Filed under: made me think, reading and writing | Tags: journalism, the times
My breakfast reading was a little unusual this morning - it was a newspaper from 128 years ago: The Times, Saturday the 19th of March 1881.
So what kind of services were on offer 105 years before I was born?
I wonder how different ‘the middle class and jobless’ would feel if they could sell themselves for work like this gentleman:
So we know the weather from yesterday … surely you want to know the weather for the current day?
Sadly, some things never change…
I was fascinated by how people used to sell themselves, their products, services and organizations, particularly the language and tone they used. It seems that back then people offered their own skills and talents as individual services…
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: reading and writing, service design | Tags: community, people, poetry, service design
This is a translation of a poem that was written by Lao Tse three thousand years ago. There are 27 known different translations of this, because the meanings from that long ago are very fluid. This version has been used as inspiration for community workers since the nineteen fifties.
Go to the People;
Live among them;
Love them; Learn from them;
Start from where they are;
Work with them; Build on what they have.
But of the best leaders, When the task is accomplished,
The work completed, The people all remark: “We have done it ourselves”Lao Tsu
Filed under: people I like, reading and writing, service design | Tags: engine, jeff howard, joe heapy, publication, reading, service design book
A new service design publication is on it’s way next summer… Service Design: A design for new challenges written by Joe Heapy, co-founder and director of Engine. I met Joe at Service Design Drinks in February, he recently collaborated with Demos to research and publish, The Journey to the Interface, a pamphlet setting out the role of user-centred approaches to service design in the public sector.
“In Service Design, Joe Heapy looks at the ways people use services, the ways innovative organisations across sectors are now looking to develop the services we use; and the new needs that they’ve created for us. The author identifies the reasons why organisations need to adopt new methods to develop their understanding of how services work and how to go about designing really good ones; and the importance of designing services with and not just for people.
Service Design outlines Engine’s approach to innovating and designing services and that of other design and non-design organisations. The author identifies trends in the design of services and the big issues and opportunities that are shaping the services that we use.”
Thank you to Jeff for discovery!
Graham just reminded me – why is it hundreds of dollars? Very inaccessible…
Filed under: design thinking, made me think, people I like, reading and writing, service design | Tags: alice rawsthorn, ReD Associates, service design, social design
This morning, Alice Rawsthorn highlights the social and service revolution for the third time this year.
Frederik Wiedemann is a partner of ReD Associates, a social design firm that was employed by the city of Copenhagen to improve the rate of sick leave in its offices.
“ReD Associates, one of a new breed of hybrid consulting groups that combine design with other disciplines, such as ethnography, psychology and anthropology, to tackle social problems as well as commercial ones.Rapidly though this area of design is expanding, it is still so new that it does not have a name, at least not one that has stuck. “Social design,” “service design” and “service innovation” are among the favorites, but a bunch of design graduate students in San Francisco nailed the problem by staging an exhibition in March entitled “What the *#&! is Social Design.” Nameless it may be, but there is an accepted methodology in this field and ReD’s approach is fairly typical.”
Filed under: made me think, reading and writing, service design | Tags: community, gordon brown, voluntary service
Initially discussed in 2006, Gordon Brown has launched The National Youth Service, which will make every young person do 50 hours of voluntary work by the time they reach the age of 19.
The Prime Minister said a pledge to introduce compulsory community service would be included in Labour’s next General Election manifesto. Under the scheme, the work is likely to become part of the National Curriculum. It would be integrated into moves to make everyone stay in education or training until the age of 18 by 2011.
Mr Brown insisted: “It is my ambition to create a Britain in which there is a clear expectation that all young people will undertake some service to their community, and where community service will become a normal part of growing up in Britain.And, by doing so, the contributions of each of us will build a better society for all of us.”
“That would mean young people being expected to contribute at least 50 hours of community service by the time they have reached the age of 19. This will build on the platform provided by citizenship classes as they develop in our schools. But because the greater part of what I envisage as community service takes place outside the school day, it will require the close involvement of local community organisations and charities.”
This appears to be a promising intent to engage young people with services. But what will this look like? Is it realistic?
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: made me think, reading and writing, service design | Tags: communication, council, language, LGA, people, phrases, service users, words
Encouraging officers to use plain language and communicate effectively with their residents, the Local Government Asssociation (LGA) has produced a list of 200 words and phrases currently used by councils, that make very little sense to most people.
The LGA recognises that words sometimes used by public sector bodies make their services inaccessible, as people fail to understand their relevance. In turn, this reduces their chances of getting the right assistance at the earliest opportunity.
It is therefore essential that all matters are explained to people in plain, simple and clear English. This is even more important today, given that Britain is so multicultural, with many people accessing public body services without English as their first language.
For example, you should avoid using:
- best practice
- service users
- outsourced
- multi-agency
And in their place, encourage the use of:
- best way
- people
- privatised
- many groups
Whilst this observation has been made by the LGA, it is of course just as applicable to Registered Providers. The use of plain language benefits all those concerned, as it:
- breaks barriers between professionals in the public sector and local people
- eliminates meaningless language
- is far more effective, and can result in fewer calls and/or letters from people due to misunderstanding or confusion, resulting in less pressure being put on the professionals
- can help reduce the drain on finances for queries that could otherwise have been resolved through using plain, simple language in the first place
Communicating with your customers should be easy: it is about having a common understanding of what is being communicated. If the message is not getting across, then what is the point? Use plain language!”
Full list of 200 words which the local government association says should not be used by councils.
This list is long overdue. I wonder what the same list would look like for designers? What word would be at the top of the list?
(Via. ‘Try using plain english’)
Filed under: design thinking, made me think, people I like, reading and writing | Tags: epiphanies, rambling, spacecollective, the future of everything
Epiphanies…A series of rambles by SpaceCollective members sharing sudden insights and moments of clarity.
“Rambling is a time-proven way of thinking out loud, letting the non-linear mind run free while spontaneously hitting upon new ideas, often finding out that we have more to say than we imagined. One of the world’s most prolific ramblers was architect/thinker Buckminster Fuller who towards the end of his life talked for 42 hours in front of an audience in a lecture series he called Everything I Know. One of today’s best known ramblers is Slovenian thinker Slavoj Žižek.”
Most definitely worth a watch if you would like to be catapulted into a very philosophical mood:
“We need a collective intelligence of a kind that may not have characterized the human species in the past; but we see no reason to believe that…a whole population cannot reach a stage of mature self-consciousness much as an individual does.”
Filed under: made me think, reading and writing | Tags: mr torghele, new york times, pizza, pizza vending machine
In Italy, the vending machine even makes pizza! Over the last decade, Mr. Torghele, 56, an entrepreneur in this northern Italian city who first made money selling pasta in California, has developed a vending machine that cooks pizza. The machine does not just slip a frozen pizza into a microwave. It actually whips up flour, water, tomato sauce and fresh ingredients to produce a piping hot pizza in about three minutes.
Tomato paste is squirted onto the dough and cheese is added before it is lifted into a small infrared oven. The baked pizza then slips onto a cardboard tray and out into the customer’s waiting hands. Mr. Torghele says the pizza will cost as little $4.50, depending on the variety.
Sounds wonderful in some ways, yet in designing this service they have removed people, conversation and patience…
Filed under: made me think, people I like, reading and writing, service design | Tags: accident and emergency, alan johnson, apology, government, healthcare, NHS, poor service, stafford hospital
Health Secretary Alan Johnson has apologised to the families and patients who suffered appalling care at Stafford Hospital.
“He announced a review of current A&E services and a second inquiry to look at how long problems had been going on for at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.
He said: “On behalf of the Government and the NHS I would like to apologise to the patients and families of patients who have suffered because of the poor standards of care at Stafford Hospital. There was a complete failure of management to address serious problems and monitor performance. This led to a totally unacceptable failure to treat emergency patients safely and with dignity.”
Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust over three years, a report said.
Although it is not clear how many of these deaths could have been avoided, the Healthcare Commission said patients undoubtedly suffered as a result of lapses in the standard of care.
Its investigation, based on more than 300 interviews and an examination of over 1,000 documents, found inadequately trained staff who were too few in number, junior doctors left alone in charge at night and patients left without food, drink or medication as their operations were repeatedly canceled.
Some patients were left in pain or needing the toilet, sat in soiled bedding for several hours at a time and were not given their regular medication, the Commission heard.
Receptionists with no medical training were expected to assess patients coming in to A&E, some of whom needed urgent care.”
A service disaster.
Filed under: made me think, reading and writing | Tags: complaints, feedback, healthcare, NHS, service, trust
The NHS is failing to deal adequately with complaints about its services, according to a recent report by the Healthcare Commission, the watchdog responsible for reviewing complaints that cannot be resolved at a local NHS trust level. The report reveals that the proportion of complaints upheld rose last year by 50% – and in less than a fifth of the 9,000 cases it looked at, the watchdog sided with the trust.
Most worrying for those who believe in the importance of listening to user feedback as a means of improving services, the main issue raised by complainants was the way in which the NHS handles complaints. In other words, what bugs people most is not the issue that led them to complain, but the way in which the NHS responded when they did so. Complaints, it appears, breed complaints about complaints.
Filed under: reading and writing, service design | Tags: are you being served?, Chris Downs, livework, revolution, service design, the design council, Trish Lorenz
Trish Lorenz, design journalist and former service design consultant with Virgin Atlantic, tells the Design Council the benefits of service design are becoming clearer as the economic climate worsens; the need for businesses to place retaining and delighting customers at the top of their agenda has never been more urgent.
Readers are introduced to the term of service design via the story of a trip to the cinema.
This is an excellent article, although I was a little disappointed to read about IDEO’s Keep the Change project again. This project seems to have been the favourite example for the past three years.
Although, something we don’t read about too often in this context – bad service design! Lorenz also give us some examples of service design disasters…now there is a interesting title. Tell me about your service disasters…
Filed under: made me think, reading and writing | Tags: design thinking, fast company, mark dziersk
the methodology commonly referred to as design thinking is a proven and repeatable problem-solving protocol that any business or profession can employ to achieve extraordinary results.
This is best explanation of Design Thinking I have read.
Dziersk breaks it down into four parts:
- Define the problem
- Create and consider many options
- Refine selected directions
- Repeat ( optional )
- Pick the winner, execute
“Defining the problem via design thinking requires the suspension of judgment in defining the problem statement. What we say can be very different to what we mean. The right words are important. It’s not “design a chair”, it’s…“create a way to suspend a person”. The goal of the definition stage is to target the right problem to solve, and then to frame the problem in a way that invites creative solutions.”
Question; How many designers will it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer; Why a light bulb?
Filed under: made me think, reading and writing | Tags: ethonomics, fast company, future
Fast Company asks “What is Ethonomics?”
“The end of the modern financial system as we know it has cleared the way for an era of ethical economics, or “Ethonomics.” We live in a world that’s resource-constrained but ingenuity-rich. So an upstart generation of entrepreneurs–and innovators within the world’s biggest companies–are founding businesses that are good for the world as well as the bottom line. They are practicing social change through urban revitalization, sustainable agriculture, green IT, alternative energy and online community-powered investing.
Any business that claims to be truly sustainable and innovative should be increasingly efficient with energy and natural resources, transparent and accountable, and good on balance for people and other living things.
Ethonomics is a hybrid of technology, design, and social responsibility, and at Fast Company we believe it is the future of business.”
I am curious…please share any links or info you have on this new found term!
