that Service Design has to present itself through a narrative that makes sense to the world of management and organisations.

Likewise, presenting a method that can be understood and absorbed by managers will facilitate adoption of Service Design practices by its own practitioners and by organisa-

tions in general. This effort is in line with what Tether and Stigliani write about the need to “substantiate the industry as a whole” (p. 37).

Service Design can also be understood as a knowledge-creation process. Design and innovation are both knowledge-creation processes. The similarities can be clearly seen. Then, why not create an ‘interdisciplinary bridge’ between the two fields and exchange concepts and theories to the benefit of both?

The Method The bridge is based mainly on two constructs: (a) the ‘double diamond’ design process of discover, define, develop and deliver proposed by the Design Council (UK) and (b) the ‘spiral of knowledge’, as one of the elements of the knowledge creating process (Nonaka et al., 2000). Also known as the SECI Model, the spiral of knowledge is a widely accepted knowledge management model. Basically, it states that “an organisation creates knowledge through the interactions between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge” (Nonaka et al., 2000).

methods, structures and processes

Socialization Tacit

Externalization

Tacit

Internalization Explicit

Explicit

Explicit

In brief, the proposed method consists of a series of divergent ideageneration steps followed by convergent idea selection steps (­R ietzche et al., 2006). The method also establishes a conceptual link between the design process and the Darwinian “blind variation and selective retention” process, as suggested by Simonton (1997).

That is, an alternating series of divergent steps (blind variation), followed by convergent steps (selective retention). As Simonton (1997, p. 67) explained, “In the long run, creators must lack foresight regarding the sociocultural merits of their ideas. If it were otherwise, we would have to consider creators a special class of prophets.”

Tacit

Combination

The method proposed in this article is not ‘new’. In fact, it results from minor adjustments of practices used by many Service Design agencies. In a sense, much of the ‘novelty’ of this method lies beneath its surface – in establishing an academic rationale for each step.

Tacit

Explicit

These interactions occur within four modes of knowledge conversion: socialisation (tacit to tacit), externalisation (tacit to explicit), combination (explicit to explicit), and internalisation (explicit to tacit). As can be seen in Figure 1, this sequence of knowledge conversion forms a spiral.

Figure 1

Dorst and Cross (2001) note that the design process involves “­co-evolution of problem/solution spaces.” In that process, combinations of problem/solution are selected and tested. This usually requires a heavy cognitive effort from the participants. effort can be eased through the use of multimodal imagery (as in the use of role-playing, pictures, drawings and all kinds of maps) and the understanding of the knowledge creation process (knowing that the creation of knowledge, i.e. innovation, may be facilitated

by a dynamic process, starting with socialisation and continuing through, externalisation, combination and internalisation).

As illustrated in Figure 2, the proposed method is divided into three stages: pre-field, Field and post-field work.

In the first stage, mapping and research of a particular value network occurs and a focal point is determined. That network, related to the service under investigation, 29

designing services as a knowledge creation process

Pre-Field

Grand Group

Real

PC

NC

Real

Real

PC

Phases 2.2.1 and 2.2.2

Real

SubGroup B1

SubGroup Bn

PP

PP

NP

Phase 2.3.2

NP

Phase 2.3.1

Grand Group

Grand Group

P1

Pn

FP

TP n

TP1

Designers

Final

Phases 2.4.1 and 2.4.2

NC

SubGroup An

Phases 3.1 and 3.2

SubGroup A1

Phases 2.1.2 and 2.1.3

Initial

Figure 2

30

Pn

FP

Phase 2.1.1

P1

Phases 4.1

The fieldwork provides Service designers with sufficient information and knowledge to start a process of designing a new value proposition for the service being studied – the third and final stage of the method. This article focuses mainly on the fieldwork stage of the proposed method. Future research aiming at the post-fieldwork stage is necessary and will probably reap

Designers

Field

In the end of the second stage, each participant prepares a reflection or self-questioning text. This step facilitates internalisation (which is the last step before the spiral goes to the next ontological level).

This last record, like all the others, is collected by the organisers of the process. A few days later, the self-questioning message is sent to each. That ends the fieldwork stage and the internalisation mode of knowledge conversion.

FP

Post-Field

defines which participants are going to join the process of socialisation at the beginning of the second stage. This definition is made through the mapping of the customer/provider relationships.

During fieldwork, multiple multimodal records are produced about the experiences and expectations of participants with regard to the service at hand.

These records support the externalisation and the combination of knowledge.

Phases 1.1 to 1.3

By Maurício Manhães, Gregório Varvakis, Tarcísio Vanzin

methods, structures and processes

References: • Baldwin, C. Y.; Clark, K. B: ‘Between ‘Knowledge’ and ‘the Economy ’: Notes on the Scientific Study of Designs’, Scientific Studies of Designs. pp.1-41, 2005.

• Dorst, K., CROSS, N: ‘Creativity in the Design Process: Coevolution of Problem–solution.’

Design Studies, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 425-437. doi: 10.1016/S0142694X(01)00009-6, 2001.

Further details about the ‘­diamond’ • Nonaka, I., Toyama, R., Konno, N: ‘SECI, Ba and Leadership: and ‘spiral’ methods can be ­obtained a Unified Model of Dynamic by contacting the ­authors.

Knowledge Creation.’ Long Range Planning, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 5–34.

Elsevier. Retrieved from http:// linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/ pii/S0024630199001156, 2000.

• Rietschel, E., Nijstad, B.,Stroebe, W: ‘Productivity is not enough: A comparison of interactive and nominal brainstorming groups on idea generation and selection.’

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 42, no.

2, pp. 244-251. doi: 10.1016/j. jesp.2005.04.005, 2006.

• Simonton, D. K: ‘Creative Productivity: a Predictive and Explanatory Model of Career Trajectories and Landmarks.’

Psychological Review, vol. 104, no. 1, pp. 66-89. doi: 10.1037/0033295X.104.1.66, 1997. greater benefits for the practices of Service Design. Even so, one of the most important contributions of this work was bringing together an interdisciplinary theoretical foundation for this emerging field, answering the call from Tether and Stigliani. We believe that only through a strong body of knowledge will Service Design be able to stand the challenges of time.

•

Maurício Manhães, MSE, Teacher at the Centre for Applied Social Sciences – UNIVALI Gregório Varvakis, PhD, Professor at the Knowledge Engineering and Managemen PostGraduate Program – UFSC Tarcísio Vanzin, Dr Professor at the Knowledge Engineering and Managemen PostGraduate Program – UFSC

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By Petteri Hertto, Mikko Jäppinen, Tuomo Ketola, Reima Rönnholm

Delivering Return on Service Design ­Investments

Working in a relatively new and developing field, Service Design practitioners still have difficulties in communicating the value of their work in terms of measurability and business1 impact.

A solid framework demonstrating how each phase in the design process supports the creation of business value is an invaluable aid in selling the Service Design approach to potential clients.

In this article, based on our project experience, we will introduce an approach to drive and evaluate Service Design initiatives for the most effective business impact. The focus of this article is on the following questions:

1. How Can Business Potential Be Converted into Service Goals?

In every Service Design project that aims to get real-life results, there will come many points when someone will have to make an 32

investment decision. To help the decision-making task, a contextual, customer-centred design approach offers ways to gather insight about what customers value.

Well-analysed and structured

insight about customer behaviour and value creation allows Service Designers to design concepts that people want to pay for, and to evaluate the potential value of a service for its customers in terms of potential revenue.

In every project, the design drivers – which are based on observation, interviews and / or other ethno­g raphic methods – are the key to bringing customers’ needs, goals and motives into the centre of the design process. Wellselected and prioritised design drivers help designers to come up with clear and strong concepts that connect to the essence of what customers value.

Later, when deciding which concepts and elements should be developed further, a ‘customer case’ should be used side-byside with the business case.

The business case evaluates the potential business value, whereas the customer case will bring more detailed understanding about which customers are willing to pay for the service, and why. In many of our client organisations, the

methods, structures and processes

service has to people, and how much people are willing to pay for it. Conjoint analysis makes it possible to analyse customer preferences in detail, revealing what creates value for customers and how much they are willing to pay for a service. This quantitative research method gives insight into what would be the best combination of service elements and the overall success potential of the service concept.

Using customer and business insight to drive projects

Service Design approach has, for the first time, provided a customer point of view for the concept evaluation. Too often, the actual customers are not included in the evaluations.

2. How to Optimise Service Delivery to Meet the Goals?

Services are consumed the moment they are provided. For that very reason, before implementation, it is often hard to know how the service

will actually work, no matter how much time is spent designing it.

The continuous development model is an effective way to optimise service delivery and customer experience.

Use of an iterative approach, including recognising critical phases and moments in the use of a service and designing, testing and redesigning the ideal solutions for service delivery, helps to steer service development into the most profitable areas.

We hold that service elements should be tested as early as possible and the projects should aim at utilising responsive methods instead

conjoint analysis In conjoint analysis, potential users are asked to choose between several different service packages that have different attributes and prices. For example, a concept may have attributes of service channel,

Customer profiling2 that is based on the varying value-creation models makes it possible to create customer case calculations for concept ideas and to measure their potential value, even before the implementation starts. This kind of quantified profiling will give critical insight into the decision making process, and makes it easier to decide what to keep and what to leave out. In the end, much of the success of the service is about the potential value the

degree of service quality, brand, price and so on. Each service attribute can then be broken down into a number of options. For instance, the options for service channel may be web, phone or retail. Customers choose the best combinations for them, and the method simulates the demand and price flexibility for the various concepts.

Conjoint analysis is most useful when insight is needed into customer preferences and when deciding how to go forward with a promising service concept. This method requires carefully planned research design and is, therefore, often neglected as too time consuming. It is a decision that is often later regretted.

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delivering return on service design ­i nvestments

By Petteri Hertto, Mikko Jäppinen, Tuomo Ketola, Reima Rönnholm

of the often heavy and costly linear processes.

We have found, for example, that making and sharing service concept visualisations early on in the project, makes it easier to establish a shared understanding of the desired outcomes within the project team.

Often, the overall goals and related metrics are defined correctly.

However, without the recognition and measurement of critical transitions throughout the service delivery process, i.e. conversions, it is virtually impossible to pinpoint problem areas if the service does not deliver on its goals.

Conversion and KPIs are familiar terms to many Service Designers who work with digital service optimisation, but these metrics can also be successfully implemented in services that do not have digital touchpoints. For example, we have used a similar framework to optimise service delivery in face-to-face customer services as well as in developing the shopping experience and service environment for grocery stores.

Optimising different dimensions of service delivery

For iterative design and continuous development to be effective, it becomes necessary to implement service-metrics instruments into the service system in the early stages of the design process.

From the monitoring point of view, it is important to identify what are the most important conversions and other key performance indicators (KPIs). This is the part of the process where many service development initiatives go wrong.

34

When developing and launching a new service model, it is extremely important to know how the new solutions, tools, environments

and practices work together in the service setting. Prototyping and piloting are the most effective approaches to gather the needed insight.

Output from service metrics — gathered by mystery shopping, customer interviews, observation and internal tracking — is extremely helpful to the design team in the service piloting phase. Based on these results, the design team is able to identify what is working and what is not. Because of the causal link between different KPIs, the design team is able to identify the main bottlenecks in the service delivery and to make some adjustments in service personnel training, tools, service evidence and service environment to optimise the customer experience and maximise business impact.

We have found that servicemetrics data is very helpful when communicating the impact of

conversions and kpis There are two types of conversions: micro and macro. Micro conversions are the steps in the process that lead to the main targets, the macro conversions. For example, 5% online store conversion means that 5% of the shop visitors become customers. When optimising the online purchasing process, in addition to the overall macro conversion, micro conversions are worth a deeper examination: how many customers put the product into the shopping basket, why do people abandon shopping baskets, etc.

methods, structures and processes

different design steps to our clients, as it helps to truly understand the power of an iterative, human-centred design approach.

Recognising the critical elements for success early on in the design and delivery phases is crucial in order to optimise the delivered service-experience elements, and make the development work more cost-effective.

four stages of critical conversions and kpis In a project to improve the face-to-face customer service for our travel and hospitality client, we defined and set up metrics that gave our design team feedback and data from four critical aspects of service production.

Service Enablers What is going on backstage in the service when the members of the service staff are interacting among themselves? Recognising the critical enablers for targeted service delivery.

3. How Continuous Monitoring Can Improve Service's Success?

When a new service is finally launched it is time to evaluate the project and the resulting service. Measuring the return on investment of a Service Design project is often challenging due to its multidimensional and intangible nature.

Nevertheless, our experience has shown that measurement is possible if the service KPIs are carefully designed with the client to reflect the actual business challenges, for example, the number of leads, new customers, sales etc. This way our designers will also fully understand what the expected result of their work is.

When designing a new service, the shared understanding of the overall goal, (initial) service targets and related measures will give the desired direction for the project team. Concepts will evolve and take shape as the design

Service Delivery What were the actual service actions and interactions performed by the service staff when delivering the service? Evaluating the role of new service elements: tools, service gestures, dialogue guidelines, etc.

Customer Experience How do customers perceive the service delivery actions?

Measuring the customers’ experiences with the service.

Business Impact What is the effect of new service models and actions on sales figures and overall turnover during the pilot period?

A close link to business targets.

process moves on, but the overall goal rarely changes radically, and it will, therefore, provide the framework within which to explore the best possible solutions.

A good service aims at two things: firstly, the best possible customer experience and, secondly, reaching the business targets. In order to be able to optimise both of these

goals, we need separate measures and targets for both. Usually KPIs are defined for the business targets, but are often lacking the customer experience measures. We have found the Net Promoter Score to be a straightforward and effective way to assess the success of our design work from the customer point of view. Simultaneous and on-going

35

delivering return on service design ­i nvestments

By Petteri Hertto, Mikko Jäppinen, Tuomo Ketola, Reima Rönnholm

effects, it is possible to see the actual cause-and effectrelationship between new service elements and business. This will not only give insight into the project’s success in terms of financial or business impact, but will also create a measurable link from customer satisfaction and customer experience to business success. Success monitoring

should be done before and after the development work in order to evaluate the impact.

Conclusion Design work in itself, without a direct, measurable link to related business goals is a futile activity. On the other hand, ambitious business goals without a vigorous design approach and capability will

net promoter score (nps) Increasing the chances of success by continuous

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer-experience KPI that collects data

monitoring

on how likely it is that customers would recommend the service. Thanks

monitoring of all four aspects of key performance indicators (enablers, service delivery, customer experience and business impact KPIs) enables the tracking of the results of design changes, for example, personal guidance given by service personnel (service action) is linked to indicators like sales figures (business KPIs).

Instead of guessing or estimating

36

to its simplicity, NPS has gained popularity, wide range of international benchmarks and demonstrated linkage to profitable growth and loyalty.

This makes it a usable metric for evaluating Service Design initiatives that aim to change the customer experience.

Unlike the traditional satisfaction metrics, NPS strongly emphasises the number of customers who would recommend the service. Thus, it accurately reflects the changes in the perceived customer experience, making it easy to underline the actual impact of different new service elements that have been implemented.

methods, structures and processes

also fall short. Linking design work closely with business impact is often challenging.

In this article we have briefly introduced a practical, three-step approach that we have successfully used in our clients’ projects. Firstly, the project team needs to convert the recognised business and customer potential into measurable service goals. Secondly, the service delivery needs to be optimised in order to meet these goals.

Here we suggested the use of measures that link business targets with the customer experience targets. And finally, a continuous monitoring needs to be set in place so that the critical conversions in the delivery of the service can be evaluated.

Based on our own experience, we see that learning and mastering the three-step approach presented here will help Service Design practitioners to link design and business goals.

Footnotes ¹ In this article, when we talk about ‘business impact’, we could have used phrase ‘business and organisational impact’. Therefore, our approach will be applicable to businesses, organisations in the public sector, not-for-profit organisations etc. ² In our work ‘customer profiling’ is used to identify critical elements of different customer value creation models. Thus, customer profiling is about behavioural models, and it does not equal customer segments or illustrative design personas. In real life, a customer or a group of customers will behave according to an identifiable mix of various value creation models. Value creation models for customer profiling are often based on ethnographic studies, and verified with quantitative methods.

Petteri Hertto, Service Designer, Palmu Inc Mikko Jäppinen, Service Designer, Palmu Inc Tuomo Ketola, Service Designer, Palmu Inc Reima Rönnholm, Service Designer, Palmu Inc Palmu Inc. Be happy with services.

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Photo: AllzweckJack / photocase.com

chapter # 2

Business Insights

A View of the Interplay Between Service Design and Business

39

By Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason

Service Design – The Bottom Line

Lavrans Løvlie

Founding Partner, live|work

Ben Reason

Founding Partner, live|work

40

When we, as designers, see that people enjoy the services we have created, we tend to accept this as proof of quality. But this proof is rarely sufficient to justify the expense of design for our clients. They have other metrics that drive their activity: usually profit or cost efficiency. They need tangible indicators to measure the performance of the service. They need to demonstrate return on investment. They also need performance indicators that will enable them to understand exactly how to improve their service and to stay ahead of competition.

This prompts the question: what are truly service-native ways to model and measure the value of design?

People Make Business Tricky We are keen believers that Service Design is a driver for more efficient service delivery, since it places value for the customer at the heart of business development. When organisations focus on customer value, they find it easier to remove processes and costs that do not directly benefit the customer.

They are also more likely to invest and excel at those experiences that make their service unique to customers. The challenge is to find ways to model the economics of service delivery in order to justify a customer-oriented perspective. In this respect, the most interest-

ing development in business theory during the last few years has been the emergence of ‘Lean Consumption’. This service-­oriented offshoot of Lean Manufacturing places emphasis on reducing waste for the customer rather than for a manufacturing process. This provides a strong argument for design to play a role in increasing the value of services.1 Another challenge is that it appears simpler to model the economics of a product manufactured in a value chain than of a service delivered by a network of actors. When you include the customer as part of the value-

41

service design – the bottom line

By Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason

»In order to argue for service design as a business-critical activity, we need simple and useful models that show how money flows in a system.«

1. Services need to adapt to people’s changing needs over time.

2. People interact with services across multiple touchpoints Transformed into points of cost and revenue, these characteristics provide us with a truly service-native way to model a business case and measure the results.

producing team – as in self-service banking – the complexity quickly becomes overwhelming. There are more unpredictable variables to service delivery than to manufacturing.

It is easier to create a robust revenue model for a re-designed razor or a new design for a potato-chip bag than a new design for an insurance-claims process.

1. Cost and Revenue through the Customer Journey By breaking down the business model across the stages of a customer journey, it is possible to model where costs can be reduced and revenues can be accrued in relation to where value is created for the customer.

In order to argue for service design as a business-critical activity, we need simple and useful models that show how money flows in a system, and how this is directly influenced by design decisions.

Service-Native Business Modelling Two defining characteristics of service delivery provide us with a framework for integrating business modelling with the design processes:

Aware

2. Cost and Revenue across Touchpoints By breaking down the business model across touchpoints, it is possible to model

Join

Use

Quit

Retail

¤

¤

¤

¤

Call Centre

¤

¤

¤

¤

Web

¤

¤

¤

¤

Product

¤

¤

¤

¤

¤

¤

¤

¤

¤

In this schematic service blueprint, we imagine that the customer first becomes aware of the service, goes through a joining process, and proceeds to use the service. Finally, she decides to quit the service. All these interactions require different mindsets in order to enable good value for the customer. Along the vertical axis, we list the channels she might use to interact with the service along her journey.

42

business insights

in which channels costs can be reduced and revenue can be made while creating value for the customer.

This framework integrates business modelling with the design process. It enables us to use a service blueprint both to design the customer experience and to model and measure the flow of money in the service.

It allows for zooming into the economics of a single interaction with the customer, and it shows the big picture.

It enables managers to prioritise which interactions to invest in, and analyse whether the whole service proposition will provide return on investment.

The Business Case for Reduced Unemployment Although the model presented here is simple, it has proven to be useful in complex cases. One of these is a project that live|work carried out in the northeast of England with the City of Sunderland to reduce unemployment.

The city found itself in a particularly challenging situation where out of 37,000 workless people only 5,000 were actively seeking employment. We were tasked with re-designing the journey from worklessness back to work. This also required us to present business cases along with our design solutions.

In public service design and innovation, success cannot be measured by competitive advantage, but rather by the value it brings to society. This is hard to measure, particularly in the

multifaceted network of a community.

In this case, however, we were able to first present a credible business case for investing in a service pilot, and to later measure the results of the pilot in order to argue for a large-scale deployment of new services.

»We were tasked with re-designing the journey from worklessness back to work.«

Make it Work Sunderland is a city in the North East of England that has suffered more than most from the decline of heavy industry in the area. Affected by losses in both the coal and shipbuilding industries, the city has some of the highest rates of unemployment in the UK. Many people have never worked and come from families where generations have not know reliable employment.

This setting provided the context for a project live|work undertook in 2005.

Working with the City Council and supported by One NE, the regional development agency, our brief was to re-design the journey to work for the long-term unemployed, especially those with complex reasons for their unemployment such as bad health, substance addiction or responsibilities as carers.

We were asked to look at the whole journey and specifically to approach a solution that was primarily informed by end user needs. Our research involved in-depth fieldwork with a small number of individuals within a specific ward of Sunderland. We shadowed their days to understand how they lived and focused on the interactions they had with services such as healthcare, social services, job centres and voluntary groups.

43

service design – the bottom line

By Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason

1

WELLNESS

Inactive due to health or wellness issue

2

STABILITY

Social stability issue (e.g. debt, caring role)

3

4

CAPABILITY

Ready to develop vocational skills

INTO WORK

5

SUSTAINED WORK

Paid employment >16 hrs/wk for Paid employment >16 hrs/wk for less than 13 weeks more than 13 weeks

Inactivity-to-Activity Journey Model The model brings together health, care, learning and skills, and employment considerations to represent a persons journey towards employment from ‘earliest start to latest finish’.

From this work, we were able to construct an ideal-but-realistic blueprint of what needed to be in place for these people to make their journey back to work. Importantly, the journey is based on overcoming barriers and is informed by our insight that people are not able to think about work until their more pressing needs – health, housing, etc. – are under control.

The blueprint – based on user needs – was then used as a common structure around which all the partners on the project could organise. Health teams were able to see how they contributed to employment by getting people well again, whilst rehab programmes could connect to employment resources to help their clients’ progress. As the case study below shows, all the services came together to support an individual to become self sufficient.

Our blueprint made clear improvements in the user experience of employment support services. It also helped managers focus their resources on where they were most effective. However, we also needed to demonstrate that the activity 44

was cost effective overall, and for each specific activity. We needed to show that the blueprint was financially viable.

The Case for Investment We based our business case for investment on the blueprint designed during this first phase of the project.

There is no specific number for how much one workless person costs society, but we were able to find that the state spends between £10,000 and £40,000 per person out of work per year in benefits and other social costs. We knew the rates of worklessness in Sunderland, what services were offered along the customer journey and what it would cost to redesign these services. We now had a metric for calculating the value of our design intervention.

We calculated that a reasonable goal would be that for every £1 invested, there would be a £2 saving to the public purse: a 200 percent ROI. If scaled up, the benefits would be massive: one hundred people in work would create a minimum £1m in savings per annum.

Sunderland City Council believed in the potential defined by this initial project

business insights

and, on the back of it, we shared our insights and concepts in workshops with more than 200 operational council employees to enable them to improve their services.

Making it Work Our blueprint made sense on paper, and we had aligned the service activity to a cost-benefit model. But we also needed to demonstrate that it worked in practice. To do this, we designed a pilot that would apply our principles on a small scale to test them before taking the service to the whole city.

1

WELLNESS

2

For the pilot, a number of complimentary services – both public and voluntary sector – were commissioned to work with us to test the blueprint. All parties would use the journey to work as their model and collaborate to ensure that their clients had their needs met in the order that we had outlined. Although simple, we had achieved the goal of re-designing the services based on user needs.

During the pilot, the fact that it takes time to help people into work became tangible. We realised that whilst some people would make it into work, others

3

STABILITY

CAPABILITY

4

INTO WORK

5

SUSTAINED WORK

MakeitWork RBLI ‘Ngage

c Foundations 4 the Future

a

b

d

Mainstream

e

Data Jobcentre Plus

James Background James had an involvement with organised crime and drugs that spanned 20 years.

He approached Voice NE after serving a prison sentence and gained support in developing motivation & skills for employment.

9 months

a

Approached Voice NE

b

Trained as Employment Support Worker (ESW)

Released from prison Oct ’07. Became aware of Voice NE through social network.

Mentoring training to become ESW in the Foundations 4 the Future project.

c

RBLI motivational training

d

Fork lift truck training

e

Employed by Vantec

Attended motivational/goal setting course entitled ‘Ngage.

Jobcentre Plus identified high demand for skill.

Voice NE sourced the provider and funded the training.

Vantec provide warehousing services for Nissan in Sunderland.

Case Study 1 – Substance Misuse. In the case of individual clients, we tracked their journey through the system to see how they engaged with different service offerings on their path towards work. One of these was James who, after serving a prison sentence, went on to work as a forklift-truck driver for Nissan.

45

service design – the bottom line

% of Provider’s Registered Project Client Base

By Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason

BEFORE Client Positions at Registration

AFTER Client Progress as of Sept ‘08

100 80 60 40 20 50 40 30 20 10 60 50 40 30 20 10 80 60 40 20

The pilot included people who were out of work for different reasons, from people suffering from mental health problems and substance users, to people who took care of family members and those over 50 who didn’t fit into the local labour market. This picture shows how the people in the different groups progressed towards work during the nine months of the pilot.

would only begin their journey, perhaps overcoming a major barrier but not finding a job. We knew that there was value in this activity in the long term – and also immediately within the funding term of the pilot – but we needed to show this value to the project sponsor.

At this point, we applied the method described above to align costs and benefits to the service blueprint. We were able to uncover the saving made to society from reduced homelessness or addiction and apply them to individual cases. We also knew the cost per person of all of our partners in the pilot, so were able to make a cost-benefit calculation for each step of the journey.

The Return on Investment Over a period of nine months, a range of organisations in Sunderland partnered to pilot a series of service concepts with 238 workless ‘clients’.

46

Of these, 19 people had come into permanent employment during the pilot.

Just as importantly, 38 people had gone from being unable to work to being capable of working, and 72 people in total had jobs safeguarded. The results showed that the redesigned services could bring huge benefits to the community.

The Revenue Potential After completion of the pilot, we were able to use the data collected to estimate the costs and success rate of the design of the new services. To model the revenue potential, we broke down the average savings for society per user into five well-documented categories. The model included economic costs such as: • Estimated benefits costs – what the city saved in individual benefit payments • Estimated exchequer losses – the tax

business insights

people would pay when in work • Economic output losses – the value people in work would create for their employers • Health & social externalities – value attached to improved health and reduced social problems Personal cost impacts were also included in the model, even if they were hard to estimate and are not traditionally counted. The personal price can range from social exclusion through to excess mortality.

Savings for Every Step of the Journey It is easy to assume that return on investment would only happen when people found permanent employment, but this wasn’t he whole picture. Using the business model, we could show how the City of Sunderland would be able to save money for every step a client took along the journey back to work.

As an example, we could shows that a person who manages to overcome

mental health problems and progresses towards work would save the community £4,000 simply by being capable for work. Savings would rise up to £20,000 when the same person managed to get into permanent employment.

Based on the pilot, we now had data on what the costs of service provision were along the customer journey, as well as for different target groups.

We also had data on the success rate of the new service design, the estimated savings and could calculate return on investment for a full-scale launch of the new design.

In conclusion, the service pilot showed that at a cost of £180,000, the community had saved £435,000. This gave us concrete numbers for estimating return on investment for a full-scale launch: 240%.

The Bottom Line ‘Make it Work’ showed us that we could use the same framework – the service blueprint – to design the customer experience and to model the business case.

Annual Savings

Mental Health: Average Saving per User £ 20,000

Personal Costs

£ 15,000

Health & Social Externalities

£ 10,000

Economic Output Losses

£ 5,000

Estimated Exchequer Losses Estimated Benefits Cost

£0 Wellness

Stability

Capability

Into Work

Sustained Work

Journey Stage

47

service design – the bottom line

By Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason

Mental Health

Wellness

Opening Closing Net Change

Stability

Carers

0

0

40

18

0

22

0

0

40

-2 1

-1

22

0

0

Stability

Totals

9

0

0

37

1

6

22

0

8

37

-4

-1 7

13

0

8

Stability

Capability

Sustained Work Total

Into Work

65

1

0

50

1 37

14

55

7

3

58

1 37

-1 0

6

3

8

Stability

Capability

Sustained Work Total

Into Work

0

20

0

0

24

2

2

17

0

3

24

-2

2

0

3

Wellness

Stability

-3

Capability

Estimated Costs £ 58,750

Estimated Savings

Estimated Costs

69

89

30

0

50

238

35

63

68

3

69

238

-3 4

-2 6

38

3

19

Estimated Savings

Estimated Costs £ 43,750

Estimated Savings

Quit

¤

¤

¤

¤

Retail

¤

¤

¤

¤

Call Centre

¤

¤

¤

¤

Web

¤

¤

¤

¤

Product

¤

¤

¤

¤

¤

£ 1,588

Saving Per Person £ 2,778

Cost Per Person £ 319

Saving Per Person £ 1,415

Cost Per Person £ 1,823

Saving Per Person £ 2,451

£ 180,000

For more information about this article check: www.service-design-network.org

Use

Cost Per Person

Estimated Savings

•

Join

£ 1,983

Estimated Costs

Footnotes 1 Womack, James P. and Jones, Daniel T. Lean Consumption, Harvard Business Review. 2005

Aware

£ 844 Saving Per Person

£ 43,750

£ 58,834

Sustained Work Total

Into Work

Estimated Savings

£ 193,855

4

Cost Per Person

£ 33,750

£ 102,792

21

This project demonstrates a highly complex case involving a broad set of stakeholders, and in a public service context where performance cannot simply be measured in profit. Using the framework of a service blueprint gave us the opportunity to model a servicenative business case and merge it with the design process.

48

Sustained Work Total

23

Over 50s users Wellness

Opening Closing Net Change

Into Work

Capability

Estimated Costs

£ 79,335

5

-7

Opening Closing Net Change

Sustained Work Total

0

Wellness

Opening Closing Net Change

Into Work

1

Substance Users Wellness Opening Closing Net Change

Capability

39

£ 434,817

Lavrans Løvlie is a cofounder of live|work in the UK and since March 2007 has managed our Nordic operation, based in Oslo. In addition to growing our client base and influence across the Nordic region, he also focuses his expertise on the telecoms, financial services and technology sectors. He continues to be on the Board of the UK company.

Ben Reason is co-founder of live|work and over the past eight years has directed his passion for social impact projects into delivering successful change for the public sector.

He graduated from Liverpool John Moores University with a BA in Fine Arts, following this with an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice from the University of Bath.

join why service design network?

The Service Design Network is an internationally aligned forum for practitioners and academics to advance the growing field of the young discipline Service Design. Our purpose is to develop and strengthen the knowledge and expertise in the science and practice of service innovation and to improve services generally. specifically, sdn exists to…

• offer Service Design as a tool to answer contemporary social, economic and environmental challenges.

• create demand for Service Design excellence among service organisations, customers and educators.

• identify research needs and key issues for the development of Service Design projects programs and research nationally as well as internationally.

• develop and share Service Design knowledge & practice.

• consolidate a common Service Design culture and language.

• establish and maintain a network of researchers and practitioners in the field of Service Design.

• integrate Service Design within design, technology & business education.

• promote good examples and best practices of applied Service Design The Service Design Network is rapidly growing – more than 100 members from all over the world have joined, representing academics, agencies and industries.

• access to our new interactive community platform of the Service Design Network – on the platform, members can meet and talk to leading professionals and experts from the field of Service Design; besides presenting your company and your work to other Service Design practitioners, you can establish interest and discussion groups, share events and news from the world of Service Design and post job offers, announcements and discussion topics.

About 1000 people have already signed in for Insider, the Service Design Newsletter, and a new community website will soon provide a platform for collaboration and communication among network members.

• regular updates of the SDN website and member pages

what’s on offer?

To become a member, companies, private firms or institutions must work professionally in the area of Service Design. Membership benefits include:

• free posting of professional papers in the Service Design Journal

• web space to present your institution or company and its activities (employees/staff, events, projects, publications, job openings).

• free newsletter • free posting of job advertisements in the Service Design Journal, in the newsletter and on the website

• the periodical Service Design Journal »Touchpoint« as PDF download join now!

To learn more and to register, visit www.service-design-network.org or contact the Service Design Network Office.

By Steve Lee

How Human Is Your Business?

Transforming the Front Line

From handier tin openers to more intuitive interfaces, the ability of design to humanise ‘things’ is well known and understood.

Services, however, in spite of being provided by people in direct contact with users, are often dehumanised by measures and policies set at an organisational level. Top-down directives intended to increase revenue, efficiency or measurability can actually undermine experiences for staff and users, and decouple what organisations aim to achieve from what their users want.

Following are three examples for bridging this gap, ­illustrating how Service Design can meet such ­organisational challenges.

It affirms that by transforming the front line you can liberate staff, ­unlock innovation and provide users with the experiences they demand to help ensure that the bottom line looks after itself.

”Computer says no” – catch phrase from a running sketch in UK comedy Little Britain, where reasonable requests are denied by a brick wall of bureaucracy.

50

Customer and Organisational Needs Service users have fundamentally different needs from consumers of products. They seek individual experiences that bring touchpoints and channels together. They require direct interaction (and often human interaction) with the providing organisation.

Organisations inevitably need to divide tasks between departments and so develop roles and incentives to keep each of its components moving, employing automation and standardisation to boost efficiency.

These differences in needs and behaviours can cause a gap to appear, diminishing the user’s experience and in turn an organisation’s fortunes.

De-Humanised Services and Market Stalinism A fixation on operations and efficiencies can mechanise and de-­humanise services. Compartmentalised departments can quickly create bureaucratic hoops for customers to jump through.

While customers seek customisation, longer-term relationships and largely measure experiences on qualitative grounds, organisations often consider success in quantitative efficiencies and short-term ROI. Key Performance Indicators would seem to be a happy medium, but can become subverted by target setting and the shortcuts necessary to achieve them. The minutiae of how to achieve something becomes an end in itself, obscuring and even detracting from why you’re trying to achieve it in the first place.

Mark Fisher calls this effect ‘­Market Stalinism’ ¹, after the USSR’s White Sea Canal project: the primary goal of providing passage for large cargo ships and tankers between the White sea and the Baltic was hijacked by target squeezing, box-ticking and PR concerns.

business insights

Market Stalinism at work – Wherever you hear these signs.

The result was a glorious media review of an efficiently completed canal, but in truth it was only deep enough to accommodate the small tourist steamers on which the journalists sat.

sneaking her out of the ward to improve her psychological wellbeing, small moments of individual initiative that did not adhere to organisational rules helped her recovery immeasurably.

The above example may be humorous, but this phenomenon is visible from small-scale interactions to life-or-death scenarios.

Although organisations need to have safety procedures and to focus on the bottom line to maintain profits and value, being rule-bound can often have the opposite result.

Gill Hicks, who was injured in the London Tube bombings of 2005, spoke at the NHS Innovation Live conference last year. She explained how it was those who broke the rules, and the moments when rules were broken, which meant the most to her recovery. From rescue paramedics bending resuscitation protocols, to hospital staff later

The cost of dissatisfied users is a damaged reputation and a long time spent trying to win back their confidence and custom. By tying the hands of staff with policy, pragmatism, common sense and innovation are stifled and even discouraged.

Re-Humanising Services Service Design is the vehicle for uniting desirable user experiences and outcomes (bottom-up needs) with operational necessities and efficiencies (top-down needs).

Below are three examples illustrating how organisations can be transformed from frustrating empathyvoid automatons to empowered, adaptive, innovative helpers.

1. See the design process as an end in itself: Lewisham Housing Options Co-creative activities during the process can be as effective as the final deliverables themselves, in establishing the right culture to sustain a service.

51

how human is your business?

By Steve Lee

ThinkPublic and the Design Council worked with Lewisham Council to understand how they could better serve constituents who required housing, some of whom were in distressing situations and / or housing emergencies.

»Being re-connected with the situations, fears and hopes of those who they serve every day, they began literally to see things through a different lens.«

Staff members were all given a camera, some training and then went about interviewing people who were waiting for, or had just had, their appointment.

The direct experience of gathering data, footage and insights released the staff from their desks, databases and forms. Being re-connected with the situations, fears and hopes of those who they serve every day, they began literally to see things through a different lens, asking different questions and getting to 52

the heart of customers’ problems in a personal, human way.

2. See services as constantly in ‘beta’: Passenger Personas Transferring tools and knowledge through workshops, training and method sharing is an often-overlooked activity. It greatly improves the sustainability of a service by equipping front-line staff and management with the tools and processes to improve and evolve the service.

One European airport group has an established protocol for understanding and improving their passenger experience. ‘Greeter’ staff are on hand to help and direct passengers as they arrive in the terminal. At quiet times, these greeters put themselves in the shoes of a passenger by adopting a ‘passenger persona’: they select a destination, and set off through the airport identifying gaps in wayfinding, accessibility or even maintenance and upkeep. Issues are dealt with swiftly, making the job more satisfying for the staff and the experience more pleasant for passengers.

Embedding design and empathy tools creates a strong link between an organisation and its users, ensuring needs are understood.

Empowering those who have the grass-roots knowledge of a situation to take action to fix

problems means solutions are more informed and services are built coherently, not on an ad-hoc basis.

3. Refrain from imposing common sense guidelines: Just A Routine Operation Generic guidelines inhibit staff from trying anything new or different. They cannot best serve individual customers, nor fulfil their role as ‘silent designers’ – observing and changing the system incrementally.

This documentary, created for the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, follows a man’s experiences during the sudden death of his wife, who suffered complications after a minor operation.

Rather than encapsulate what was observed through the film into another ‘framework for communications protocol’ or a ‘critical situation checklist’, the film has simply been screened to 2,000 NHS staff.

By more directly experiencing the situation, the staff can draw their own conclusions, which mitigates the need for ‘guidance’ because skills and empathy are developed more directly.

To those who may balk at a lack of control, consider Nordstrom, a US department store renowned for its customer service. Until recently, its staff guidelines consisted of just 75 words, including:

business insights

»Just a Routine Operation.« 2

tween operational necessities, and what users want is created, reducing waste and increasing demand.

“Rule 1: Use best judgement in all situations.

There will be no additional rules.” 3

This laissez-faire approach has empowered Nordstrom sales associates to go to the extremes of customer service. By increasing autonomy and lightening the touch of administration, barriers to common sense, ideas and action are removed, enabling a culture of innovation.

Conclusion By using Service Design to address organisational challenges, you can create direct and dynamic links be-

How well this is done is most apparent at the ‘front line’ where staff and users interact. Organisations need to trust and support the people they hire, so that they can efficiently provide effective services that are meaningful and desirable to people. That is true return on investment.

com/earticlesstore_articles. asp?type=article&id=108] With thanks to Thinkpublic (www. thinkpublic.com) and Sean Miller (www.nonon.co.uk) for case studies and images.

•

Footnotes ¹ Fisher, M (2009) Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (esp. p39, 43) ² Just A Routine Operation (2008, Thinkpublic) [http://vimeo. com/970665] ³ Spector, R. (2000) Lessons of the Nordstrom Way [online quote retrieved on 8/7/2010 from www.ecustomerserviceworld.

Steve Lee is a Senior Service Designer at Prospect (www.prospect.eu), a London-based consultancy that designs and implements great services and experiences. Steve has also worked at Engine and the Design Council and as an interaction designer at Imagination. He was educated at Goldsmiths, University of London. His blog is at steveleedesign.org.

53

By Rikke B E Knutzen, Lotte Christiansen, Søren Bolvig Poulson

Stuck in a Price War? Use Service Design to Change the Game in B2B Relations

Competition within the building materials sector is based mainly on the price of materials – the cheaper you can provide a material, the more competitive you will be. This is a simple fact of business and a prevailing condition in many industries.This situation has helped to sustain the market positions of some companies.

Since larger companies have the advantage of high-discount bulk purchasing – and can therefore pass these savings on to the buyer – they put their small – and mediumsized competitors at a disadvantage. One way of getting out of this sticky situation for a medium-sized company is by shifting the focus of competition. Service Design has great potential as a strategic element in such circumstances.

On larger construction projects, the price of materials determines which wholesaler the clients choose. This created a difficult situation for the Danish company BOLDSEN. The company, a medium-sized business dealing in retail plumbing materials, is the smallest amongst its competitors. BOLDSEN’s competitiveness depends on a different way of doing business, and shifting the focus of 54

competition is one way to go, by changing the focus from lowering prices to providing appealing and profitable services to their clients – plumbing companies.

This article is based on work ­carried out in a master thesis project during Spring 2010, at the School of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University. The aim of the project was to apply Service Design as a strategic tool for BOLDSEN. It was found that there are two major challenges to confront when shifting the focus of competion from lowering material pricing to offering services in B2B relations: 1. Changing the mindset within the company.

2. Designing a service that is both profitable as well as being a good business choice for the client.

Changing the Mindset of the Company For companies to differentiate themselves on service, it is crucial that they perceive themselves as a service provider (Reinartz & Ulaga 2008) – this, however, was not the case with BOLDSEN. For many years, BOLDSEN’s self-perception was that of being a simple product trader. To challenge – and eventually change – this company mindset, we established various workshops with creative activities, which served as learning situations.

To initiate the project and to discuss the strategic direction of the company, a design game called Consolidate was used in a workshop at the company’s offices. The game proved valuable in maintai­ning a particularly focused discussion on rather abstract subjects, such as the current market situation and how to differentiate the company from others. The playful element of the design game contributed to an informal and open discussion among the participants, from top management to

business insights

sales p ­ ersonnel. The result of the workshop impressed upon the participants the need to differentiate themselves from the competitors and seeded the notion that services are the potential strategic elements to pursue.

In a second workshop, video material from field studies at construction sites was introduced as design material (Ylirisku & Buur 2007).

The purpose was to uncover current problems and to identify design directions for services. The company was surprised to learn that that their clients knew very little about the services already provided. New service ideas also emerged through

observing the routines of plumbers and understanding the challenges they faced during their daily work.

The openness of the video allowed participants from the company to formulate different interpretations and to apply their knowledge of the company’s capabilities.

This contributed to the development of a workable service concept that could be provided and maintained by the company, while supporting the day-to-day work of their clients.

During the different workshops with the company, a better understanding of the company arose; they came to perceive it not just as a product provider, but as a service

provider with something valuable to offer.

Designing a Good Business Choice Services offered in B2C should be useful, usable and desirable for the client (Moritz 2005). This is also the case with clients in B2B relations. However, the desirability of a service is highly dependent on economic aspects – is it a good business choice?

During the project, contextual interviews, expert interviews, service scanning, competitor analysis, and video analysis were carried out to discover what would be a good business choice for plumbing

»A design game was used early on in the project to facilitate discussion about the strategic situation of the company (left). A workshop using video footage from field studies at construction sites as design material proved essential in establishing perception of being a service provider within the company (right).«

55

stuck in a price war?

By Rikke B E Knutzen, Lotte Christiansen, Søren Bolvig Poulson

companies. During the studies it became evident that there was great potential for increasing workflow efficiency and reducing concerns at job sites, both of which could result in reduced time – and material waste and in increased trust between plumbers and wholesaler.

At present, during larger construction projects, plumbers spend a considerable amount of time organising and re-organising the plumbing materials after delivery to the site. This is in order to both reduce clutter in the on-site storeroom and to smooth their workflow. The owner of the plumbing company also attempts to structure and adjust the material orders accor­ding to the workflow on each project – but without making use of the plumbing wholesaler as a strategic partner.

The investigations further revealed the great potential for BOLDSEN to be one of the first plumbing material wholesalers to make the strategic move towards differentiating itself on service. The majority of small – and medium-sized companies have not yet discovered and utilised this potential.

These insights, together with the continuous involvement of the plumbers, led to the design of the ‘BOLDSEN packs for you’ service, which is a direct continuation of the existing working procedures.

In the new service, BOLDSEN organises and gathers the plumbing materials together in packages based on the working procedures of the plumbers and delivers these packages in an organised container

located at the construction site.

What makes this service a potentially good business choice for the plumbing company is that the organisational work is moved from the construction site to BOLDSEN, and that existing procedures have been supported and eased. For example, with this service, the plumbers can order packages of materials instead of ordering every material using its nine-digit number. The service not only increases efficiency, it also reduces the risk of making errors and wasting time and money. Furthermore, increased feedback when materials are ordered and delivered reduces concerns and enables the plumbers to react instantly if an order cannot be delivered on time.

Rather than focusing on competing on material prices, the options

»One way to make the offer of services a good business choice is to make the client’s workflow more efficient. These pictures show how a plumber has organised the plumbing materials according to his working procedures. The service concept moves this task from the client to the service provider , thereby creating a more efficient workflow for the client.« 56

business insights

that are included in the ‘BOLDSEN packs for you’ service have the potential to be good business choices for the plumbing company. However, providing a service that is a good business choice is not enough if the sales personnel are unaware of the value of the service and if the client does not see the potential benefits.

To support the sales process and the shift in mindset among the sales personnel at BOLDSEN, a service directory was introduced. In this directory, the benefits of BOLDSEN’s services and why they have the potential to be a good business choice are clearly explained. The service directory can be used as a tool by the sales personnel for understanding and communicating the value of the services to the plumbing companies.

Conclusion Service Design has great potential for small – and medium-sized companies that are stuck in a market situation where they cannot compete on price. When making a strategic shift towards services, it’s essential to implement an open process where stakeholders are invited to participate.

During this open process, Service Designers need to facilitate a shift in the mindset of the company and to enable them to sell, provide, and maintain services.

Furthermore, Service Designers need to familiarise themselves

»‘BOLDSEN packs for you’ is a service that has the potential of being a good business choice for the plumbing companies, as it increases efficiency in the work procedures while reducing the risk of making mistakes and wasting time and money.«

with the culture and workflow of users and clients in order to design a service that is profitable and a good business choice for the clients.

Only when confronting both challenges simultaneously, does it become possible to make a strategic move and to maintain a ­competitive advantage.

•

References • Moritz, S. (2005). Service Design: Practical Access to an Evolving Field. Köln International School of Design.

• Reinartz, W., & Ulaga, W. (2008).

How to Sell Services More Profitably. Harvard Business Review, May 2008, 90-96.

• Ylirisku, S., & Buur, J. (2007).

Designing with Video: Focusing the User-centred Design Process.

Springer.

Rikke B E Knutzen, M.Sc. in Industrial Design, from Department of Architecture, Design and Medialogy, Aalborg University Lotte Christiansen, M.Sc. in Industrial Design, from Department of Architecture, Design and Medialogy, Aalborg University Søren Bolvig Poulsen, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Design and Medialogy, Aalborg University

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By Damian Kernahan

How to Create Outstanding Customer ­Experiences for Franchises

Most Service Design models and definitions discuss the importance of creating mutual value for both provider and customer. It is a central tenet which forms the basis of the work most Service Designers undertake. However, what if there are multiple providers and customers who both need to be served and to derive value from the relationship? Franchises represent almost 50% of all retail sales in developed countries and generate over $2 trillion of revenue globally every year.

In this article, we look at the growing role and importance of Franchising in Business, how designing their service propositions requires a different approach, and what some of the key lessons for designing and delivering outstanding service experiences for Franchise businesses are.

becoming a key part of all developing economies.

The Coca-Cola Company has a stated aim of placing their products within arm’s reach of every person on the planet, which would appear not too dissimilar to the goal of the franchise industry.

In most ­cities and suburbs, you would find it difficult to walk 100 metres down a shopping strip or mall without coming across one or more franchise businesses. As a result, they are becoming a formidable ­presence in modern business, creating about $ 2,000,000,000,000 (2 trillion)

The purpose, of Service Designers should be to positively transform the experience of as many customers as possible. One good avenue we have found to achieve this is by taking a particular interest in assisting franchise businesses that come into contact with millions of customers every year. Despite popular perception, most franchises would benefit from a better understanding of how crafting a more consistent service experience could play a key part in contributing to their long term business growth.

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in global revenue every year.

Enough to equal the 4th ­largest GNP in the world, franchises also account for about 50% of all retail sales in most developed economies and are represented across more than 75 different industries who use franchising to distribute goods and services to customers.

In Australia, franchising accounts for 14% of our Gross Domestic Product and is also growing at an annual rate of 14%. Far from being a fringe player in business, it is fast

And despite most of us being well acquainted with brands such as McDonald’s, Starbucks and The Body Shop, how deep is our understanding of an industry that spawns hundreds of new service brands every year and comes into contact with tens of millions of customers every year?

And more importantly, as Service Designers, how do we approach working with Franchise businesses to create outstanding customer experiences?

business insights

As a franchise, if you don’t have 50 years of corporate history and culture to lean back on, you don’t have the equivalent of Hamburger University or you aren’t led by someone with the single-minded passion of an Anita Roddick, who can determine exactly what will or won’t happen throughout the network, what do you do?

For the vast majority of franchises, there aren’t the learning and insights that come from selling tens of millions of hamburgers across 100 different countries every day, nor do they have a centralised and significant marketing budget to invest in mainstream media to grow their brand. Most of the time, they are relying on the entrepreneurial instinct and drive that has cata­ pulted their company from a ‘one man band’ to a multi-site, multi-provider, multi challenging world. And therein lays both great challenge and great opportunity.

The life of most franchisors is very different to what you might expect.

Most non-U.S. franchises in our experience are characterised by being relatively new to franchising, have surprisingly low levels of customer understanding and are quite beholden to their franchisees who are looking for a strong say in not only how the business evolves but, more importantly, how the marketing funds are spent.

»As Service Designers, how do we approach working with franchise businesses to create outstanding customer experiences?«

In this environment, new and improved service ideas and propositions – which are the lifeblood of our work – can be quickly dismissed if we are not careful.

Although some might shudder at the concept of strong innovative ideas becoming an early casualty a long time before you even get the chance to start prototyping, we have found that to be able to shepherd great service ideas through to implementation with large franchise organisations it is crucial to understand: 1. who your customer really is and; 2. what their criteria is for the creation of mutual value (which is quite often different to a traditional business)

We have found by working with a range of different franchise business models, that using a binary service-design model – assuming single provider and end customer – can be severely limiting at best and downright disastrous at worst.

Judging ideas and decisions using the model of what is desirable to customers, feasible from an operational point of view and financially viable, can work well with traditional businesses.

However, once a new set of inter­ nal customers is introduced into the equation, what should be a relatively simple decision-making process can become far more complicated.

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how to create outstanding customer experiences for franchises

By Damian Kernahan

What is feasible for a franchisee can be operationally unworkable for a franchisor. What makes financial sense for a franchisor can drain the cash flow of a franchisee on a tight budget. So what makes franchise businesses different to more traditional structures?

What Is Different About Designing Services for Franchises?

Multiple providers and multiple customers In large numbers of franchises, rarely is there just one provider and one customer: there may be three levels of providers and three sets of customers who need to believe that they will be better off as a result of the ideas and service propositions being developed.

In the real estate business for example, there is a franchisor (provider 1), franchisees (provider 2), and the Real Estate Agent (provider 3). At the same time, customers include the franchisee, the agent and the end customer. How as a Service Designer does one easily achieve mutual gain across three service providers and three sets of customers?

Customer Related Decisions Require Franchisee Approval In large corporate businesses, centralised functions such as Marketing might consult Sales or

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»How as a Service Designer does one easily achieve mutual gain across three service providers and three sets of customers?«

Distribution to gain some ‘buy-in’ prior to launching a new initiative.

However, often there is no requirement to gain approval from those customer-facing staff. However, in a franchise business, more often than not, a percentage of franchisee revenue is allocated to a marketing fund, coordinated by a head office marketer, but approved by a franchise council or marketing council. Despite how customer centred the idea might be and how it might build the long-term business of the brand, without franchise approval, the only place

it is going is in the waste bin.

Financial impacts are magnified As Service Designers, we work with innovative ideas which by their very nature offer no guarantee of success. In fact, like all new things, there is some risk, albeit with significant rewards when done right. So in this environment, it would make sense to introduce some ideas as prototypes and test them, to see what we can learn. You know, ‘fail fast’: wrong.

That all makes sense in a world where the customers belong to the company and they are willing

business insights

to fail fast for the greater benefit of customers and company alike.

However, what if testing an idea upsets or puts off a customer and the franchisee loses the customer sale or the customer’s lifetime value. How do you convince a franchisee that a small risk of losing a sale is worthwhile for the greater good of the company?

Franchisees are not employees Successful Service Design rests quite often not in the ideas generated, which are customer centred, but in the execution of the processes and systems that improve the actual customer experience.

Undertaking significant change within an organisation generally requires senior management to have endorsed the change and lead the teams under their control to implement the required improvements in the agreed timeframe.

But what if the system is largely enacted by people who are not employed by you, how do you ensure that the training, processes and systems are undertaken at a more local level to deliver the customer experience you as the franchisor are looking for?

These are just some of the issues when working with the multiple layers and levels of a Franchise business. So what are the key lessons for those who might be attracted to improving the customer

experience in the complex but nevertheless appealing sector of franchising.

Five Key Lessons in Successfully Designing for Franchises Being Clear on Why As Joe Heapy indicated in his article on ‘Making yourself useful’ in the previous Touchpoint, quite often companies have a very fuzzy view on ‘why they exist’ and ‘why it matters’. They are in need of a clear vision for their company. We have found helping franchisors develop a single organising idea that works to align everyone in the franchise network to a unified purpose, enables future decisions to be made that work for all providers and customers within the system.

Having this internal positioning statement is a key tool in measuring the alignment of all future customer touchpoints. Without it, there simply isn’t enough time or budget to run the workshops and internal communications that would be needed to make up for the resultant lack of clarity.

Start with Little Stuff In the majority of our Service Design engagements, you will uncover not only Service improvement opportunities but, quite often, business-model opportunities that present significant potential for revenue growth. We have

found that by starting with small service improvement ideas that can visibly improve the customer journey and providing them with hard metrics gained through realtime customer feedback is really valuable. By getting this feedback through prototyping new ideas and gradually introducing larger and more significant service propositions, the trust needed to introduce ‘game changing’ Service Design becomes more realistic.

You also Need to Be Business Centred Being customer centred logically starts with what will be appealing to customers, then deciding if it can work and finally determining whether it will make money. Although developing and evaluating ideas this way makes good sense, when selling new ideas, it can be far more effective to start with the financial benefits that accrue to the franchisee, demonstrate how simple it will be to implement and then finally why customers will appreciate it. A few attempts at ‘being endcustomer centred’ when presenting to franchisee groups and being met with blank stares quickly showed who the real customer was and how important building a financial case was in selling new customer centred ideas.

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how to create outstanding customer experiences for franchises

By Damian Kernahan

Franchisees Are as Important as Customers In one of our early engagements as part of our discovery process, we talked and interviewed not only end customers, but invested additional time with real estate ­principals (franchisees) and their agents to ensure we also understood the business of real estate. It helped achieve solid understanding and insights across the whole business.

What we didn’t realise at the time, was that the extra investment of time with franchisees would pay back ten fold as we moved to the design phase. Why? Because when it came time to start testing new ideas and asking for volunteers to prototype them, the time invested in establishing empathy and building rapport with hard-nosed business owners enabled them to trust us enough to test small

ideas initially and then as we built greater credibility, we could test larger and more important improvements. Without it, useful prototyping would not have been possible.

Being a Small Business Yourself Is an Advantage Undertaking design research with customers is, more often than not, a rewarding and insightful

»Undertaking design research with customers is a rewarding and insightful experience.«

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business insights

experience. It’s rewarding because you learn so much that you are able to take back and share with your client, and insightful because your observations provide rich and varied ways of seeing current customer problems.

As consumers talking to other consumers, there is a base line of empathy already established.

Because Service Design is relatively new compared with many other disciplines, most of the firms undertaking the work are small – to medium-sized businesses. This can be a real advantage, because as a small business owner interviewing and talking with other small business owners (franchisees), you are not only able to empathise better, you are able to move to directed storytelling much more quickly.

produced during and immediately following the session.

With franchising such an important growth element of developed economies, we believe it is worth continuing to gain deeper insight into how best to design for multi-customer organisations like franchises.

Mastering the complexity of designing and delivering ­outstanding service in such a decentralised organisational structure has the potential to produce great learning and application for traditional organisations. For Service ­Designers, it provides the opportunity to demonstrate the ability to not only generate new ideas and service propositions, but more importantly to see them through into execution generating real value for both clients and their customers.

Damian Kernahan founded Proto Partners, Australia’s first Service Design Consultancy in 2008 with a firm belief that you cannot deliver outstanding service for customers without intimately understanding them first and when employees truly understand their customers, they make better decisions.

•

The benefit of this is the ability to build on ideas more quickly by starting to co-create ideas with respondents during interviews.

Establishing empathy so quickly, enables you to move from just discovery to a generative session with low fidelity prototypes,

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Photo: AllzweckJack / photocase.com

chapter # 3

Background Stories

Background Information from the World of Services

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By Ellen Simmons

Making it Better

Transforming the SDN Website

Ellen Simmons

Design Student KĂśln International School of Design Cologne, Germany

The Service Design community has grown enormously in the past few years. Service Design as a discipline has become much more widely established, and is now taught in universities worldwide, producing a new generation of Service Design students. The question now is how to bridge the gap between students and industry; how to open doors and provide opportunities that integrate young Service Designers into the existing community. The SDN is looking for more permanent ways to include students in the network, and this year’s Service Design Conference in Berlin will have a special student focus. Two days of student workshops directly preceding the conference will be of great benefit to the young Service Designers. In future the SDN will offer more opportunities for students to volunteer and get involved with the network.

A team of five Service Design students from the KĂśln International School of Design (KISD) carried out a research project to identify ways of opening up the Service Design Network to fellow students.

With the aim of designing new website features that would place the emphasis on student use, the team carried out an in-depth analysis of the existing SDN website. Their research concluded that the existing website could not adequately accommodate the ever-increasing population of Service Designers, and that a transformation of the network

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structure as a whole was in order. The entire Service Design community has a vested interest in supporting the development of students, and the new website will help to facilitate this.

A network has optimum potential to maximise the skills and connectivity of its members. Sharing knowledge, resources and experience, a group will become stronger, and a web-based platform enables an international community to develop. The strength of a network is always greater than the sum of its parts, and bringing together the experience of professionals with the

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making it better

By Ellen Simmons

»Sharing knowledge, resources and experience, a groupwill become stronger, and a web-based platform enables an international community to develop …«

fresh ideas of new students can only help our discipline to develop.

A website is the most practical way to connect a global community such as this, and the new website will be a tool to turn our members from passive browsers into active participants. By giving them more of a say and being more responsive to their activity it can offer rewards to individuals who are particularly active. For example, discussions on the website’s blog will 68

have the potential to become articles in Touchpoint magazine, which will be provided free to SDN members.

The opportunity for participants to contribute their own content guarantees that the network is a true representation of its members.

New features with a direct benefit to students will be added to the SDN website, offering valuable opportunities such as thesis support from Service Design professors worldwide.

background stories

Information will also be available with regard to placements, grants and funding options. These new features, although aimed at students, will enrich the website experience for all members. For example, the job – and placement engine will provide students with a platform for relevant employment opportunities, and employers with a clear overview of students looking for work.

Service Design thinking will be brought into play during this transformation, and as ever, users are the central focus.

For this reason, a blog has been set up to collect your opinions about the upcoming changes. The infrastructure of the new website will enable better connections, knowledge-sharing and collaboration opportunities within the world of Service Design, and we welcome your suggestions.

»Expect to see changes to the SDN website from January 2011...«

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Mapping out the new website structure at KISD

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By Christophe Tallec

Where Does Service Design Stand in France?

An Overview of the Service Design Offerings and Demand Structure.

Somewhere between the discovery and the adoption phase, In France, in recent years, Service Design has evolved with more and more “early” adopters. It has only been in the last three years that the design scene, which continues to be product-design oriented, has shown a rising interest for service innovation.

Christophe Tallec

Service Designer and co-founder of Utilisacteur / Uinfoshare

These practitioners tend in their everyday practice to adopt product service system thinking and to build extended design offerings.

Some of them, interaction designers or from the fields of information architecture and systems or web design are building a global offering of Service Design around their existing activities.

Despite this, the actual situation can be depicted as follows: the service ‘touchpoints’ are designed by industrial/graphic/interaction or information designers, while the marketing and process management retain ownership of the overall design of the service, which goes from the front office choreography to the back office, process and organisational design.

The upcoming design generation, struggling with the paradox of

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their design roles and ethics within the complex context of the 21st century, see Service Design as a means for product dematerialisation. Because designing services allows a new and wider macro/micro scale and depth of intervention, it makes them realise what new opportunities it offers. French design schools (such as Ensci/ Les ateliers or Ensad) explore those territories by organising seminars or workshops with signs of emerging Service Design departments or regular product – and service-systems oriented courses. Some of the students enrich or conclude their design studies by ‘innovation in service programs’ in business schools, in which service innovation is focused on strategic and service management aspects.

background stories

The demand for service innovation boomed last year, and newly graduated designers are directly taking existing Service Designer positions or setting up new ones in large companies based on product and services systems offerings, such as IT/telecommunications (Orange), energy (Edf), transport (Veolia Transports), in which design was often already a part of the internal culture of innovation.

The interest from public services is also growing, with pilot schemes that show the advantages that design is bringing as a tool for co-creation and social innovation.

Some think tanks or do tanks are increasingly using design thinking and Service Design methodologies

to explore public service issues.

Such an example is provided by Fing (Fondation Internet Nouvelle Génération), which intends to link technological and user-generated innovation and currently hosts the 27ème Région program, a laboratory for policy innovation in the digital age. They have been using Service Design in immersive explorations and working teams (consisting of designers, Service Designers, architects, sociologists, creatives...) tackling public service issues at different scales from rural areas to cities.

»The upcoming design generation, struggling with the paradox of their design roles and ethics within the complex context of the 21st century, see Service Design as a means for product dematerialisation.«

Service Design is progressively being promoted, awarded and is now the subject of calls for projects. Although Service Design

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where does service design stand in france?

By Christophe Tallec

»After having been a vector of innovation applied to the industrial economy, it has to reach new dimensions of innovation in the service economy.«

is a rather difficult field in which to judge and to exhibit, it is the subject of national exhibitions, fairs and conferences. Apci (Agence pour la promotion de la création industrielle) includes social innovation and Service Design in its annual Design Observeur competition and exhibition and leads research on Service Design practices.

That being said about the rising interest in Service Design, there is another aspect of this phenomenon.

Companies facing difficulties in properly integrating design into their organisation are puzzled by the fact that a Service Designer works in collaboration with different services within the firm. As a result, the Service Design practice suffers from communication and organisational problems. Since internal industrial design and its management are accustomed to working only on products and the tangible side of product-service-system offerings, Service Design approaches are seen as intruding on marketing territory, and designers are only consulted after the service thinking process is complete.

There are additional difficulties when industrial companies are forced by the economic situation to redesign their products into products-services systems, as in the car industry. French examples of services that have been

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well-designed and marketed in this industry are lacking, considering the current need for structural changes.

Though the service aspect of cars (the ‘software part’ we should say) is definitely not an innovation coming from French car brands: Service Design is a tool that those practitioners are now thinking about. There is now political support for cars-on-demand and micro-rental models and pressure from the low-carbon economy is creating a fast-growing market that challenge the economic models of the car industry, a subject in which Service Design has an opportunity to play a great role as a vector of change.

We now acknowledge that design has to go beyond its accepted roles. After having been a vector of innovation applied to the industrial economy, it has to reach new dimensions of innovation in the service economy: • Service Design is needed by industry players, who are still driven by old economic models, as a competitive – and market-changing tool, in order to transition their economy.

• For successful players in the French service economy, Service Design is an opportunity to improve their service offerings in competitive environments due to economic recession.

background stories

+ service product

-

service ?

However, design investment seems to be on hold for the moment.

The service management of many organisations is somewhere between exploration and acceptance of this kind of design thinking.

In France, there has been a growing industrial-design culture built on product innovation where RODI (Return on Design Investment, to quote the U.K the Design Council) has become the main criterion for evaluating and measuring the impact of design. But the emergence of Service Design in France could lead to a change in this one-sided scheme of evaluation.

To draw a parallel between foreign Service Design sectors, we could say that France has great potential for a flourishing Service Design sector with an existing strong service economy, but there is work that must be done in parallel: • Companies should work on integrating designers in their service innovation and Service Design departments and manage Service Design. • The Service Design offering should build a more networked and betterdefined sector, lobbying for a better understanding by companies and public bodies alike.

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service design snapshots

from around the world

#1.

creative waves coten– service designing education Higher Education is one of the most important public services, but despite endless meddling from an army of bureaucrats and politicians, the general ideology hasn't changed much in 200 years. The 360º student experience is often ignored, yet students are the key stakeholders who experience the entire education service.

Building upon over a decade of successful online creative collaborations, the Creative Waves COTEN – Service Designing Education project was a collaboration between Creative Waves founders, The Omnium Research Group <www.omnium.net.au> at UNSW, Sydney and the Lucerne School of Art and Design, Switzerland <www.hslu.ch/design-kunst/>.

World -renowned designers and thinkers, together with students, experts, practitioners and academics from all over the world examined how we might re-think higher education from a service-design perspective.

Over the seven weeks, participants and special guests (John Thackara, Ben Reason, Arne van Oosterom, Snook, Uscreates, Nabeel Hamdi 74

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and Liz Danzico) brought their own educational experiences and insights to the online table.

Debates ranged from the role of art and design education, to the benefits and drawbacks of online education and building a culture of trust between students and faculty.

In contrast to previous Creative Waves projects, which have had a graphic design focus, moving from the talk to action was difficult with such a complex subject area. However, along with the guest lectures, one of the highlights was the opening ‘Virtual Cultural Probe’ workshop. Participants were asked to photograph and describe some of their favourite places to work and learn as well as their inspirations.

The resulting collection of insights material was very engaging and bodes well for future projects where a wide range of research material could be gathered in a short space of time.

And what of innovation in higher education? Each team brainstormed an aspect of the higher education experience, from principles for building trust, through to developing an educational co-creation space. We hope these will sow the seeds of a set of future innovation projects for higher education. The project and the outcomes will be presented at the SDN Conference in Berlin in October.

coten

A collaborative online research activity exploring service design for higher education in 2010

The Creative Waves COTEN project can be found at www.creativewaves-coten.com.

Andy Polaine, Lecturer and Research Fellow in Service Design at Lucerne University of Applied Arts and Sciences, Switzerland

#2.

masters in service design: classes start in january 2011 The decision to offer a Masters program in Service Design comes from the observation that there is a general lack of an adequate culture for designing services in a market that is increasingly competitive and quality-oriented. Due to the utmost importance of the service sector in our contemporary world economy and the customer expectations for a high quality-level of service, service providers have no choice but to differentiate themselves through innovation.

Service Design is an interdisciplinary practice that designs services and that emphasizes the centrality

of users and user experience.

“Since its first steps — said Elena Pacenti, director of the Masters in Service Design — the Service Design discipline has seen a significant development both in terms of research and applications. It is definitely one of the most promising approaches responding to the need for design in the service sector: what values should we give to the new professionals? What sectors and fields do we address? What kind of innovation and tools?”

Domus Academy’s distinctive approach is to experience the most up-to-date Service Design methodologies and tools within Italian design culture, which considers the aesthetics of service amongst the parameters of quality and efficacy, and which takes into account the fact that such a dimension depends on sensitive emotional and cultural aspects. These factors go beyond the effectiveness, usability, accessibility and performance and are often linked to a country’s cultural background.

Customer service and customer experience are at the core of the educational program. The contributions, lessons, exercises and workshops focus on a wide spectrum of typologies and applications: financial services, tourism and hospitality, transportation and mobility, entertainment and cul-

ture, retail and commercial, public services and healthcare.

The Masters aims to develop specific professional skills for designing services. It integrates management and services organizational notions with the design of the customer experience. It addresses professionals and graduates in humanistic studies, social sciences and communication, business and design-related disciplines. Aiming at training the next generation of experts in Service Design!

Elena Pacenti, Director Master in Service Design, Domus Academy, Milan

#3.

designing services at the hotel kempinski Between December 2009 and June 2010, we organised the first Service Design Supervision seminar in Vienna, Austria. Ten practioners from several different disciplines participated in four sessions that provided theoretical foundations, methodological know-how and cases supervised in parallel that the participants had set up in order to apply Service Design in their environment. One of the participants, Daniela Sommer, is now the head

of human resource development at the famous Hotel Kempinski in St. Moritz, Switzerland. We talked to her about the impact Service Design has on her work.

Daniela, you have just participated in a four-day Service Design Supervision seminar. How has the Service Design approach influenced the work you do now at the Kempinski?

The hospitality industry is very focused on guest and employee satisfaction. With the Kempinski, I have many opportunities to improve processing and work on new strategies.

Service Design really helps to get a process going where it has to be started. Another aspect is that if you look at a process through the eyes of a designer, you get more creative and you learn to think out of the box. Service Design influences the working style of my team every day. It brings more fun, passion, identification and, at the end, better results. It encourages team spirit and makes us want to continually improve our service.

You are not a designer, so do you still think you are doing true Service Design?

True Service Design or not, I have changed my way of thinking, I have changed my style of working, I concentrate now more on real

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service design snapshots

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from around the world customer needs and we have seen our efficiency increase.

What is the most valuable insight you take from Service Design?

That design is not only reserved for creating products.

Birgit Mager, Professor for Service Design at KISD, Cologne, Germany

#4.

servsig conference in porto From June 17th to 19th, the 2010 SERVSIG International Research Conference, founded by the American Marketing Association, was held in Porto, Portugal. The Conference chair, Lia Patricio, organised a great Conference with international interdisciplinary speakers, among them the leading service researchers from all over the World, and more than 180 participants from 26 countries.

Lia has put a great effort into integrating different Service Science topics such as Services Marketing, Interdisciplinary Research in Services and Service Innovation. In addition to this, she was especially interested in involving Service Design, because service research76

ers have increasingly recognised the crucial role Design plays in developing service systems. The holistic and customer-centric view of Service Design brings a unique perspective that complements the already interdisciplinary field of Service Research.

Therefore she was a bit disappointed that very few Service Designers had answere the call for papers. Is this due to a lack of scientific foundation or interest in the Service Design community? As far as I’m concerned, the answer is definitely ‘no’. We will collaborate in putting together communication for the next SERVSIG Conference, to make sure that Service Design will be represented. We need to use the opportunity for networking with the Service Science Community. One outcome of the Porto Conference is the setting up of an international group (Stephen Kwan, Cheryl Kieliszewski, Toshiaki Kurokawa, Daphne Yuan, Birgit Mager) that will organise the Service Design track for the next Arts and Science of Service Conference at IBM Almaden in June, 2011.

They are also planning to set up a research project on ‘Design thinking for Service Systems’.

Birgit Mager, Professor for Service Design at KISD, Cologne, Germany

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european union funds for service design Service Design is still a novel area for research, development and innovation. The European Union programme for culture (http://ec.europa.eu/culture/ index_en.htm) includes several sub-programmes that enable funding for Service Design education. The EU’s ERASMUS programme offers opportunities for developing curricula and study programmes in Service Design. The EU’s ATLANTIS programme also promotes EU-USA exchanges and the ERASMUS MUNDUS External Co-operation Window allows third-world countries to be included in educational development. The 7th Framework Programme (FP7) makes scientific research project possible (http://cordis.europa.eu/ fp7/home_en.html). Finally, the Service Design Network provides us with a good contact network for developing joint projects and EU funding proposals.

Are you interested in EU funding and Service Design? Savonia University of Applied Sciences is working on the idea of developing Service Design education, as well as Service Design research on social platforms and co-production.

Themes related to Service Design education are: curricula development, didactics and developing an auditing system to guarantee the quality of teaching and co-operation with the companies.

Social platforms and networks – both virtual and physical – are developing rapidly. Could social platforms benefit from Service Design methods and development processes? Can Service Design or design thinking enable new, innovative solutions for the coproduction of public services? The EU will open a call for research on social platforms.

If you have good ideas for funding and you are interested in cooperating on these themes please contact me, either at the SDN conference in Berlin or via email (satu.a.miettinen@savonia.fi).

Satu Miettinen, Co-ordinator for the Industrial Design Competence Centre, Savonia University of Applied Sciences

#6.

service science factory When it comes to promising new fields, Maastricht University School of Business and Economics is never

one to drag its feet: the School recently launched the Service Science Factory in collaboration with a number of highly renowned international schools and faculties.

is a prestigious partner institution that specializes in management processes and the underlying ICT systems that facilitate these processes.

Companies can approach the Service Science Factory for help with a wide variety of challenges, ranging from the development of new, service-oriented solutions to the rethinking of existing services. A ­ cademic insights and research will serve as an input for the projects. Both academia and the business world profit from collaboration that is set up as a project that is neither managed by the company nor by the university.

In effect, a multidisciplinary, multicultural think-tank – the perfect solution for businesses that are too small, too busy, or that lack the expertise to do the work themselves. More specifically, innovative service ideas will be developed in a stimulating collaborative environment.

What’s more, according to the Service Science Factory’s initiator and directing Professor Jos Lemmink: “The unique thing about this concept is that a student’s voice can be worth as much as that of a professor or a business manager. It offers a great, controlled environment in which they can collaborate on interesting developments.”

A team will be set up to work on the project, consisting of top researchers and academics, business representatives and R&D experts and students from Maastricht and, for example, students from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) or the Köln International School of Design (KISD). Service Design students from KISD will be able to give a team, decision makers and other stakeholders access to future service concepts. It provides a discussion base with hand-drawn sketches, Photoshop mockups, video montages or real life prototypes, so that different levels of abstraction and detail can be shown. The IIM on the other hand,

Service Science Factory ssf-sbe@maastrichtuniversity.nl www.servicesciencefactory.com You can now follow the Service ­Science Factory online via Facebook and Twitter.

Jos Lemmink, Director Service Science Factory, Maastricht, The Netherlands

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By Vanja Misic, Mark Strachan and Deng Zhi Tan

Customer Profile meadow family, melbourne, australia

The city of Melbourne, Australia, has over 4 million citizens, and is growing, thanks to an influx of immigrants from all over the world. Because of its growing population, there has been a great demand for living space in and around Melbourne. This has resulted in property values increasing by up to 200%. The following customer profile describes an English family in Melbourne who have been living in a rented house close to the city for almost ten years. It describes the situation and problems experienced while searching for a new house, including the moving and setting up of utilities.

Hi, my name is Mark, I am 41 years old and I come from London. Ten years ago, I moved to Melbourne with my wife Tess.

We moved to Melbourne due to better job opportunities. Currently, Tess works in the advertising industry, and I am a design lecturer at Melbourne University.

I also have two daughters Mell and Maya, aged 16 and 12 respectively.

We enjoy Melbourne because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a multicultural city with a diverse art, design and music scene.

ÂťWey htahrdee onlnths to mo k for a loo place.ÂŤ new 78

Until recently, we had have been living in a rented house in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. Monday to Friday, I cycle a few kilometres to uni, and my daughters take a direct tram ride to their school; transportation has been very convenient.

Unfortunately, at the end of last year, we received notice from the owner of our house, stating that he would not be renting out his place anymore. We had only three months to look for a new place. Tess and I discussed the option of either renting or buying a new house, both of which were

difficult because of the very competitive market. The rental market was very difficult to get into, so we decided to buy a house that we could renovate and live in indefinitely.

Although we already have a loan on our beach house, Tess and I decided to take out a second one. Our salaries have not increased much, although both of us have had promotions. The rising cost of living only makes it more difficult to afford a house in Melbourne. Therefore, the next step was to talk to the bank regarding our financial situation, and whether we could afford to take out a second loan. The meeting with the bank left us confused. The options we were offered were not transparent and affordability was unclear, especially with rising interest rates. On top of that, it would take a month of processing before the loan was finally approved.

Searching for the right property proved to be most frustrating. Despite using a

variety of on-line service, the process was slow and the profiling inaccurate. Many weekends and evenings would be spent inspecting potential properties. This was time-consuming and disheartening. As many properties in Melbourne are sold by public auction, the sales dynamic becomes very fraught. Engaging with estate agents was also infuriating as the auctioned properties regularly sold for 20% more than their advertised price.

This made it a very unpredictable process, often resulting in disappointment and considerable expense, especially if legal searches and property surveys were conducted in advance. Ultimately, after two months of looking for properties, we decided to go through a real estate agent.

I have to say, this is one of the experiences I am not keen on having again. The agent estimated that it would take four to six months to find a suitable place, depending on the property market. He did not seem particularly enthusiastic about helping us find a place even though he would receive a 5% commission. When we finally found a place in the second month of our search, it had one bedroom fewer than we expected. Despite that, we were happy that it was in a convenient location where public transport wasn’t a problem.

Six weeks before we moved in, it became very chaotic trying to coordinate everything. Old utilities had to be cancelled and connection of new utilities had to be organised. We had to arrange for minor renovations in the old house to get back our bond. Walls had to be repainted and carpets and curtains had to

be steam-cleaned, all requiring different companies. We also had to devise a solution for packing and transporting the furniture. The friends I talked to hadn’t had good experiences with professional movers: they were either expensive or did not take good care of the furniture. With the remainder of the furniture, Tess and I were thinking of giving some to charity, selling some, and moving the rest to the holiday home. Amidst the chaos and confusion, we decided to rent a truck and transported all the furniture ourselves, with some help from friends.

When we got to our new place, unpacking was a real headache. Our boxes were all over the place, and we had great difficulty locating the right box to unpack. It took a month of struggling with the Internet provider to finally get our internet up and running. The whole moving experience was a mental and physical drain, and I am just glad that it’s over.”

a possible new service experience

»He did not seem particularly enthusiastic about helping us.«

This is what would have happened if I had heard of the Community Management Department (CMD): A friend of mine recommended CMD to me. CMD is a department of the City Council that provides assistance to residents looking to relocate. The local government recognises that many residents need help in finding the right place to live. This department exists because the real estate agencies, banks and professional movers are not always able to satisfy customer demands in terms of organisation and coordination.

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customer profile | family meadow

By Vanja Misic, Mark Strachan and Deng Zhi Tan

CMD offered us domestic and international moving service packages, and also offered to support us in the search for a new house. I found more out about CMD through the Internet, and they provided a seamless process, which assisted me at every step of the way.

I began by filling out an online form that collected basic information about my move (budget for new property, preferred suburb etc.). The next day, I received a call from Judy, who introduced herself as a community agent working for the CMD.

» they provided a seamless process, which assisted me at every step of the way.«

Judy acted as my facilitator, liaising between the three main services (bank, real estate, movers). She is professionally trained to connect me as a customer to the appropriate services. As part of her job, Judy helped me and my family assimilate into the new community.

At the beginning, Judy met Tess and me every fortnight, and we would discuss the necessary arrangements regarding finances and real estate. Having grown up in Melbourne, Judy is well connected to different people and companies. She was able to provide me with relevant advice and information, and connected me with all the right services. Tess and I trusted her because she had built a personal relationship with us. Besides receiving advice and assistance from Judy, we had also access to ‘Moving Software’.

This computer programme provided us with a step-by-step guide on the whole relocation process.

When I was looking for a loan, Judy was

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able to recommend me a community bank, known for its reliable and efficient service. This bank was able to provide me with a house loan, for which we were able to work out a suitable payment plan, and the arrangements with the bank took only two weeks.

Mitchel, a sales representative from the bank, patiently went through the whole process and paperwork with Tess and me. Once the loan had been processed, the bank liaised with the conveyancing solicitors to ensure all the legal requirements were met and settled.

Once the payment for the house was made, Mitchel immediately informed me that everything had been settled. From then on, the loan repayment was linked to the ‘Moving Software’, which keeps me updated (on my computer and phone) on important matters. Once the date for the move was finalised, Judy provided us with a ‘Moving Toolbox’. This consisted of a checklist, outlining all the necessary arrangements, which needed to be made.

The electronic checklist reminded me of all the outstanding errands, and was linked to my phone as well. With this service in place, I did not have to worry about missing any important steps. It even provided me with the right forms and information when a utility needed to be connected or cancelled.

CMD provides links to a number of reputable local businesses that can provide a myriad of services to newcomers, including: packing, removals, decorating, cleaning services etc. To maintain the quality and competitiveness

Existing System Map: Meadow Family Is Moving • Disparate Services • Minimal Accountability

moving company/not helpful

of the services, Judy organises competitive tenders for the various jobs. A month before we moved, Judy recommended a moving company who would accept unwanted furniture as part of the payment. They also provided cleaning and renovation services, saving us the hassle of going to multiple companies. Again, the software system helped our family to create floorplans of both houses and a packing system, which made it easier for us to move the furniture.

With Judy’s help, all the utilities were connected right on schedule. The moving company did a great job with the furniture, and even installed all the appliances.

A week after we moved into the new home, Judy dropped by to check on us. She brought along a voucher booklet to be used in restaurants and cafes in the neighbourhood.

The booklet also provided local information on shops, services and the community. We were grateful for this, which made it easier for us to adjust and settle into the new suburb. Two months into the move, the ‘Moving Software’ is still helping my family and me by advising us on relevant matters (renovations, installing washing machines, prompting bill payments, changing address to enrol for the electoral register etc.).

With this service provided by the CMD, the usual anxiety and hassle of moving was minimised for us, thanks

utilities /time consuming new house

old house

claim bond

cleaning company / not thorough

renovation company / timeliness

real estate / suspicious

bank /not transparent

Possible Solution for the Meadow Family • Local services • Greater accountability • Reputation • Ratings (peer reviews) • Trust

community agent / trustworthy

better organization, less stress interactions and thoughts

services

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dos & don’ts service design

A Warm Welcome

The Community Matters Scheme from a Waitrose Supermarket Waitrose asks its customers to help them choose how much money they should donate to community projects, so their investment is driven by the community for the community. Customers who shopped in the store were given a green token to vote for the community project they would like to support, and then Waitrose will invest the money in these projects according to the result of the voting. A rather engaging approach to presenting community development to Waitrose’s customers, don’t you think? By the way, I had just voted for the wild animal scheme, when a lovely lady passed by, put her token into the same box and said ”nice choice.”

Qin Han, Newcastle, UK

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On my way to speak at DOTT Cornwall, I had taken the train from Southern Germany, all the way to the South of England. It took 13 hours and five (progressively smaller) trains.

By the time I arrived, it was late, raining and I was pretty tired. When I walked into the hotel reception, I was greeted with a handshake from one of the staff at the Scarlett hotel and with this beautifully hand-written letter from the event organiser, Andrea Siodmok, who will be well known to Touchpoint readers. It was a very personal touch that made the long journey feel worthwhile, because someone had thought of how I might feel when I arrived.

Andy Polaine, Luzern, Switzerland

In a Melbourne Supermarket A supermarket in Melbourne recently redesigned their queuing system so that there are four separate queues

instead of one single queue for four cashiers. The customer now either has the burden of choosing the fastest moving queue, or must watch anxiously as customers who started queuing later are served first.

Unfortunate consequences of this system have included confusion, frustration and fights between customers! Service efficiency has decreased, and customers often leave the supermarket in a negative state of mind.

Katherine Alsop, Melbourne, Australia

Who Needs Service Design?

Hotel Kamp, Helsinki A prestigious hotel, in a beautiful location. A beautiful summer’s day, the outdoor tables are sunny and busy. It takes more than ten minutes before someone hurriedly scribbles down the drinks order; asking for the menu is treated as an imposition.

The food arrives 20 minutes later, a tiny, tiny salad, costing almost 12 Euros , and with no accompanying bread. The cutlery is dirty. Trying to find someone to settle the bill takes another 15 minutes. My mentioning the dirty cutlery leads to no reaction.

She comes with a box that includes the bill, stands a metre away and wants me to take it, instead of placing it on the table. A bit of Service Design could be injected into the DNA of Hotel Kamp’s outdoor restaurant.

Making Service Visible I would like to share a great service experience with you: In April, I spent 2 weeks in Japan, a country that is full of very interesting aspects of and approaches to Service Design.

I experienced a really nice example of ‘making service visible’ in my hotel in Tokyo, the Hotel Claska. We stayed there for 6 nights and the daily room service always brought

a smile to my face. Every morning, I placed my Euro Coins on the little table next to my bed. When I returned to my room each evening, I could see that my coins had been placed in a little origami bowl ,which made sure that the money didn’t go astray. Nice gesture – smile on my face – nice service! See the difference in the accompanying pictures!

Dominik Flener, Vienna, Austria

Birgit Mager , Cologne, Germany

Check Yourself Out In a Tesco’s supermarket in Brighton, UK, they have been trialling selfcheckout systems that work on a combination of barcode scanning and weight of groceries in the bag. The problem is that things like 2 for 1 offers regularly confuse the machines, leaving customers frustrated. In the case that I want to talk about, the machine was out of service, but despite the

large no-entry sign on the screen, customers must still have been trying to use it. The store workers decided to put a carrier bag over the top of it, thus drawing even more attention to the failed touchpoint.

Bad interface design, bad technology implementation and a sloppy workaround.

Andy Polaine, Luzern, Switzerland

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dos & don’ts Service Design

share your service experiences The Do’s and Don’ts-page in Touchpoint is a special feature, which provides space for our readers to publish their pictures and experiences from the world of services. Make use of this opportunity and share service flaws or outstanding service successes with an international audience!

The Shinagawa Prince Hotel in Tokyo Many hotel rooms have a fridge that runs all of the time and keeps you awake. When you look, it is impossible to get at the plug to

disconnect it. At the Shinagawa Prince Hotel, they put a switch at the side of the unit so you can easily turn it on and off. Great Service Design.

Aidan Kenny, Lyrath, Kilkenny, Ireland.

Dangerous Taxi Service Several Brazilian states allow motorcycle taxi services to operate. It is cheaper and faster, albeit more dangerous. Most motorcycle taxis aren't regulated and have poorly maintained equipment.

Jairo da Costa Junior and João Victor Inacio Pereira, Curitiba, Brazil.

Drive-Through Cash Machines In Curitiba, the use of drivethrough cash machines is becoming increasingly more common. It is a convenient service that has brought the efficiency of other types of service delivery to this sector. It’s an interesting initiative, and can generate insights into other applications.

Jairo da Costa Junior and João Victor Inacio Pereira, Curitiba, Brazil.

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the assignment If you would like to see your story published here, please send in a photo, together with a text describing the situation depicted, which illustrates your personal (positive or negative) Service Design highlights, to: journal@servicedesign-network.org The Service Design Network Office collects all stories and chooses three to four examples to be published in each issue.

Service Design Conference October 29th, 2010 Cambridge, MA, USA We are pleased to announce a special one-day Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, October 29th, hosted

by Microsoft with an evening reception on October 28th.

For more information visit: www.service-design-network.org

member map

service design network Finland Culminatum Ltd Oy , Espoo Laurea University of Applied Sciences , Espoo KONE, Espoo Taivas, Helsinki Grey Direct & Digital, Helsinki University of Art and Design Helsinki, TaiK, Helsinki Palmu Inc., Helsinki Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences, Jyväskylä Kuopio University of Design, Kuopio Lahti University of Applied Sciences, Lahti e21 Solutions Oy, Helsinki Sweden Tieto Corporation, Älvsjö Business & Design Lab University of Gothenburg, Göteborg Linköping University, Linköping Doberman, Stockholm Design Västerbotten, Umeå Transformator, Stockholm Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg Norway Designit, Oslo AHO University, Oslo United Kingdom Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd, Crawley Imagination Lancaster, Lancaster Engine, London IDEO, London live|work, London Prospect , London Seren Partners, London STBY, London thinkpublic, London Design London | Imperial College Business School, London NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, Warwick Naked Eye Research, London Radarstation, London Strategyn, Cranfield Eurostar Group Ltd, London Design Wales, Cardiff Ireland Centre for Design Innovation - Institute of Technology Sligo, Sligo Hygge service design & innovation, Dublin Portugal University of Madeira–Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, Funchal Novabase, Lisboa USA SCAD University, Savannah, GA Mc Donald´s Corporation, Oak Brook, IL Continuum, West Newton, MA Frontier Service Design, Malvern, PA Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburg, PA Paulvoglewede.com, San Francisco, CA New Era Soft, New York, NY Parsons The New School for Design, New York, NY Skyworks Solutions Inc., Woburn, MA Adaptive Path, San Francisco, CA Canada lvl studio, Montreal Ascent Group, Vancouver Normative Design, Toronto Brazil UFRJ/COPPE- Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - DESIS group, Rio de Janeiro Igorsaraiva.com, Brasilia ISG Consulting, Rio de Janeiro

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Turkiye KIRMIZI KALEM, Istanbul Korea Creative Design Institute, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon Xener Systems, Seoul teaminterface, Seoul Xener Systems, Seoul Taiwan Chili Consulting Corp., Taipei Institute for Information Industry, Taipei Taiwan Design Center, Taipei Australia Proto Partners, Sydney BT Financial Group, Sydney Huddle Design, VIC Melbourne Russel Baker, Canberra Meld Studios, Stanmore Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne New Zealand Ministry of Justice New Zealand, Wellington Austria ISN - Innovation Service Network GmbH, Graz MCI Management Center Innsbruck, Innsbruck Mobilkom Austria, Vienna tourismusdesign, Tulln an der Donau Italy Domus Academy, Milano Politecnico di Milano - Facoltá del Design, Milano Experientia, Torino Germany Sturm & Drang, Hamburg Köln International School of Design, Cologne Macromedia Hochschule für Medien und Design, Munich Rudolf Haufe Verlag, Wolfsburg Volkswagen AG, Wolfsburg Southwalk. GmbH, Rheine service works GbR, Cologne KIT - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe Denmark Aalborg University - School of Architecture and Design, Aalborg 1508 A/S, Copenhagen Copenhagen Living Lab, Copenhagen Switzerland Luzern Universtiy of Applied Sciences and Arts, Luzern Dimando AG, Zurich customfuture SA, Baar Belgium Yellow Window, Antwerpen The Netherlands Delft University of Technology , Delft 31Volts, Utrecht Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht T+Huis, Eindhoven TietoEnator Netherlands, Amersfoort DesignThinkers, Amsterdam Edenspiekermann, Amsterdam Informaat, Baarn Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, Rotterdam Mixe - medical marketing, Zeist Media Catalyst, Amsterdam Spain FunkyProjects, Bilbao

Service Design Conference 2010 Student Days 11th – 12th October Conference Days 13th – 14th October Members Day 15th October

This year’s Service Design Conference takes place in Berlin, Germany on the 13th and 14th October 2010. It will start with two Student Days on the 11th and 12th of October. The annual SDN Members Day is scheduled for 15th October. Save the date! For more information and to register visit: www.service-design-network.org

About Service Design Network The Service Design Network is a forum for practitioners to advance the nascent field of Service Design.

Our purpose is to develop and strengthen the knowledge and expertise in the science and practise of innovation and improve services generally.

Service Design Network . Ubierring 40 . 50678 Cologne . Germany . www.service-design-network.org