Emergence 2006 Day 3
Panel discussion: The Future of Service Design with Jeanette Blomberg, Mark Jones, Rick e. Robinson, Jennie Winhall
Jeanette Blomberg – IBM
What’s different about services? deeds, acts, processes or performances; activities provided as a solution to customer problem; intangible and perishable, created and used simultaneously
designing for participation…co-construction of value in service relationships. respect for the different kinds of knowledge people bring to the participatory framework, opportunities to learn about different domains
industrialized service delivery. How do you leverage IT to enhance the client experience, not just reduce costs?
Mark Jones – IDEO
what are service designers being asked to do? technology (in broad terms. implementation, delivery mechanism), strategy (where to next?), experience (user/customer experience, bringing the strategy to life)
1) service design details the user experience: technology-driven motivation, design the website, not the strategy or the technology.
2) service design makes a strategy tangible: design the experience for a strategy, with technology as a parallel development. the goals have been set, so how do you achieve those goals? Phased roll-out of changes shown in a roadmap. relationship with the company has grown
3) Experience focuses and drives strategy – experience and strategy drive technology (implementation investments). Companies asking, What do we do next? What is my ad campaign, role in the marketplace?
What should we be prepared for? More complex projects, longer time frames, bigger teams, working with more diverse skills sets, working across many parts of the organization, designing for multiple touchpoints at the same time, serial projects.
Rick Robinson – Luth
a service is a product, products are a tool in some way, a service is something someone uses to accomplish something, you don’t consume it, you use it. What you use it for is not a given.
services are plastic, they have a more adaptive nature than hard products. every instance of service delivery is different, altered as they are delivered, evolutionary in nature
changes how people act and think – not balancing the checkbook on saturday morning, the concept of where money is stored is even more abstract.
dirt = matter out of place
weed = plant out of place
works for gossip too…
making, not simply discovering, things to think with should be what research does for design and the design process. those models have application even when the original thing you studied changes.
longitudinal research (fallen out of favor) – kinsey report, 7up 21up 42up
watching the same people over time instead of watching lots of different people at the same point.
communispace ongoing research about the brand, a relationship is maintained
on youtube: “noah takes a picture of himself everyday for 6 years” develop a multidimensional understanding of people, everyday at scale
sarkar, rheinfrank, and hegel’s “digital platform”
longitudinal research is harder, but it’s more interesting and more valuable and relevant to service design.
Jennie Winhall – RED Design Council
concentrate on making public services better, for an economic and political sense…to have people build our companies and economy in a country, the public services offered those people must be sufficient to support them and be attractive
the public sector has to compete with the private sector
breaking down power relationships (doctor, patient) to create a space for both parties to interact on an equal level
Discussion:
experience of services cuts across many different companies. maybe research will become a syndicated model, with multiple companies studying the same people at the same time
danger in over-designing services (ezio manzini’s point about theme parks), design has aspects/perceptions of “spin” and covering up, which aren’t good when talking about involving design in government, for example.
embarrassment service in spain: if a person owes someone else some money, the service has someone stands outside of a person’s home/office/business dressed in a particular costume until the money is paid.
Q: what is the difference between service design and management consultants? management consultants we very good at creating a strategy, but weren’t very good at bridging the strategy to the experience. operations people were left to make decisions. another kind of management consulting involves implementing technology. Service design can bridge the gap between the strategy and the implementation. See Oliver’s presentation. =)
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Daniel Letts, service usability:
three apologies – most people can pay attention for only 20 minutes at a time, the title is wrong (most service DO deliver, but not in the right way), and he’s not talking about service design
Majority of company efforts is placed in understanding products, not understanding their customers
not testing = bad services = bad business
“49% of US and UK consumers said poor service led them to change service providers [in the last year]” accenture 2005
goals: less churn, increase advocacy
apply the methodologies of online usability to the offline world. don’t open multiple windows, type other addresses in to change pages…so why do phone banks do that?
proposition, accessibility, usability, experience, expected (effectiveness over time) – the provider’s perspective.
service lifecycle: invention, usage, feedback…most research happens at the ends (invention—focus groups—and feedback—customer satisfaction) but what about the gap…what about the usage?
service usability, end-to-end benchmarking
- service usability v. traditional research
- real time, don’t just listen to what they say, look at what they do (the path doesn’t meet the need)
- not just the user’s perception – see reactions and body language to the service journey facts rather than memory
- whole picture, not partial – look at the whole user journey, not just customer satisfaction
- specific, not generalist – look at the particulars, ask specific questions related to the customer journey, not an “overview” of the experience.
- actionable no abstract – what, how, when can you actually do to improve the service
only by looking at the whole journey in real time can you understand what’s going wrong…it’s right in front of you.
what do customers need, rather than what they want?
The Stupid Company – you have to believe the customer, you can’t pay lip-service to the consumer. it’s not enough to use the language of the customer.
How Service Usability does it:
listen to users, look at how they actually use a service, learn what’s bad and what’s good, measure, take the measure back into the system
basically: The rigorous application of common sense.
the SU index: proposition (what is the service?), experience (what is the experience of using a service?), usability, accessibility
take the four dimensions, having shadowed the user’s journey of the service, ask users questions about touchpoints, problem areas, and get scores from them about those components and distill down to a single number.
the one number you need to know…too much research is crippling and useless…what is it that you need to know (for enterprise: are customers recommending the company?)
Audit and benchmarking: user centered, holistic, contextual, measurable, usable.
Top ten problems and top ten quick fixes, visual map of the journey with problem points highlighted, areas of opportunities.
how people are using it: one-off, iterative audits at the moment, but would like to move to strategic (always used by companies).
clients are acting on their recommendations.
they like the top 10 lists
they find the SU index a very useful indicator
there’s quite a tight range of scores (between 5 to over 7)
spread of issues across dimensions varies completely
performance of touchpoints varies enormously (not necessarily learning from counterparts in the industry)
there is a large perception gap between those who use their MPs and those who haven’t used their MPs. 30%s vs 70%s
before going to the design phase, understand the current situation
Q: is the index absolute? yes it is
Q: is the ranking done by the user? yes…so how do you scale it up? (i.e.: how do you move beyond the individual into a larger sample size?) take the questions and give them to
Q: how far along the supply chain do you look? yesterday talked about repairing the asphalt so that the person doesn’t break their leg so they don’t need a hip replacement. how do you scope what you are measuring? it’s best when it’s focused.
Q: what is the methodology? shadow users using the service, don’t set up a controlled environment. interview in and around that shadowing, then go back and ask questions/interview.
Q: why service usability and not live|work? Don’t want the company designing the service to test it. also a different perspective/focus in shadowing instead of viewing it as an initial part of the design investigation. Also doesn’t suggest that companies have to redesign their entire service…it’s just an audit.
Q: can the learnings from SU feed back into the service design process? probably yes, but it’s still early….
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Birgit Marger:
Gulliver (survival station for the homeless)
Investigating customer needs: the homeless need an address for applying for jobs, looking at public bathrooms, empowerment (the homeless running their own outreach program), create visualizations through physical models to help others decide whether to follow through on the project.
Service Design Professionalism: development of language, theory, methods, practice
Siemens – the Cooper method of developing personas is too complicated, need an easier way to develop this component, to communicate it better.
Lufthansa – storyboarding and enacting
Customer journeys, touchpoints, prototyping – you pay for insurance, but you never meet them until something goes wrong…just the bill. So how can you develop and maintain a relationship through means that are not the primary focus of the company.
Security check at the beginning of summer, maintains relationship and can also reduce the insurance premium (and opportunity to cross-sell, enter the home of the customer)
Long customer journeys.
Service design awards – first one: international design prize of switzerland.
new award in 2006 – future institute
service design exhibition – from servants to service: what role does service play in the home (servants, slaves), how modernization and industrialization changed service, and how now services reenter the home through companies.
establish service design within the design community and the business community
Need to establish design and service design as a valid and competent partner with industry.
10-card set of basic rules of how to approach service design. given to industry, which is excited to understand something through the simple explanation and connection to their needs.
1) Look at your services as products
2) Focus on the customer benefit – who are your customers and what is the benefit to them
3) Dive into your customers world – show the experience from the customer’s perspective
4) Look at the whole picture – the whole customer journey: before the consumption, throughout the consumption, and after the consumption – look at customers, but customers of your customers. prolong the view of the service
5) (missed this one)
6) Create perceivable evidence – make the service visible – folding the toilet paper in the hotel as evidence of the bathroom cleaning, which is an otherwise invisible service.
7) Strive for a standing ovation – it’s hard to deliver wonderful service, need support of employees to create and deliver good service
8) Design for flexible standards – services are alive, must react to different situations, demands
9) A living product – continuously learn from employees, customers, benchmarks
10) Create enthusiasm – internal marketing and external marketing
Service design experiments
“the art and science of service” – genres of service, style of service (style sheets: no-frills, hip-hop, luxury – people, profiles, places)
project within the school, testing on students. experiments within university.
experiments to research – translate experiments into research.
research investment: 3121 euro per person for production industry v. 67 euro per person in the service design industry
sedes research – service design research
1) service specific notation and organization – customer-centric organization instead of organization-centric organization, from tailored linearity to complexity and dynamics, integrate functionality with harmony and beauty
The art of service – looking at theatre and movies, how do they storyboard, scriptwriting, rehearsals, improvisation. Do the same with music and dance, how you score, orchestrate, how notations and choreography work. Probably turn this research into a book.
service organization and service notation
2) design language for service – gestures of service. what gestures are used to welcome, greet, rituals, rolling out the red carpet. measurement and metrics of gestures.
3) globalization of service – international service culture – what are the cultural demands on services?
Service design network – manifesto
Q: the examples of services tend towards vertical integration (within an airport terminal, a building, a company), but if the focus is now on the customer, how does this change the nature of how companies interact.
A: the service chain will have to make sure that customers can transition between them without stumbling
the theatre of puppets – if the service mind isn’t there, are the gestures empty?