photo: Michael Oh (CC BY 2.0 – thanks!)

It’s great the way this happens… In parallel, many people thinking in similar ways, but calling it by different names. “Service design” came out of the bubbling pot that also contained transformation design, system design (from a user perspective!), design by transformation, experience design, user experience design, user-centred design, etc. But when it all came down, the linguistic prizes pretty much landed on user experience and service design.

We still have angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin debates about how different these two things are. And for what it’s worth, my view is that service design is a user-centred approach to systems design, and seeks to develop an integrated offering across touchpoints through beautiful, engaging and useful user experiences.

A new label has been bubbling up in the last year or so: UX strategist. So… is it a planner? is it a design strategist? is it a service designer? is it an insight person? is it a social media consultant? a design ethnographer? a UX analytics expert?

I believe it could cover any of these, and it’s great that there is wide range of possibilities because of what this represents: the widening acceptance that in-depth understanding and engagement with users/audiences/customers/players needs to start way before the first wireframe is drawn or even way before the first Agile story is written on an index card.

Where I believe this is heading, is a world in which we not only start thinking about the strategy for the user experience way before specification stage, but a world where most organisations are eager to use user experience and service design as a strategic weapon in early stage proposition development. Yes, I know some people call that “design thinking,” but, that’s cool.

I’ll leave for another post, or for you to post, reflections on the research regarding increasing weather extremes and climate change. However, note that two years ago, I wrote my first snow post in February. Last year, the first snow was in January. You can see where this paragraph is headed, so I’ll move on.

Today, I decided to work at home, rather than face the crush and uncertainty of the reduced Southeastern Railway services. Southeastern has had a number of issues to deal with in the last few days, including a tree on the line, train failures, probably frozen switches, and, sadly, a fatality on one line during the first day of snow.

The Southeastern site details what they are doing to address the probability that we will have more severe (snowy) winters. Efforts include issuing Blackberrys to train drivers to “receive immediate updates from Control and pass information to customers” (which makes me wonder about the role of old-skool radio comms, in the age of mobility). They have also redesigned the site to make status more visible, rebuilt the backend to support greater traffic volumes, and are using Twitter.

They have apparently taken a systems approach to severe weather, and created a reduced schedule. I would imagine this is with the philosophy that fewer trains running more predictably is better than full-on chaos.

From a service design perspective it’s good and helpful… but reactive.

On the prevention side, they are testing heating strips for the third rail, and running a trial of anti and de-icing techniques with the University of Birmingham.

The Network Rail site describes their own work in fighting weather conditions, which includes “Two £1.6m multi-purpose vehicles (MPVs), fitted with lasers to blast leaf mulch off the track.” (Lasers! In my day, we just had the sand train!)

Still, this isn’t happening fast enough, is it? And so much of it is about fighting weather incidents. As we can all tell from never-ending weekend engineering work, there are general improvement works, but do they include fully upgrading the signal system, or installing switch heaters across the board? Further, are they exploring machine to machine (internet-of-things), comms? What about new forms of data visualisation? Couldn’t these kinds of technology help?

I would hazard a guess there isn’t enough investment to catch up fast enough, and, the excuse would be that there isn’t enough money. Here is where the armchair economist steps in. Last year, the Federation of Small Businesses estimated the productivity losses from a single day of snow absence as £1.2 billion. Surely, with the increasing incidence of snow, the economic argument for increased investment is there. And, it would create employment, and perhaps even become another(?) opportunity for the UK to lead in technology innovation in aid of infrastructure. That would be cool.
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Footnote: while having a quick look around the web for train telematics and railway M2M, I came across some interesting work being done at the University of Lancaster, including

I came across Palcom through finding a link to a working paper by Johan M Sanne (the basis of a chapter in the anthology), on an ethnographic study he did with railway workers about how they troubleshoot and communicate problems with infrastructure. His approach is informative for those of us doing design ethnography.

Night box office in Berlin

On the eve of the UK spending review (slash-and-burn) announcements, it’s difficult to remain optimistic about the opportunities for service design in a climate of 500,000 projected public service job cuts and knock-on private sector job losses. However, in an effort to not be pessimistic, I will try to believe that a downturn can be a propitious time to innovate – in any case, at the grass roots level.

I’ve just returned from the Service Design Network Conference in Berlin, which I attended on behalf of the ThoughtWorks experience design team, and where I experienced many stimulating conversations, workshops, and presentations.

Lucy Kimbell’s keynote on Service Design at the Crossroads was an excellent reminder to celebrate and exploit the unique skills and sensibility that design brings to the inter-disciplinary mix, as many service design offerings now overlap with other consulting professions.

Despite the climate of cutbacks, there were many sessions on design innovation in public services. I found this symptomatic of hope, even as we read the list of 192 non-departmental bodies (quangos) that the UK government is planning to cut. Among these are organisations that have used design innovation methods — including co-design, co-creation, user research, visualisation and prototyping — in their work.

Toke Stub Barter’s presentation on his work with the Innovation Center Copenhagen touched on creating a sensitive interface between public services and private lives, and the challenges of changing attitudes and behaviour through design. It’s interesting to note that, in Denmark, they use the term “welfare” as a positive designation.

Other topics covered by sessions included:

• health/wellbeing, e.g. a provocative discussion raised by Gianna Ericson & Augusta Meill, on whether the problems inherent in the model of patient-as-consumer raised doubts about patient centricity in health service design
• education, including using service design to innovate across the spectrum of eduction, designing design eduction, and examples of innovation projects based in schools, such as Ksenija Kuzmina’s work on using design in education for sustainable development in UK primary schools
• business case studies, including Engine’s work for the Portuguese airport authority, and a presentation by Marianne Norelius and Johan Dovelius, representing the client (Apoteket AB) and consultancy respectively, which hightlighted development of an online touchpoint integrated with a real-life health advice service offered in pharmacies. Interestingly, Apoteket AB’s turn to service design was partly sparked by a change in Swedish legislation, removing the monopoly on sales of (at least some classes of) medications, leading to commoditisation of a portion of their offering

Like many conferences, there were concurrent sessions, and choices were often difficult. I unfortunately missed

• Eleanor Davies’ workshop on social nodes
• Erick Morhr’s presentation on Measuring the Value of Service Design
• Stefano Maffei, Elena Pacenti, Beatrice Villari’s presentation on their proposal and development of a Compasso d’Oro prize for Service Design
• Giovanni Inella and Franco Papeschi’s presentation on the innovation project they were involved in, in Burkina Faso.

I enjoyed several roundtables (including our miniature cafe-table on Service Design and Agile), and Work-Play-Experience’s workshop on drama tools for service design and prototyping.

This quick overview is somewhat impressionistic, and I’m hoping that there will be videos and slides linked from the SDN site once they have had time to consolidate.

Among the discussions of theory and methods, there was a real hunger for implementation.

Service thinking and systems thinking applied to design have been conscious approaches for at least 35 years (see Jeff Howard’s list). So, the idea of a human-centric approach to intangible systems is not new, or wildly fanciful. In the past few years, there have been many research and pilot projects under the specific banner of service design, transformation design, social innovation, etc. These pilots are good things. And there are many more examples of touchpoint and product design which has been enriched by taking a “service thinking” approach. Some consultancies, like Engine, are making strong inroads, particularly in commercial projects, but there is still impatience for more breakthroughs into actual entire service offerings, in real-world implementations.

Part of this is the difficulty of “getting the right people in the room” to approach problems on a holistic scale. There is also the recognition that, once a service has been conceived of and designed from a human-centric perspective, there are often large requirements for organisational change, and systems design (including logistics and infrastructure), which are not core skills of service design as an emerging inter-discipline. As service design matures, I believe that discussions, alliances and methodology will move forward on these issues.

But in the meanwhile, it is 19th October 2010. Tomorrow, we’ll learn what public services and innovation will be left in the UK after budget slashing. We’ll see the effects on the overall economy in the coming years. I’m trying hard to remain optimistic.

In the last few years a new international cultural meme has developed: the apparent belief that photos of people who “look natural with no facial expressions eg smiling, grinning or frowning” deliver better national security than pictures of relaxed, smiling, happy people. At least this must be a meme for those who set the requirements for ID photos, e.g. a driver’s license or passport.

I just had my driver’s license re-photo’d. No, I am not going to post the photo, but you’ll get the idea from a friend’s comment that I look like something from (what would be) a very grim Madame Tussaud’s exhibit.

Another friend just got his Netherlands passport, and the photo took over 45 minutes of digital re-shooting to get right. “Right” means that his head shape and distance between the ears(!) fit within very strict guidelines.

Granted, that his new passport has a laser-etching on the reverse side of his photo, generated by his mug shot reversed, so that as you hold it up to the light, you see through the paper completely aligned with the photo on the front side. Way cool. But, again: no smiling. Apparently light-heartedness messes with laser beams.

Even Denmark, the country with the highest worldwide score for happiness, states in their consulate site “No smiling and no headgear please!,” although they include that friendly exclamation point.

I know I’m showing my age, but I remember when getting a passport photo was an opportunity to show an interesting face to the world. An opportunity, it seems, that is denied to most people now. OK, maybe with all of our online profiles, etc., we can shed this particular opportunity.

But even in these times, wouldn’t we rather that the first impression we give is of an approachable, happy individual? Doesn’t this precondition any interaction we have with officialdom, at least slightly?

One theory about what is behind this, is that it is due to the spread of face-recognition technology; showing emotion through facial expression “distorts” our machine-readable features.

The dystopian vision that emerges is of airports and major urban centres that are legislated as expression-free zones – no laughing, smiling, and certainly no expressions of sorrow. Just looking “natural with no facial expressions.”

But maybe we could get an emotion-zone set up next to the cigarette smokers.

Update!: Now the photo booths have to warn against public displays of happiness:

photo: dan paluska (cc: attrib 2.0 gen – thanks!)

During a recent trawl for blogs on sustainability and service design, I came across an old post on sustainability and user experience that, I believe, still has good bones.

Alexa Andrezejeski’s Adaptive Path post, from early 2008, addresses the question of what UX and sustainability have to do with each other. She writes about a discussion at Adaptive Path, which came up with a set of principles, including:

Experience is closely tied to sustainable behavior: People act un-sustainably because it’s often much easier or results in a better experience than doing otherwise….

Make sustainable experiences more compelling than the alternatives….
Understand and appeal to people’s motivations, values and aspirations…
Harness the power of information to help people make better decisions….
Promote a service-mindset vs. a product-mindset…
Communicate the business value of sustainability….

Her post ends with an expression of frustration with the difficulty of finding or creating opportunities to put this awareness into practice in aid of furthering sustainability.

Since 2008, people’s consciousness of the issues has intensified, as has awareness of the evidence of increasing climate chaos. So there is greater openness to the need for services/products that apply the congruence of user experience and sustainability, or even consideration of the one in the development of the other.

But the future is uneven, isn’t it. For example, see the problems around the launch of  PG&E smart meters in California, written about by Tom Raftery (PG&E smart meter communication failure – lessons for the rest of us).

Consumers who adopted smart meters faced significantly higher bills, without a corresponding increase in electricity use, resulting in a class action lawsuit against PG&E. In his Green Monk post, Raftery addresses the issues created by poor user experience and service design at the forefront of innovation intended to change individual behaviour in the aid of sustainability:

There are a number of problems here – all to do with transparency and communication.

If, as PG&E say, this is because of “customers not shifting demand to off-peak times when rates are lower”, then it follows that PG&E have either failed to communicate the value of shifting demand or the time when rates are lower….

It seems that PG&E’s smart grid rollout is woefully under-resourced at the back-end. What PG&E should have is a system where customers can see their electrical consumption in real-time (on their phone, on their computer, on their in-home display, etc.) but also, in the same way that credit card companies contact me if purchasing goes out of my normal pattern, PG&E should have a system in place to contact customers whose bills are going seriously out of kilter. Preferably a system which alerts people in realtime if they are consuming too much electricity when the price is high, through their in-home display, via sms,Twitter DM, whatever.

Since 2008, there is much more sustainability-related data available, and many more opportunities to bring that data to individuals wherever they are at the time.

Three vectors of development that UX/service designers and developers are pursuing are: connecting to this data (both real time and historic), making it meaningful to individuals, and turning that meaining into motivation. The Adaptive Path post, although pre-dating current levels of connectedness and urgency, has the basic tenets to advance sustainable user experience, and user-friendly sustainability.

Remembering my post from last year, when snowfall unleashed much irony-free snowman-building fun; here we are again, with the wonder of the white stuff charming the average Londoner.

One difference is that there is a lot more on Twitter this year about #uksnow and the tweet-mining UK snow map is now at version 2.0.

However, many people are trying to figure out the relationship between the colder winters we are facing, versus climate change and global warming. In his Comment is Free post on the Guardian today, Robert Henson differentiates between the overall trends of climate change:

What’s different now is that climate change is gradually shifting the odds toward record-hot summers and away from record-cold winters. The latter aren’t impossible; they’re just increasingly hard to get, like scoring a straight flush on one trip to Vegas and a royal flush the next.

It’s also critical to remember the “global” in global warming. Even if every inch of land in the northern hemisphere were unusually cold, that would only represent 20% of Earth’s surface. There’s plenty of warmth elsewhere around the world…

and the cause of the current cold weather:

If you’re craving a scapegoat for this winter, consider the Arctic oscillation. The AO is a measure of north-south differences in air pressure between the northern midlatitudes and polar regions. When the AO is positive, pressures are unusually high to the south and low to the north. This helps shuttle weather systems quickly across the Atlantic, often bringing warm, wet conditions to Europe. In the past month, however, the AO has dipped to astoundingly low levels – among the lowest observed in the past 60 years. This has gummed up the hemisphere’s usual west-to-east flow with huge “blocking highs” that route frigid air southward.

Why is this important? We are all trying to judge the evidence of major environmental change. Individual action is obviously no substitute for government commitment, but in polluting societies, the sum of individual actions will be significant. The persuasion to change will be based on our perception of what is happening in the world. Confusion is more likely to result in inaction.

Henson’s  post is also headed by the photo “Baboons at Knowsley Safari Park try to keep warm with hot potatoes.” You are going to have a look now, aren’t you?

Monday morning, and we’re traveling north on track number five through London Bridge station. North! Can you ever imagine?

I have always suspected that the only way to undo the mess that has been rush hour at London Bridge was to do something radical, or many things radical.

Southeastern Railway had their big, new timetable launch this Monday. They had preceded it by saying that it had involved a great deal of consultation, use projections and planning, but while they hoped that the changes would be generally appreciated, they also expected some people to be disappointed with the results.

There have been mixed reviews. The changes include the introduction of the North Kent high speed line, up to St Pancras, which dramatically decreases journey times from major towns, but costs a premium to use (around 30%).

Some lines have had service reduced, and there have been major route changes. From the customer perspective, it’s quite difficult to get the big picture of the changes.

The line I travel on seems somewhat better in terms of crowding on the trains, but I suspect it is at the expense of other line reductions. Given the growth in London’s population, until new lines are opened, I imagine this will be impossible to solve in an entirely neutral way.

However, we don’t seem to be faced with the taunting presence of emptier trains passing through the station without stopping, followed by packed trains which did stop, which was the previous norm.

The London Assembly recently release a study on the negative social impact of overcrowding on the tube, Too Close for Comfort, in which commuters discussed the stress of being crammed into rush hour trains, and the subsequent decline in social behaviour through competition for space and seats. All of which makes a good argument for transport development and service design in the name of both sustainability and convivial society.

Like the proverbial cobbler whose children go barefoot, circle-d has very bad about utilising our own expertise – in this case to maintain a consolidated, up-to-date online presence.

So, today begins the relaunch of the circle-d site from this blog, to explain and present current work and thinking in user experience, service design and strategic design.

While material is being assembled, please find gathered below some relevant blog posts that were originally posted in my personal blog. And for those of a nostalgic nature, you can still visit the old product and interaction design focused site (now with Flash 5!!).

Photo of “output of the new and improved CandyFab 4000″ by oskay  on Flickr under creative commons Attribution 2.0 Generic. Thanks!

…not necessarily simultaneously

I just saw this new-style safety pin and was fascinated by the idea that someone felt it was worthwhile, and a sensible business proposition, to improve on the old classic. I think, in many contexts, it would be an improvement. Smaller, lighter, less material, fewer production processes. All good things. And very elegant design. Undoubtedly, there are instances where the old, larger and more robust version would be more appropriate.

I would imagine it is inspired by shower curtain clips, and I saw one reference to knitting stitch holders. Nice re-appropriation of design.

After a quick search, I only found one other design geek interested enough to mention it.

The other instance is something that Franco P brought to my attention: the newly released book, Canine Ergonomics. I haven’t read it (yet) but as I am intrigued by working dogs and their relationship to their human colleagues, I find it interesting to see user experience research moving across species. I am, however a little concerned by the part of the blurb that says:

It sounds like it aims to isolate accrued user-generated knowledge from science, which is a divide that user-centred design, design ethnography and co-design have been bridging in the human sphere. And increasing interest in areas like pursuasive technology, are bringing science closer to user experience.

(I know this seems earnest, but I am honestly interested in it, and trying not to make cheap ironic points at working dogs’ expense.)

Originally posted 22 August 2009.

Can anyone tell me why having a toothbrush at work in a UK corporate environment is faintly embarrassing? I have worked in small design studios that were home-like enough to allow for people parking their toothbrushes in the loo.

I can’t remember what it was like in US corporate workplaces, but in the UK, I feel compelled to palm the toothbrush and paste, and scuttle to the ladies’. Apparently in Germany, it is not a thing of strangeness. Witness above the happy array of brushes, paste and other devices.

Is it something about the “personal” being stored in the public realm? It makes me think of Chartier, a (19th century?) workers’ restaurant, now very much on the tourist trail, which has small drawers built into the architecture, where patrons would store their napkins between meals – the little drawers that look like miniature filing cabinets below the carafes. (Photo by kev_walsh, on Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic, thanks!)

So, when is Muji, or some other clever manufacturer going to come up with a mini storage method for 6 to 36 toothbrushes and accoutrements? With some method of personalising the front of the drawer, so people can easily locate their own. When I have a moment, I’ll return with the start of an open source scribble for how I would do one, and the name of that online one-off manufacturing source.

Originally posted on 9 February 2009