Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design, people I like, service design | Tags: Crossingtheborder, David Hicks, master of design, service design
I would like to introduce Redjotter’s first ever guest blogger: David Hicks founder of Glasgow based consultancy CrossingTheBorder that specialises in developing services, visual communication and customer engagement.David shares his opinion on the T-Labs project I worked on during my MDes program…
Recessions stink, they really do and ours isn’t over yet by a long shot. We may be having a bit of respite at the moment but the experts predict that this initial growth of the UK economy will only be temporary. In all likelihood, there will be a further contraction followed by a further ‘false dawn’ before sustained growth finally kicks in.
This ‘W’-curve recovery pattern means we are in a strange period of economic stagnation. But ‘Never waste a good crisis’ are words being uttered by many in business. An initial opportunity, not least a critical one is that your business audience is in a receptive state, whether they are in the public or private sector, with regard to learning how things can be done differently, at minimal costs of course.
Another mantra we are starting to hear is ‘Do more, with less’. Not ‘Do the same as you were doing, with a bit less’ but do a lot more with a lot less’. This is increasingly true for public sector organisations as the reality of looming budget cuts starts to be realised.
It was with these thoughts rattling about my consulting brain that I visited the Dundee University Masters Degree Show last week. In particular, I was interested in a project, which was a collaborative undertaking between a number of the Mdes (Master of Design) students and with a real client. It was clear on arriving at the show, and glancing at the large format visuals this was no ordinary academic undertaking.
The students, through the ‘design school’ had been commissioned by a well-known global mobile company to look at how their services could be developed for an aging and increasingly elderly population. The client provided a framework, which could generically be described as a design thinking process, however the remaining architecture of the client solution was developed by the students themselves, no mean feat given the client had to buy the structure before any further work could be completed.
The client engagement methodology was titled Rip + Mix by the students, one that alluded to the deconstruct/reconstruct nature of the approach they intended to take through the design process. Within this process, the students developed their own creative tools and workshop formats that would allow them to answer the service design brief both thoroughly and commercially. It was clear from the presentation that they had done this with the highest standards of thinking, creativity and professionalism.
Not least, they had taken the opportunity to first reformulate the clients’ questions, prioritise them and double-check them with the client, (how many agencies, consultants and economic support organisations could do with a refresher in that part of the process alone?) and they also eschewed, I was glad to see the default ‘customer-centred design’ process most designers seem to think is the be all/end all first
Within the project, each student had identified their own strengths and interests and identified where they fitted with each stage whilst contributing in a truly collaborative way – designers egos seemed to be conspicuous by their absence, meaning the client needs were always coming first.
Although I can’t go into the detail of the project for IP protection reasons, the students, or former students as they now are, showed a remarkable capacity to understand the client. By taking sufficient risks in coming up with both innovative yet practical solutions and importantly grasping the opportunity that there was space to both educate and up-skill the client in the process, an additional set of value creating deliverables had been included in the project.
Now, these are the people I want to work with, no matter where we are on the W-curve.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design, service design | Tags: "Making Service Sense" "Service Design", graduation, Lauren Currie, makingservicesense, redjotter
Last Friday, 11th September I had a remarkable day! Firstly, I discovered I had been awarded a distinction for my MDes degree! …and secondly the exhibition of my work opened at Dundee University.
Making Service Sense is a service I have created hypothetically created during my MDes programme and with these foundations intend to turn into a reality. Making Service Sense offers young graduates a new way of accessing the world of service design, through a variety of methods and mediums.
The five core objectives:
1. To act as a knowledge bank.
2. To offer vibrant and relevant insights into the industry.
3. To provide a comprehensive pathway into service design.
4. To build connections between practitioners and graduates.
5. To grow and develop in a co-design manner – with the help of its users.
For the week of the Master of Design show Making Service Sense was articulated through a brand (logo design by Chris Clarke), a pack of 40 case study postcards, business cards, a process map, a 200 page design synthesis (all designed by Kate Andrews) and an interactive exhibition space!
The exhibition space had four elements:
1. Take a seat
2. Join the conversation
3. Ask the industry
4. Read about the service
The space was conceptually designed to mimic what happens in this web space, in that my catalysts fuel further questions. On Friday evening, I harvested questions in real time – I put a question out to the service design community via twitter, but no one at the exhibition needed to touch a computer. I acted as a filter between the complexity of questioning about service design vs. industry experience vs. internet information. This is more than being a moderator it is about being a facilitator. I am the service design filter. I am Making Service Sense.
So what is next?
I have learnt a lot over the past 12 months and hope to visit universities to talk about Redjotter and the journey I have been on during my MDes. I have also been invited by Tamsin at Engine to share Making Service Sense with the team in London next month!
Filed under: master of design, people I like | Tags: master of design, mike press, tom inns
Tomorrow night at 6pm, an exciting lecture by Professors Tom Inns and Mike Press is taking place in Dundee. This lecture accompanies the Masters of Design Exhibition which showcases the work of my project.
Modern design has run its course. The challenges of our age demands a new design; in place of designing for desire we should design for inclusion, understanding and real world problem solving. The power of design thinking presents us with new opportunities for the future.
As Scotland’s top rated institution for research design, the University of Dundee is uniquely placed to set out a new vision for the future of design. In this special lecture, Professors Tom Inns and Mike Press – both internationally acknowledged writers, researchers and broadcasters on design – provide a provocative and visionary of design in the 21st Century.
Evidence of this new design is seen in the work of this year’s graduating Masters of Design students. The lecture accompanies their masters exhibition, providing vital contexts and insights into their work. Together, the lecture and exhibition emphasise Dundee’s unique approach to the research and practice of design.
Tickets are available from University Online store and the Tower Building Reception.
Professor Mike Press is a fantastic speaker and has been a strong inspiration throughout my MDes year. Mike and I were part of the T3 team!
Professor Tom Inns has been my project mentor this year and has been a major influence – I am really inspired by the way Tom makes sense of complexity through metaphors and language!
This should not be missed!
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design, service design | Tags: blueprinting, experience, journey, Lauren Currie, method, play, service design, tools, user
Over the past few weeks, I have been working on blueprinting my service solution for my Masters. So far, I have developed five distinct concepts for visual representation:
- Rooms of Knowledge
- Service Stairway
- Painting on the wall
- Illustration of machinery
- 2D.3D.4D dynamic dimensions
In summary, I am developing a service for design students and graduates that offers them an accessible pathway into the service design industry.
The models all have different levels of representation and detail, each illustrating how my understanding of what a ’service blueprint’ has to be, and during the process the potential of what it could be (visually) has evolved.
ROOMS OF KNOWLEDGE
Working with the metaphor that ’service design’ is a building, I developed one ’service design floor’ – and mapped user journeys through this environment. The ‘Rooms of Knowledge’ are static – the ‘experience’ becomes tactile. This visual method asks questions such as; How does each room support learning? What are the props needed to support learning?
So, which service design floor are you on? Is your current understanding peripheral or deep? What floor do you want to go to? Do you want to fast track between floors, or systematically go into every room? Serendipity causes people to enter the ‘Rooms of Knowledge’ by chance, whilst the physical rooms have different experiences.
SERVICE DESIGN STAIRWAY
PAINTING ON THE WALL
Thinking big and playing with colourful paints enabled me to feel less cautious of the content and more focused on the route that users take through the service: Scribbling is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.”
SERVICE AS A MACHINE
Looking at the movement of machines and the components that make up their function, I took visual inspiration from a postcard design from NESTA’s Starter for 6 initiative. Drawing the service in this way has enabled me to think about how each ’stage’ of the service impacts on the next stage in the process – every aspect a cog in a system.
2D 3D 4D DIMENSIONS
Conceptually considering 2D as learnings, 3D as the landscape and 4D as the dynamic network, I am thinking dimensionally and treating the experience like a 3 dimensional shape. This is helps me think about the channels and routes into, through and out of the service, and view the experience holistically.
I am aiming to incorporate backstage / physical touchpoints and user experiences into my final service design blueprint. So now a week of ultimate play lies ahead, as I turn the ‘editor’ down low and become an ‘architect’. I am putting my pen and paper away (!!) with an aim to be very spatial. My study adviser believes I am on my way to developing “an iconic new way of representing a service”. Very high hopes… I best get on with it!
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design, service design | Tags: Berlin, design process, dundee university, method, product design, rosan chow, service design
The question of when a project formally ends is one that I usually take for granted. But this project has been different - our client was real, the budget was concrete and it all felt true.
Berlin felt like a whole new place in the sunshine…
I have learned a whole new way of designing that was really challenging, but ultimately very liberating. It challenged the process I have been taught since high school . We didn’t find a problem – we didn’t evaluate concepts – we let all ideas and possibilities collide. At times this felt too random, too unstructured – but the vast amount of ideas generated in such a short space of time was nothing like I had experienced before.
RIP and MIX places the focus on the process of existing design knowledge, objectified in the form of existing products and services. I have a new found respect for that knowledge.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design, service design | Tags: ruby slippers, service, seth godin
Seth Godin asks “If you could make one thing come true that would change everything for your project, do you know what the one thing would be?” One breakthrough client, one technical advance, one testimonial? One achievable change in the world?
“For Google, the one thing was a big thing, “we need to be the place people come to search.” But for many sites, many companies, there isn’t a thing. They can’t articulate it. They have no wish. If you have no wish, how can it possibly come true?”
So what is my thing? What is my wish? for my MDes project:
“my service needs to be where young designers go to learn about service.”
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…
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.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design | Tags: visualisation, charles leadbeater
A significant part of my Masters project is to adopt an intelligent, mindful, distant view of myself as a practitioner and a commentator. To help me with this I have made my world tangible by simply dividing it into parts that resemble boulders and pebbles. This method of visualising my landscape was inspired by an metaphor described by Charles Leadbeater in his paper “Coming Crisis of the Creative Class”.
This model is composed of boulders, pebbles and micro pebbles. These individually weighted and labeled parts have enabled me to ask meta level questions about the value that I add through my work and to view my everyday work holistically and see where the gaps are.
When I look at this landscape I am asking these questions:
- Who visits my beach?
- What boulders work with pebbles?
- What pebbles are growing to become boulders?
- How do the boulders make money?
- Are there any pebbles growing taller than the boulders?
- Who should I invite to visit?
- How is it being sustained?
- What can I see in the distance?
- How do I find the pebble I am looking for?
- How do visitors navigate their way around?
- Are there any dangers on the beach?
- Do I like working on the beach?
- What is missing?
- What is driving me to maintain and enhance this beach?
- What will the beach look like in five years time?
It has made me realise I need to be more conscious of how often I roll a new boulder onto the beach. This takes time, dedication and focus. I am only one person and I can only sustain a certain amount.
There is rising tide of pebbles on my beach. Every minute millions of people throw a pebble onto my beach: a blog post, a YouTube video, a picture of Flickr or an update of Twitter. A puzzling collection of pebbles in different sizes, shapes and colours , in no particular order, as people feel like it. How is this managed?
This very simplified version of my world into boulders and pebbles has focused my thinking on hybrids and collaborations. I hadn’t realised until now the vast amount of opportunities I have to create new collaborations and organise my pebbles to new heights.
But what does it mean when pebbles grow taller then the boulders? My network is rapidly become the tallest attraction on the beach. The nature of social networking allows me to connect with pebbles who are friends, and twitter allows me to create lots of really tiny little pebbles.
I am really keen to hear your thoughts and opinions on this model. It is up to you if you throw a pebble towards me in the form of a comment or a little micro pebble reflection in the form of tweet.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design | Tags: health sector, journalism, master of design, service design, writing
People are often curious as to where the name ‘redjotter’ came from…here is the answer :) When I was nine years old I re wrote all my stories into a hard bound red book. I dug it out for part of my research for my Masters work to spend a few days looking over old pieces of writing work. I was asked to create a piece of ‘intelligent journalism’. Inspired by an awful accident and emergency experience I recently had in England the focus of my piece is why the NHS needs service design.
I took this image on my mobile phone in Stoke and Mandeville accident and emergency unit. Here is a snapshot of my story:
“Here’s a question for you. When we are in the middle of the worst recession since World War Two, who would you expect to help make health services better? The nurses who have given up complaining? The doctors who wouldn’t admit their own family to their ward? NHS Chiefs who are driven by targets over patient safety? Or designers who work behind the scenes to explore what patients really need from the systems and processes that govern the delivery of services?”
Fancy reading more?…just drop me an email.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, design thinking, made me think, master of design, people I like, reading and writing | Tags: adrian shaughnessy, career, design education, design graduates, design week, masters of the universe
The education of designers is a perennially hot topic. Among design’s chatterati it’s an issue that’s guaranteed to raise blood pressure as well as hackles.
Two unlikely bedfellows have recently chucked petrol on to the debate. In these pages Ian Cochrane has advised students to ‘Get out of this business. It is inundated with graduates and there aren’t the jobs, especially at this time’. And, in his recent D&AD President’s Lecture, Peter Saville questioned the point of colleges producing ‘50 000 design graduates a year’.
Cochrane and Saville are riffing on a familiar theme. Warnings against the intensive farming of design graduates are nothing new. But is it really a problem?
Perhaps Cochrane knows something no one else knows – namely, that the current financial situation is going to last forever. I’d have thought that studying design over the next few years will allow graduates to avoid the worst of the current implosion. It could even see them emerging into a saner world where, after a decade of financial greed, fraud and ineptitude, design is valued as a force for social good rather than a lubricant of consumer indebtedness. I know of one university that’s had a marked rise in applications for next year – which it attributes to a desire among students to avoid the worst of the recession.
Saville’s lack of enthusiasm for the over-production of design graduates is easier to fathom. Since he is responsible for inspiring many of them to choose a career in design, he is perhaps experiencing a twinge of culpability.
But I think both are wrong. A design education – even a basic one – equips individuals with many of the skills that will prove invaluable in an information-based, digitally rooted global culture. Just as Britain produced engineers to forge the Industrial Revolution, the information revolution is being – at least partly – driven by designers. I can’t think of many skills that will be more useful in the coming years than a mastery of digital tools and the presentation of information across all media.
When I first started hiring designers in the late 1980s, most had been soured by their educations, and were in retreat from a process that had encouraged them to think of themselves as service-sector fodder. Towards the end of the 1990s, a new breed of tutors, radicalised by theoretical developments within design, started to produce graduates with a disdain for the old notion of design as a problem-solving process, and saw it as a means for self-expression and creative experimentation. The notion of design as art took hold in design schools – or at least in the imagination of students – and it has been hard to dislodge. It’s a question that Nick Bell is wrestling with in his new role at London’s Royal College of Art.
But after recently spending time in two universities, I think the balance has been redressed. Both knocked me out with the standard of teaching on offer, and the imaginative level-headedness of the students. I think we’ve reached a point where a design education is a bit like a history degree. History graduates don’t necessarily become historians. Instead, they use their analytically trained brains to work in business, research and education. Today, we can say the same about a good design education. Design graduates are equipped for life in the modern world.
Let’s have more of them.”
A fantastic, long over due article that has fuelled me with determination regarding my Masters research question:
“What is the role of a service design graduate in tomorrow’s design landscape?”
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design | Tags: dundee university, jonathan baldwin, kate andrews, Lauren Currie, networking, social media, The Studio Unbound
The Studio Unbound has generated a fantastic response from practitioners, students and tutors.
You can watch the presentation here.
The Studio Unbound: Social Networking and Design Education from Jonathan Baldwin on Vimeo.
Tell me what you think!
Filed under: master of design, reading and writing, service design | Tags: community, development, jonathan glennie, Katine
Jonathan Glennie asks: What can British residents learn about development from Katine?
“I know a lot of Africans, Latin Americans and Asians who are appalled at how we live in this country and who genuinely pity us for our way of life. And they don’t just pity the poor. They pity the affluent, the wealthy, society as a whole. They cannot fathom how we put our parents into old peoples’ homes to sit in circles watching telly. They are sad that mental health is now as big a concern in our hospitals as physical injury. They find the number of abortions carried out each year abhorrent, to name just three examples.”
“In the Katine project, through the website, we have learned of the serious problems locals face: in education, health, gender differences, water quality and simply making a decent living. What would our experts from Katine discover on their visit to a poor British community? They might visit the parents of a young boy, the most recent victim of knife crime. They might be invited to a group for pregnant teenagers. Go around the corner to the school where smoking kids are shouting at teachers. Up the road, past the crack house, is the job centre where there are no jobs for people with no skills. A caricature, maybe, but not so far from the reality of life for many people living in Britain today. Having created a society so ill at ease with itself, so disappointing, it might seem surprising, almost arrogant, that we still choose to go abroad to try to help other people.”
Fantastic article. So many questions and even more possibilties.
Filed under: Red Jotter Work, master of design | Tags: Berlin, t mobile, T3
It rained every day and the sky was gray and bleak but Berlin proved to be a thought-provoking city. The day spent at T-Labs was fast-paced. It was an important milestone in the project – relaying our findings. We are now focused and ready to begin phase two of the project! You can see all my photos here.
I discovered a tool for measuring emotions that was created as part of an MSc graduation project, the interactive survey measures the emotional reactions people experience whilst staying in a hotel. There are some good images that trigger memories on the site!
