Filed under: service design | Tags: design week, digit, directgov, public service, social networ, touchpoints
Digit develop DirectGov touchpoints.
The Government’s public services website Directgov is a digital service that consolidates public services into one site. They are looking to develop digital touch points based on emerging technology, and has appointed Digit to a long-term project.
“Digit will be promoting Directgov’s services through a number of platforms, including blogs, iPhones, Transvision screens and widgets, says the spokeswoman. She adds that Directgov is looking to engage with communities by providing the ‘right kind of information in easy-to-use formats’. It sees opportunities around social networking.”
Filed under: service design | Tags: kate andrews, london, networking, service design drinks, social
I have had a fantastic few days! Now heading to London to spend the week with Kate Andrews.
As a follow up from the workshop I co-led at Glasgow School of Art I am taking part in a Real Work Experience workshop tomorrow. We will spend the day at ThinkPublic sharing our insights from the workshop and developing the winning idea!
During our social and service revolution we are entering our proposal into Nordes… I’ll also be catching up with Joel Bailey, Sophia Parker , Kevin Gavaghan, Andy Gibson, Project H, The Future Laboratory Team, Chris Clarke ,Alex Ostrowski, Cassie Robinson and Tessy Britton…can’t wait!
Really looking forward to meeting fellow service designers and interesting people at ’service design drinks’. Please say hello.
Paying a visit to London College of Communication to meet people from the Design Writing and Criticism course!
I am hoping to get a ticket (fingers crossed) to be in the audience as creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson takes to the stage at BMI IMAX in London, to give a lecture on “The Element”, the title of his forthcoming book on creativity, education and human talent.
On my return I will be presenting my reflections of the Service Design Network Conference, alongside Qin Han
I’ll also be presenting ‘The Studio Unbound’ to the course directors of Duncan of Jordanstone.
“MDes student Lauren Currie explores the power of online social networking, and demonstrates some of the tools which students at DoJ are using to move ideas forward, form networks with practitioners around the world, and build a reputation before and after graduation.
“For the designer to become a producer, she must have the skills to begin directing content, by critically navigating the social, aesthetic, and technological systems across which communications flow.” (Ellen Lupton, 1998)
By highlighting how creative people all over the world are using social networking and Web 2.0 to their advantage, Lauren will discuss the dynamic and conversational value of online networking, and will further illustrate how ideas of teaching and learning need to move away from the confines of the studio towards other, often ad-hoc and virtual, venues.
Joining from London via video conferencing will be Kate Andrews, design writer and networker extraordinaire, who will share her own insights into the potentials offered by new communication technologies.
Focusing on the new possibilities and opportunities that the digital world presents, this talk will demonstrate how the world has changed and continues to do so, and therefore highlight how design courses must adapt with it if they are to stay relevant.”
I am so excited and looking forward to the organized chaos :) Wish me luck!!
Filed under: service design | Tags: aces train service, experience, transport
Direct train service from New York City to Atlantic City: www.acestrain.com
The majority of transport websites in the UK are difficult to navigate. These guys are showing us how it should be done!
Filed under: made me think, people I like | Tags: dundee families project, the guardian
Dundee Families Project is a voluntary sector scheme that had been quietly transforming disruptive families for a decade and had an 84 per cent success rate.
“This is my last chance to make it work. I want to keep my kids. I feel that for the first time I’m not being judged. I don’t want to be a neighbour from hell. I want to be accepted in my community.”
Because the project is part of the voluntary sector, families know that instead of threatening to take their children away, the project’s workers are trying to help make sure that doesn’t happen.
This project was on my doorstep and I have just discovered it!!
Filed under: made me think, people I like, reading and writing | Tags: council on social action, the good society
Willing Citizens and the making of a good society: the ideas underpinning the practical work of the Council on Social Action.
The Council on Social Action brings together innovators from every sector to generate ideas and initiatives through which Government and other key stakeholders can catalyse, celebrate and develop social action. We consider ‘social action’ to include the wide range of ways in which individuals, communities, organisations and businesses can seek through their choices, actions and commitments to address the social issues they care about.
This paper is all about supporting the role of the willing citizen.
“There is much that is bad in the world; talent wasted, aspirations unrealised, illness endured and harm done. But there is much more that is good; people supporting one another, communities finding solutions to problems, generosity and differences resolved.”
We all have power: The wellbeing of us all, our communities and out planet is dependent on the aggregation of these individual, everyday behaviours. Together, through our actions, we have the power to change the world.
We are equal: Every individual is the author of their own life and can and should rise as far as their talents can take them but a recognition that we all need support at some time in our lives.
We must be guided by those who have least: People who experience a problem understand it best.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, reading and writing | Tags: charles leadbeater, demos, the independents
This afternoon I read The Independents by Charles Leadbeater.
“Across Britain, thousands of young Independents are working from bedrooms, workshops and run-down offices in some of the fastest growing sectors of the British economy: cultural industries such as design, fashion, multimedia and Internet services. The authors set out the current state of cultural industries and recommend new approaches to education, business support, finance and arts policy to help provide these new cultural entrepreneurs with a firmer base to build upon.”
The independents work within networks of collaborators within cities, and thrive on easy access to local, tacit knowledge.
What encourages them towards entrepreneurship is their values. We do not fit into neat categories and thrive on informal networks.
Charles’ advice:
Be brave enough to be distinctive. If you are doing what everyone else is doing you are in the wrong business.
Hold onto that unshakeable self belief in your distinctive talent.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, reading and writing | Tags: criticism, design writing, jonathan baldwin, journalism, kate andrews, london college of communication
I am reading about Design Criticism. Asking the question do designers get the critics we deserve ?
To address this problem a new MA course in Design Writing/Criticism has been developed. My lovely friend Kate is a student on this course, I am very excited by the opportunities it presents for design writing.
I have always been fascinated by design journalism. In meeting the career advisor at high school, it seemed like a logical career path for me – combing my passion for design and writing.
This is a conversation I have been having for a long time with Jonathan – an author who believes “the key to being a good writer is having something to say”. His post “Designers Don’t Write…Bullshit” highlights:
“The idea that writing and design are somehow mutually exclusive is the sort of crap that really should be challenged. Designers write. End of story. So if you’re not writing, you should be…”
Where can a design student go to learn about becoming a design writer? Where are the job opportunities?
“We need to create a place where the act of writing and criticism can be explored and pushed through the act of design.”
If you are a designer - do you write? should you write? and why?…
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, made me think | Tags: duncan of jordanstone, social networking, value
Yesterday I presented the value of social networking to undergraduates at Duncan Jordanstone. The audience was made up of jewelery, product, interior, interactive media and graphic design students.
The focus of my talk was expressing the huge opportunity social networking presents. It has offered me the chance to be discover people I may not have discovered otherwise. I am now part of a web of fantastic people! Much more on this topic coming very soon… How has social networking affected you?
Filed under: master of design, people I like | Tags: president barroso, services, social agenda, social innovation
On January 20, 2009, President Barroso met social innovation experts and stakeholders in Brussels, following a workshop organised by the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) on social innovation.
The objective of the meeting was to explore ways to boost the social innovation dimension of the Renewed Social Agenda with which the Barroso Commission has put Social Europe back at the heart of its policies.
“Social innovation means the design and implementation of creative ways of meeting social needs. It covers a wide field ranging from new models of childcare to web-based social networks, from the delivery of healthcare at home to new ways of encouraging people to use sustainable means of transport.”
Filed under: made me think, service design | Tags: experientia, mobile phone, putting people first, services
95% of mobile users would use more data services is setup was easier.
“Two-thirds of mobile users find phone setup as frustrating as changing bank accounts…”
“Basic services such as email (46%), Internet browsing (40%), instant messaging (30%) and picture messaging (29%) are among the top applications and services that people find don’t always work when they first switch on their phone. As a result, 61% have stopped using mobile applications because they cannot solve problems with them.”
iloveyoumorethanblank.com is a site brought to us by Paperwhite Studio. They want to find out about the real things that we use to measure love.
Lovely. Thank you Mindapples.
Filed under: people I like | Tags: drinks, london, nick marsh, service design
Thanks to Nick! On Friday the 30th of January, service designers are catching up in London. Email drinks at servicedesigning dot com
I can’t wait…hopefully see you there :)
Filed under: made me think, master of design | Tags: computer, dundee university, intelligence, interaction, master of design, microsoft, richard harper, technology
Professor Richard Harper spent yesterday afternoon with Master of Design and Master of Ethnography students.
Richard focused on learning to discover how other people think and how they see the world. How do you do that? You create metaphors for the space you are thinking within. Whilst talking about the act of gossiping, Richard suggested we think of communication as a ‘human act’.
So when someone gossips they are performing, often with the receiver ‘doing listening’. Expressing, achieving, listening, looking and ignoring and all acts of communication!
We had an interesting discussion about how designers differ from scientists. Designers have a weird habit of only wanting to show other designers our portfolios. We don’t want to show scientists! They wouldn’t understand the process! We only show them the finished outcome…
Richards advice: Be aware of this. Use all the tools you have got. Trust people. Show them the roughness. All of this presents an opportunity for deepening and reasoning. Oh, and don’t get weary of the way other people tell their story or communicate.
View the world through a lens. In Scandanavia, people only communicate with an average of 4 people. This is extraordinary as they have such rich communication networks. The reality is that friendships are hard work! When answering machines were invented people imagined their friends had always been trying to get them…all of a sudden this was recorded this and we don’t get any messages!
“Be compassionate and show that you are human.“
Richard also gave a lecture Changing Humans in the evening to a large audience made up of scientists, engineers and designers. It was fascinating and focused on How the designers of computer systems have altered their vision of the human user.
He began by telling us the present is full of shadows. But how do we know what shadow to follow? The key tool is language; metaphors, similes, synonyms, contrasts and imaginings. We need to develop tools to enable us to SEE in different ways. The skill is knowing which way, when, why and what that will gain you.
So people love to chat, love to give and love to share. Using SMS, video, links we love to make our friends laugh! We all have fantastic imaginations and this is proved by the way people tie themselves together in new webs of networks.
“People want to play…and why not!”
Filed under: people I like, reading and writing, service design | Tags: alice hawthorn, iht, livework, MS, NHS, service design, social design
IHT’s Alice Rawsthorn has written about Live|Work’s recent work with the NHS.
“The result shows how the young, increasingly fashionable discipline of service design can work in practice by tackling a serious social problem.”
“Service design is one of the new disciplines that are redefining design by taking it into the realm of what’s called “user experience.” This is business school gobbledygook for ensuring that services (everything from online bank accounts to airline booking systems) can be used easily and efficiently. The service designer literally designs every aspect of the customer’s experience by applying the type of thinking that designers use intuitively in conventional projects, such as analyzing problems and inventing unexpectedly effective solutions. Often they do this in collaboration with other specialists, like anthropologists and economists. Good service design schemes are so intelligently planned and executed that we barely need to think about whether we’re using them correctly. The bad ones (and, sadly, we’ve all suffered from them) are confusing, inefficient and infuriating. How often have you been flummoxed by an impenetrable online booking system or call center?”
“Not so long ago the public sector officials would have scoffed at the suggestion that designers could do more than fuss over glossy brochures, but that’s changing. There is now a growing realization that many public services are no longer fit for purpose and a willingness to experiment with new approaches when reinventing them – including service design.”
