The talks couldn’t have been more different at this weeks service design drinks. Stephen Cox, Customer Experience Manager at Westpac opened the night with a presentation on touch-point workshops. Janna DeVylder from Meld Studios invited the audience to ponder whether the service designer has a role to play in the execution of projects. The first was a talk around design education, the second a discussion about design implementation.

Stephen Cox’s workshop is taken from At-One and a more detailed description of it is available at service-innovation.org. Participants are asked to design an experience for a persona across a journey using a range of touch-points cards. To see if the freshly designed experience stacks up, participants then consider if it works with a different persona; and if the experience is still coherent if touch-points are removed.

Stephen’s team is responsible for shifting Westpac culture to be more customer centric. But it seems his team could also affect  the corporate culture itself. The sessions involve participants from different areas of the bank that may otherwise not get the chance to work together, let alone meet one another. The workshop sessions have participants design their products and services for touch-points they may not have traditionally considered to be in their remit, and to consider their output as existing within a broad range of experiences.

The next discussion asked whether the service designer should get their hands dirty in implementation. Janna DeVylder asked “How do you design for the implementation of service?“ It’s an interesting question that goes to the heart of a utilitarians view on user experience design itself—that its easy to conjure up the perfect solution when you don’t have to be responsible for rolling it out.

At first the audience seemed to be in some sort of consensus that a service designer should play a role in implementation and all that is needed for this to happen is a suitable metaphor to communicate what they are doing in the trenches, be that director or composer. As the discussion unfolded other considerations arose:

• Is it just a matter of passing on appropriate tools to get the client to the next stage?
• How do you work towards change management?
• How do you make prototypes for service design?
• How do you test concepts?

Having worked in implementing web projects I advocated that producers are needed—people that are responsible for the detail but who understand the vision. Some people thought that I was still riffing on the director metaphor, but I wasn’t. By the end of the discussion everyone agreed concept and implementation are two very different types of engagements.

The first presentation was about building design thinking in a corporate culture. The second was about the designer playing a role end to end. Advocates need to be built within organisations. Someone else is ultimately responsible for the products, services and experiences that we may be designing. They are the ones who need to take ownership of the ideas as they are the best placed in seeing them through. I don’t think that concepts don’t get implemented because a designer isn’t there to realise their vision. Concepts don’t get implemented when they don’t have people championing their cause.

If you have not been, Service Design Drinks is a casual meet-up, where guest speakers present and take questions from the audience. It’s held regularly at the Trinity Bar in Surry Hills. The fourth event was held on 18 May and was attended by 30 or so user experience designers, including a team from Different.

The last event was a panel discussion moderated by Damian Kernahan, from Proto Partners. The panellists were:

• Opher Yom Tov, formally of Ideo, now working with BT
• Rod Farmer, Co-founder and Director of Research, Mobile Experience
• Susan Wolfe, Managing Director, Optimal Experience
• Faruk Avdi, from the NSW Department of Education and Training

The opening question put to the panel was “What is service design?”

• Opher Yom Tov: Weaving together discreet experiences in an ongoing relationship.
• Rod Farmer: Meaningful value at the point of interaction.
• Susan Wolfe: Thinking about the broader context. Experience design is service design.
• Faruk Avdi: The ecosystem a product exists; experience design is a subset of service design.

Much of the early discussion veered around product design, defined as designing for the experience and the utility that it brings, and not focussing exclusively on the product itself.

A conversation followed about the importance of leadership and change management in service design projects. Several challenges were discussed:

• How do you model relationships?
• If the bar is always moving, how do you exceed the standard that has been set?
• Companies do not measure people’s performance on delivering a whole service. What KPIs should be set to help put service initiatives into operation?

The final question put to the panel was, who’s doing it well? This was best answered by Ant from Different who said that the best service experiences are being had at the ma and pop stores. Everyone agreed; the challenge is getting big organisations behaving like small business. (Interestingly, Mark Pollard made the exact same analogy at a Social Media Club event when asked about the challenges businesses face in participating effectively in social media).

It was a lively discussion, where the panel conceded that service design is a fairly new term. It was interesting to see that the industry is still forming its opinions as to what service design really is, and how it differs to experience design and also interesting to see how the field of user experience is expanding and defining itself.

An edited version of this post first appeared on the blog Different UX

Postscript June 17, 2010

Audio of the event has been published on the Service Design Drinks blog:
http://servicedesigning.com.au/2010/06/17/service-design-thinks-drinks-4/

* Warning: this film review contains spoilers *

Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) is in the business of firing people. He travels the US first class, arrives at his destination to do what his clients are too scared to do themselves.

I couldn’t help but think of work as I watched this film. Not because people are being fired! But because the film is a great illustration of service design, and the pitfalls of an imperfect software implementation.

The opening of the film follows Ryan as he fast tracks airport check in with his first class frequent flyer VIP credentials. He receives personalised greetings and preferential treatment at every turn. Any interaction with the airport, airline, rental car service, hotel, is geared toward his status. Ryan is aware of the service he’s getting, he’s earned it,  it’s “the perfect experience”.

This is until a young go-getter, Natalie Keener, comes along and in an efficiency drive to cut costs and optimise the contract-for-fire business designs a system to take Ryan off the road.

The video conferencing set up is accompanied by a model that maps out the script for call centre operators to fire someone. The workflow includes what to do when the firee at the other end goes postal.

Can technology and a perfect workflow replace Ryan, and worse — stop his frequent flyer miles?

There are some great examples here for every experience  architect, and even a case study in why user centred design should be part of any software project.

Rating: 4 stars from me. 5 stars for EAs.

Related Links

Film review from a frequent flyer perspective. Hilarious.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2184-Frequent-Flyer-Examiner~y2009m12d4-Up-In-The-Air-with-George-Clooney-movie-review-by-a-frequent-flyer

Up in the Air Tweets. Great visualisation
http://www.upintheairtweets.com/

Up in the Air Official Website
http://www.theupintheairmovie.com