Filed under: design thinking, made me think, people I like, service design
“Journalists, politicians, academics, police and parents all have a point of view on what the ‘kids of today’ are like.
But has anyone ever asked the young people themselves, and not just in a focus group in Edmonton, but in an open and transparent way and on a national scale? And has anyone done anything smart, cool or fun with that data, that might, just might, make the truth about young people be heard?
These questions were the starting point for Voicebox; a project which aims to curate the views of 16-25s, visualise the results in creative ways, and then set that data free. Over the coming months, we’re going to try to find out how young people spend their time, what they care about, how many carry knives, what they really think about the area they live in and much more.
The more people take part, the more detailed picture we get. Each month, we’ll have new themes, and you’ll be able to play with the results by age, gender, location and ethnicity. And remember, this isn’t our data, this is your data. So we are inviting people to use our data and do fancy things like cross-tabbing, create their own visualisations, pick out random statistics for the community or get campaigning.
The project is being run by V, the national youth volunteers service who want to increase the number of 16-25s in the UK who volunteer. Our aim with Voicebox is to better understand young people, so we can deliver programmes better suited to their needs. For that reason, we are only ever going to use data for this age range and in the UK, but the project is open to everyone to take part, however old and wherever they live.”
These visuals are superb. They have 1000’s more on their Flickr! Follow these guys on twitter.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, design thinking, made me think, people I like, service design | Tags: design thinking, Karelia, president obama, service design, theory143, USA
I would like to introduce Karelia:
“I’ve had a pretty clear idea of “it” ie. my big picture for a few years now. I knew that I simply wanted to help people via design. I just didn’t a) think an actual position/title of “it” existed, or b) knew exactly what “it” would be called, since it’s an amalgamation of so many things. but i’m pretty sure, as of yesterday, that i’ve found “it.”
*cue heavenly chorus*
And “it” is called SERVICE DESIGN.”
She is on a google frenzy, buying post-its and drinking coffee – becoming a service design sponge! With a background in Graphic Design, Karelia has connections with Design Ignites Change and Project M.
Karelia is a prime example of why there is a growing need for Making Service Sense. We had an exciting conversation over the weekend, she said ‘I don’t have a filter’.
Based in Chicago right now, Karelia is happy to move anywhere her service design journey may take her. So who’s doing what in America -
- Continuum
- Peer Insight
- Adaptive Path
- Ideo
- Frontier Service Design
- Pink Service Design
- Idea Couture
- U.S National Design Policy Initiative
And of course, not forgetting the fact President Obama needs service design!!
I would like to ask you all to post any links/ advice/ books/places/ people / opportunities you can think of to share with Karelia.
Filed under: design thinking, made me think, people I like | Tags: creative, crisis, design, festival of interdependence, inhabitat, NEF
Responding to current economic, social and environmental crises, London’s NEF (the new economics foundation) have recently launched plans for “The Bigger Picture: A Festival of Interdependence,” a series of creative activities and events, including lectures, film screenings and art exhibitions, beginning in autumn 2009. The festival will culminate in a large-scale, public event in central London on 24 October 2009 (11:00AM-18:00PM) when an interactive, living exhibition will be staged in the dramatic post-industrial setting of the Bargehouse on London’s South Bank.
Economic turmoil and social upheaval coupled with the threat of runaway climate change have revealed major failings in the current system. In response, nef has brought together a range of organisations and individuals to share a vision of the world as it could be. We believe that the great transition to a new economy begins with a potent mix of hope, creativity, practicality and fun. Collectively we already have many of the ideas, policies and resources that can deliver greater human well-being and social justice within environmental limits. But a huge shift is still needed to make change happen. We think 2009 will mark the start of that shift
With over twenty-five speakers from a range of backgrounds, The Bigger Picture offers visitors and audience a chance to actually join the conversations, learn, share and exchange skills and tell stories. Topics are big and far reaching, including the future of food and farming, the hidden costs of economic growth, civil liberties and climate change, local economics and how inequality leaves us all worse off.
“The Bigger Picture is about people coming together to produce a shared, coherent vision of a sustainable economy.”
Will you be going?
Filed under: design thinking, made me think, people I like, reading and writing, service design | Tags: people or policy, peter bates, sketch book, social change, susan deacon, university of dundee, visualisation
Last week I attended The Peter Bates Lecture People or policy? How to bring about social change:
“Good leadership at every level is the key to bringing about real social change within communities.
Susan Deacon, Professor of Social Change at Queen Margaret University, will discuss this, and other factors effecting social change at the Peter Bates Lecture.The Lecture, jointly hosted by the University of Dundee and NHS Tayside, will take place at the University of Dundee’s Dalhousie Building at 6pm on Wednesday, September 23rd.Professor Deacon, former MSP and Minister for Health and Community Care, will examine the influences effecting progressive social change in Scotland. She will examine whether government policy or community-level initiatives are more powerful drivers of social change.
In particular, she will discuss a failure to take account of the importance of leadership at every level in our communities, and suggest that we need to give more recognition to the power of individuals to bring about social change.”
Here are my notes from the talk…
It worries me that myself and my old design studies tutor, who I spotted across the room, were the only people in the entire lecture hall taking notes…
I was very excited about the way Susan spoke about the human condition and truly listening to people, claiming the NHS had ‘lost the plot and lost sight of what it means to be a person’. But there was no real conclusion as to how to achieve this – her ending phrase was ‘ we can make the world a better place by encouraging each other’. I’m not convinced. That’s not enough is it?
Filed under: design thinking, service design | Tags: design thinking, experience design, integratedplace, luxembourg, service design, UX design
I discovered this on Nick’s blog – it is very relevant to the work I am preparing for the Experience Service Design conference in Finland.
IntegratedPlace is a design consultancy specialised in service design, environmental & product design, design strategy and design management.
“We use design thinking as a methodology to solve many different types of problems. To achieve this we analyse the value of what an organisation has to offer from a customer or user point of view and how the actual products and services relate to their needs.
We carry out complete user centered design projects for our clients, from project brief definition, strategic orientation, user centered research, ideation, design proposals, prototyping, through to production or market deployment.”
Sylvain Cottong, a partner at IntegratedPlace, has created a presentation to highlight the differences between UX design, service design and design thinking. [ Spot the use of the CD cover image I discovered on slide 62 :) ]
What is UX design, service design & design thinking more
The design initiative ‘Unfinished business’ is the unfinished words and deeds of the core team of the unfinished business project. They have highlighted an interesting way of perceiving design thinking.
If ‘design thinking’ was an object, how would you describe it?
“How might the application of a familiar analogy might help to illuminate the elusive qualities of design thinking? We thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what folks would come up with if tasked with submitting three entries or nominations for a periodic table of the elements of design thinking. FYI, the current table of chemical elements contains 117 atomic elements.
First, I put out a call on Twitter (got a few bites) and then I posted the question/task to the Google Group of the Overlap community. In short order, the folks on the Overlap list got a very good list going, along with some very interesting discussion about what to do with structure, categories, and how best to visualize these “elements” and their relationships to each other and to the meta of design thinking.
I do believe that there is merit in trying to puzzle out what happens when we put design and thinking together. I’ve always thought it was kind of like trying to put hand and head back together, to reunite the body and mind and undo the violence of their Cartesian separation. We have to, to borrow the phrase of country singer David Ball, admit we’ve got a thinkin’ problem in design.
Rather than struggle too much with an overburdened theoretical approach to the question, “so what is that design thinking thing, anyhoo” I have taken the approach that there really is something there. The evidence for that would be, I submit, that if there an “object” called design thinking, then we ought to be able to start to describe it. The elements that are emerging from this thread are already bearing out some interesting data and pattern to mull over. Please join in with you suggestions for elements, related thoughts and relevant links.
Here’s the list we have so far, merely organized by alpha for the moment. All thoughts about meta categories, and structural or visual ways to describe relation are also very welcome. Will Evans has rightly suggested that (among other things) this can be seen as an effort to develop an ontology of design thinking. That means that philosophers can have a go at this, too.”
The (Overlapping) Elements of Design Thinking
Abduction = Ab
Analysis = Al
Anticipation = An
Behaviors = Bh
Collaborative = Cl
Collapse: Cl
Communication = Cm
Community: Cm? (Cy)
Context = Cx
Contribution: Cn
Convergence = Cv
Courage = Co
Debate = Db
Deconstruction = Dc
Dr = Design Research
Dialogue = Di
Discourse = Ds
Divergence = Dv
Empathy = Em
Envisioning = En
Experimental = Ex
Fabrication = Fb
Failure: Fi
Forecast = Fc
Heuristics = Hr
Human = H
Ideation = Id
Identification = Id?
Imagination: Im
Internalization = Iz
Iteration = It
Language = La
Myth = Mt
Noticing = Nt
Observation = Ob
Overlap = O or Ov
Perception = Pn
Play = Py
Practice: Pc
Prototyping = Pt
Recombining = Rc
Reframing = Rf
Reliability = Rl
Research = Rs
Rigour: Rg
Semiotics = Se
Skepticism = Sk
Sociality = So
Sustainability = Su
Synthesis = St
Systemics = Sy
Taste = Ta
Thrivability = Tv
Topography: Tp
Validity = Vl
Nick has already spotted this one, coining it “pretentious but inspiring”. Christopher Fahey from www.graphpaper.com advises “please don’t try to shoehorn this into the *actual* periodic table’s grid”.
I can see where these guys are coming from and have to admit I do agree with them. Although, I think the idea of describing an intangible as an object has huge potential. This experiment is reminding me of the Rip and Mix method I explored at T-labs – if we could break down methods and ways of thinking into these elements then we would be able to pull elements from each, mashing them together to create something new.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, design thinking, made me think, people I like, service design | Tags: Bruce Mau, design manifesto, Social Design Notes
Social Design Notes have published 100 years of Design Manifestos from as far back as 1909 to the present.
These manifestos are public declarations of design principles and intentions. I created a tangible version of Bruce Mau’s manifesto that I can take with me on my travels.
I wonder who is really listening to these profound declarations…are they for the maker or the observer? It is time to create a new form of manifesto for the young designers of tomorrow? What could that look like?
Whose manifesto do you listen to? and when do you seek it out?
Filed under: design thinking, made me think, people I like, service design | Tags: Donald Norman
The MIT Sloan Management Review has published Donald Norman’s paper ‘Designing Waits That Work’ (available for $6.50).
“Designers at restaurants, theme parks and elsewhere have investigated how to make waiting in line more pleasant. What they have learned has profound implications for all managers.”
This fascinates me – I have built up a little collection of images related to waiting in line. I intend to read Norman’s first paper entitled ‘The Psychology of Waiting Lines’ (which is freely available). There are sections on “Variations of basic waiting lines” (including triage, categorization of needs, and self-selection of queues) and “Deliberate Chaos.”
“At some point, every manager has had to tell someone to wait. We all have to wait sometimes. It’s a simple matter of timing and resources. Whenever two systems interact, one is invariably ready before the other. In the factory, this disparity can lead to stockpiles of goods or bottlenecks. When people are involved, it can give rise to inefficiency and anger. This is no good for customers or employees. But the psychological impact of waits can be managed, and studies in design show us how to do it.
My introduction to design started with my studies of fundamental principles of interaction to enhance the use of technology Now, as I teach and consult on the applications of these principles to business, I apply them to many aspects of customer experience.
In places where waits are required, these principles can not only make waiting more pleasant but can also make it feel like not waiting at all. Sometimes inducing a wait can improve the customer experience. When waits are inevitable, the research shows, the goal should be to optimize the experience for both customers and employees, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction and reducing employee stress and turnover. What this research has revealed can help managers in many situations…”
Discovered at Putting People First
Filed under: design thinking, made me think, service design | Tags: language, service design, words
Language is a very crucial part of designing services. That’s why I wanted to share this newly discovered word with you. I think it captures the way many of us think in terms of systems, processes and services.
Autopoiesis literally means “auto (self)-creation” and expresses a fundamental dialectic between structure and function. The term was originally introduced by Chilean biologists in 1973.
“An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.
[…] the space defined by an autopoietic system is self-contained and cannot be described by using dimensions that define another space. When we refer to our interactions with a concrete autopoietic system, however, we project this system on the space of our manipulations and make a description of this projection.”
The term autopoiesis was originally presented as a system description that was said to define and explain the nature of living systems. An autopoietic system implies that not only it has the capacity to acquire knowledge, but also that knowledge itself, understood as effective action, determines the viability and, indeed, the very existence of the subject.
Good isn’t it?
Thank you to SianeP for highlighting I had autopoieses on my mind yesterday!
c4di are an enterprise associated with Robert Gordon University to assist small to medium sized companies (SMEs) in Scotland by helping them to develop their innovation strategies. The centre’s approach to innovation is based on human centred design methods applied to business and new technologies.
They are currently working on a project to map people’s understanding of design thinking. The plan is to develop a visualization of design thinking, based on the answers to the following questions:
* what is your interpretation of the term design thinking?
* why (or do?) do you believe design thinking is important?
* what do you think are the qualities of a design thinker?
* how can design thinking benefit SMEs?
* which innovative SMEs are currently using design thinking?
On behalf of Graham, the principle designer of c4di, I would like to put these questions to you. Perhaps this is a opportunity for us to gather our thoughts on recent debates!
“Our internal worlds can be liberating or limiting.” Paul Hughes
Email me your answers directly or add them as a comment and I will pass them on to c4di.
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.
Filed under: design thinking, service design | Tags: customer live, Larry Hochman
Larry Hochman is a globally recognised expert on customer relationships. On Thursday 12 November 2009 ‘Customer Service Live’ is taking place at the London Business Forum. Larry will offer real-time lessons in the best and worst customer experiences in Britain.
- Experience and learn from live customer service calls
- Identify what your customers really need and deliver it
- Build customer trust and loyalty
“Your ability to retain customers will define whether you survive the current economic crisis. To do this you need to build customer trust and confidence at a time when both have collapsed. So, what are the secrets behind building this confidence and how do you get your staff fully engaged?”
Larry argues that urgency, clarity and total transparency are fundamental requirements of customer service today – this session will outline how you can instill these values. Bring your team for answers to the following questions:
- What are the repercussions of your customer service actions?
- What do your customers really need right now and how can you deliver it?
- Are your leaders specific about the role everyone has to play?
- How quickly will customers desert you if they experience anything but superb, meaningful, sincere, fast and compassionate service?
What was the last compassionate service you encountered? Last week a bus driver came out from behind the glass barrier to listen to me, he made me laugh and didn’t make me feel silly for being completely lost. I liked that.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, design thinking, people I like, service design | Tags: conference, experience service design, finland
This September, I am embarking upon an adventure to Finland. The Kuopio Academy of Design at the Savonia University of Applied Sciences in Finland is hosting a service design conference on September 7-9, 2009.
“We are inviting the participants to innovate new service concepts and solutions by applying service design methods. Day one is about service design thinking, getting ready to innovate, listening and tuning the tools. Days two and three will be about learning, using the service design tools and developing new ones. We’ll invite 15 participants to each workshop to create new service solutions and concepts. Each workshop will receive a SERVICE CHALLENGE.”
The conference will be structured around keynote presentations on the 7th of September and will continue with three practical service design workshops facilitated by myself, Arne and Stefan . Keynotes will be delivered by service design professionals, including Professor Birgit Mager from KISD and Associate Professor Nicola Morelli from Aalbog University.
Attendance is free. Sign up by contacting minna.merivalo [at] savonia.fi and regular updates are posted here: www.experience-servicedesign.com
What does a service design challenge look like to you?
Filed under: design thinking, made me think, people I like | Tags: design thinking, library, unfinished
I discovered ‘Unfinished’ via Nick and Arne. It is a site that thinks about design thinking : an emerging literature – http://unfinished.torchiswicked.com
A fantastic resource!
