Filed under: people I like, service design | Tags: design education, public services, rsa, service design, sophia parker
The Royal Society of Arts is calling for design education to focus more on the design of services and move away from what it says is an emphasis on product and industrial design.
“An RSA paper released today, Social Animals: Tomorrow’s Designers in Today’s World, says students need to gain a broader range of communication and research skills to help them work within public services.
It outlines six challenges for design educators, among them the suggestion that students should be taught how to be ‘problem finders’ as well as problem solvers, to help find new ways of delivering public services.
RSA head of design Emily Campbell says, ‘We are currently seeing huge opportunities arising in service innovation, which stems from all the time trying to get public service providers to invest in service design.’
She adds, ‘Generally speaking design schools are not preparing for that at the moment.’
The paper, which was authored by Sophia Parker and emerged from this year’s RSA Design Directions award competition, also looks at how redesigning prison visits could benefit inmates and their families and reduce reoffending rates.
It suggests strategies such as creating a system of visiting ‘pods’ to offer enhanced privacy, and introducing virtual prison visits through a secure Internet connection.
Campbell says, ‘Recently announced plans for new prisons holding 1500 offenders each to be built in the next decade provide Government with a real opportunity to “build in” recognition of the importance of design in modelling and prototyping facilities.
‘There is an ongoing debate about the role designers could have in improving health and education services. Here is an opportunity to bring those skills to the prison environment, which provides us all with an essential public service.’”
This is a crucial topic that is at the heart of my research question (pictured above). I am happy to see my undergraduate experience of product design courses not embracing service design echoed in this call for change in design education.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design | Tags: Berlin, case transfer, deutch telekom, rosan chow, transferring today to tomorrow
“Berlin Calls” once again! The 6 month project “Transferring today to Tomorrow” that commenced in January with Deutch Telekom laboratories is now in it’s final stage. We are flying over to relay the final outcome, in the form of a book, to our Berlin counterparts. Wish me luck :) You can view pictures of the process here and learn more about my last visit to Berlin in February.
When I come back from Berlin I am flying to a place where the sun shines all day every day.
If everything goes to plan I will return rested, cleverer with more freckles…
Last month, Dougald Hine asked how we could use social media to help people cope with the personal consequences of the recession. I met Dougald at our letter writing party and I am really excited about his new intiative: Signpostr.
From today, they are looking for people to start trying out one of those projects – specifically, young people who are leaving education into the toughest job market for a generation.
“Signpostr is a response to the rapid rise in unemployment here in the UK and elsewhere. The site is about helping each other find a way through the recession. It gives people a space in which to:
- talk honestly about the realities of the current job market
- find and share information about resources that are useful for finding work and living cheaply
- create projects, gather people and resources, and get things started
If you’ve just left college or university and are looking for work, try it out – add some Resource listings for things you’ve found that help save money or increase your chances of getting a job; create a Project for that idea you’ve got that you’d like to make happen; tell people what you need and what you can offer.
If that’s not you, can you help us by spreading the word to people you know who are leaving education this summer? Send them a link to: http://alpha.signpostr.com/
Finally, you can follow @signpostr on Twitter, where they are talking about the site, sharing ideas about looking for work, living cheaply and helping each other through the recession.”
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, service design | Tags: master of design, opinion, people, public, research, service design
This weekend, I spent an afternoon in Dundee city centre asking people about their good and bad service experiences. I carried out this research to gain a deeper understanding of how the word ’service’ is perceived by the public. As part of my Masters project pitch I highlighted that the public are unaware of just how many services they interact with on a daily basis .
Speaking to this range of people showed me that this is very true. It also showed me that people are very passionate about the services they use and how they are treated as customers.
You can see photographs of the day here – taken by Kate Andrews.
The Social Enterprise Coalition commissioned photographer Charlie Pinder to take portraits of people served by Open Door, a social care enterprise in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. Open Door offers medical, nursing, social support services and alternative therapies to around 50 different people each day. Pinder took clients’ photographs and asked them about their lives. The photographs are published today to mark Social Enterprise Day.
Rachel Welsh, 40: “I’m a recovering drug addict. I have two kids – one aged 16 (Hayley, pictured) and a four-year-old.”
Filed under: people I like
A recently published French report asked the question: What is social innovation?
“During a study tour organized by the 27th Region, we went to explore British social innovation, meeting most design firms and major actors involved in redefining the role of users in public services. How is innovation is it practical in people’s lives? Can be done without technology innovation? Innovation is it to enter politics?”
This report highlights The Lift Conference: an International conference on innovation, creativity, technology and society, happening in Marseille on the 18-20 June 2009. It also includes work from Engine, Livework, Particple, Charles Leadbeater and others.
Filed under: service design | Tags: design thinking, fast company, systems thinking
Fast Company’s Fred Collopy writes about Lessons learned – Why the Failure of Systems Thinking Should Inform the Future of Design Thinking.
Last month I read about Systems Thinking and spent an afternoon talking and asking questions about it.
Design and “design thinking” is gaining recognition as an important integrative concept in management practice and education. But it will fail to have a lasting impact, unless we learn from the mistakes of earlier, related ideas. For instance, “system thinking”, which shares many of the conceptual foundations of “design thinking”, promised to be a powerful guide to management practice, but it has never achieved the success its proponents hoped for. If systems thinking had been successful in gaining a foothold in management education over the last half of the 20th century, there would be no manage by designing movement, or calls for integrative or design thinking.
Callopy argues that Systems Thinking never really captured the imagination of business leaders. And we must learn from its mistakes. He proposes we learn and subscribe to a theory or system of thought that is based on ideas from design and managers and policy makers will become designers of a sort particularly suited to their circumstances.
Filed under: made me think, people I like | Tags: design education, design observer
Jessica Helfand writes an open letter to design students everywhere in Design Observer:
“It is the first week in June, which so famously heralds the beginning of summer, also marks the conclusion of the academic year — and with it, calls and emails from students trying to make sense of what to do, where to go, how to reconcile the various components of their education that lead to greater self-knowledge, better work, more challenges, and maybe, just maybe, an eventual opportunity to begin paying back those student loans.”
“With structure comes freedom. And freedom, let’s not forget, is what education is all about. It is a great time to be a student. Go out and make great things, things that help us, inform us, enlighten and change and impact the world in millions of meaningful and glorious ways. Your education will not end the day you graduate: on the contrary, what you’re doing is learning how to learn, and how to think, and how to visualize the ideas that percolate in your brain. So here’s what you do: never stop thinking. Never stop asking questions. Never, never stop reading, looking, imagining what else can be done. And don’t be afraid to start small. You’ll get there, eventually. And when you do? Send somebody a thank you note.”
Uplifting. Inspiring. Better get on with it.
“The internet is vast. Bigger than a city, bigger than a country, maybe as big as the universe. It’s expanding by the second. No one has seen its borders.
And the internet is intangible, like spirits and angels. The web is an immense ghost land of disembodied places. Who knows if you are even there, there.
Yet everyday we navigate through this ethereal realm for hours on end and return alive. We must have some map in our head.
I’ve become very curious about the maps people have in their minds when they enter the internet. So I’ve been asking people to draw me a map of the internet as they see it. That’s all. More than 50 people of all ages and levels of expertise have mapped their geography of online.”
See them all here
Filed under: service design | Tags: experience, feedback, government services, service
The easy, safe way to share your front-line experience of public services for free. Just describe your own experience. You can also add what it should have been: “Wouldn’t it be better if…”
“In short we are here to get feedback on government services. The PublicExperience project is currently in a pilot stage. We are funded by the Ministry of Justice through their Innovation Fund and hosted by mySociety.”
Would it be better if…
“People could request that Public services communicated with them by telephone or email (not by letter).
I am a young professional. I rent, and in the past 6 years I have lived in 4 different shared houses/flats. However, I have had the same mobile phone number and email address.
My post is shared and not that secure to be honest. At the last flat I lived in we had a problem with teenagers stealing the post.
It would be far more secure (and environmentally friendly) for any important information to come to me by text or email. And I have access to this 24 hours a day!
I was recently ‘de-registered’ from my GP practice without any notification. I had moved 5 minutes away and hadn’t had time to change my address. Presumably they had sent a letter, that I hadn’t received.”
What was your experience, and what should it have been…?
Filed under: design thinking, made me think, people I like | Tags: design thinking, personality, profile
Tim Brown writes about Design Thinking in the Harvard Business Review:
“Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need weird shoes or a black turtleneck to be a design thinker. Not a re design thinkers necessary created only by design schools, even though most professionals have some kind of design training. My experience is that many people outside professional design have a natural aptitude for design thinking, which the right development and experiences can unlock. Here, as a starting point, are some of the characteristics to look for in design thinkers:”
Empathy: They can imagine the world from multiple perspectives – those of colleagues. clients, end users, and customers ( current and prospective). By taking a ‘people first’ approach, design thinkers can imagine solutions that are inherently desirable and meet explicit or latent needs. Great design thinkers observe the world in minute detail. They notice things that others do not and user their insights to inspire innovation.
Integrative Thinking: They do not only rely on analytical processes ( those that produce either/or choices) but also exhibit the ability to see all of the salient – and sometimes contradictory – aspects of a confounding problem and create novel solutions on existing alternatives.
Optimism: They assume that no matter how challenging the constraints of a given problem, at least one potential solution is better than existing alternatives.
Experimentalism: Significant innovations don’t come from incremental tweaks. Design thinkers pose questions and explore constraints in creative ways that progress in entirely new directions.
Collaboration: The increasing complexity of products, services, and experiences has replaced the myth of the lone creative genius with the reality of the enthusiastic mutli-disciplinary collaborator. The best design thinkers don;t simply work alongside other disciplines; many of them have significant experience in more than one.
Jeff Howard has highlighted a new Service Design Initiative. European academics Daniela Sangiorgi, Stefano Maffei and Nicola Morelli have launched a promising new initiative focused on service design research.
“We argue that to support the growth of activities around Service Design, there needs to be a space for deep self-reflection on its theories and practices. The idea is to create solid foundations for its further development both in education and research and to support an open and diverse research community as well as interdisciplinary dialogues with other related disciplines.”
This approach sounds promising. I am looking forward to the interviews with key players in the field. Although, I think it is important the team cross over into other disciplines during these interviews and perhaps speak to people who have never encountered Service Design before. That would be interesting.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design, service design | Tags: graduate, master of design, research question, service design
This one minute video is a snapshot of my Masters final project, set out to explore; “What is the role of a service design graduate in tomorrow’s design landscape?
1. AIM: The objective of the final project is to first define the skill set of a service designer and make a tangible contribution to an evolving field. My project will be both about and for people – for members of the public, graduates and for young designers who are keen to push past the status quo.
2. METHODS: In developing my own brief, I have adopted a metaphorical model recently pioneered by a writer on innovation Charles Leadbeater. I have visually created my current ‘landscape’, showing all the ‘ real world ‘ projects I am immersing myself in, and how they are related to one another. For example, I have recently become a news scout for the International Service Design Network.
3. DELIVERY: The third stage of my project is delivery. I intend to deliver a new voice to the world of service design and aim to create a service that offers an accessible pathway for all, through and into the service design industry.
The following insights from IDEO’s Ryan Jacoby have influenced how I am perceiving this piece of work…
“If it isn’t new, you aren’t learning.
If it isn’t new, it probably isn’t a meaningfully differentiated offering.
If it isn’t new, you aren’t going to get the attention of a new user.
Since new offerings and new users are how you grow, then you’re probably not growing.When you’re at the edges, people are bound to disagree on the right path forward. If everyone on your innovation or design team agrees, you probably aren’t pushing hard enough. That’s a tough reality and one of the hidden facets of what is usually a team sport.
So, what can you do to help inform your decision? Here are some options.
Observe and interpret what the ultimate user wants: Design research is meant, in part, to uncover explicit and implicit functional, emotional and reflective needs of a user. Getting out into the field to really look deeply and listen faithfully makes the difference.
Test, validate and repeat: Most large scale organizations know this well. Unfortunately, the thing about traditional validation and the use of benchmarks is that they are actually a form of consensus (albeit with folks or a standard that isn’t even in the room).
Design for “yourself”: There’s a school of thought that says you can and should design for yourself. Steve Portigal has an article (the first in a series I believe) in Interactions magazine that discusses this point of view. I think this usually doesn’t work for most large-scale companies (with notable exceptions of course) because most of their people are not the user.
Show the user: Build a prototype and show it to someone. Anyone. Projective methods, a type of design research, puts a question in front of someone to let them react. Let your users’ reactions influence you (not necessarily guide you), refine what you’re making and helping to craft how you’ll tell the story of what you’re making.
Build it, see what sticks and learn from it: The less the experiment costs, the better. Build a discovery-driven plan and you’ll know what to learn.”
This is my initial prototype and I have decided to show you it. This is very much a draft piece and it is worth mentioning I am not entirely happy with some of the editing techniques used.
I am putting this question to you: Can you find fault with this?
Your reactions will influence me, help me refine the direction of my project and craft the story of what I am aiming to achieve.
