Touchpoint Vol. 3 No. 2 - Organisational Change

volume 3 | no. 2 | 12,80 euro

September 2011

Organisational Change •

Overcoming the ‘Monkeysphere’ Challenge Jesse Grimes and Mark Alexander Fonds

•

Innovating in Health Care – an Environment Adverse to Change Francesca Dickson, Emily Friedman, Lorna Ross

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Service Transformation: Service Design on Steroids Melvin Brand Flu

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from the editors

Organisational Change

Many years ago, I worked for Hewlett Packard in Human Resources Development and I was in charge of organisational development for three business units. I had studied psychology, had received a great education in organisational development at the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institut in Switzerland and I had studied systemic consultation, and with this background I supported both large and small organisational change projects. At that time, our reference systems for theory and methods of change were Lewin, Argyris, Senge, Schein, Comelli or the Tavistock Institute, to name but a few. A background in psychology or social sciences was normally the entrance ticket into the world of organisational development. Of course, at that time, there was also a strong community of business-led approaches to change. The McKinseys & Co did quantitative analysis of processes from the outside, leaving thick documents full of recommendations when they left, whereas the organisational development approach worked from within, involving people in the process of change: co-creating, as one would say today. Since those times, many new concepts have come and gone, and one of the latest buzzwords is ‘Change Management’.

But never has design played an explicit or crucial role in these concepts.

So why is this issue of Touchpoint about organisational change? There are several answers to this question. When design started to expand its scope, moving from products, graphics and interfaces towards interactions, experiences and systems – in short, towards services – it became clear that the construction of a service is in its organisation: the structures, the processes and the flesh of a service is in the culture, the interaction, the people. So design and innovation of service systems automatically has to be about organisational change.

With the growing experience of the service design community, it became clear that service design really brings something unique to the process of change. It is about interdisciplinarity, about co-discovery and co-creation, about deep exploration and radical user focus, it is about visualisation and about prototyping and, even more, it is about the magic of design. The magic that gives empowerment to people, of being the creator of change, the magic of envisioning solutions that do not yet exist, the magic of hard work combined with creativity and fun.

By the way: we also had fun working as the Touchpoint Advisory Board and getting things changed! Throughout the last month, we have developed some conceptual changes that will hopefully make TP even more interesting and informative. The main topic will be covered in the feature section, there will be new regular sections on Cross Discipline, Education and Research, Tools and Methods, Profiles and ‘Inside SDN’. We hope to bring you a broad variety of information and inspiration. Please, let us know what you think. And, of course, recommend Touchpoint!

For the editorial and the advisory board Birgit Mager

Birgit Mager is professor for service design at Köln International School of Design (KISD), Cologne, Germany.

She is founder and director of sedes research – the centre for service design research at KISD, co-founder and president of Service Design Network and chief editor of Touchpoint.

Jesse Grimes has twelve years experience as an interaction designer and consultant, now specialising in service design. He has worked in London, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf and Sydney, and is now based in Amsterdam with Dutch agency Informaat.

Jeff Howard, editor of ‘Design for Service’, a wide-ranging collection of research, patterns and observation focused on service design. He currently works as a designer and researcher in San Francisco.

Dianna Miller is professor and programme coordinator for the service design BFA/MFA programme at Savannah College of Art & Design.

She has twenty years experience as an interaction designer, user researcher, project manager, and content strategist.

Elisa O’Donnell is an organisational innovation consultant who has worked internationally with leadership teams for more than 20 years, helping them achieve innovation successes and build the necessary capabilities to promote and sustain innovation in their organizations.

contents

18 feature: organisational change

8 2

imprint

3

from the editors

6

news

10

forrester’s take

cross-diszipline 12 Love at First Touch: Creating

Tangible Service Innovations Linda Lichel and Jos Lemmink

14 Synthesizing Service Design

and Service Science for Service Innovation

Lia Patrício and Raymond P. Fisk

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20 From Products to Services Paul Thurston

24 Leading by Example: Effecting

Organisational Change in a Third Sector Organisation Laura Warwick and Mark Bailey

28 The Change Agent's Secret...

Martin Beyerle, Daniela Hammel and Jan Schröder

32 Designing for Doctor-Patient

Interactions During Leavetaking Kipum Lee

42 Designing the Service of

Service Design Laura Keller

44 The Coalition of the Willing Bruno Jaspaert and Jürgen Tanghe

48 Innovating in Health Care –

an Environment Adverse to Change Francesca Dickson, Emily Friedman, Lorna Ross

54 Service Transformation:

Service Design on Steroids Melvin Brand Flu

60 The Expanding Scope

‘Monkeysphere’ Challenge

of Service Design: Effecting Strategic and Organisational Impact

Jesse Grimes and Mark Fonds

Angela Meyer

38 Overcoming the

66

92

education and research 64 Service Prototyping in Action!

Satu Miettinen

tools and methods 68 10 Lessons from the

Propagation of Design Practice in Organisations

Joe Heapy and Julie McManus

72 Creating a Framework

for Organisations New to Service Design

profiles 86 Interview: Jamin Hegeman Miriam Becker

88 Interview: Alex Nisbett Miriam Becker

90

inside sdn 92 The Service Design

Global Conference

Matthew Marino

76 Writing on the Wall Lawrence Abrahamson and Marco Cimatti

80 Strategy by Design Roberto Saco

dos & don’ ts

Jamin Hegeman and Alex Nisbett

96 Boosting the French Service

Design Community Ione Ardaiz Osacar

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member map 5

Insider

design wales launches service school The Welsh Assembly Government have sponsored a new ‘service school’ for product, interactive and branding agencies that want to extend their business and build a service design capability. The programme will support thirty of the most innovative and ambitious companies in Wales.

Every six months, six companies will enrol in the service school, where Design Wales will provide training in applying and practising service design. This activity will be deliv-

addressing poverty through human-centred design Aiming at addressing poverty and spreading human-centred design through the social sector, IDEO will launch a new nonprofit organisation, IDEO.org, in autumn 2011. The fields of interest of the organisation will be partnering with non-profits to design solutions to problems in

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ered through a series of workshops and one-to-one support, as well as a wider series of service design events for the creative industries. Wales has a large number of successful design companies, but at present only a small number are practising service design. The programme aims to change this and establish a hub of internationally recognised expertise within Wales.

The service design programme is led by Paul Thurston, who says: “We are always looking to develop new programmes that support the creative industries: the service design programme is evidence that the Welsh Assembly Government understands the economic impact of design, and we value their support”. The service design school has been developed with six design agencies whose spectrum of expertise ranges from product design, to brand strategy to interaction design. To keep up to date with the programme go to www.testyourservice.co.uk

different areas, using open innovation platforms and social networking to share insights on best practices and launching a year-long ‘future leaders’ fellowship program that will pair fellows from the developing world with selected IDEO staffers. Have a look at their website www.ideo.org!

The Service Design Network has set up a new membership package customised for students. We would like to invite all students interested in service design to become a student member and socialise with the service design community! You will enjoy a number of student member benefits: You can create your user profile on the SDN website, showcase yourself and your projects and connect with others, enjoy full access to the Service Design Network Community Platform and you will also have priority booking for student tickets for SDN conferences. And – most notably – you will receive a free subscription of Touchpoint, the Journal of Service Design! Have a look at the membership details and become a member at service-design-network.org!

design at the edges – 2011 ida congress taipei Get inspired by keynote speeches given by world renowned experts in the fields of economic development, the Internet, biotechnology, urbanism and international migration, seize upon major design trends at the ‘Taipei World Design Exhibition’ and the ‘Young Designers Workshop’ and acquaint yourself with Taiwan at three evenings of social events and daily design tours! More than 3000 delegates from around the world are expected for this cross-disciplinary design event organised by the International Design Alliance (IDA):

photos: Taipei – Fishtail@Taipei (flickr); San Francisco – Rich Niewiroski Jr. (wikimedia); design change – ideo.org

the service design global conference is approaching The 4th Service Design Global Conference will open its doors on October 19, 2011 in San Francisco! It will start with a student day on October 19, the two main conference days will take place on October 20 – 21 and on October 22, the SDN members and the representatives of the national chapters will come together for the annual Members’ Day. The conference topic is ‘From Sketchbook to Spreadsheet’: we’re particularly interested in understanding the impact that service design is now making on organisations’ bottom lines and in hearing just where the compelling stories of designing business strategies, mon-

etising service propositions and cultural change are coming from.

We will also be maintaining our focus on the practice and business of service design itself: examples and case studies, yes, but also on how to buy and sell service design and what the design community can learn from business and vice-versa. We are expecting over 350 participants from around the world – join us and use this opportunity to meet peers, expand networks and hear from those operating at the very heart of service design! For more information about the conference, read the article on page 92.

2011 IDA Congress 24 – 26 October 2011 Taipei International Convention Center (TICC) Taipei, Taiwan For more information browse www.2011idacongress.com

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Insider

service design basics 1.0 In order to spread service design knowledge further and help prepare the next generation of designers for the challenges of the serviceoriented world, the Service Design Network has created the ‘Service Design Basics’ workshop. The first workshop, ‘1.0’, introduces participants to the discipline: explaining the basics, elements and processes and putting various service design

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tools & methods into practice in a short project. This 12-hour activity is specifically intended for people who are new to the field of service design and are curious about exploring it. This workshop caters to schools, organisations and people willing to promote and to introduce service design to their members and peers. It is a great starting point for a different way of thinking.

In one of the experiences, in Brazil, we had three groups that were working to develop innovative services in the News industry. In just 12 hours they learnt a great deal about service design concepts and methods. They uncovered insights into field research and conceived 10 new services. These concepts were introduced in a playful presentation with prototypes.

You can see some of the results presented and pictures on our website: http://www.servicedesign-network.org/content/ service-design-basics-10-0, If you want to make this workshop happen in your city, contact us at info@ service-design-network.org and let’s make it roll!

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new touchpoint advertising packages Do you want to make your institution or company known throughout the world of services? Do you want to grab the interest of future students, employees or customers?

Then seize the chance and advertise in Touchpoint – the first and only international service design magazine! We have set up interesting new advertising packages including free copies of the journal. Members of SDN will enjoy special discounts!

Find all details on the Touchpoint media sheets: http://bit.ly/tpmedia

d in Intereste esign ed ic rv e s more e to ubscrib news? S SDN Newse , th ‘Insider’ ave a look at h letter or here: s issues r u io v re p e id s in n bit.ly/sd

scad.edu/servicedesign

design reigns.

SCAD offers the only service design B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees in the United States.

By Kerry Bodine

Organisational Change Requires Deep Understanding of Service Ecologies I recently read a story about the butterflies in Zion National Park: apparently, there aren’t as many of them as there used to be and, after decades of research, scientists have finally figured out why. Zion National Park, located in the southwest United States, was developed in the early 1900s, and with that development came an influx of tourists.

Scared off by human foot traffic, cougars retreated from certain areas of the park, and with no natural predators, the deer population exploded.

These cute (but ravenous) animals became unstoppable in their quest to devour everything in their path, including cottonwood tree saplings.

And with fewer cottonwood trees reaching adolescence and maturity, the banks of the streams lost their primary source of erosion protection.

Soil erosion made it difficult for wildflowers to bloom, and fewer wildflowers meant fewer butterflies.1 Natural ecosystems, like the one in Zion National Park, comprise complex interdependent relationships that change over time.

Service ecologies are quite similar. They encompass a complex set of relationships among a company’s internal employees, external partners, and customers, and it’s these people’s decisions and

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actions that collectively determine the quality and characteristics of all service interactions.

Healthy Service Ecologies Provide Value to All Parties Involved Customers want useful, easy, and enjoyable services that fit into the context of their lives. Frontline and back office employees want fulfilling jobs and a good pay cheque. Business stakeholders and external partners need to meet certain business objectives.

If one party in the service ecology isn’t getting what they want or need, they will often try to find a workaround. For example, a customer expecting a home delivery during work hours might leave a note on their front door, instructing the delivery service to leave the package with a neighbour. Or a call centre employee, tasked with a short average handle time, might try everything within their power to get

off the phone as quickly as possible, regardless of whether or not they’re solving callers’ problems.

If the workaround is successful, knowledge of the workaround spreads, behaviours shift accordingly and the service ecology evolves. But if the workaround is unsuccessful – or if too many workarounds are required in order to gain any real value – employees, partners and customers will likely leave, just as the cougars and the butterflies left the areas of Zion National Park mostly heavily trafficked by tourists.

Core Problems in Unhealthy Service Ecologies Why do so many companies fail to provide value to the employees,

forrester’s take

photo: Tambako the Jaguar (flickr)

partners and customers in their service ecologies? One root cause is that they don’t approach service delivery from a systems perspective.

Customers have specific needs as they discover, evaluate, buy, access, use and get support for a company’s services and related products. But rather than view their work as it fits into the context of customer journeys, most employees and partners focus on just the channel or function that they’re responsible for. For example, the website owner at a major retailer recently told me that she hardly ever speaks to the execs heading up the call centre or retail stores. And marketing departments, together with their advertising agencies, often make promises without first determining whether the rest of the organisation can deliver on them.

To make matters worse, executives place too much of the burden for service delivery on frontline employees like retail staff and call centre agents. In reality, behind-

“Similar to natural ecosystems, service ecologies encompass a complex set of relationships among a company’s internal employees, external partners, and customers.”

the-scenes employees can have an equal or greater impact on customer interactions. Take, for example, the seven – yes, seven – pages of ticketing fare rules on the United Airlines website, which are full of unintelligible pseudo-sentences like: “provided - combinations are for carrier co/ac/lh/ua in any rule in tariff ipra - between usa/ca-area 2/3 and guam-area 2 for travel via the atlantic.”

You can tell that United’s legal eagles had their hands all over this, and I’m guessing United’s IT folks had something to do with formatting all seven pages in all caps. In contrast, Southwest Airlines’ lawyers made the very humane decision to put fare rules in plain English, like “lower fares may be available”, and the company’s web designers formatted the rules in short, easy-toscan bulleted lists.

Indeed, all parts of the service ecology are interconnected. Tweaking one small part, like a return policy or sales incentive, can have massive consequences somewhere else. But too many companies just don’t fully understand the full breadth of service touchpoints or the intricate set of decisions and actions that ultimately influence customer interactions.

Forrester’s Recommendations In order to improve service delivery, company executives must embark on an organisational change initiative to shift the dynamics of their service ecology. Service designers – who plan and organize complex systems

of people, products, interfaces, services, and spaces – are ideally suited to help with this task. While it might be tempting to dive right into envisioning a new or improved future state, the first step to successful and sustainable organisational change is to help employees and partners see the connection between their existing day-to-day work and customer interactions. To facilitate first-hand discovery and understanding of the issues involved, hold an interactive workshop with a handful of crossfunctional employees, partners and customers. Have the group map out an important customer journey and all related service touchpoints. Then identify every person, action, system and policy that influences service delivery along this journey. Service blueprints, which are most often used to generate and define new services, make a great canvas for this type of collaborative activity.

•

References 1 Betsie Blumberg. 2009. [In Focus] Impact of a cougar decline on Zion Canyon, Zion National Park. ParkScience 26(2) . Accessed 19 May 2011 from http://www.nature.nps.gov/ParkScience/ index.cfm?ArticleID=318.

Kerry Bodine, VP & Principal Analyst, Customer Experience at Forrester Research

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By Linda Lichel and Jos Lemmink

Love at First Touch: Creating Tangible Service Innovations Collaborative Service Design

Creating service innovations is like going on a journey full of challenges and rewards. Mastering every step of this journey requires the perfect team, in order to create valuable experiences and to communicate them to a broader audience.

The Service Science Factory conducts short-term service innovation projects, integrating service design thinking into the innovation process.

In interdisciplinary teams, and together with clients, we co-create service prototypes that place the end user at the heart of every aspect of the service. The combination of academic, business and design thinking opens up new horizons, and we posit it will become a dominant approach for new service innovation developments. In close collaboration with Köln International School of Design (KISD) and its service design students, we are focusing on fastpaced concept creation. Within this creation process, service design is a distinctive driver, ensuring customer focus and value enhancement.

However, because services are intrinsically intangible in nature, companies often struggle to produce successful service innovations. We believe that embracing service design thinking and complementing it with multiple business school disciplines

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(e.g. marketing, ICT, finance) will make companies more effective in creating services that cater to their users’ needs. In the following, we lay out several key principles of success.

Even Chaos Requires Structure Creating service innovations requires creativity and sometimes even chaos. This does not mean, however, that working takes place in a ‘fuzzy’ environment. Project managers with an academic background should give guidance and should support team members in contributing their individual expertise. The team needs time and freedom to inspect the service: to go to the root of current problems, look at key stakeholders and ask questions to customers – to collect and synthesise all relevant information to gain a complete picture of the challenge. Then take all these insights and build on them to generate a new service concept that lives up to all needs and expectations of the customer.

Lastly, don’t forget to validate the new concept: ask the user and customer how it is perceived and whether it is valuable. Take feedback seriously and use it to further improve the initial concept.

‘Inspect’ Phase Centring on the Customer Services are most successful when they are built with customers and not for them. Taking a service design perspective means placing the customer at the centre and identifying their wishes and needs.

The methods used for insight generation are mostly qualitative and adapted to the characteristics of the respondent. In one of our recent projects at the Service Science Factory, children constituted the focus of interview sessions. Taking ‘traditional’ interview methods and asking the children directly what they would like to see on their favourite website would hardly have succeeded. It required putting yourself in their shoes: we gave them pencils and paper and asked them to draw their favourite meal.

Academic literature in the fields of psychology and education hereby helped in shaping interview topics and ensured comprehensive insights.

cross-discipline

The service innovation process

Featuring Interactive Methods Whereas most academic research methods are characterised by their static nature, service design methods bring information to life.

An interview set up, for example, not only consists of predefined questions, but is also designed to actively involve respondents. Tangible materials invite the respondent to interact with the topic and will generate more profound insights than their traditional counterparts.

The power of service design methods arises through their combination with traditional statistical analysis: a conjoint analysis survey that aims to find out the preferences of customers combined with insights discovered by interactive design methods is but one example for this new way of doing research.

‘Generate’ Phase Creating a Common Language When service designers join interdisciplinary teams, their ability to quickly transform the essence of conversations into visual representations is indispensable.

Words are often interpreted differently by individuals – visualisation – however, is a ‘language’ understood by all project

inspect

generate

members? In addition, service design tools help to structure the wealth of information into meaningful ideas: examples are customer journeys and personas. This creates a common basis for discussion that, in turn, increases the involvement of all project members and ultimately leads to more ideas.

‘Construct’ Phase Testing Tangibles Once the concept has been conceived, the prototype needs to be tested.

Note however, that a prototype is not only a report that is handed over to the client. People have to see, touch and feel the outcome!

Service designers possess the skills to turn the concept idea into something real and concrete. In one of the Service Science Factory projects, we developed a functional version of a training game: the end user had the opportunity to interact with the prototype and the educational researcher was

construct

able to assess the learning process on the spot. Feedback for further improvement could thus immediately be integrated.

We believe that service innovations can only be created by an interdisciplinary team combining a practical approach with scientific rigour. This unique combination helps to create customer-centric services that are engaging, useful and valued in the marketplace.

•

Linda Lichel, MSc, Services Consultant, Service Science Factory Prof. Jos Lemmink, Academic Director, Service Science Factory and Dean of Maastricht University School of Business and Economics

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By Lia Patrício and Raymond P. Fisk

Synthesizing Service Design and Service Science for Service Innovation

Lia Patrício is assistant professor at the School of Engineering at the University of Porto, Portugal. She teaches and carries out research on interdisciplinary methods for the design of service systems and was cofounder of the Master in Service Engineering and Management at the University of Porto.

Raymond P. Fisk is professor and chair, Department of Marketing, Texas State University, San Marcos, USA. He has been researching and teaching about serving customers for more than 30 years.

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The growing importance of services in the global economy and the need to foster firms’ competitiveness has brought service innovation to the forefront of research and practice priorities.

Understanding the crucial role of customer experiences and the growing complexity of service systems creates the need to develop interdisciplinary methods that unite contributions from Service Science, Management, Engineering and Design (SSMED). In this article, we will show how synthesising service design and service science can foster service innovation.

Service innovation involves finding new ways of value co-creation for the customer and the firm. Value is co-created with customers through relational exchanges and interaction experiences. As such, service innovation builds upon a strong focus on the customer experience. This requires Design Thinking (Brown 2008), which powers innovation from a thorough understanding of users and their lives.

Service design has emerged as a new field that involves understanding users and their contexts, understanding service providers and social practices and translating this understanding into developing evidence and service systems interactions (Evenson 2008). Service design makes a crucial contribution to service innovation through its holistic

perspective and co-creative processes, in order to transform user understanding into the development of services that are useful, usable and desirable (Mager 2009).

Customers today co-create their experiences through ‘systems of service systems’ that are increasingly complex.

For example, customers co-create their house purchase experience by combining a constellation of services such as estate agents, registration offices and banks. In this context, a bank needs to understand how its service fits into the customer value constellation to better design its service concept. This ‘system of systems’ view is important in broadening the firm’s perspective beyond the boundaries of the existing service and in opening up new forms of service innovation.

cross-discipline

At the company level, customers cocreate their service experiences through multiple interactions with the service system, which comprises multiple service channels, backstage support processes and technologies. Firms, such as banks, need to design their service system as integrated configurations of people, technologies and service channels, in order to enable customers to smoothly co-create their customer journeys according to their preferences.

These complex services require ’systems thinking’ to be able to bring together the different components of the service system into an integrated whole. Service Science (Chesbrough and Spohrer 2006) has emerged as an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand complex service systems and develop frameworks for service innovation.

Service science helps understand and model service systems, their actors, roles, activities and relationships between them. Service science can therefore help design complex service systems, such as systems of service systems that form customer value constellations, or multichannel service systems, which are becoming increasingly more common.

We believe that synthesising the contributions of service design and service science is crucial for designing complex service systems. Service design provides the design thinking, with holistic, co-creative and user-centred perspectives to open up the boundaries for service innovation. Service science provides the systems thinking, to help understand, model and design the complexity of service systems.

multilevel service design understanding the customer experience

designing the service offering

designing the service concept

value constellation experience

customer value constellation

designing the service system

service experience

service system architecture and navigation

designing the service encounter

service encounter experience

service experience blueprint

The Multilevel Service Design Method (MSD) for Designing Complex Service Systems In the past several years, we have synthesised the contributions of different service fields to develop the Multilevel Service Design (MSD) method (Patrício, Fisk, Cunha and Constantine 2011). MSD enables integrated design of service offerings at three hierarchical levels with a strong focus on the customer experience. MSD contains a set of interrelated models: • Designing the firm’s service concept with the customer value constellation of service offerings for the value constellation experience. In MSD, the service concept is defined as the set of benefits that the service is expected to offer to the customer and how it is positioned in the customer value constellation.

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User experience

Customer experience Service Blueprinting

Human Activity Modeling

interaction design Usage centered design Touchpoints Use cases

Value constellation Service Encounter

service management Service concept

Service Experience Blueprint

service design

Customer value constellation Service system architecture

Service evidence

Service system navigation Customer Journey

service engineering Activity Diagrams

Service system

service science

Service modeling Technology enabled services

and that each touchpoint is designed to enhance the service encounter experience, but also supports the other service levels.

By building upon in-depth studies of the customer experience, MSD adopts a usagecentred approach to enhancing customer experience at all levels.

MSD is an interdisciplinary service design method that synthesises the concepts methods, models and tools from service science, service management, service engineering, and interaction design for the design of complex service systems.

Service science provides the systems logic that helps to understand and model the different levels of customer experience and service design. Service design provides We have applied our MSD method to several service industries, such as banking a unique perspective for understanding the customer experience and a holistic and retailing. MSD enables integrated perspective for turning this understanding design of the different service levels, addressing the complexity of service systems. into new service offerings. We hope MSD is just one example of the fruitful syntheThe multilevel approach ensures that the sis of service design and service science. service concept is well integrated into the customer value constellation, that the ser- These two service communities have much to gain from further collaboration in the vice system supports the service concept and enables a desirable service experience, shared quest for service innovation.

• Designing the firm’s service system, comprising its architecture and navigation, for the service experience.

The ’service system’ is the firm’s configuration of people, service channels, processes, technologies and other resources that support the service concept.

• Designing each service encounter with the service experience blueprint for the service encounter experience. ‘Service encounters’ or ‘touchpoints’ are the moments of interaction between the customer and the firm and may take place at multiple interfaces.

•

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Systems thinking

Service design as an interdisciplinary field

New York City

SERVICE DESIGN AT PARSONS Parsons The New School for Design offers interdisciplinary courses in service design that draw on the unique resources of New York City in these and other degree programs: –Design and Management –Environmental Studies –Product Design –Integrated Design –Transdisciplinary Design –Urban Design –Design and Urban Ecologies Parsons explores new approaches to this emerging field in its DESIS Lab, a research lab that’s part of an international network of design schools and organizations promoting design for social innovation and sustainability.

www.newschool.edu/parsons2 An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

Photo: Martin Seck

photo: jwannie (flickr)

Feature

Organisational Change How Can Service Design Create or Improve Complex Systems?

By Paul Thurston

From Products to Services

How Service Design Is Being Used to Support Economic Growth Within the Advanced Manufacturing Sector in Wales

Paul Thurston, Service Design Programme lead, Design Wales.

Paul joined Design Wales in 2010 because he wanted to use his skills and experience to help Welsh manufacturers use design to shift from products to services. Previously he was head of design at the London based consultancy thinkpublic, focusing on public service innovation. @sd_wales.

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Government support for innovation has traditionally focussed on R&D, technology and manufacturing. But, in keeping with the most recent innovation policy from the European Union (Innovation Union, 2010), the Welsh Assembly Government has broadened this definition by including design-led service innovation and supporting The Service Design Programme, which is delivered by Design Wales.

Government support for business exists to improve economic growth and to help companies grow, which, in turn, improves the economy through job creation and taxation. The phrase “We are in the business of economic development� was coined by Jonathan Ball at a recent SEE Project workshop and neatly sums up why design support exists. But what about service design: can a design approach to services offer industry a positive economic impact on a region or sector?

Other organisations and design centres have established support programmes in the past and many are currently operating. For example: the Danish Design Centre (360 Design), New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (Better by Design) and the UK Design Council (Designing Demand). All are excellent illustrations of how design has been used as a tool to stimulate economic growth. The Design

Wales programme builds on previous experience, providing support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and as a lead partner in the SEE project, a European design and innovation network.

The programme launched in 2010, and uses service design as a tool for economic growth within the advanced materials and manufacturing sector. This article highlights examples from the first nine months of the programme and reflects on lessons learnt with regard to service design’s impact on business introduction/planned introduction of service innovation in manufacturing next 3 years

past 3 years

0%

10%

20%

Source: Innovation Monitor 2010 (EEF)

30%

40%

50%

60%

organisational change

growth. As it is the first programme specifically focused on manufacturing and service design, the outcomes should provide useful models for future design programmes.

Moving from Products to Services In 2009, findings from an Engineering Employers Federation (EEF) survey revealed that services account for between 15% and 20% of total revenue earned by UK manufacturers. However, these services tend to focus on fixing products, ongoing maintenance, marketing, and sales, for example, rather than a strategic move towards servitisation.

Intriguingly, a survey conducted in 2010 by the same organisation showed that the number of companies introducing or planning to introduce service innovation had jumped from 17% to 48%, highlighting the rise in interest in services from manufacturers.

This shift from products to services provides clear opportunities for service designers to support manufacturers in realising their aims. Design offers a clear path for businesses to add value to their offer, servitise their products or even adopt new service-based business models.

Design Wales’ support programme aims to capitalise on this shift and demonstrate how service design can help companies

One-to-one strategic support for your business

3 hour workshops.

Applying service design to your business

Quick advice about using service design

knowledge transfer projects

Service design programme – offer diagram achieve these gains, kick-starting a demand for design-led service innovation.

Model of Business Support The model of business support developed

by Design Wales is based on a four-step process: Events, Telephone Advisory Service, Service Essentials Workshop and the Service Strategy Programme. In order to create meaningful impact on a business, it is important to engage them over a longer period of time. The shift from products to services that service design can exploit is as much about change management as it is about design.

Many of the programme key performance indicators (KPIs) revolve around new services registered (20), improved products processes or services (75) and R&D investment induced (ÂŁ150k). When achieved, these KPIs have a significant impact on the behaviour and roles within a business, particularly in SMEs. There-

21

By Paul Thurston

Within SMEs, responsibility for all three fore it is important to establish a supof these roles generally sits with an owner/ portive ongoing relationship with these manager or small management team. companies – something we call ‘The90’.

The diagram below illustrates the ‘The90’ is a list of companies that three key stages (over time) of a business Design Wales has supported with the uptake of service design expertise and projects moving from products to services based on Design Wales’ experience of supportover a set period. These companies are ing manufacturers through this process. highly engaged with the programme and have demonstrated a commitment to service Typical Companies innovation through internal investment.

Although there are some exceptions The Service Design Programme also works with the design sector in Wales to the rule, most companies accessing government support for innovation to create the ‘supply’ of service design are SMEs or micro businesses. This expertise, ensuring that, once compatrend is also true of the service design nies have received their funded support programme. Businesses that don’t from Design Wales, local service design have the resources to buy in service expertise is available to deliver the work. design expertise or develop an inThis element of the programme is highlighted in the news section of this issue of house capability, value design support programmes the most. As well as being Touchpoint. open to support, these SMEs also have great potential as typically shifts Shifting Mindset in mindset, approach and business In volume 2, issue 3 of Touchpoint, Mark model are easier to realise within Hardvelt and Hugo Raaijnmaakers from smaller companies.

Philips described three areas where One typical company that has reservice design should impact within a business: strategy, pilots and enablers. This ceived support through the service design programme is a manufacturer of electroinsight from within a large product comchemical water treatment systems called pany is also relevant to many of the SMEs Aggrelek, from Swansea (South Wales). that are typical of businesses in Wales.

Aggrelek’s managing director described the situation on our first meeting as “We are a new company WE MAKE WE DELIVER introducing new technology, and it can PRODUCTS SERVICES be an uphill struggle” a common theme within many SMEs. However, after participating in the programme and focusing on the service the company offered, the team started to revise their product- and sales-focused business plans ADDING VALUE TOTAL SHIFT and to look into developing new services SERVITIZATION around their core product.

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organisational change

With the support of Design Wales Aggrelek created a new service that would enable customers to rent it's unique equipment for short periods of time rather than buy it outright.

Support was provided by Design Wales to ensure that the innovation was designed properly and developed in a way that minimised risk. Aggrelek set aside £50k in R&D to create the new service and develop their existing product to fit with the new offer. The new service would enable customers to rent Aggrelek’s unique equipment for short periods of time rather than buy it outright. This new service was focused on industries where water treatment may only be required for a period of two or three months, such as construction.

The service also benefited the company, since it provided a paid route for customers wanting to test out the new technology on their own waste water, something that had previously been swallowed up as an expensive part of the sales process.

In the case of Aggrelek, the investment was made because a clear financial and competitive benefit was visible after prototyping the new service, and within just two months of launching the new service sales had reached £100k. Once the new revenue stream became clear, Design Wales was able to support the company to maximise this opportunity and to create the economic impact required through job creation. It is this type of investment by individual companies that is crucial to ensure that service design is “in the business of economic development” and not business advice.

Insights So Far After nine months of the programme, we have seen some positive results and gained insight into service design in the manufacturing sector. Here are some personal reflections on the programme: You’re a Business Think of the programme as a paidfor service that you have to sell. The programme may be funded, but it has to be attractive to industry. What is your offer? What is your service?

And, above all, make sure your customer experience is great.

Evaluate Your Work You can’t demonstrate that your programme delivers impact if you don’t measure it. Set up a practical evaluation process at the start of the project and stick to it.

Talk About Impact…Not Support Don’t talk about how great your programme is, talk about what your programme will do for that individual company.

•

23

By Laura Warwick and Mark Bailey

Leading by Example: Effecting Organisational Change in a Third Sector Organisation

Laura Warwick, Service designer, Age UK Newcastle, working to embed service design processes within the charity and to support the development and implementation of a coherent, sustainable suite of services that provides a better customer experience.

Mark Bailey, Senior academic since 1997, teaching undergraduate programmes in Design for Industry including the development of service design within the curriculum.

Published lead academic responsible for the development of post-graduate study in Multidisciplinary Innovation.

KTP academic supervisor responsible for knowledge transfer with Age UK Newcastle.

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When embedding service design knowledge in a thirdsector organisation, we were faced with a challenge to prove the value of the approach in a time of unforeseen financial difficulties. Knowing that, as children, we learn and develop by imitating those around us, we decided to take the staff back to school and to set an example for them to follow.

Age UK Newcastle is a charity that enhances the status and well-being of older people. Since 2009, it has been engaged in a UK Government Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme to help use and embed service design capability to produce a coherent suite of services that provide a better user experience. A service designer is based in-house as a constant resource to ensure an effective transfer across the entire organisation.

The changing context affecting a third-sector organisation is unlike that in any other sector, impacted, as it is, by policy context changes, public spending cuts and service delivery reforms, to name but a few factors. Facing severe funding cuts, Age UK Newcastle’s staff and stakeholders found it increasingly difficult to focus on innovation while the basic service offering was under threat.

It became vital that the organisation understand the need to use service design at this difficult time to produce more

sustainable service solutions that would help it weather the storm.

To do this, the service designer conducted a project with the ‘Befriending Service’, which provides social contact for isolated, lonely, older people. Currently working at capacity and with an uncertain funding future, it was an excellent role model to review in full view of the organisation: providing something to imitate in order to effect real system change.

Laying All the Facts Bare One of the distinctions between commercial and non-profit organisations is the disparate performance targets set by numerous funding bodies. These targets focus on the effectiveness of a service and do not always give equal consideration to the efficiency of the service, despite this being considered easier to measure.

To rebalance their perspective, the service designer asked the staff to articulate and attribute a time to every

organisational change

My Week

water ol to do the to Elswick Po Monday- I go and a a un have a sa 0am. I like to aerobics at 9.3 oup Gr lls the Fa 12pm, I go to steam first. At w ho u yo teaches ton Centre. It at the Leming

Hobbies and interests • I keep racing pigeons...I’ve got 17...my nephew bred some for me after my wife died. I love just watching them. It would break my heart if I had to give them away...I tried to the other day for when I’m in hospital, but I just couldn’t do it...but I still might have to.

to balance.

. I go swimming again Tuesday- I go y. all re n anytime I ca ) comes to rah (befriender Wednesday- Sa a big hug me m. She gives visit me at 2p my week. t ou ab d asks all and a kiss an might imming, then I Thursday- Sw th my of the day wi spend the rest eding fe t, ning them ou pigeons- clea . em tching th them, just wa bics again. to water aero or watching tv.

Friday - I go just tidying up st of my day I spend the re . I usually on a Saturday lax a bit more e the results se to Saturday- I re e lik I e football...

Saturday... just watch th e Bingo every ed to go to th us I I haven’t been in. w. ng no mi th co wi ve anyone to go ha y all re n’t I do nths. in maybe 3 mo sic on my listen to my mu maybe sit and on the settee lie st Sunday- I’ll ju d all’ an ll click ‘play I’ ... er ut mp co em. listening to th

activity undertaken when delivering this service. Simple administrative tasks were taking most of the co-ordinator’s time. A budget analysis also revealed that the service had an organisational cost of £900 per service user per year, a figure far higher than the team’s estimates.

These steps instilled the motivation within the team to address the inefficiencies in the service, laying the foundations for undertaking a thorough research process.

Thoroughly Designed Research The organisation previously conducted limited, infrequent research, considering it too costly for so resource-strapped a body.

To prove the value of appropriately designed research, we wanted the team to conduct as much of the activity as pos-

• I read all the papers on the computer. I’ll read the deaths, and then what’s going on in the news and the football. I watch YouTube too...I type in ‘little waster’ and I get clips of Bobby Thomson, and then it links you on to all the other comedians. I watch clips of the dancing and old singers like Doris Day...I like being able to see them sing.

• I don’t like going out at night, I don’t like driving in the dark.

• I used to go to the club but after my wife died, I kept thinking ‘I shouldn’t be here’...now I need someone to make me go...I need someone to say ‘Joe, I’ll meet you there in half an hour’, that way I can’t get out of it...but I don’t have a friend to go with...if I had a friend I would go.

• I used to be a brick layer...I miss the manual work but I just can’t do it anymore...it breaks your heart to pay someone to do something you now you could have done. I tell the lads at the swimming baths how to do things, give them advice on stuff, like how to make a patio or something...I like helping people.

• I’ve got a digital camera and I used to go on trips with SEARCH project to places and I’d take photos and put them on the computer...I got right into my computer classes, but then I didn’t really need them anymore.

My visitor Sarah is the best thing that’s happened to me since my wife died... she just listens...I can talk to her better than I can talk to my own family.

She really changed my life. When I don’t see Sarah, if she’s on holiday or something, it feels like a long long time... I look forward to seeing her

A page of one of the participant profiles sible. We trained them in design research methods, so that they could understand the purpose of the techniques and to ensure that they collected the information in a consistent and appropriate way.

Each activity was also designed with the staff team, focusing on the needs of the participants, and how best to elicit the information whilst providing an enjoyable experience for them.

We showed the team that research could be thoroughly designed and yet remain flexible: they were given conversation tips, feeder questions and visual prompts to help them be truly responsive to the participant, whilst gathering the necessary information.

(anonymised)

25

By Laura Warwick and Mark Bailey

Being Visual Throughout the research process, we asked the team to gather images of the participants or things that were of value to them.

The service team were initially nervous about this, due to the vulnerable nature of the people involved and the fact that this was a departure from their usual practice.

What they found was that almost every older person agreed to be filmed and photographed and actually enjoyed the attention being paid to them and their belongings. The images also helped the staff remember details of interviews, in-

awareness

contact

spired them to create solutions for real people, and helped to effectively communicate the content of interviews with other team members.

Making Sense of It All Third-sector organisations often work in partnership, but different funding bodies and management guidelines mean there is rarely comparable research data. It is, therefore, not common practice at Age UK Newcastle to gather and consider all data simultaneously, but we did exactly that.

The process helped the team to pinpoint commonalities and differences in our findings, threading the information together to form a more cohesive understanding of what we had discovered. In examining the information as

assessment

waiting list

matching

visit plus service information

contact every month

accompanied visit

visit

contact every month

get info about what they want/ like

keep up-to-date with needs

regular visits

customer journey

referral by social services or pct

through existing services

word of mouth

staff journey

leaflet website

call acn

advise about options arrange a visit

write up profile and add to waiting list try to match to appropriate volunteer

match with volunteer volunteer training

update profile try to match to appropriate volunteer

contact customer arrange visit accompany on first visit contact volunteer and customer to see if both are happy to proceed

managed between customer and visitor

contact volunteer and customer after 3rd visit to see if both are happy to proceed further training volunteer supervision (diary sheets) social events

The befriending service customer journey 26

organisational change

a whole, staff were also able to draw some conclusions based on in-depth research rather than generalisations and to use these to inform the idea-generation stage.

Being Open to Potential, and Closed to Judgement Where there had been no research, there had also been no idea generation: Age UK Newcastle often emulated good practice taken from elsewhere without validating whether it was appropriate for their aims, customers or circumstances. We wanted to use the research findings to generate numerous potential service innovations to demonstrate that things could be done differently.

We asked the team to consider not how they could improve their service, but simply how they could fulfil its aim: offering social contact to isolated older people. In reframing the question, we gave the service team permission to think broadly, creatively, and differently.

Staff found that by focusing on the potential of an idea and withholding judgement, they could take inspiration from each other and produce surprising – yet appropriate – suggestions.

Testing the Water Being such a small organisation, there had never been much emphasis on prototyping ideas before launching them.

This had often led to unforeseen issues that had proved costly to the charity.

Assisted by the service designer, the staff team piloted the service with a control group to check that it operated as intended. The monitoring and feedback process was carefully designed to show if the service was both effective and

efficient and gave us the opportunity to refine the model before launching full scale.

Taking It to the Next Level Third-sector organisations do not always pursue their development work to a strategic level. We wanted to demonstrate that, by using the research findings and their implicit knowledge, they could also help stimulate and improve the wider system.

The staff team developed a blueprint model for an ideal social care service experience and shared this with a wide group of stakeholders in the sector. By linking the more generic model to real client and service issues, the work had a more profound impact on their thinking, appealing to them on an emotional as well as professional level. These meetings have subsequently led to several new partnership and funding opportunities.

Lasting Impact The project work resulted not only in improvements to the Befriending service, but the team was also inspired to apply this practice across the rest of their department. As a result, Age UK Newcastle are re-assessing all of their services and possible development options and are also seeing a service design approach as crucial to those reviews.

The project’s impact on both the organisation and supporting system demonstrates that effective organisational change can be achieved by having an in-house service designer driving the change, as opposed to an external consultant influencing it. As an employed member of staff, the designer is a constant resource to help support the next steps of the organisational change, engaging stakeholders at pertinent times during their day-to-day activity and gradually educating them in service design methodology. They are in an ideal position to learn about, predict and respond to the changing contexts to produce a truly responsive approach, which is key for third-sector organisations.

As the voluntary and community sector continues to go through this period of difficulty, the discipline of service design must ask itself how it can help organisations to innovate and whether, as in this case, it must always lead by example?

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By Martin Beyerle, Daniela Hammel and Jan Schröder

The Change Agent's Secret... ...And How to Instil It in Organisations

Martin Beyerle, Co-founder and strategy director of minds & makers. Martin is specialised in social research and sustainable innovation and lectured at Design Academy Eindhoven and Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd.

Daniela Hammel, Co-founder and creative director of minds & makers, guest lecturer for Service Design and Social Innovation at University of Cologne.

Daniela is specialised in service design and social innovation.

Jan Schröder, Co-founder and creative director of minds & makers, guest lecturer for Service Design and Social Innovation at University of Cologne.

Jan is specialised in service design and interaction design.

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As service designers and catalysts of change in organisations, we have all observed how perceived barriers impede progress, even where progress is possible. We find would-be change agents, bursting with vivid ideas of what they would accomplish if only positioning, resource allocation, time pressure or availability of information were otherwise.

Because the ‘if only were otherwise’ position implies untapped potential, it is great fun to challenge it: think of a change agent (i.e. an individual or group) whose initiatives gain traction and whose visions materialise. Consider whether that change agent's path really is paved with ample funding and uncontested authority. Consider whether, for that change agent, offers of information and collaboration really are forthcoming every step of the way.

The answer is likely to be no.

What sets the change agent apart from the would-be one is not an absence of barriers – it's the instinct to circumvent them. As service designers, our mission is not merely to distinguish the would-be from from the actual change agent, it's to transform the one into the other.

Our service design intervention at Swindon Borough Council provided an ideal setting for this sort of transformation. Initially, the council engaged us to

help design a service that would intensify engagement with the local community.

As we immersed ourselves in the problem space, we found a series of dedicated local engagement projects already operating.

Although there was no shortage of local engagement projects within the council, the absence of collaboration between them was striking. Precious insights remained confined to the projects in which they were generated while projects with complementary missions carried out their work in isolation. We delved into the causes.

Barriers abounded. Organisational lines separated complementary projects.

The inclination to exchange insights across projects was trumped by a presumption that fellow projects were competitors.

In interviews, council members were more likely to focus on the differences in mandate and approach of fellow projects than on the overlap in their objectives.

Few communication channels connected

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departments, and even where communication channels were open, a sentiment prevailed that there simply wasn't enough time to absorb and impart insight.

We envisioned a council with an integrated service interface to the communities of the borough: a council capable of coordinating service initiatives so that they evolve with the needs and realities of the borough's population. But, in reality, the border between the council and the borough it served mimicked its internal borders.

The council's ability to intensify engagement with the local community turned on its ability to intensify engagement internally. So the real problem of intensifying local engagement demanded an underlying mission: evolve a culture of learning and collaboration across the council. The resolve of the council's management and the drive of its practitioners presented exactly this opportunity.

We introduced techniques and approaches that empowered an internal team of council members. The project they implemented would spark curiosity in activities across the council. It would encourage individuals to expand their

perspective on the council's work and cultivate an impulse to share insights across projects. It would dislodge insights from the projects in which they were generated and create channels for them to circulate. The council members called the project ‘360’.

The 360 team re-purposed a storage room as a dedicated work space.

Together, we took down old posters, removed unused furniture, bought supplies and painted the walls. The exercise, quite literally, built up the initiative.

Together with the 360 team, we designed an intervention that would bring to light perceived barriers, challenge ingrained mindsets and forge new work practices. And it would do so by inciting action.

The 360 intervention kicked off with a bright green envelope.

Participants from across lateral and hierarchical divisions received one envelope a day. On each day, the envelope contained a different mission, e.g. “Take something you do routinely, and do it differently today. Make sure someone benefits from it” and a different mindset such as “Be curious, ask why.” Participants were encouraged to integrate both the mission and the mindset of the day into their practice and record their experience in a diary.

During the interventional research, the participants were asked to solve different tasks which challenged their ingrained behaviour.

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By Martin Beyerle, Daniela Hammel and Jan Schröder

“The day tha t participants were asked to gath er colleag ues from different depa rtments and le vels of hierarchy to gether in a ga me of skipping rope was telling.”

The 360 team was able to observe ingrained behaviour by prompting people to change. When participants incorporated the missions into their practice, inroads into cultural change were forged.

When participants pushed back, barriers were exposed.

We imparted techniques to instil in the 360 team the capacity to capture perspectives and synthesise the inputs of participants. The team analysed each diary and facilitated dialogue with participants. From the outputs of the intervention research, the 360 team distilled four systemic barriers that called for change.

1. Communication 2. Idea management 3. Time pressure 4. Relationships and networking In keeping with the cultural transformation that the intervention was designed to bring about, the 360 team elicited ideas to remedy these issues from within the council itself.

Through a series of workshops, the team empowered organisation members to conceive of ways to address the barriers. As with the intervention research, workshops participants spanned departments and hierarchies.

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To set an enabling tone at the outset, the 360 facilitators bestowed superpowers corresponding to perceived barriers.

Those who felt that a lack of budget precluded initiatives got money-printing power. Those who doubted that it was possible to garner buy-in for their initiative got the power of persuasion.

Those who felt hindered by time pressure got the power of speed.

Charged with these superpowers, participants were tasked to address one of the four barriers / opportunity areas.

To stimulate lateral thought, they were asked to consider team dynamics within different, but analogous, professions.

The group addressing time pressure, for instance, was asked to consider what enables an emergency hospital team to progress under constant time pressure.

Participants presented the concepts that they had developed in a way that challenged conventional modes of communication in the council. One group created a news report, and another presented in song. The twist awakened participants to the many forms of communicating ideas with impact.

The exercise made visible a wealth of concepts – memorable because of their novelty, but also because of their feasibility. The time pressure group devised concepts for an internal help

organisational change

desk, admin bin and a staff time bank.

The relationships group conceived blind dates for lunch and job swaps.

The communication group conceived an internal news channel and a ‘Like’ button, while the idea management group advanced ‘idea flea markets’ and ‘idea flash mobs’.

The 360 intervention challenged perceived barriers to building initiatives by building an initiative. The wider organisation was able to observe it being conceived, sparking interest, eliciting participation, gaining traction and eventually being brought before the corporate board and chief executive. The phenomenon instilled a sense that the barriers to launching an initiative are surmountable.

The project countered barriers to collaboration by cultivating curiosity in a

system-wide perspective and an impulse to share insights.

Participants came to consider the 360 intervention as “...a constant reminder of the importance of sharing, reflection and curiosity.”

The team bridged lateral and hierarchical divides by engaging collaborators across multiple functions and levels and creating a venue where they could mix. The intervention research prompted action that pushed the limits of routine work practices. Participants felt encouraged “to do more, to go further, and to be open to change.”

The research synthesis brought to light significant barriers and reframed them as opportunities, while the workshops empowered participants to devise novel ways of addressing barriers. Participants ultimately saw the intervention as a “methodology and way of being that [shifted] the broken bits of the system into something better.”

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31

By Kipum Lee

Designing for Doctor-Patient Interactions During Leave-taking A Case Study: Impacting a Physician-led Organisation

Kipum Lee, Doctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management and senior interaction designer at Marriott International.

The following academic research project captures the work of a five-member team for a capstone class at the Weatherhead School of Management. While conforming to accepted notions of service design, the project also had a strategic dimension aimed at making an argument to the leadership at Cleveland Clinic. The structure of the inquiry consisted of problem finding, developing a hypothesis and making a product to address the problem. The final deliverables took the shape of a project report and a process book and were presented to and before the Office of Patient Experience, the CXO, and CEO of Cleveland Clinic. What follows is a narrative of our design process that seeks to contribute to the service design discourse.

In 2007, the CEO of Cleveland Clinic was invited to Harvard Business School to discuss a case study on work being done by his organisation. At the end of a session, a student raised her hand and said, “Dr. Cosgrove, my father needed mitral valve surgery.

We knew about Cleveland Clinic and the excellent results you had. But we decided not to go because we heard you had no empathy there. We went to another hospital instead.” The student then asked, “Do you teach empathy at Cleveland Clinic?” This left the CEO speechless. 2

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Immediately following this penetrating and sobering question, Cleveland Clinic was quick to set up the first Chief Experience Officer (CXO) position in a healthcare organisation and an accompanying support department called the Office of Patient Experience (OPE). Since its establishment, the OPE has played an important role in raising the level of awareness around patient experience at the clinic, starting various programmes and, most importantly, facilitating discussions around the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey.

organisational change

kinds of healthcare innovation humanistic care quality & safety innovation

The HCAHPS is an in-patient survey mandated by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in the United States that was recently created to increase transparency around patient experience and to aid consumers in their health provider and hospital decisions. While there are a lot of details around this survey, the takeaway is that Cleveland Clinic continues to perform below the national average for several of the questionnaire domains. This impacts the reimbursement that the Clinic gets back annually from the government and has implications for the Cleveland Clinic brand.

It was in the context of these government standards for patient experience, competition from other organisations and the realisation that the art of caring for others had been lost that Weatherhead began a one-year engagement with Cleveland Clinic.

A Problem It was critical that the exploration of possible paths for the project not become too narrow and singular too soon. To accomplish this, the team dedicated a full three months to the contesting of issues (framed as paradoxes within the organisation) before settling on one pressing problem. We wanted to get an intimate understanding of what Cleveland Clinic was as an organisation prior to setting

service innovation

Kaiser Permanente (Garfield Center)

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (Center for Quality Improvement & Innovation)

Mayo Clinic (SPARC) Reagan UCLA (Center for Health Quality & Innovation)

Arizona State University (Herberger Institute)

Massachusetts General Hospital (Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation) Johns Hopkins Hospital (Center for Innovation in Quality Patient Care)

discovery

Cleveland Clinic

invention

University Hospitals - Ohio (Research & Innovation Center) Barnes – Jewish/Washington University Duke University - Medical & Business School (Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation)

Mount Sinai Hospital

University of Washington Medical Center

New York - Presbyterian

University of Michigan Health System (Medical Innovation Center)

Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

biomedical research innovation

technological/device innovation

mechanistic care

It was important to point out to the leadership at Cleveland Clinic that innovation in the United States is not just about quality and safety improvements, biomedical research and technology/device inventions. There is a strategic imperative for the Clinic’s ‘engineering culture’ to invest in service innovation.

33

By Kipum Lee

“While physicians at Cleveland Clinic are great formal leaders, they face the enormous challenge of being ‘servant-leaders’.”

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Hypothesis a course of action. These initial months While it would have been ideal to explore became our time of problem finding as doctor-patient interactions across the opposed to problem solving.

Out of a set of a half-dozen interest- entire patient journey, it was not possible given the time frame and resources. ing issues that were identified, we were Therefore, to make it manageable as a perplexed by the paradox of the leaderone-year project, our team chose one ship structure at Cleveland Clinic. In all part of the patient journey: the discharge of the marketing materials, as well as the overall communication that the organisa- experience. To humanise and contextualise this moment in the greater context of tion as a whole publishes, it is very clear understanding what an experience is, we that Cleveland Clinic takes great pride also called this the ‘leave-taking’ experiin its physician-led culture. This form of ence – the final sub-unit of a face-to-face leadership goes back to 1921, when four physicians founded the clinic. This ‘officer engagement that contributes to the overall structure of an interpersonal encounter core’ remains one of the organisation’s 1 between people – after Erving Goffman’s greatest strengths : the doctors lead the classic study of human interaction.3 programs, institutes and innovation.

Yet, the paradox lies in the realities Why focus on leave-taking? The that patients and families experience last few days of a patient’s stay are very when their encounters with these worldimportant. For patients, this time is a class doctors are marked by frustrations critical moment to understand their and loss of dignity. While physicians at condition, to deal with emotional distress Cleveland Clinic are great formal leaders, and incoherence if they’re on medications they face the enormous challenge of being and to find a way to manage the complexity ‘servant-leaders’. For example, during of information and instructions. For contextual inquiry, we witnessed a patient families, this is when key decisions are at the Clinic who received great clinical made about the patient’s transition to care but complained about her doctor’s another place (e.g. facility, another hospital, arrogance and poor communication skills. home) and may be a turning point in the When we asked a caregiver in private lifestyle of the care-taking family members, about the patient’s concerns, he responded especially if the patient requires constant that this was a “touchy issue” and that the attention. For caregivers, this is the last doctor who provided treatment for this moment at the hospital before patients are patient is a seasoned and senior physician sent the HCAHPS and the last opportunity who is at the Clinic because he is good at for service recovery if things have gone what he does. wrong in earlier phases of the patient This exchange illustrates a problem journey. It is also a critical time to mitigate at the Clinic: It is difficult for Cleveland the chances of a patient’s readmission due Clinic caregivers – nurses, administrative to mishandling of information. staff, patients, families, and even other Our hypothesis: Focusing on builddoctors – to change the behaviours of phy- ing quality encounters between doctors sicians with patients and their families. and patients during the discharge phase

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Design research consisted of observations in the field, co-creating /generative activities, shadowing, and interviews.

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By Kipum Lee

INTRO

DUCTI

ON

PROBLE

Vestu r

M

HYPOTH

Designing for Doctor and Patient Interactions in the Leave-taking Experience

& RES SEA EAR RCH CH

ture

PROD UCT

CONCLU SION

INTRODU

CTION

PROBLEM

Decora

HYPOTH

ESIS &

ted doc

RESEARC

H

tors

A Project Report

PRODUC

T

CONCLU

SION

THEM

ES

INTRODUCTION

PROBLEM

HYPOTHESIS

Discharge jou

& RESEARCH

PRODUCT

rney map

CONCLUSION

THEME

INTRODUCTION

PROBLEM

HYPOTHESIS & RESEARCH

PRODUCT

S

INSIGH TS FRO M RES EARCH • Physici ans are compet Clevela itive at • When nd Clinic ma the org ndates from the ani physici zation are enf top of ans com orced, ply relu ctantly

CONCLUSION

Dignity blanket

INSIG HTS FROM • Some RESE ARCH patie nts co unap pro nside r docto alway achable rs • Patie s seem ve because they ry nts appro also fee busy l like priate it’s no to ask t quest ions

• Dr. Cos gro Busines ve’s stor y at Har vard s member School when aud ask Clinic tea ed him if Cle ience veland ches its doctors empathy Leaving

THEMES

INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH • Patients view the discharge phase as a very compl icated process • It’s hard for patients to see that various parts of the discharge experience are connected

Cleveland Clinic Office of Patient Experience Designing for Doctor & Patient Interactions

ESIS

e ges

1

even thoug h the quest y ion be rud s since themay have a e by askin y don’t wa list of time with g docto for some nt to rs perso nal Leavin

g Transi

tioning

Continu ing Care

Transitio

ning

• Patients treasu re what doctor s ggive them even if it’s something sm small

Continu ing Care

Transitioning

THEMES

INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH

Cleveland Clinic Office of Patient Experience

• Patients lose their sense of dignity when they can’t go to the bathroom on their own, can’t wear their own clothes, and have to expose their body parts

Recovering

Accepting

Choosing

Planning

Learning

Teaching & Assessing

Explaining & Estimating

Providing Options

Discharging

Educating

• Some doctors provide preferential treatment to people they know when they think patients and families are not looking

Leaving

Continuing Care

Transitioning

Continuing Care

makes a memorable impression and will benefit an important part of the patient journey.

Design Research: Not Just Outcomes but Process Our team had a particular interest in providing alternative ways of gathering insights to inform service innovation.

With its long history of thinking about the world through the lens of scientific inquiry, Cleveland Clinic’s method of research has always relied heavily on quantitative analysis and statistics.

We found common ground with the clinic by focusing our attention on the theme of innovation. The clinic has a legacy of innovation in the way they manage quality and safety improvements, biomedical research and technical and device inventions. Our team made the case early in the process that service innovation is a legitimate area of innovation that demands exploration and aligns well with the strategic establishment of the OPE. However, instead of providing a unique voice in the clinic and advocating a holistic perspective of patient experience,

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A project report booklet detailing the entire design process with some of the recommended doctorto-patient interaction concepts.

the OPE was using the same quantitative methods used by the greater organisation for its day-to-day work. In fact, publication materials from the clinic were explicitly lauding the decidedly data-driven, metricsmake-sense methodology of the OPE.4 While scientific and quasi-scientific (i.e. social sciences) measurement methods are powerful means to understanding clinical outcomes and making decisions, they are not the only ways research can be done.

We carefully formulated and positioned, as a complementary mode of research, the argument that there is value in patient and family stories as well as insights from ethnographic-type research.

We highlighted design research as one product of the project and demonstrated that the architecture of the leave-taking experience, as well as patient stories with accompanying emotions, are just as relevant as quantitative data.

It was at this point that the range of customary service design methodologies was used. Our team developed a toolkit for participatory design activities (we engaged with patients, families, caregivers and senior leadership at the clinic, as well as members

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of the OPE), created a detailed service blueprint of the discharge experience with sub-layers of emotional elements, and synthesised various themes for concept development based on the research process.

The Product The themes were then used to propose an interaction guide to help physicians and their teams say goodbye to patients and families during the leave-taking experience of a hospital stay. The interactions are depicted in the form of short sketches with ten scenarios that support the conditions for conversation and connection between doctors and patients. Each scenario highlights the themes that informed the concept, along with where in the discharge experience the idea might have the most impact.

To illustrate this, one concept – the ‘dignity blanket’ – begins with a Cleveland Clinic caregiver covering the naked body of a patient about to undergo surgery and who is lying on the operating table. After the surgery and during the beginning moments of discharge, a physician presents the patient with the blanket that was used to cover them when they were at their most vulnerable. This service acts as a gift and, more importantly, a vehicle for conversation. Research revealed that patients lose a sense of dignity when they enter a hospital environment, especially when physically exposed. To address this, the clinic redesigned the patient gown several years ago. The dignity blanket elaborates on this notion of preserving or restoring dignity by asking, ‘Can we embed the idea of dignity not just in an artefact (e.g. gown) but also in a service?’

There was also a more subtle insight from research that motivated this concept. Some doctors provide preferential treatment by personally making sure that the bodies of those they know are covered. One interviewee also confided that it is easy to be indifferent and to not cover the bodies of individuals whom they do not know, especially if those working think that families and other patients are not looking or aware. Yet, families and patients have a keen sense of awareness: surprisingly, this is true for things that may even happen during the backstage moments of the patient journey.

This concept provides a way for the clinic to exercise transparency, eliminate a potential moment of preferential treatment and guarantee some protection and respect for all patients. It encourages physicians to show an explicit concern for patients’ dignity during their most vulnerable moments by providing evidence. Envisioned as a service concept at the beginning of leave-taking, the ‘dignity blanket’ is one way to set the tone for a time of dynamic transitions.

References 1 Clough, J. D., ed. (2004). ‘To Act As A Unit: The Story of the Cleveland Clinic’ (4th ed.). Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Clinic Press.

2

Cosgrove, D. M. (2007). ‘A Better Patient Experience’. Cleveland Clinic Magazine, Summer 2007, 3.

3

Goffman, E. (1963). ‘Behavior in Public Places’. New York, NY: The Free Press.

4

Szilagyi, S. (2011). ‘The Patient Experience’. Cleveland Clinic Magazine, Winter 2011, 20-27.

Conclusion The space of service innovation in healthcare is ripe, with much room for exploration and development. It is our hope that the thoughts and recommended actions in this case study can be a reference, a way to initiate dialogue around doctorto-patient communication and a point of departure for caregivers at Cleveland Clinic and other healthcare institutions.

Download full project report at: kipworks. com/clevelandclinic/projectreport.pdf.

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By Jesse Grimes and Mark Fonds

Overcoming the ‘Monkeysphere’ Challenge Supporting Organisational Change in the Jungle of a Large Organisation

Jesse Grimes is an editor of Touchpoint, and has twelve years experience as an interaction designer and consultant, now specialising in service design. He has worked in London, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf and Sydney, and is now based in Amsterdam with Dutch agency Informaat.

Mark Alexander Fonds (MA) is working as a service design consultant for Informaat in Holland. Mark has been working in the design field for over 25 years. His experiences include working for large international corporation like NASA, NOAA, E*Trade Financial and Cirque du Soleil.

He is trying actively to apply service design thoughts and tools into the workforce of today's service industries.

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In early 2009, the Dutch government laid out new requirements for its federal agencies, aiming to put in place cost-savings and efficiency measures. For the UWV (Uitvoeringsinstituut Werknemersverzekeringen) – the agency responsible for employment – these triggered the start of a series of organisation-wide changes that would dramatically improve the way it served its clients.

Supporting those changes was the implementation of service design tools, techniques and thinking, put in place by a small team from our consultancy.

In particular, we came to recognise the tremendous value of ’mini-networks’ that were initially created as a by-product of our workshops. These networks – made of staff that serviced the same clients but sometimes had little or no contact with each other – have broken down barriers and improved the service offering.

The UWV is staffed by more than 20,000 employees, with offices spread across the country. Its remit includes work placement for the unemployed, income support, and integration of disabled people into the workforce. It was with a subsection of this last user group – those with physical or mental disabilities that ruled out mainstream employment – that a pilot program of service design was put in place in 2009.

Years and years of politically-driven changes in the structure of the UWV, the

roles and departments within it, the processes and administration required to support clients, and the changing obligations it must meet, have led to frustration, confusion and inefficiency amongst its staff. What was urgently needed was to bring a better understanding of the provision of the UWV service to those that were actually providing it, directly or indirectly.

Introducing Service Design at Every Layer of the Organisation Our initial work focused on Wajongeren, a user group of more than 200,000 young people with disabilities. Medical consultants, work advisors, and others maintain years-long relationships with these young people, and during this time they are offered training, work placement, income support and additional services.

The co-ordination of all the roles within the UWV responsible for delivering that service was complex, timeconsuming and expensive. Furthermore,

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However these service innovations were poor communication meant that clear opportunities for not the only outcome: to our surprise and improvement existed. pleasure, we noticed that the networking Through comprehensively researched personas that took place in the workshops bore and detailed journey maps, we started to bring a true unfruit for weeks and months after the derstanding of these users into the organisation, beyond just those front-line workers who met them on a daily ba- participants had departed. We were told of many cases where problems and issues sis. Further work took place to identify and influence the were solved by being able to pick up a service touchpoints, and to design and develop a website phone or send an email to a new contact and portal for both clients and potential employers.

By the end of the first year of work, we had expanded in an otherwise unknown department.

Furthermore, each workshop we held the scope of the project, developed journey maps for other contributed to a larger and more detailed client groups of the UWV, and created an adaptable workshop aimed at clarifying and improving the overall service. collective mental image of the service: something that hadn’t existed beforehand.

During the workshops, we introduced detailed personas, and encouraged participants to create user journeys with Workshops, Networking, and the them. In doing so, shortcomings in the current service – ‘Monkeysphere’ Phenomenon and opportunities for improvements – became clear. And Amongst all the service design-related finally, with the combined effort of all participants, we developed solutions and innovations to improve the service. activities that we carry out, workshops have proven to be the most successful tool in supporting the organisational change that the UWV is undergoing.

In a workshop context, we carefully analyse specific situations that take place during the service experience, such as how information and assessments about a particular client are transferred between people or departments, and how the client experiences this. We then encourage the participants, who come from a wide cross-section of the agency, to work together to find solutions, adding our insight and expertise as well.

This shared approach to problemsolving – in which the participants share a common goal, but have initial confusion about the roles and activities of parts of Workshop instructions – an extensive series of work- the agency outside their domain – leads to the creation of informal networks, shops was carried out with representatives from whose benefits continue long after our throughout the UWV, to identify the roles and the touch- flipcharts have been taken off the wall and points through which the new service would be provided. conference room doors have been closed.

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During each workshop, polaroid photos were taken of the participants and annotated with their contact details. These were collected and distributed to everyone, serving to build long-lasting ‘mini-networks’ that supported the organisational change programme.

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The networks serve to reduce the opacity and anonymity that's an inevitable result of working in such a large organisation, and relate to an issue dubbed the ’monkeysphere’ limitation, or ’Dunbar's number’.

Originally theorised by an anthropologist, it states a theoretical maximum number of relationships that any one person can stably maintain and pegs it at around 150. Although the research itself described social relationships, we feel it's applicable in huge organisations as well. Not only are those working in different departments and other offices outside one's familiar network, they may well be viewed with distrust or anxiety. This not only makes an organisation inefficient, it jeopardises the seamless delivery of a service. So by encouraging cooperation in a workshop setting, and building enduring mini-networks, we're not only providing some much needed ‘glue’ as the organisation restructures, we're helping ensure that it provides improved services as well.

And it's not just the networking function of our workshops that support the change programme; the outcome of each of these workshops (service innovations, for example) are gathered together and analysed. Those which represent systemic changes to the way the UWV does business are then fed into an existing change management function at the highest level of the agency, and in turn ministers within the federal government. In this way, we’re providing a direct channel for change, from those directly providing the services, to those managing multi-million euro budgets and plans.

Our expectations – and those of our direct sponsors – have been surpassed by the success of this engagement. Our long-standing relationship has provided us with broad insight into how the UWV conducts core parts of its business, and we have earned the trust of and established a rapport with key figures throughout its hierarchy. And we also derive satisfaction from knowing that we’re helping to greatly improve the experience of the clients whom the UWV serves. Demonstrating faith in our approach, plans are underway to scale our work across the whole agency, province-by-province. This means improving the service for additional user groups, and building further connections between management levels and the service providers themselves.

eleven tips for supporting change through service design techniques 01. support the creation of mininetworks to overcome the ’monkey brain’ phenomenon 02. encourage people to get to know each other's jobs and functions 03. build recognition that they have a common responsibility to serve their clients 04. get them to share their client group through the creation of personas 05. identify problems in the service together and create solutions together 06. gather problems and solutions from workshops across all locations and feed these back into the improvement program of the company to solve these problems 07. help build a mental model of the total service, for management through to all other workers 08. agree on the service elements 09. use techniques such as workshops as quality monitoring tools 10. actively engage workers in the improvement of the service rather then have management conduct changes ‘from above’ 11. inspire people to bring about change by making them experience things from their clients’ perspective

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By Laura Keller

Designing the Service of Service Design

Practicing What We Preach for Organisational Impact

Business transformation is certainly not easy, but service designers are implicitly prepared to be successful. The following article discusses how we can leverage the very practices of service design for an organisation’s customers with our own customers.

Laura Keller, Account Director for MISI Company’s Experience Design group, focuses on representing the human element in any interaction with a brand through actionable, business-impacting insight gathering. She’s always been an observer of people (but not in an inappropriate way) and is eager every morning to do what she does, as long as she can sleep soundly at night based on the ethics of the day.

As service designers, we hope that organisations see the value of what we do for their customers and their businesses.

However, our work often doesn’t always live up to our original aspirations: unexpected stakeholders question the methods, employees feel territorial about our activities or no one really understands the value of our approach.

Why does the above happen? Ironically, we don’t design the service of our own service design work intelligently and accessibly for organisations. The very service design methods we say our clients need to employ for their customers are precisely what we need to do for our own.

Understand All Stakeholders We advise our clients to understand all constituents – front office, back office, the customer – to be able to design an effective service experience. As the designers of services for these clients, we need to do the same.

For example, during an interview with a stakeholder for a financial services project, we asked if there was anyone else

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who would be interested in the work we were doing. The new stakeholder recommended to us as a result of this enquiry became critical to our success because that person had significant weight in the organisation. By interacting with all affiliated stakeholders, they have a part in the project from the beginning and become your predictable ally instead of an unpredictable enemy. More importantly, having access to a wide array of stakeholders broadens your perspective of, and insight into, the organisation you are transforming.

However, even clients who are your advocates may waiver in their commitment.

A publishing client who had been on-board with our work suddenly appeared less supportive when they realised that their role would need to change as a result of our recommendations. People are emotionally tied to their jobs: therefore, understanding and responding to the emotional implications of the work that we do is critical.

Co-create with the Client Services are a result of a co-created experience among all of the people involved

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Workshop participants brainstorm services for their markets | 2. A participant shares his customer personas and service scenarios with the group 1.

and only through iterative ideation does an effective service come to fruition.

The service of service design is no different. We are often reluctant to share our work with clients until we feel completely prepared. The risk, however, is that what we perceive as being comprehensive, they perceive as being un-collaborative and closed-off.

Throughout a project, expose clients to your in-progress thinking, encourage their participation and feedback and even give them assignments so that they feel equal ownership. For a healthcare client, whom we were helping to strategise their global physician services, we led a workshop to help identify insight gaps. During the workshop, the attendees interactively participated in collaborative story-telling exercises to help us understand research opportunities and project priorities. Effectively, they created the content themselves and witnessed our approach and the subsequent outcomes first-hand.

Rather than being armed for meetings with presentations, printouts and deliverables for them to react to, bring whiteboards, markers, and prepared activities for them to participate in. When clients see the tangible outcomes of the service design work we are doing with them, they begin to understand the potential impact these practices have on transforming their business for them.

Be Outcomes-focused With service design, whether it is about improving comprehension in education or streamlining the hospital wait in healthcare, determining the impact you are striving for as a result of the service is critical. Ultimately, the work

we do with our clients will naturally drive toward these measurable outcomes for their customers, but we should focus on outcomes for our customers. Collaboratively determine at the start of the work what you and your client hope to accomplish by the end: for example, one of our professional services clients explained that they hoped to have a better understanding of their colleagues as a result of our work, which we captured as a key-learning objective for the overall project. With agreed-upon success metrics, you can transparently assess satisfaction with the client.

Be Adaptable Service designers orchestrate an overall framework within which effective services operate, but the reality is that within that framework, much can shift and evolve. With your own service of service design, you need to be prepared with an overall skeletal approach, but accept that as you begin to understand the organisation, its processes and its people, you will have to adapt the approach to be successful. One of the most rewarding quotes from a client after we finished a project was: “You know us better than we do.” The ability to organically and seamlessly change according to the unique needs of the business is invaluable in ensuring long-term organisational transformation.

Ultimately, much of the above relies on having empathy for the organisation you are transforming through service design. By continually asking yourself, “how would I feel if…” you will begin to anticipate some of the issues that may prevent us from having the impact we aspire to.

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By Bruno Jaspaert and Jürgen Tanghe

The Coalition of the Willing

Organisations have systems and structures in place to make them efficient, but these very structures also make them inert.

Strangely enough, it is the widely accepted ‘good management practices’ that make innovation so hard.

Bruno Jaspaert works as service innovation engineer at Kite. If he is not gardening or biking Bruno is devoting most of his time developing new servitization projects or designing new sustainable services for a wide range of customers.

Jürgen Tanghe is psychologist and founder of Kite. He runs service design and organisational transformation projects with his clients and plays some futsal on the side.

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A few examples: • Listen to your best customers (who will not be able to tell you anything new) • Net Present Value calculations to evaluate investment opportunities (which are positively biased towards the continuation of existing services) • Building great brands through advertising (which – in case of a service that is not in line with the brand promise – creates dissatisfaction and lacks authenticity) Organisations are striving so hard to become lean, agile and efficient that they are struggling desperately to incorporate innovation. Outperforming organisations are those that are capable of embracing innovation and using it as the ultimate tool to stay ahead of the competition.

Service design offers an excellent way to overcome these innovation barriers.

It offers principles and an impressive set of tools such as observing the real behaviour of your customers and using extreme users as an inspiration, to ultimately create services worth launching.

Still, innovations in general, and new service designs in particular, introduce disruption into the organisation. This is because a new service design brings new answers to these key questions every company needs to answer : • Who are our customers really and what are their needs?

• What value do we offer to them?

• How to deliver that value?

Consider this example of a very successful health insurance company. They realised that they have to provide services to their clients at some of the most important moments in human life such as birth, marriage, sickness and death and that they needed to deliver more value at these moments.

This client started a first service design project, aiming to innovate their services offered when a person passes away.

We started by assembling a group of employees with diverse backgrounds within the organisation who teamed up with designers to delve into the design process, do research, generate ideas, and create concepts.

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Very quickly they discovered that: • The needs were very differentiated, depending on the relationship the client has with the deceased: partner, close friend, parent or child (different clients and their needs).

• To be successful, they needed to offer services that are much closer to the emotional values in life (other value).

• They fulfilled their role only from an administrative point of view and had to separate the touchpoints needed to get the administration in order and those to deliver supportive value (different way to deliver value).

duction of the innovation into the organisation, it will die on the drawing board.

This final step is basically also a process that, in our view, involves 4 steps: • Mapping the environment • Planning and creating a roadmap • Building through experimentation and implementation • Delivery

Funnily enough, the logic behind service designers can partner with the reasoning of organisational change practitioners.

Consider this list of key principles that are used in successful organisational change projects: • Treat all organisational change as Although most service design approaches behaviour change include a final step with names like ‘imple• Align the people, process and method mentation’, ‘delivery’ or ‘enterprise’, they aspects do not have a consistent way of integrating these services into the existing organisation. • Paint a rich picture of the future with visual language and the use of stories An organisation needs more than a well-crafted blueprint depicting the newly • Use the inverse relation between participation and resistance tchange designed services to make it a success. If you cannot rely on a robust approach and a • Allow people to repeat specific behaviour until they get it right ‘coalition of the willing’ to guide the intro-

Challenge

Identify

Discover

Insight

Concept

Create

service design

Roadmap

Landscape

Prototype Map

Plan

Launch

Build

Land

service implementation 45

By Bruno Jaspaert and Jürgen Tanghe

To most service designers, this sounds familiar, because these principles are fundamentally based on the same underlying values of service design: human centred, holistic, participative, visual and use-experimentation (as listed in ‘This is Design Thinking’).

The Role of the Co-creation Team Service designers boast that co-creation is the ultimate guarantee of creating a design that works for the organisation and can be implemented neatly.

Based on our experience we have to state that this depends largely on the motivation and insight of the assigned co-creation team, not just to ‘design stuff’, but also to act as change champions for the organisation. They need eagerness to innovate, to push things forward, to introduce change, to embrace new service model designs and to strive for improve-

MGMT TEAM CO-CREATE TEAM

W

BACK & FRONT OFFICE

Identify

Discover

Challenge

Insight

Create

Prototype

Plan

Landscape

Concept Concept

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Map

Build Roadmap

ment. The power of an effective change champion can hardly be overestimated: their behaviour is very contagious. Leandro Herrero has demonstrated how one individual change champion can influence the behaviour of 50 people.1 Monitoring the W, M, C factors Basically, there are 3 challenges in any type of significant change: usually we label them MUST, WANT and CAN. MUST is the acknowledgement that an old model is no longer effective and needs to be abandoned. It’s all about seeing the reality (for example, of changing customer preferences) and forgetting the practices associated with this.

WANT is the motivational aspect and is more emotional. It’s the challenge of describing a desirable mental picture of the future state and of the path towards it.

CAN is the action-oriented part: the belief that the organisation and the individuals in it are capable of being successful in the new set-up and the acquisition of the competence to be so.

To monitor the state of mind within the changing organisation we started to chart the willingness factor throughout the design process. For us, it is a (subjective) method of testing the water and assessing the chances on successful introduction of the service into the organisation, specifically for 2 key stakeholders: the top management level, and the front & back office delivery teams.

For the health insurance company, the creation of services that provided an

Land Launch Delivery

Willingness monitor

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experience closer to the emotional needs of the clients raised the MUST-WANTCAN challenges very clearly: • Top management needed to understand that, for the success of the organisation, it was necessary to reframe their job from ‘making sure all paperwork is ok and costs are covered’ to ‘alleviate any financial, administrative, practical and emotional worries that people may have’. (MUST) • Front office employees, though well trained, showed concern about their ability to cope with the new demands of delivering this value, not only on a personal level, but also from a workload point of view. (CAN) • Both groups had difficulty positioning the new situation within the landscape of other service providers (WANT)

• Complement and combine the stories about individual clients with quantitative data on customer retention and defection.

• Use the energy and enthusiasm of the co-creation team to install a ‘growth mindset’, in which new services are no longer perceived as a necessary answer to a problem, but as an opportunity for growth in business and reputation.

• Use the prototyping workshops to start identifying the requirement for organisation (roles and responsibilities) incentives, control systems etc. and contrast that with current policies.

• When presenting the concepts you have to clearly demonstrate what resources and competences of the current services will be re-used (‘shrinking the change’).

Service Design in a Changing Environment We argue that the organisational change starts long before the final concept pitch and the start of the implementation phase if you want to keep the project up to speed and successful. During the design process (or on a parallel track), the design team needs to prepare the organisation for the change ahead. Fortunately, with some modification, design tools and techniques can serve as change tools!

Towards the Delivery Organisation • Use the personas to tell stories, both in order to let go of the past and to show the possibilities for the future.

• Talking on regular bases of the insights they discovered, discussing how that would affect their work, not in terms of general ‘culture’ statements, but in terms of very specific behaviour. This could take the form of an ‘expedition’.

• During the prototyping, invite process-, marketing- and IT specialists, and let them experience the challenge, but also the benefits of the new service.

• Create concept boards that allow the team members to present them at every possible occasion, in order to get feedback on their concepts.

Below, there is a list of actions that can be taken throughout the steps in the design process : With the Management Team • Use customer journey maps and walkthroughs to confront the management with the experience that was provided.

•

References 1

Leandro Herrero (2006) Viral Change

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By Francesca Dickson, Emily Friedman, Lorna Ross

Innovating in Health Care – an Environment Adverse to Change

Francesca Dickson, Communications Consultant, Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation

Emily Friedman, Senior Designer & Design Researcher, Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation Design Team

Lorna Ross, Creative Lead and Manager Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation Design Team

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Decades of practicing medicine have created a system that teaches physicians and members of the care team best practices to replicate standardised behaviours, the very antithesis of change. In health care, the antibodies to change are embedded in the culture and the training of the employees who provide care. It is a finely tuned workplace environment that strives to drive out variance, understands the hard science of quantitative measures, and embraces standardisation of care practices with the intention of keeping patients safe, all while creating safety standards and efficiencies intended to reduce cost with streamlined services. Medical errors are usually the result of a procedure or a process that was missed: reinforcement that doing something out of the norm can cause a mistake.

It is perhaps this very culture that has created a system of healthcare in America that has not changed the model of care delivery in over a century.

Setting the stage, and creating the buy-in among leaders and employees to question – even simply suggesting that there are service changes to be made – has become an art in itself.

Medical knowledge, previously owned solely by the physician, is now readily accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Shared decision-making

and the intensive nature of the clinical interaction it requires is well ingrained in health care. All of these elements require clinics, hospitals, and health systems to approach care delivery differently. Traditional business models are insufficient. These largely analytical and incremental approaches will not yield the transformational changes needed to anticipate and respond to these forces.

Health care organisations desperately need innovation in procedural

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techniques, protocols, roles and tools.

However, some of the most powerful opportunities for innovation can be found in the way that patients experience health care: the service of medicine.

Health care organisations simply cannot continue to practice and deliver care the way they have for the last 50 years. This change requires conviction and confidence and will take extraordinary acts of imagination by all of us.

A Paradigm Shift Is Needed Often, we have a very clear view of where we are going when we face a challenge and begin by figuring out the incremental steps that will get us there. This is a predictable and familiar way to meet objectives. This is especially true when we are trying to implement institutional goals. We can confidently get the expected results through a series of wellplanned, managed stages. However, what often happens in this situation is that the goal sits neatly in our crosshairs… and does not move. Incremental improvements will never lead an organisation beyond what is expected.

If something can be clearly described then it is not the future.

A goal as articulated is a function of the need for consensus and agreement.

The problem as stated will lead to a predictable solution, and not the

paradigm shift necessary to implement true organisational change. The real goal is far beyond what can be described, or even imagined.

Think Big, Start Small and Move Fast The Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation’s (CFI) patient-centred mission is to transform the way health care is experienced and delivered. The key to our approach is in how we frame and understand our objectives. We know we will never realise the potential of an endeavour if we drive too quickly towards solutions. However, through

INSTITUTIONAL GOALS

PARADIGM SHIFT

WHAT’S EXPECTED

WHAT’S NOT EXPECTED

INCREMENTAL IMPROVEMENTS

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By Francesca Dickson, Emily Friedman, Lorna Ross

divergent thinking

problem as stated

problem as understood

protected time & space for experimentation & exploration

* * * *

predictable solutions

*

unexpected possibilities

divergent thinking, collaboration and a commitment to experimentation, we will identify multiple possible outcomes. By doing this we mitigate risk, greatly increasing our potential for success.

Divergent thinking is key to the Center for Innovation’s fusion of design thinking and the medical practice within Mayo Clinic. CFI brings together people from diverse disciplines to use human-centred participatory research and design methodologies. We look beyond the problem as defined during a protected period of experimentation and exploration to allow for unexpected possibilities. At a high level, our work is based on a process that includes planning, research, synthesis, prototyping and implementation. The core of the activity is centred around the research component. This is where we build out a model of the landscape for design. It’s a best shot at imagining the future: it’s where we assemble everything we can learn about the current task, including a deep understanding of the past and present landscape.

The second phase of research is through experimentation. We build to think. This is a period of rapid, spontaneous, low-res, low-tech experimentation.

Insights and findings from these experiments are combined to maximise the range and number of concepts to prototype. Once concepts are made tangible

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we are then able to display, evaluate and evolve an idea.

An experiment is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It’s an opportunity to create a situation for people to collaborate and try things together, and to do things differently and to then talk about how it felt. Experiments are opportunities to learn unexpected things. In the end, the value comes from the conversation the moments trigger: the experiment itself disappears. What is said and felt is what we pay the most attention to. People reacting to the experience, building upon it, making it better and more relevant is where the really good ideas come from. Through taking chances and learning from failure as much as success, we co-create innovative solutions to ultimately implement in a real world context to validate and pilot. The people who introduce novel ideas might be physicians, nurses, administrators, secretaries, desk attendants, engineers, designers, custodians, researchers, lawyers, computer programmers or volunteers. Together, they help make the invisible, visible. Most importantly, patients are crucial partners in our innovation journey. At CFI, we ask these stakeholders to participate and validate our experiments at every step of the way.

Each project encounter with CFI creates internal evangelists who sing the praises

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1.

of the process and the changes that the Center for Innovation team inspires, spreading the word between specialties about CFI’s unique methodologies and our contributions to their environment.

CFI leaders also present the team’s work to the broader enterprise leadership and include observations, testimonials, measurements, data (both qualitative and quantitative) that encompass efficiencies, improved patient encounters and improved work environments for the staff. All of this contributes to a more open attitude about approaching health care delivery from a new direction.

2.

center for innovation methodology we innovate by using design thinking, deep collaboration and rapid experimentation to co-create the unparalleled health care experience.

scanning and framing

researching and experimenting

CFI designer, Maggie Breslin, leading a workshop | 2. CFI designer, Caroline Lu (lower right) and Amber Caron (Care Assistant), synthesizing information after a workshop 1.

synthesizing prototyping implementing

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Mayo Clinic Exam Room 1954–2004

Prototype of Jack-and-Jill Room, conversation side (above) and exam side (below).

“We’ve realized that we need to interact with patients in a setting more conducive to consultation. Only a small portion of a clinical visit today involves a physical exam.

Traditional exam rooms, however, are dominated by the tools needed for that activity,” says Dr. Mundell, M.D., of the Division of General Internal Medicine (GIM) at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. “The computer has become an active participant in the conversation.

We’ve found that it’s better to be able to share screen views with our patients. Current exam rooms don’t allow that.”

Building these re-imagined rooms began fast and simple: brainstorming and mocking up cardboard prototypes of how the space could be laid out. These low-fidelity rooms were then used in story telling and mock-visits where inputs for changes were received. Once the team felt that had a better room design, Mayo facilities was engaged to build up real space with two sample setups for CFI to further evaluate the room’s layout. This outpatient laboratory became a unique clinical space where real patient volunteers visited with real physicians.

Completed Jackand-Jill Room in General Internal Medicine

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By Francesca Dickson, Emily Friedman, Lorna Ross

A New Patient Exam Room −Jack-and-Jill Suites Named the Jack-and Jill-Suite because the final design included two consult rooms sharing a single exam space, this is one example of CFI’s active experimentation process for testing new ideas. From 2006 through 2010 our design team engaged with practice teams to revisit the design of the patient visit room and the effects of that design on the encounter between patients, physicians and care teams. The premise of this experiment was that medical examination rooms haven’t changed much in the last 100 years, however among other developments in the practice, the computer has changed the dynamics of physician-patient interaction.

When GIM planned its move to a new space Dr. Mundell teamed with the Center for Innovation and the Department of Facilities to develop the first new major exam room innovation at Mayo Clinic in decades.

Key Insights The lessons CFI has learned over the years are many. The primary lesson is that creating buy-in involves partnerships and collaborations that increase the value for all involved.

Storytelling to key leadership and among employees creates this buy-in, as well as a safety net to work under, while also generating more partners and continuing the momentum.

Other insights include: Play — Don’t Invest a Lot of Time and Resources into Any One Experimental Idea Too Quickly Having a casual and curious attitude makes the success of any one direction less precious. Often the experience of trying new ideas and perhaps even learning from their failure leaves you open to discovering the unknown and unexpected.

Document — Record What You See in a Comprehensive Manner How you document depends on the situation. You can take notes, make sketches, audio recordings, video clips and take digital photographs. Anything that captures the rich detail of what you are observing will help you interpret and share your findings.

the specific observation: reapply them to other observations to see if they fit.

Share — Display Your Findings, Photos, Artefacts and Notes Observation is not a solitary activity. The interpretation and synthesis is enriched through sharing, while the meanings and different perspectives and experiences will shape themes that emerge. Set up a dedicated space – a project room – for this purpose. People respond to visual cues.

As the project evolves, it becomes a living space where the work is visible and the story can best be told.

Creating meaningful changes in a healthcare organisation is not easy and requires purpose and commitment around wellexecuted experiments with engaged and committed partners. This takes time, documentation and storytelling. The landscape around health care delivery is changing, and the more we understand the surrounding driving trends, the greater our perspective will be on what is needed to meet the demands of the future.

•

Thanks and recognition to co-authors We would like to recognise and thank the following CFI team members who have written materials for the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, and from which we borrowed to craft this article: Maggie Breslin, Linda Downie, Julie Koch, Gerry Greaney

Synthesise — Question and Interpret What You See Happening What do your observations tell you about larger themes? This is a period to use the technique of going back and forth from the specific to the general and back to the specific. Develop principles from

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service transformation phases and main steps

54

objectives and deliverables

design the experience

explore service and experience concepts test and proof scenarios

defined & proven service concepts involved & excited organisation

prepare the transformation

create a holistic view establish potential and value confront reality: willingness, readiness and ability to transform determine the transformation approach

benefits & impact understood approach & scope singed off essential resources committed top level commitment & support

execute the transformation

initiate transformation programme design and test solutions and processes phased implementation in small iterations

• buildup internal skills & capabilities • involve & prepare the organisation • deliver workable tools & processes • measure & improve based on trials

consolidate and improve service

validate effectiveness initiate next cycle of improvements

• new customer & employee experience imbedded in the organisation

By Melvin Brand Flu

Service Transformation: Service Design on Steroids

photo: digital cat (flickr)

Creating a customer experience that is seamless across multiple channels is a challenge that service design aims to take on. To do this for a large organisation is a significant transformation challenge that goes beyond just designing a service. Bringing a fresh customer experience to the core of a business impacts virtually all policies, processes, people and systems of an enterprise and requires a radical approach to understand and prepare for the far reaching implications. Service transformation offers a powerful mixture of service design methods and traditional business consulting tools to guide the design and implementation of customer centric business transformation.

This article reflects on work done within the telecommunications industry and argues that the service transformation approach enables organisations to deliver a new customer experience in, and across its customer touchpoints with a higher level of business success.

Service transformation has four phases aimed at achieving a specific set of objectives that guide the organisation towards realising its overall goals.

Melvin Brand Flu is a business and strategy consultant with over 20 years’ experience working for companies across continents.

He advises management and leads projects on the cutting edge of business and technical innovation in industries ranging from telecommunication and financial services, to public sector and entertainment.

Service Transformation Design-led service projects frequently run into trouble when is time to implement service concepts, facing unforeseen business realities and organisational inertia.

Business redesign projects might have the financial-, economic- and systems related analysis in place, but often fail to properly incorporate the human and behavioural aspects. Service transformation is service design on steroids, as it combines service design with business design and change management, to implement and imbed the new customer experience into the organisation. Service designers bring a strong customer experience focus and the co-

55

By Melvin Brand Flu

creation with other disciplines produces outputs that can be understood and shared throughout the organisation.

Management and business consultants contribute industry and business expertise, in addition to tools like root cause analysis and business modelling, that help ground experience design in the realities of an organisation.

The first phase in service transformation is experience led and is in the area where service designers traditionally operate. Designing and implementing the transformation is more the domain of business consultants, solution designers and change agents.

Design the Experience The biggest challenge is to design a customer experience that fundamentally changes the existing one AND can be implemented in the organisation. It is therefore important to ground the desired experience in the principles and realities of the business involved. This is not intended to limit the creation of innovative concepts, but rather to be able to engage and excite management and employees with scenarios that make sense and look achievable.

Designing a customer experience together with a corresponding employee experience increases the success and effectiveness of the service transformation.

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and employees undergo the new experience, while at the same time exposing the internal bottlenecks to the organisation.

The customer experience led approach provides valuable insights and (dis-) proofs a number of assumptions about customer preferences and behaviour. The pilots start to outline the complexity, size and scope of the transformation challenge ahead. The insights, information and data gathered all need to correlate with recognized business KPI’s and benchmarks to serve as a foundation for a business case.

Explore Concepts Most service concepts are not completely new, as they exist in some form in different industries. What are standard customer practices in on business means radical thinking in another. It is important to bring the current disconnected and often painful customer experience into to boardroom to achieve executive sponsorship. By presenting topics and issues from a human perspective, executives, managers and staff can all relate to the desired customer experience, generating a high level of understanding and buy-in, especially when supported by associated facts and figures.

Prepare the Transformation While the new customer- and employee experience and insights can spark excitement and positive feedback from the shop floor to the boardroom, it does not bring the organisation any closer to executing a multi-year transformation programme. This requires significant management participation and a dedicated team to manage and align the complex web of stakeholders, interdependent activities, politics, systems, processes and priorities. It takes significant skill and effort to translate the different components of the experience into a set of projects and activities that can be executed.

Ultimately the approach, scope and pace of the transformation are determined by the readiness and ability of the organisation as well as level of management commitment.

The key steps of preparing the transformation are illustrated here in the context of a cross-channel initiative.

Identify and Proof Key Scenarios Even though benchmarks, market studies and customer feedback are important, the real proof of service concepts lies in testing scenarios in real-life situations. By setting up and running pilots in real settings, both customers

Create a Holistic View A customer experience cannot be designed as such, because departments, processes, people all control parts that together make up the experience. A customer friendly pro-

organisational change

new customer customer prospect lifecycle stage 1 stage 2 stage 3 stage 4 stage 5 stage 6 stage 7 stage 8

cess or tool will have little or no impact unless on-stage and back-stage staffs are provided the right context, training and incentives to create the desired experience for the customer. A broader organisational perspective and context helps management and staff to see how a particular experience improvement relates to the different areas of responsibility.

A service transformation map has 4 views that visualise, connect and control different elements of the overall customer experience. It is extremely effective to relate experience points to customer interactions, policies, systems and processes, which are discussed in cross functional teams.

• In the customer experience view the key experiences of the majority of customers are mapped to the different stages in the customer lifecycle.

Experience points reveal events that have major impact on the customer in addition to occurrences that offer great potential for improving the overall customer experience.

Example: Receiving the first bill scores negative in terms of experience, but explaining the bill to a new customer before her receives it leads to a higher overall customer satisfaction together with a lower number of billing incidents.

wow

desired customer experience points per stage

impressed

neutral

positive neutral negative

dissatisfied

By targeting key experience points in the customer lifecycle, organisations can significantly improve the overall customer experience.

stage 11

stage 8 stage 9 stage 10

ecstatic delighted

user incident

somewhat very

customer experience over the customer lifecycle Key experience point

extremely

timeline

period 0

period 1 period 2 period 3

period 4

period 5

• The interaction view maps the interactions between the customers and touch points at each stage of the customer lifecycle. This highlights the components that need to align in creating a seamless experience across channels.

Example: When a customer receives an offer in the online channel, this exact offer should be available to the customer as well as employees in all channels.

• The organisational view captures the interactions along with interdependencies between the on-stage staff and the different back-stage actors, departments and organisational silos. Since this view is people centric, it shows the areas where the most change management effort will be required.

Example: Alignment between central- and regional offices around services, prices and campaigns prevents confusion in the retail channel, which significantly improves customer- as well as employee experience.

• The transformation view shows the relationship between the customer experience and the domains: people, policies, processes, procedures, practices and systems. By better understanding the relationship between these domains and the desired experience, issues can be tackled in the right domain.

Example: A small change in the in-shop process enables employees to do online follow-ups with prospects using simple online tools. In this case a technology solution would have had little effect on the customer experience.

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By Melvin Brand Flu

Establish Value and Potential Establishing the potential of a customer experience is not a linear process of calculating increased sales and/ or reduced service time, but should be determined over the entire customer lifecycle to establish the overall value for the organisation. This frequently requires a different measurement model to capture the change in customer preferences and behaviour.

Case in point: a customer might like the convenience of picking up an online product at a retail outlet, but the value for the organisation lies in the opportunity to educate and upsell that customer. Looking at in-store pickup this way changes this stage from a cost element, to one that generates revenue and saving.

Assessing potential and value of this scenario lays the foundation for a business case which determines its place and priority on the implementation roadmap.

Confront Reality: Willingness, Readiness and Ability to Transform In building the transformation map, a number of issues come up that need to be resolved in one or more of the following domains: people, policies, processes, procedures, practices and systems. Organisations enforce practices that frustrate customers and employees, but changing the underlying policies has major implications for processes, systems, and employees. The cost in monetary terms and required political capital has decision makers and stakeholders wary about implementing this sort of change for real. Adjustments to processes or systems can improve parts of the customer experience, but the unwillingness to address core issues puts the improvement of some of the experience points out of reach for these organisations.

The level of management commitment, resources allocated and strategic importance given, together determine the readiness of an organisation to pick up the challenge of a large transformation programme. It is important to match the scope of the transformation with the readiness of organisation and not just its ambition. With the large number of moving parts that create an experience for the customer, it is important to force

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clear decisions on scope and direction at the highest level before even building the multiyear plan.

Determine Approach Transformation should not be mistaken for reorganisation as most organisations have undergone the latter, but few have attempted the first. Taking the time to prepare the transformation and matching it with the organisations abilities and readiness leads to an approach that has higher chance of success in delivering and imbedding a new customer experience.

Execute the Transformation, Consolidate and Improve Service transformation entails a fundamental rethink of how the organisation serves its customers and requires people and departments to think, talk and act differently. This brings new activities, skills, roles and responsibilities that can be very different from what is understood in the current organisation. While the expertise can be brought in to design and manage the transformation, the company itself needs to develop the ability to transform, as any transformation is a journey, not a project.

The implementation of a new service should focus on those stages of the customer lifecycle that in combination with core journeys will bring real benefits to the organisation and its customers.

The transformation programme should engage the organisation early in designing and testing solutions and processes.

This will result in tools and procedures that after a number of trials are ready to be rolled out. Effectiveness of the new experience should be measured against

organisational change

experience goals along with business KPI’s to monitor progress and impact, in addition to building the foundation for further service improvements. The underlying philosophy of 'learn as we go' allows adapting to changing circumstances, while maintaining a steady course.

Conclusion These days, organisations do not have years to make fundamental shifts in the way they act, think, operate and serve clients. Business complexity, lack of focus, absence of vision and organisational inertia all conspire against attempts to improve the overall customer experience.

Service design offers the tools plus insights to help envision and make tangible the way towards a better future.

However, therein lays the dilemma: Service design on its own does not deliver the execution, nor the associated transformation required to make something like a crosschannel customer experience a reality. Organisations can be more successful in delivering service innovations into existing businesses by taking the service transformation customer lifecycle customer experience

prospect orientation aware interested decision

approach of: designing experience, prepare transformation, execute transformation and consolidate service. By mixing service designers with business consultants through the entire process, a service transformation programme can be based on solid business and customer principles, while recognising and dealing with the major internal challenges. Design artefacts such as the experience map and customer journeys offer a strong reference point for teams and departments throughout the organisation to rally around. However, it is the service transformation map that shows the rewards and consequences of the new customer experience. The process of putting together the service transformation roadmap, better prepares an organisation for the daunting task of truly transforming its customers’ experience.

•

costumer/user

new customer buy

admin

receive

setup

learn & settle in explore

use

reconsider

retail online @home

interaction view: new experience offered in a specific stage of the customer lifecycle

call centre mobile on stage

train- start of day ing

inform

offer

admin

design the experience: by extending the scenario additional benefits can be found

deliver

setup

educate & assist

sales marketing

organisation view: impact of the new experience on departments and functions

operations finance/ legal

prepare the transformation: heavily impacted departments must get involved early

technology back stage

implemen-rollout business excite tation as usual

attract

information

& tools & tools & in- promote & inform & incentives reward support monitor facilitate logistics training structions support

nurture

people policy process procedure

transformation view: type and level of implementation and transformation effort

execute the transformation: red flag issues must be resolved to ensure success

The views of the transformation map capture different components and activities that together create the customer experience at each stage of the customer lifecycle.

practice systems

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By Angela Meyer

The Expanding Scope of Service Design: Effecting Strategic and Organisational Impact

Angela Meyer, Independent Design Consultant.

Angela was the Project Leader for the USPS DMM Transformation Project from 2001–2005.

Angela is a design consultant and educator with experience taking design into organisations and making design accessible and effective for business and government clients.

All service design problems intersect, at least to some degree, with issues of organisational design and change. This intersection happens because of the inherent properties of services and the essential and ongoing relationship they require between an organisation and its constituents or customers.

Designing for this relationship requires acute sensitivity to the organisational ecosystem into which a service, process or system will be introduced. It is an important concern for designers, along with their clients, to understand and negotiate the scope of their projects in an organisational context – and to acknowledge both the possibilities and limits of their influence.

In 2005, a design team at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design completed a 3.5 year project with the US Postal Service that focused on the redesign of its core operational manual, an information system used by 800,000 employees and a mailing industry of eight million people, from commercial mailers to packaging manufacturers to software developers. The project was also launched as part of a five-year strategic plan within the USPS, with the objective of making the organisation more accessible and responsive to customers.

In taking on such a project with one of the oldest and largest service organisations in the US, the School of Design

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understood that it would be grappling not just with the design of a document system, but with a huge number of stakeholders at multiple levels of the organisation and a huge array of customer and user groups with a variety of informational and transactional needs. This would bring services, systems and the organisation itself into the design process.

There were three core tasks entailed in the project: • Develop a new system architecture • Develop a new document management system • Design, write, and test a whole new document, in print and digital forms

organisational change

A new kind of operational manual would make USPS services more accessible to a wider range of users by supporting learning, decision-making, and doing.

Above all, the goal was to utilise a human-centred design process that relied on user research and collaborative design to drive the development process.

This process itself, by involving both customers and a wide array of internal stakeholders, was to be a key part of introducing a cultural shift in the organisation, away from an operational focus and toward a more customer- and user-centred one.

Like most designers would, the team relished the prospect of being able to positively influence the

organisation through their work and to bring about changes in the way that the organisation served its internal and external customers. Indeed, part of the problem was that, over many years, the organisational culture had yielded an increasingly unusable information system. And while the client never intended to give the project formal responsibility for any explicit organisational change objectives, the project

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By Angela Meyer bulk mail household unions

CUSTOMERS

business

mail industry suppliers

bmeu employees

mailing standards group

retail clerks

USPS

postal rate commission mailing service agencies

product development plant employees us congress

marketing

The team worked with a range of internal and external stakeholders in the US Postal Service organisation.

was part of an overall strategic plan, and it was implicitly understood that the work would have an important ability to influence the organisation strategically and culturally.

So while the project brief was limited to designing this document system, there was a tacit understanding between the client and design team that the project would have the capacity for – and the expectation of – greater impact. The project was framed in a limited way on purpose: to frame it as an organisational design challenge would have created a scope that was too large for the design team to realistically manage and too ambiguous for the organisation’s management and leadership to accept.

Outcomes and Potential Outcomes In the first stage of the project, the design team completed the first element of the document system, a document explicitly targeting the general public. This component of the work was led by a huge amount of design research in the field with customers and with relatively little interaction with internal USPS stakeholders. This was an intentional strategy, to begin with a breakaway product that was not influenced by prevailing thinking inside the organisation and could lead the later work with a strong set of core design principles.

Stage two of the project re-framed the work as moving toward more organisational participation. At this stage,

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the team developed an instructional document for business customers that required a deep understanding of customer needs, but also a high degree of the internal expertise from the USPS knowledge base.

Stage three, the final and longest phase of the project, was where the real organisational context emerged as a component of the design challenge. Here, the team was able to build on substantial earlier customer involvement and shift to a high degree of participation with internal organisational stakeholders. Throughout all three stages, organisational leadership used key project benchmarks to communicate and demonstrate strategic elements of the five-year transformation plan.

Our engagement with stakeholders was not without conflict, however.

There were many times when the design team felt besieged by dissenting internal experts or discredited and ignored by key voices in the organisation. It was difficult for the team to remember that much of the resistance we faced was actually more about people feeling threatened and fearing change than of any true objection to the progress and content of the work itself.

In this we were, perhaps, somewhat naïve in grasping just how much sustained

Changed the way the internal team

process worked together and changed the management approach to how the document system was managed in an ongoing way.

leadership

Key leaders developed an understanding of the value of design and became champions for design approaches in other areas.

work practices

The project encouraged cross-silo collaboration and increased transparency. Shared ownership increased cooperation among groups.

strategy

The system’s focus was shifted away from its operational bias and toward customers and end users, positioning the organisation for growth.

The organisational outcomes of the project occurred in four key areas.

organisational change

effort in the organisation would be required to win over hearts and minds.

Early stakeholder meetings were very formalised and meant to ‘benchmark’ stages in the design process. But because many stakeholders lacked a real understanding of the process, they had trouble not seeing the insights and proposed early concepts as ‘solutions’ set in stone. There was no culture around the kind of open dialogue required to explore and develop ideas collaboratively. Things were viewed as simply ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and in the earlier phases of the work it was often deemed ‘wrong’.

Introducing a major paradigm shift in the thinking of any organisation will never be easy, and there are no ‘magic bullets’ to bring this about. If anything, the team came away feeling like we needed more time and more opportunities for interaction. Later in the process, we developed a very tight working relationship with a team of internal experts who effectively became part of the design team. This allowed us to get the traction we needed in developing and advancing design concepts through to implementation, with a high degree of confidence that internal concerns were adequately addressed and the right voices included.

Managing Organisational Expectations How can a design team negotiate and manage expectations around its role as a change agent? I mentioned earlier that the design of services and systems cannot help but have an impact on the organisations into which they are launched. As a result, designers have a responsibility to actively plan for the organisational scope and impact of their work. This is challenging because the team’s knowledge of, access to and authority over what happens in the organisation will be limited.

Whilst the design brief for the USPS project never changed, the scope of organisational involvement was adjusted at intervals to accommodate the demands of the work and the degree to which our organisational involvement could assist with larger strategic goals.

The result for the organisation was a transformative project that shifted the strategic focus to customers and demonstrated how this could be done on an ongoing basis.

Finally, it was critical for the team to have this kind of organisational involvement as a way of creating a more sustainable environment for the new document system.

How the system would be implemented over time would be the ultimate test of its success. For this reason, designers of systems and services should consider the degree of organisational change that will be required and how they will collaborate with their client organisation to bring this about.

Of course, the flip side of this responsibility is opportunity. When design is brought into an organisation, it gives permission to internal stakeholders to try something different. Like all organisations, the USPS had smart people who were willing – and hoping – to do good work with us. Under the banner of ‘design’, a lot of changes can start to happen that are, in many respects, already eagerly awaited by those who have not been able to gain headway or acceptance for changing the status quo. The lesson to take away is that while the project never had an explicit mandate, organisational change became both a means, and an end, for a sustainable solution.

•

During the three phases of the project, the scope of organisational involvement shifted. phase

scope

benefits

risks

1

The team maintained organisational distance and a narrower scope; project treated as a “demonstration”.

swift progress and independent decisionmaking intensive time spent researching users

greater risk in acceptance of the new document design (It ended up being hugely successful.)

The team still maintained some distance, but called on specific types of expertise and broadened the scope of strategic influence.

speed and novelty of approach building relationships with a small number of key stakeholders

some internal resistance to changes (In the end, this document lacked the needed organisational commitment and was withdrawn after four years.)

The scope of organisational involvement was increased significantly, and a highly participatory process was engaged.

far greater engagement and accountability from internal groups intensive time spent with internal users

a laborious and timeconsuming collaboration process less time spent with external users

2

3

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By Satu Miettinen

Service Prototyping in Action!

Service prototyping has been a valuable method in service development for Nokia, UNICEF, Lappset group and many other companies. SINCO, (Service Innovation Corner) is a prototyping lab for service and interaction design at the University of Lapland. SINCO lab has worked with the above companies, focusing on prototyping new solutions for their service journeys, user interfaces and overall product experience.

It has enabled them to study and analyse existing services and user experiences, to visualise ideas and develop them quickly, to communicate with stakeholders coherently, and to test and evaluate concepts collaboratively.

Service design is one of the strategic research areas at the University of Lapland. The faculty of Art and Design has worked for several years with service design methodology, especially service prototyping.

Research and development work on service prototyping falls into two different areas: the first area considers how service prototyping can add value at various stages in the service design process to elicit customer insight and help evaluate new service concepts; the second area focuses on the development of agile technologies used to prototype service touchpoints, service moments and service journeys quickly and iteratively. The use of

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agile technological solutions enables the creation of digital interface mockups made with an iPad, an interactive touchscreen or other easily available means. These mock-ups can tested and developed further during bodystorming or concept design phase.

The Benefits of Service Prototyping Just as it is in other design practices, prototyping is one of the core methods in service design. SINCO labs’ handson experience with service prototyping has come to include the company’s R&D staff more deeply in service development. As a result, proposed customer experiences and service journeys make evaluating and innovating new solutions more concrete.

Including the company staff in the service prototyping through enacting, analysing or developing service journeys, has given them the means to

evaluate the service experience from the user point of view rather than from the outsider’s perspective.

Kimmo Lehtonen, CEO from KL-Kopio describes the benefit that service prototyping has had for his company, by looking at his business from a customer point of view. The prototyping process has helped his company to develop a new customer service concept in digital printing as well as to improve a concept for the servicescape. These changes have brought new customers to the company. Putting together the new business idea with mock-ups and visualisations helped him to evaluate the new service and business concept thoroughly. The value of SINCO lab is in having the space and technological means to do hands-on prototyping with low overheads. This allows small- and mediumsized companies to get involved and to benefit from service design. SINCO lab has also developed a mobile lab that can be used on site.

The findings at SINCO lab are supported in research literature on prototyping where the main purpose of prototyping is to concretise an idea1.

A prototype can quickly and cheaply communicate a service proposition and prompt questions on the technical feasibility, consumer desirability, and

vphotos: SINCO lab – Antti Lindström, Satu Miettinen – Aino Huovio

education and research

business viability.2 Prototypes should represent product, technological and social interactions.3 Experience prototyping has been done at IDEO for years, because active participation in the user experience opens up the user point of view, and thus enables new service and product innovation. Service designers4 find service prototyping central to their work because it is collaborative, makes services visible and helps to communicate service concept suggestions.

Prototyping enables collaborative work with stakeholders when designing product service systems and multi-channel services. Stakeholders’ participation helps to figure out ways to realise ideas already in the concept design phase.5 How to Service Prototype at SINCO Lab Project work with companies focuses on different aspects of service development depending on customers’ needs. In the beginning of the prototyping process, generative work that produces lots of ideas with prototyping methods can help the client

to form the brief and understand the value of service design. Simple tasks, like creating empathy and looking at the user’s service journey are core elements at SINCO lab. Companies like Raunua Zoo have utilised this when creating new travel service concepts for the Christmas season. One of the important focuses of SINCO lab is to work as a learning environment, where MA students work with the service design team (Simo Rontti, Essi Kuure and Antti Lindström) and companies. Students work with hands-on cases, learning to use both different prototyping methods and technology that facilitates prototyping.

Technology used in service prototyping at SINCO includes: large interactive touch screens (user interface prototyping), interactive whiteboards (notes, sketching and user interface prototyping), probes and building blocks (role playing and rough modelling of physical environments), scene workstations (controlling service scene backgrounds and service journeys), back-projection displays (for the quick creation of service scene backgrounds), RGB spotlights (creating the desired atmosphere at a service scene), craft equipment (mock-ups, puppet-theatre and other

Prototyping at SINCO lab using interactive touchscreens and a scene conrol sta-tion for agile visualisation, testing and developing of service ideas.

tools for creative, hands-on building), handheld projectors (producing user interface mock-ups and visual touchpoints) and UI devices (interaction design mock-ups). SINCO lab is actively leading EU funded projects that, with the help of cooperating companies, have enabled the betterment of the environment. The results are driving the development of new tools and methods for service prototyping.

•

References 1 Fulton Suri, J. (2008). ‘Informing Our Intuition.

Design Research for Radical Innovation.’ Rotman Magazine, Winter 2008.

2 Samalionis, F. (2009). ‘Can Designers Help Deliver Better Services?’. In S. Miettinen, & M. Koivisto (Eds.), Designing Services with Innovative Methods.

Kuopio Academy of Design, University of Art and Design, Helsinki B 93, 124 – 135.

3 Kurvinen, E. (2007). Prototyping Social Action.

Taideteollisen korkeakoulun julkaisut A75. Helsinki.

4 Blomkvist, J. (2011). Conceptualising Prototypes in Service Design. Faculty of Arts and Sciences Thesis No. 101. Department of Computer and Information Science Linköpings universitet. [online] Retrieved June, 2011, from http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/ record.jsf?pid=diva2:412916&rvn=2 5 Vaahtojärvi, K. (2011). Palvelukonseptien arviointi. In Palvelumuotoilu –uusia menetelmiä käyttäjätiedon hankintaan ja hyödyntämiseen.

Miettinen, S. (toim.) Teknologiainfo Teknova Oy.

Dr. Satu Miettinen works as a Professor of Applied Art and Design at the University of Lapland. For several years she has been working with service design projects funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation and Technology. She is actively working with writing and editing service design research literature.

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photo: s i m o n | s t o c k / photocase.com

Tools and Methods Service Design Related Techniques, Activities and Deliverables

By Joe Heapy and Julie McManus

10 Lessons from the Propagation of Design Practice in Organisations

Joe Heapy, Co-founder and director, Engine Service Design.

With roots in industrial product design, Joe is an engaging advocate of the social value of design in improving people’s lives. Joe has worked with many of Engine’s clients across sectors to improve business performance and the experiences of service users.

Julie McManus, Knowledge manager, Engine Service Design.

As knowledge manager at Engine, Julie ensures that nothing we learn gets lost.

From collating our best work to gaining new insights from each project, Julie keeps everyone up to date, sharing and transferring what we know to everyone in the company.

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Our work at Engine over the last ten years has taught us that great services need great organisations. So it often happens that, by designing a service, we address an organisational challenge.

Today, we apply design thinking and design methods to business challenges at many levels, from the design of touchpoints and experiences, through to the development of teams and their skills to designing collaboratively in response to customer need.

The subject for design has extended beyond the service product, to the people, processes, purpose and culture of organisations.

We believe that there are two key areas that must be addressed to support organisational change: modelling and making tangible new ways of working and the development of a ‘design platform’ – a core structure and its components that support teams in working in new ways. The objective is always to allow people to learn through doing and to create the conditions that will allow new tools and ways of working to be propagated beyond a single team.

These two areas must be developed in tandem, so that new practices can be freely modelled and adapted as needs arise. We have put together some key lessons on the implementation of designled practices within an organisation:

1. New Practices are Linked to a Clear Service Vision A service vision has to be supported from the top and be relevant at every level.

This means the vision is aspirational but clearly actionable for those looking to implement it. The actionable elements of the vision should describe how the organisation behaves and, importantly, the role that it should adopt in the lives of customers. The process of creating a vision is critical: it needs high levels of collaboration and a structure that allows it to evolve over time.

2. The Reasons for Adoption of New Practices are Advocated from the Top When reasons to adopt new ways of working are advocated from the top and

tools and methods

linked directly to commercial objectives, the process of change is more likely to gain traction and succeed. If leaders can articulate the need to change the way people work, others can go on to engage in and take ownership of specific working practices. Changes in working practices can be aligned with significant reorganisations, rebrands and changes in legalisation or new policy ideas.

5. Immediate Practical Value New ways of working should be introduced on live projects with real objectives. There are always sceptics.

Sceptics are not always a negative force: they simply require evidence where others proceed in good faith.

It’s important to introduce new ways of working on real projects as soon as possible, to demonstrate real impact.

3. New Practices are Recognisable Alongside Existing Practices New design tools and processes should be visibly aligned with the current internal design and development processes. It must be clear how any new service design process augments or informs existing ones.

As design practice works to facilitate a multidisciplinary approach, designlike processes should be informed by ways of working elsewhere in the organisation. An ideal would be to create a service design process that combines existing practice around strategy and implementation with the newly incorporated services design and management approach.

6. Prototype and Iterate New Tools and Processes Before Launching Them on the Organisation New design approaches should be prototyped on a small scale and initially away from the scrutiny of the wider organisation so that the generic tools of service design can absorb the language and culture of the organisation. Starting small through ‘demonstration projects’ will generate evidence of success and allow early teams to gain confidence and act as advocates to others. Once there is greater fidelity and confidence, then the approach can be 'pressure tested' by applying it to more complex problems with new participants.

4. New Practices Shouldn't Add Complexity Due to the cross-organisational nature of services, service design processes, if given the remit, will extend to overlap and encompass many functions and processes within an organisation.

Therefore, those who own the existing processes need to be involved and to spend time understanding the purpose of each particular function or process of the organisation.

A comprehensive set of training and project tools used by the SILK team to develop skills and capabilities

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By Joe Heapy and Julie McManus

7. Analyse, but Don’t Rush to Adopt Best Practice from Elsewhere Reference to best practice across sectors is hugely valuable, but the core client team needs to go through a design process for themselves and to model new practices in their image. Best practice provides ideas and stimulus, but it’s rarely possible to successfully adopt an approach from another organisation in its entirety or from an aggregation of best practices from elsewhere.

8. Local Adaptation Business units and teams should, within the constraints of shared principles and platform elements, be supported to tailor the common approach to their local requirements, skills and team dynamic.

The design of the over-arching process therefore needs to have this scalability in mind when it is conceived. It is rare in a dynamic organisation that there be one rigid ‘product to market’ process.

Instead, a skeleton structure adapted to accommodate different teams, business requirements and levels of organisational maturity is more effective. The important achievement is that there be some levels of commonality of language and approach to enable multidisciplinary working. Piloting the process against different challenges produces options for how a core design process is adapted: for example, whether a team has three weeks or three months to develop a solution.

9. New Ways of Working Backed Up

by New Measures of Success Remits for new processes need to be clearly given and clearly supported by changes to performance measurement. These

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measures need to reflect the changing nature of the internal practice by measuring outputs, but also including a perspective on behavioural change and impact within the organisation, such as the effectiveness of a person's work in building awareness of new techniques, among others things.

In a programme that is rolling out new ways of working, staggered review points and a roadmap for measurement that correlates with the evolution and maturity of new practices can be implemented. This requires having a realistic view of what success looks like in terms of outputs and impact at the service and organisational levels and over time.

10. Make Customers’ Stories into Valuable Business Assets These serve as insights and key differentiators and provide high value in a service organisation. Bringing them to life can increase the ease with which multidisciplinary teams can be formed around a challenge. By making customer research and the customer highly visible in an organisation, a single point of focus is presented. It is much harder to deny what everyone is there to do when customers and their stories are embedded in conversations. Having useful and usable information and rich pictures of customers freely available to teams and ensuring that their use is routine within processes increases the likelihood of reaching valuable and sustainable solutions for customers.

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The Social Innovation Lab for Kent (SILK) collection of design tools to support new ways of working

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designing people-centred services

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There once was a client who wanted to involve local stakeholders in the co-design of public services. Here is how the User Studio agency helped them.

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By Matthew Marino

Creating a Framework for Organisations New to Service Design

How Service Lab Can Introduce Local Governments to User-Centred Innovation Methods

Working for organisations that have no prior experience in using design-led approaches to develop their services can present a challenge for service design practitioners. Of the four steps commonly used in a service design approach – discovery, ideation, prototyping and implementation – the first two, discovery and ideation, are often abstract for the client organisation until initial results emerge. Using the example of ‘Service Lab’, a design framework created for local governments

by Paris-based practice User Studio, this article aims to explain how creating a sector-specific framework may acclimate client organisations that do not traditionally employ user-centered innovation methods.

In 2009, User Studio carried out service design work for several local governments in France as part of an experimental program, partly funded by the European Union, to help design public policy. We faced an immediate test: the local governments were unaccustomed to the approach used by designers. They were noticeably unclear about the initial phases, which included ethnographic research to identify the users’ needs and to help us frame the problem, and also about co-design workshops with various stakeholders to generate ideas and solutions.

Matthew Marino is a Franco-American service designer and co-founder of USER STUDIO, a French service innovation and design consultancy. Having advised Orange, EDF, Lyonnaise des Eaux and the 27th Region, a public innovation lab for the 26 French regions, Matthew focuses on how a design-led approach may inform strategy.

For example, having sixteen-yearold students suggest better uses for the library space in their school was unexpected in a setting more used to a top-down approach in policy making.

This flexible, non-linear phase that designers are comfortable with when starting projects was perceived by public sector managers as lacking a structure and a predictable outcome. We were concerned that this phase would be undervalued by organisations that focus on minimising risk.

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By Matthew Marino

Reassuring the Client Organisation Our response was to create the Service Lab framework for local governments, a series of tools that translates the service design steps of discovery and ideation into a roadmap that civil servants can quickly visualise. This relies heavily on tools that are custom made for the specific city, district or greater region, such as an online regional map, which we dubbed the ‘Observation Map’, to compile user insights gathered during the discovery phase. We also devised an illustration tool with pictograms, the ‘“Crayon Box’, to give stakeholders – from elected officials to local residents – a common language to communicate their ideas during co-design workshops.

The design team working with students in a high school in the Champagne-Ardenne region in France

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How the Tools Work The Observation Map is an online application using the Google Maps API that allows the design team to rapidly geolocate any input relevant to the study, such as landmarks, stakeholder interviews, key players and recurrent themes. This allows stakeholders at every level to view how the project is progressing in real time, demystifying the research phase and involving public managers straight from the start.

The insights collected in the discovery phase help us frame which problems need to be resolved by the creative workshops. We generally invite about ten people to a workshop and split them into groups of three or four, each with a member of the design team.

Once brainstorming begins, the Crayon Box facilitates self-expression, adding a game-like feeling to the exercise. An online application run on an iPad, it allows participants to sketch out their service ideas using custom-made pictograms relevant to the project’s central theme. A split screen offers a choice of pictograms – often

1.

organised in categories such people, urban infrastructure or seasons – on the right and a symbolic urban setting on the left. Participants select 2. which symbols best represent their ideas and place them on the miniature urban scene. In one example, we created pictograms representing the Garonne river and a radio broadcasting station for a workshop in the southwestern region of France focusing on local media.

The result resembles a stylised postcard of urban scenery that is placed on the regional map used in the previous phase. This allows public managers to visualise the relationship between stakeholders’ insights and potential solutions in specific streets or neighbourhoods.

An elected official, who was key to one project, told us, “This Crayon Box allows me to understand what my constituents want even if I am unable to attend the workshop.”

Others participants felt that a visual representation of their ideas added value to their contributions, creating ’buy-in’ for local stakeholders around a common vision. They were thus more inclined to back the project to completion.

tools and methods

4.

3.

Servicelab.fr The roadmap and tools of the Service Lab framework are presented on the commercial website: www.servicelab. fr. This includes a demonstration version that viewers can try out for themselves before deciding whether to invest: a feature that has reassured some publicsector managers.

Design jobs traditionally involve custom-made roadmaps and tools designed for a specific project. Service Lab takes a different stance, offering a standardised framework that can be adapted to specific situations.

Pictograms, for example, can be easily designed to suit the local context.

If traditional design contracts can be thought of as ’haute couture’, think of Service Lab as ‘prêt-à-porter’, a standard model adjusted according to each client’s needs. Of the two approaches, Service Lab has proven more accessible for clients new to the idea of service design.

Designing a Framework In testing Service Lab in three small to mid-sized French cities, we have learned

several lessons about how to develop a service design framework: • Identifying recurring themes or problems common to client organisations in the same sector offers a business opportunity for developing a service design framework that may be used on different projects (eg. a framework for health care, education, etc.)

• Adapting the framework to the client organisation’s own language increases the client’s receptiveness • Remember to practise what you preach: apply design principles to your own working methods and tools, so the product is both desirable and accessible to the client organisation

1. The

‘Observation Map’ | 2. Custom-made smartphone application designed to send photos taken during the discovery phase directly to the ‘Observation Map’ | 3. Participants use the ‘Crayon Box’ during a creative workshop | 4. Service idea illustrations made with the ‘Crayon Box’

It’s About Reducing Risk Devising a framework can be win-win situation for both the client organisation and the design agency. It involves and reassures clients straight from the start and gives the design team a product they can replicate in future jobs, as successful trial and error increases its efficiency and minimises risk.

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By Lawrence Abrahamson and Marco Cimatti

Writing on the Wall Facilitating Organisational Change Through Model Co-Creation

Lawrence Abrahamson is a designer who has practised and promoted design in a variety of project types including retail, branding, healthcare, the workplace and higher education. He has been based in Singapore, New York City, Portland, Oregon and recently joined IDEO Chicago as a senior designer.

Tasked with building a new sailing programme by merging two organisations, the newly appointed director of the Chicago Park District’s Judd Goldman Sailing Program sought assistance attracting participants and increasing retention.

As a freshly minted public/private entity envisioned to extend the reach of sailing to the greatest number of Chicago residents, these previously separate sailing affiliations – one a successful private foundation working with the disabled, the other a forgotten community recreation programme – now needed to agree on what services to offer. Our process used chalk talks, a method familiar to sailors for charting a sailing lesson, and invited stakeholders into the co-creation of an experience model outlining their service offerings.

2.

Marco Cimatti is a freelance designer based in Milan, Italy. His primary experience is in industrial design working for leading design firms in the US and Europe. His interests have evolved towards strategic projects, incorporating userresearch and service design.

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3.

1.

tools and methods

Integrating Past Offerings With support from the Institute of Design’s ‘Design for Social Good’ Initiative at the Illinois Institute of Technology, our participation followed in the footsteps of a semester-long design planning course in which the sailing programme participated as a client. Infused with energy and ideas, the programme’s leadership was ready to begin creating promotional materials that clearly communicated their offerings to potential users. Expressing his vision, the programme director used a simple sketch (figure 1) showing the two main offering groups: racing and cruising. As he talked about each branch of the programme, a web of potential classes, skill-building exercises and overall aspirations emerged.

However, given the recent union, the portfolio of offerings was fragmented and difficult to understand for the seasonal instructors and, we suspected, for potential users as well. Before any materials could be designed, an integration of the two organisations’ past offerings was required and the programme director’s sketch provided the seed to help reinvent this community sailing programme.

once-separate organisations. For example, some staff members thought there should be a push towards more intensive racing courses while others favoured low-intensity basic sailing lessons. We noticed that a visual presentation facilitated these discussions and enhanced the staff’s comprehension of the entire sailing programme. It became apparent that an experience model could serve as a way to provide an overall snapshot and to help to knit this new organisation together both philosophically and operationally. We just needed to have everyone see it.

Chalk Talks Each sailing lesson begins with a classroom discussion – a chalk talk – where instructors use whiteboards (figure 2) to draw diagrams explaining the parts of a sailing boat, how wind direction effects forward momentum and other session goals. Tight on classroom space, the sailing centre’s exterior walls are clad in full-height whiteboards for these talks. Observing countless lessons as we worked on site, we decided to use the language and techniques of a chalk talk to involve all the programme stakeholders. Instead of being tucked away in a distant room, we worked in front of our clients using these whiteboards to visualise, discuss, and iterate large-scale model alternatives right where the service offerings would eventually be carried out (figure 3).

The director’s initial sketch highlighted programme branches. | 2. An instructor teaches boat navigation techniques during a chalk talk in front of the centre. | 3. The sailing centre’s exterior whiteboards enabled a transparent method of working in sight of all stakeholders. | 4. Early iterations of the experience model remained on the walls for a few days allowing informal viewing and incorporation of feedback. | 5. Large-scale models and sticky notes quickly captured ideas for new courses at each skill level from instructors and staff.

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From Sketch to Model As the sketch started to be populated with details, we began to uncover misalignments in the desired vision between the 4.

5.

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want to enjoy touring the lake in a sailboat ?

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light lessons

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foundation lessons

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c401

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regatta coaching

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now you can race the mackinac race

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now you can sail overseas

tools and methods

6. The

final model mitigated past programme divisions by focusing on user goals and skills as opposed to whether users are disabled or able-bodied.

Transparency and Curiosity The novelty of drawing diagrams on their chalk-talk boards piqued staff members’ interest and curiosity.

As familiar faces using familiar tools, we were able to talk to the instructors during their dock time, and encouraged them to offer opinions, discuss ideas, or share what other competitive programmes were doing.

Keeping the visualisation up on the walls over the course of the three-week exercise (figure 4) signalled to all members of the organisation that this discussion was out in the open and up for debate. It also provided staff the space to invite others into the process, like the student sailor who participated by reflecting on what courses he would like to see offered. In order to encourage this level of participation, we drew large, empty boxes representing skill levels and populated them with sticky notes representing courses (figure 5), which could be rearranged by the staff to test hypothetical offerings or leave comments. This method demonstrated our transparent process while simultaneously visualising the programme’s content and soliciting feedback.

Aligning Around the User To provide common ground and align different points of view within the new sailing organisation, we layered the voice of the user into the model. Having learned from research participants that they consider sailing lessons a means to achieving a greater goal, such as enjoying Chicago’s summer in a new way or accessing Lake Michigan without the hassles of owning a boat, we created three open questions through which the user could enter the experience model. "Want to enjoy touring the lake in a sailing boat?" "Just getting started sailing?" "Already have some sailing experience?" These questions led to tangible goals that users could work towards at each skill level while at the same time giving staff a simple way to engage potential sailors (figure 6). Instructors identified areas for new offerings that helped achieve each sailor’s goals, including hourly tourist ride-a-longs, participation in the Mackinac Island regatta and disabled sailing rent-

als. The focus of the model shifted from an organisational tool to an experiential chalk talk constructed by the staff and instructors. In addition to being a successful internal planning tool, this model also serves to educate the general public about the sailing centre’s offerings.

Final Diagram in Practice Our process alternated between working on-site and formalising the model off-site.

We tested versions of the diagram with people unfamiliar with sailing and the Judd Goldman Program to determine how best to develop the visualisation and provide clarity to potential participants. In the end, a diverse group of the general public, staff, dock volunteers, sailing students, participant caretakers and programme leadership were engaged to co-create the experience model and chart the required course structure for an individual’s sailing ambitions. Not only did this allow novices to understand the programme in its entirety, it became a device for the two programmes to discuss how their individual parts and pieces would fit together.

Seeing the value of the visualisation, the director used it as a communication tool to explain the programme’s new direction and offerings to the Chicago Parks Department and the Judd Goldman Foundation’s board. The resulting model also fuelled the creation of a detailed service blueprint that outlined the specific roles of paid staff and volunteers and enabled a streamlined process for handling both the programme’s able-bodied and disabled participants. By utilising a co-creation process that was literally ‘out in the open’ the two organisations charted a destination that they could all see on the horizon.

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By Roberto Saco

Strategy by Design

Using Service Design to Craft a Customer Service Strategy for Microbank

Roberto Saco is principal at Aporia Advisors a boutique consulting firm specializing in designing for services, business process management, and organizational change. When not consulting in banking, healthcare, and IT he may be found teaching on the topics of service quality and innovation, or enabling leaders in the notfor-profit sector.

Strategic planning is no longer what it used to be. While some organisations persist in following traditional planning methods, quite a few are experimenting with highly collaborative, interactive and holistic ways for strategy design and deployment.

Paramount to these approaches is stakeholder inclusion and participation. The eminently practical question then is: ‘how’?

When crafting plans, organisations usually have to trade off the inclusion of multiple participants versus timely planning outputs.

In other words, the larger the number and the more diverse the participants, the longer it takes to actually generate the plans and execute them. What if design principles and tools were employed in planning to better resolve these kinds of trade-offs?

What follows is a brief discussion about developments in planning, an introduction to ‘wicked’ problems and how service design was used to ameliorate aspects of wicked problems in a microfinance organisation.

Dilemmas in Generating Strategies Companies are faced with a dilemma when it comes to planning. On the one hand, they want multiple stakeholders involved, such as departments, customers, suppliers and employees from throughout the organisational hierarchy, etc. They want a collaborative process, and one

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which adheres to certain tenets of transparency and consensus-building. And yet, on the other hand, they want it fast, as shorter product cycles and a turbulent environment undermine long organisational planning horizons. This is but one aspect of the problem, or, rather, a contemporary recasting of a wider issue in planning.

The craft of strategy is fundamentally about creating change. Strategy assumes significance precisely when a fundamental change is required, such as higher performance or a greater degree of innovation. As the business environment and even society at large become more

tools and methods

turbulent and complex, the planning issues turn formidable. Ongoing security threats, continuous financial crises, hyper-competition, severe – and seemingly more frequent – natural disasters all connive to disrupt our carefully constructed plans.

In today’s world, how we plan is, ostensibly, as important as what we plan.

Some of these issues were highlighted as far back as the early 1970s by a design theorist named Horst Rittel. In a seminal paper1, published while they were at the University of California, Rittel and Webber anticipated many of these issues.

At its core, they made a distinction between ‘tame’ problems and ‘wicked’ problems. A tame problem is one which is primarily technical in nature, and which can be solved through a logical and analytical approach.

Because a problem is tame, though, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easy to solve. But time and resources are the friends of a tame problem. With enough time and money and dedication, they can be solved. Not so with wicked problems. And part of the reason is that wicked problems require, at some level, fundamental behavioural change. If tame problems are technical, wicked problems are social and political in nature. The wickedness and difficulty here have to do

with people’s clashing motivations, aspirations, values, agendas and desires. In this case, time, money, and even expertise may not be your friend.

Teaching design theory, Rittel went onto explain the nature of wicked problems and their implications for strategists, planners, and designers. If you’re engaged in wicked problems, a rational / technical approach is a mismatch with your problem. In essence, planning – insofar as it is increasingly facing wicked problems – is a political process. So what is to be done?

Rittel advocated a second-generation planning system relying on collaboration, facilitation, argument and a multiplicity of views. His approach de-emphasised the empiricism, analysis, logic, and closure of a prior generation of practitioners. He did not disdain a systems approach to planning, but clearly preferred one in which the planner is no longer the omniscient expert.

How, then, can design tools and design thinking itself help us deal with wicked problems that manifest themselves in conflicting goals, resistance to change and a history of failed efforts?

attributes of a systems approach of the 2nd generation solutions not in one head, but in many ”nobody wants to be planned at” transparency of the planning process moral dimension of wicked problems

Rittel’s description of what he terms a “Systems Approach of the 2nd generation”, i.e. his approach to design and strategy would exhibit these characteristics.

no scientific planning, only political and social the planner is not an expert, but a mid-wife the planner makes careful, seasoned respectlessness the planner has moderate optimism a conspirancy model of planning solving requires an argumentative process

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By Roberto Saco

ago, it now has more than 12,000 Microfinance but not Micro Issues employees and over 140 branches The approach described here takes place throughout Mexico serving over a million in a leading microfinance company in customers. Microbank is an industry Mexico: let’s call it ‘Microbank’. The pioneer, and for many years, it enjoyed company has seen its blazing growth rate hefty margins and sizeable profits. As diminished as new competitors enter the industry has become increasingly the market and weaknesses in customer fragmented, and several major banks service drain the brand. In microfinance, have entered the microfinance business, an established lender makes rather small competition is now considerable. loans to the ‘unbanked’, i.e. people with Additionally, when compared to these very limited financial means and no competitors, Microbank’s customer banking relationships. The loans may ratings trail the leaders. Its tough be as high as $2,000 (USD), but tend to collections tactics and apathetic customer be as low as $100. Although the entire service include a reputation for being microfinance industry has been under “serious”, “unsmiling”, “persistent”, attack recently, particularly in India and “unfriendly”, and “curt”.

Bangladesh2, established microfinance lenders have served to regulate a market Moving through the Process for the underserved. Forced to borrow The project brief focused on customer from a predatory informal sector service improvement. Microbank has a where there are little, if any, consumer history of failed or disappointing atrights, borrowers can at least count on tempts in this area. In the most recent some legal protection and benefits in iteration, a customer service manager the established microfinance industry. crafted a customer service strategy, sevIn Mexico, microfinance lenders are eral levels of employees were trained, cusregulated under CONDUSEF, a national tomer videos were produced, a customer regulatory body. survey was introduced and numerous

Microbank’s customers are in other customer service tactics were the ‘C’ and ‘D’ market segments. While employed. In due course, the manager poor, these individuals work in the was fired – mostly for his lone ranger or formal and informal economy, live in modest homes and have a basic education. go-it-alone approach – and today a hodgepodge of initiatives and activities litter Since Microbank is not an NGO, but the organisational landscape. rather a for-profit private company, it is

The brief called for three distinct not compelled to make developmental project phases: assessment, planning and loans only to social entrepreneurs. execution. A key deliverable included a Nevertheless, over the years, specific customer service strategy and plan. The products have been launched targeting external consultant offered to play three home improvement needs, the needs of roles: ‘expert’ during the assessment young mothers and families, etc. phase, ‘facilitator’ for the planning phase,

Microbank has been highly and ‘monitor / coach’ supporting the successful. Established nearly 20 years

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stage

operating question

toolkit (in this engagement)

scan

what’s in the current environment?

• informal (e.g., in-house survey) and formal market research (e.g. ethnographic study) • role playing and/or customer videos

gen(erate)

what ideas can we come up with for better service?

• world café (with posting) organized around themes

con(solidate)

which ideas seem more promising?

• affinity diagrams • multi-voting (on 2 axes)

off(er)

how do we move forward to design the service?

• importance / implementation grid

execution phase. A capable in-house project team was tasked with managing the overall project.

An initial, week-long assessment included visits to the main facilities, over 30 independent interviews with executives, middle managers and analysts, a review of key documents, including an enterprise strategic plan and financials, customer survey results, customer complaints and employee training. The assessment, as outlined in the brief, concentrated on the customer service issue. The CEO was particularly concerned about the organisation’s inability to embrace a service culture. In all, the consultant presented 27 recommendations to the management team. At this point, what would normally follow is an action plan based on these recommendations. Here is where things get interesting: instead of the traditional follow-up, the consultant and client agreed to a different approach for the planning phase.

During the assessment, several themes emerged that could impede the usual planning process: very strong departmental silos, fragmented information for customer service, informal and spotty performance management and skepticism regarding yet another cus-

the wall

tools and methods

SGCO process, key inquiries and tools

tomer service initiative. In other words, the solution could not be provided by one person: given prior failed efforts, there was a need for transparency in planning and there wasn’t sufficient information available to support a smooth analytical process. Finally, there was a moral dimension involved, in that the core business is based on lending money to a vulnerable population. We had entered a Rittel landscape of wicked problems.

To ensure a collaborative, transparent, and interactive process – and one which would not require months of additional frustration with a protracted effort – the consultancy used a service design framework. We hoped to tame the problem by turning the responsibility and accountability for customer service back to the diverse department managers.

The key to this intent was a collaborative planning process. A two-day workshop was convened during which we walked through a four stage process: SCAN, GENERATE, CONSOLIDATE, and OFFER. Fifteen department heads, opinion leaders and managers were invited. All had been briefed on the project, and most had been interviewed during the assessment phase. The room was laid out with a U-shaped table, several smaller tables

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By Roberto Saco

Café3. Developers of the tool first came up with the and a wall had been covered with brown paper. During SCAN we presented the idea when they noticed that, at conferences, most of the results of the initial expert assessment interaction was taking place during coffee breaks. Thus, and corresponding recommendations, as they argued, if exchange and collaboration are critical well as the result of a prior brainstorming for the business in question, why not institutionalise the session, carried out independently of our coffee break and make it the centrepiece of any meeting? efforts, several customer research studies, The World Café technique is similar to speedtwo videos on idea-making through coldating, except the aim here is to recombine ideas through laboration and the CEO’s perspective and fairly intensive dialogue. As individuals rotate through vision for a more customer-centric culture. group discussions, they enrich each others’ perspective We asked them, throughout this stage, to (see Graph 1). An advantage of this approach is that it jot down ideas on blue Post-it’s, and then allows everyone to comment on a variety of themes concluded by a silent posting on the wall. having to do with the topic, in this case customer SCAN is a warm-up stage that also service. A theme could be ‘Operations and Processes’, serves to level the playing field, as people for example. In this project, we used a version of World come to the workshop with asymmetrical Café that requires table participants to post their ideas information and knowledge. The ideas (using yellow Post-it’s) on the wall. The nature of the presented here via the Post-it’s are wall is such that it allows for transparency and facilitates still individual ideas: they have not collaboration. Now, the yellow Post-it’s reflect ‘connected’ been recombined. For that we go to ideas resulting from the various conversations taking GENERATE. We now move to the smaller place during the World Café. tables in groups of four or five and use The CONSOLIDATE stage leads the team through an idea generator to come up with many a series of labelling exercises to ‘affinitise’ or cluster ideas for customer service improvement. similar ideas and eliminate redundancies. Each iteration We used an idea generator called World serves to clarify ideas and give them appropriate names or labels. If SCAN and GENERATE serve to open up possibilities, CONSOLIDATE starts to restrict the idea flow, like a conceptual funnel. All the work is done on the wall.

3. what Finally in OFFER, themes (in this case customer you both service strategies) are prioritised via a tool called create! multi-voting. In multi-voting, each participant receives a restricted number of votes (dots) that they can place next to the themes of their choice. Once voting is done, the Post-it’s are placed on an X-Y priority grid denoting 1. what you know… ’importance’ and ’ease of implementation’.

In all, the SGCO process generated a total of 97 individual ideas, 266 recombined ideas, and 47 separate 2. what someone else knows…

The simple notion behind the World Café, creating better ideas through dialogue 1.

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3.

tools and methods 4.

Posting on the wall during idea generation | 3. Ideas are clustered into themes (pink and red post-it’s) | 4. Transitioning from ‘Consolidate’ to ‘Offer’ using multi-voting.

2.

2.

and distinct strategies. A second workshop with a smaller team took all of this information and, using a similar process, produced a concise draft of the customer service strategic plan. The plan now is organised around six strategic objectives, 20 separate strategies and more than 50 individual projects scheduled over a 24–30 month planning horizon. So, the main objective of the planning brief was achieved. But more importantly, the way it was done, with transparency enforced through visual methods, intense collaboration in a team mode and a non-hierarchical approach honouring everyone’s contributions modelled behaviours for the kind of culture Microbank wants to embrace.

Learning Lessons The client had never before participated in an exercise of this nature, and the reviews were very favourable, both through formal and informal feedback.

Participants remained engaged throughout the two sessions and three weeks, and can now follow the iterations

of a dynamic plan with a reference to what they actually crafted together on the wall. However, the story is not over: we are barely into the implementation phase.

Wicked problems still remain. And, yet, there is confidence that, over a two year period, a very solid base for a customer service culture will be built.

In the case of Microbank, several positive features helped the project. A Customer Service committee populated with senior executives had been formed, and they all participated in the workshop.

A strong project team was put in place, and key members of this team participated throughout. And some latitude for experimentation was clearly present.

Additionally, visual tools and processes – the toolkit of service designers – are assets in challenges exhibiting ‘wickedness’.

By promoting transparency, facilitating collaboration and connection and showing the unfolding trajectory of thinking in action, they promote a dialogue for more sustainable results.

As service design gains prominence, designers will be approached to step out of their comfort zones into non-traditional design arenas. They will be asked to participate in – or perhaps lead – complex business processes requiring a talent for collaboration, synthesis and the reconciliation of antagonistic goals. Scary thought, isn’t it? But it’s also very exciting.

References 1 Rittel, Horst W.J., and Webber, Melvin M. (1973).

‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’ Policy Sciences 4: 155-169.

2 Bornstein, David (2011, March 24).

‘Grameen Bank and the Public Good.’

The New York Times Opinionator [Online] Retrieved May 15, 2011, from http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes. com/2011/03/24/grameen-bank-andthe-public-good/ 3 Brown, Juanita, and Isaacs, David (2005). The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter. San Francisco, CA: BerrettKoehler.

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By Miriam Becker

“I Attempt to Get to the Essence of the Design Solution in the Same Way that I Aim to Find the Essence for Each Poem.”

To gain insight into the work of a service designer, Touchpoint spoke to Jamin Hegeman about his career and about good and bad experiences in service design projects.

You have worked in different service design environments from companies, to universities to being an independent consultant. But you did not start your studies with service design. Can you tell us more about your bachelor focus?

Jamin: I studied electrical engineering for a year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but found myself writing poetry during my classes. I decided to follow my passion and switched schools and degrees to study writing at the University of Pittsburgh. There, I focused on writing poetry, which is the concentration I chose for my writing degree. I also studied nonfiction and journalism, and minored in political science.

Is there a relation between poetry and service design? Does it influence your work today?

In poetry, every word matters.

If a word is there, it must have meaning. I ask the same questions of my design solutions as I do the words in poetry. Why does the word need to be there? Do the words stand on their

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own and also contribute to the whole?

Can the same meaning be achieved with less? Essentially, I attempt to get to the essence of the design solution in the same way that I aim to find the essence for each poem.

What was your first introduction to service design? Why did you choose to go into this direction?

I first encountered service design a week into my graduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University, which hosted the first international conference on service design in 2006.

I had no idea what it was at the time.

The following year, I directed the second conference on service design.

In addition, I studied service design under Shelley Evenson. I led a project with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which I wrote about in This Is Service Design Thinking.

Service design seemed to push the discipline of design into new territory. As an interaction design student, I became interested in the application of interaction design in a broader sense. Service design offered a

way to advance the discipline of design by engaging with an unfamiliar form: a service.

Looking back at the projects you worked on, what was your favourite project? Why? When I worked at Nokia, I led a project to design a new service for HIV positive teenagers. We were asked to design a reminder to help them take their medication on time.

After conducting research with HIV positive teens, it was clear that a reminder would neither not solve the challenges they faced, nor address the reasons why they didn’t take their medication. We worked with the teens to design a service that addressed them more holistically and be a solution they would use. That was extremely rewarding.

What was your strangest / worst experience on a service design project?

For the research with teens, a man showed up to the interview who looked to be over 40 and claimed to have forgotten his wallet, so he couldn’t prove his age. He insisted he was younger than he looked, and he smelled like alcohol. He threatened us when we told him we could not proceed.

profiles

What did you learn from this?

Interacting with strangers during research can be very insightful and humbling, but it can also be risky and scary. We were lucky this interview took place at our office, where we had security to support us.

Jamin Hegeman, Design director, Adaptive Path, San Francisco, USA. Before working for Adaptive Path, Jamin was a senior designer at Nokia. He is a member of the Service Design Network Advisory Board and Chair of the Service Design Network Conference 2011 in San Francisco. He recently contributed to the book This Is Service Design Thinking.

What was the best / the most interesting experience in a service design project?

One of my best experiences took place during my first service design project with a neurosurgery clinic at UPMC. At first, the staff had no idea what we were doing there. But we shared our process and findings, and they began to understand. They figured out that they could look at their work differently, through our design lens, and make changes to improve the patient experience. That taught me that not all design work is about the deliverable. Engaging people in the process can lead to even greater benefits of affecting change that will improve the service experience.

Do you have any advice for people who want to refocus on service design?

This is one of the hardest questions I get about service design from people interested in practicing, because there aren’t a lot of opportunities to practice. I think it

is important to have fundamental design skills in graphic, industrial, or interaction design. Going to design school is an option for gaining those skills and, in some cases, exposure to service design. But there are few opportunities there as well.

I believe service design requires a shift in thinking from product design.

There are more pieces to consider. And the intangible nature of services is a challenge for some. The shift comes when practicing. Therefore experience is required. But until organisations understand the value designers can bring to the design of services, and there are not many opportunities to gain experience, this will continue to be a difficult question to answer.

Do you have an advice for up-andcoming service designers?

The design of services has traditionally been a business function. As designers contribute to the design of services, we will increasingly tread on territory currently occupied by other disciplines. While designers have a lot to offer in the design of services, we must be humble about what we can achieve on our own. We have as much to learn from other disciplines (and perhaps more) as they do from our approach. Knowing some business language and the history of service design outside of a design context will serve you well.

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By Miriam Becker

“Sometimes It’s More Important to Let go of Control and Generate a Shared Understanding…”

To deliver insight into the field of service design, Touchpoint asked Alex Nisbett to share some experiences from his work as a service designer and service design consultant.

As a service designer, you worked for well-known clients and have been responsible for big-budget projects. How did you begin?

I guess I’ve come to service design later in my career than many people, but it was a series of happy coincidences, working with clever people coupled with a deep need to make a difference.

itself in a design strategy with a focus on services. OK, I’m a design consultant.

What did you study? Does it influence your work today?

I studied graphic design to degree level and I like to think it gives me good communication skills, an eye for detail and a solid grounding in problem solving. Informally, of course, all our experiences both professionally and personally help shape our responses to work today.

What was your first introduction to service design? Why did you choose to go in this direction?

In 1991, I was inspired by the pioneering French Vélib bicycle hire service and wanted to create something similar for London, but I just didn’t know where to start, I had no process. Working in multimedia and then interaction design made me really appreciate the value of user-centred design. Fast forward to 2005, and an introduction to IDEO helped me make sense of everything and give me an approach, some tools and methods to actually start designing services.

How would you describe your field of work?

I'd talk about a holistic approach to solving the problems we all face in navigating the complexities of life: given the focus on approach, that tends to manifest

Looking back at the projects you worked on, what was your favourite project? Why? Last year, with Engine, I completed a project for ANA, who operate the main airports in Portugal.

This is a favourite as it ticks all the

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right boxes. We first created an inspirational strategy, then a number of value-added services and a suite of tools to help ANA develop, implement and manage their new strategy. This was very holistic in its completeness and, by helping to create a better experience for regular travellers, it also generates value for the airport.

What was your strangest / worst experience on a service design project?

When facilitating two introductions to design innovation workshops in South Korea, we brainstormed and developed concepts, in the first [workshop] in English, meaning our guidance would be very direct and controlling.

In the second workshop, we allowed the participants to use their native language so they could work more rapidly and intuitively, but with little input from us.

We learnt the importance of flexibility and, possibly more importantly, understanding that

profiles

product in a glass case and admire it.

It’s different for a service.

What are your plans for the future?

Keep on keeping on, and try to find more time for the family!

Alex Nisbett, Service design consultant, London, UK. Alex currently works as a service design consultant, he is chair of the Service Design Network Conference 2011 in San Francisco and a member of the Service Design Network Advisory Board.

Before he worked as service designer at IDEO, Sense Worldwide and Engine.

sometimes it’s more important to let go of control and generate a shared understanding… those ideas will come.

What was the best / the most interesting experience in a service design project?

You know what? I can’t easily pick out just one, but I’m always looking forward to the next challenge.

Can you share an example of good service design?

There is so much good service design in our world today. Sadly, and unlike products, it’s often really difficult for those examples to get the exposure and appreciation they deserve. You can place a wonderful

Do you have any advice for people who want to refocus on service design?

The service design network and its conferences are always a great place to start.

Do you have an advice for up-andcoming service designers?

Work hard and enjoy!

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dos & don’ts service design

Cheer Me Up! For unknown reasons, I was a little down. My first attempt to cheer myself up failed. Coffee and cake at one of my favourite places didn’t do the job. When leaving the café, I thought maybe one of those delicious cookies you get along with your coffee might do the trick. At the bar, I asked politely whether it would be possible to have one more of those gorgeous cookies...

Obviously he read my mind. I couldn’t stop smiling like a child when he returned with an entire bag of cookies – for me. It saved my day!

Gerrit Wigger, Cologne, Germany

My Favorite Bike-Sharing System We have all used the various bikesharing systems and have all had differing experiences. After trying these services in various cities such as Barcelona, Paris, Pamplona, Milan, etc., I have finally found my favourite one in Cologne!

I believe there are a lot of positive and interesting features of this system that make the experience as painless as possible. At home, the users of the bike-sharing scheme can use their computer to find out where the closest available bike is or, if they’re out in the city, they can find the same information using their smartphones. After the user approaches the bike, the only thing they need to do is check the code

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on the bike, type it into their smartphone (or simply call to the service hotline if they don’t have a smartphone), tap in the code they have just received into the bike and it will be unlocked. As easy as that! Once the user reaches their destination, they just need to park the bike at a traffic intersection, in order to make it easier for the system to discern the bike’s new location.

This is a great service that gives the users the freedom to pick up and leave the bikes wherever they need them, with no need to find the usual static stations, a situation that can bring so many problems with it.

Is a pity to hear that, due to high maintenance costs, they are thinking of discontinuing the service…

Passenger Safety Has a Price A few months ago, I praised what I saw to be a great safety improvement in the way Yarra Trams highlighted doors so that passengers and drivers could see them more easily. See in the image how clearly marked the doors were.

As my tram approached this morning, I was a bit surprised to see that the doors on the tram were now positively camouflaged. Can you find the doors on the tram? In fact, I was pretty disappointed. To see the tram covered in advertising to the point that the doors were no longer discernible seemed like a massive regression on the great progress that had been made. Not only

time for service designers to define an alternative without losing the strengths of the current system!

Ione Ardaiz Osacar, Madrid, Spain

that, but it said to me that passenger safety has a price: it is only a priority if advertising dollars cannot be secured.

On the Yarra Trams website, a file called ’Your new look Yarra Trams’ contains the following: “To further improve safety, all door frames will be enhanced with highly visible yellow vinyl as well as an additional reflective strip. These increase visibility for pedestrians and drivers to improve safety across the network.”

They left out the caveat: ‘…only if we can’t make some money out of them’. Shame on you Yarra Trams.

share your service experiences The ‘Dos and Don’ts’ page in Touchpoint is a special feature that provides space for our readers to publish their pictures and experiences from the world of services. Make use of this opportunity and share service flaws or outstanding service successes with an international audience!

the assignment If you would like to see your story published here, please send in a photo,

Katherine Alsop, Melbourne, Australia

Yarra trams before (below) and after (above)

together with a few lines describing the situation depicted illustrating your personal service design highlights (or lowlights) to: journal@service-design-

Nice Gesture On my last visit to Brighton, I ate at Food for Friends (a good name for a restaurant) and received the bill shown in the photo. Apparently an employee left a handwritten note on it and wished me a lovely evening.

I found this a nice personal gesture and a good idea. The employees should be free to choose the form of their message. This way they can react flexibly to each situation and reflect on their relation to each respective customer.

network.org. The Service Design Network office sifts through the all stories that you send us and chooses three to four examples for publication in each issue.

Alexander Gogoll, Erlangen, Germany

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The Service Design Global Conference San Francisco, 20 – 21 October 2011 The Service Design Network moves from strength to strength: starting in 2008 in Amsterdam and with two conferences last year, the first national conference in June in Paris, this will be the fourth Service Design Network global conference and, for the first time, it will be held in the United States. For us as co-chairs it’s important to maintain momentum, so we reflected on those past events, on what worked and on what didn’t.

We also reflected on the state of service design.

Previous conference themes have focused on beyond the basics and, last year, connecting the dots. We agreed that we are moving swiftly beyond basics, but that not all the dots have been connected. The two big pieces that we see needing to be synced up are the design community and the business community. The challenge for service design is no longer about what service design is or how you do it, but being able

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to practice and integrate successfully into business and organisational processes. To meet this challenge, we began talking about a theme based around business and design. During one of our early chats, Alex described it as moving from sketchbook to spreadsheet.

I wrote this down and, ultimately, we decided to make it the theme. Our goal is to push the content further and to engage the business community.

We are doing this by approaching keynote speakers who are closer to the business side of things and by encouraging contributions to focus on key points of the theme ‘From Sketchbook to Spreadsheet’.

photo: Tim Dorr (flickr)

“If you're going to San Francisco Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair If you're going to San Francisco You're gonna meet some gentle people there” *

Jamin Hegeman, Design director, Adaptive Path, San Francisco, USA Alex Nisbett, Service design consultant, London, UK

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By Jamin Hegeman and Alex Nisbett

These are: • Design and business collaborating: what working, learning and building together looks like, what works, what doesn’t?

• Measuring success: What? Where?

When? How? • Service Design and how it works at different levels within organisations • Not everyone who creates a service calls themselves a service designer • Service designers designing business, businesses designing services • How does the business community view service design?

• How organisations access service design • What makes a successful (service) design business?

• Marketing service design • What might designers learn from business and vice versa • What will service design look like 5, 10 or 15 years from now?

“We’re particularly interested in understanding the impact that service design is now making on organisations’ bottom lines and in hearing just where the compelling stories of designing business strategies, monetising service propositions and cultural change are coming from.”

We will also be maintaining our focus on the practice and business of service design itself: examples and case studies, yes, but

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also on how to buy and sell service design and what the design community can learn from business and vice-versa.

We are really excited about the conference, especially as we’ve had over 4 times the number of submissions in our call for contributions that we can accommodate. The response to the theme has been very positive from all quarters, and there are some big names vying for a spot on the conference stage.

We’ll be announcing speakers as they are confirmed, so look out for them on the conference website.

As this edition of Touchpoint goes to press, there are still two months before the conference itself and much is still to be finalised, so make sure you check the website for details on the following activities and sessions: The development of students and recent graduates is close to all out hearts and an explicit remit of the SDN, and we are currently planning a Student Workshop activity on Wednesday 19th.

We have many ideas for a theme and an approach, and we have been especially careful to listen to feedback from previous participants and their tutors.

Aside from content relating to the conference theme, there will also be a strand supporting those needing to build their initial understanding of the basics, so the Service Design 101 sessions will be designed to prepare participants for the rigours of the rest of the conference.

to u b u y ch onl point ine

As usual, we’ll be trying out alternative and new formats: new ways of meeting, sharing, collaborating and connecting.

Networking will be high on the agenda and no conference would be complete without its fair share of socialising.

Members of the Service Design Network have a day together immediately after the conference to reunite, discuss and define the Network’s next steps of the Network. If you’d like to be a part of this conversation, have a look at the SDN website www.service-design-network.org, as membership also includes reduced ticket prices to the conference.

We’ve also negotiated a discount rate with the conference venue, the Palace Hotel, for a limited number of rooms.

Why not take advantage of the discounted price and convenience of staying in the same location as the conference?

We are really excited to have the Global Conference in San Francisco this year and we look forward to seeing everyone there in October (with or without flowers in their hair). Have you booked your ticket yet?

Touchpoint, the SDN Service Design Journal, was launched in May 2009 and is the first journal on service design worldwide. Each issue focusses on one topic and features news and trends, interviews, insightful discussions and case studies. All issues of Touchpoint are available on the SDN website both as printed version and ebook. To purchase single issues or an annual suscription of three issues per year visit www.service-design-network.org

Service Design Research Exploration, Improvement, Innovation

Jamin Hegeman and Alex Nisbett, conference co-chairs. www.service-design-network.org/ conference2011

sedes research Ubierring 40 • 50678 Köln www.sedes-research.de

*Scott McKenzie. San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)

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By Ione Ardaiz Osacar

Boosting the French Service Design Community

On the 24th and 25th of June, the first Service Design Network national conference took place in Paris, France. There were 120 enthusiastic participants who demonstrated the growing interest in service design in France and created an energetic atmosphere.

The conference started on the 23rd of July with an opening evening at ENSCI (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle), in the amazing top floor of the school. The venue and the aperitifs were prepared by the students, a very nice touch. The evening went by with the conference participants enjoying great food and drinks, while having the first inspiring conversations.

The first day, 24th of June, took place at the Institut Français de la Mode (Docks en Seine) where inspirational French and international keynote speakers were present, who contributed to boosting the interest in service design. Prof. Birgit Mager gave an introductory presentation about the discipline that was highly appreciated by a French audience new to service design. Craig LaRosa (Continuum) emphasised the importance of building mockups, Julia Schaeper (NHS institute) showed clearly the difference when engaging with the users, Ben Reason

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(Live|work) showed the importance of presenting the cost benefit of the proposal together with the project itself and Felix SomervilleScharf (Volkswagen) showed the necessity of including service design inside organisations. The various contributions coming from French agencies and companies, such as Veolia Transdev, Nekoé, Attoma and InProcess, made it clear that the interest in service design is growing in the country and that there is already amazing experiences and expertise.

On the second day of this French national conference, the 25th of June, workshop sessions took place at EnsAD (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs). During the various contributions from speakers working in service design and related disciplines, we had the opportunity to be inspired and actively discuss current topics that concern the service design community.

If you are interested in delving deep into the content, we invite you to browse our website. Go to www.service-design-network.org, click on the conference tab and look for the Paris conference section.

You will find various videos and presentations of the speakers’ contributions from the first day: watch them and get inspired! You can also browse wonderful photos on our Facebook group ( facebook.com/ ServiceDesignNetwork) and get to know more about the conference!

inside sdn

This first national conference was also an opportunity to give the French community some big news: the SDN France national chapter is being built! The French audience welcomed the news warmly and the nSDN chapter is very satisfied by the service design boost that this conference has created in their country. If you are in France and are willing to be part of the national chapter, don’t hesitate to contact their representative, Christophe Tallec (Utilisacteur), on the following e-mail address: christophe.tallec@utilisacteur.fr. We look forward to seeing the growth of the service design community in France!

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Ione Ardaiz Osacar, SDN Assistant, project manager of the first Service Design Network national conference in France.

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member map

service design network Denmark 1508 A/S, Copenhagen Aalborg University - School of Architecture and Design, Aalborg Copenhagen Living Lab, Copenhagen Innovation Center Copenhagen, Copenhagen Norway AHO University, Oslo Designit, Oslo Making Waves, Oslo The Netherlands Delft University of Technology , Delft Dr. Kominski's Social Service Design, Amsterdam Edenspiekermann, Amsterdam Informaat, Baarn Media Catalyst, Amsterdam Mixe - medical marketing, Zeist MOC consultants, Breda Philips Research, Eindhoven Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, Rotterdam Service Science Factory, Maastricht T+Huis, Eindhoven The Other Side Of The Moon, Amsterdam Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht Luxembourg integratedPlace, Luxembourg Belgium CIC, Yvoir Kite Consultants, Waarschoot Originn, Brussels Namahn, Brussels Yellow Window, Antwerpen

France Attoma, Paris Axance, Paris Ingersoll Rand, Angers NEKOE, Orleans Orange-ftpgroup, Paris Uinfoshare, Paris USER STUDIO, Paris Voyages-sncf.com, Paris VEEB DESIGN, Rhone Canada Ascent Group, Vancouver Cooler Solutions, Toronto lvl studio, Montreal Normative Design, Toronto YuCentrik Inc., Montréal USA Adaptive Path, San Francisco, CA Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburg, PA Continuum, West Newton, MA Frontier Service Design, Malvern, PA Genentech, Inc, San Francisco, CA Hot Studio, San Francisco, CA Info Retail, Atlanta Mc Donald´s Corporation, Oak Brook, IL New Era Soft, New York, NY Parsons The New School for Design, New York, NY Paulvoglewede.com, San Francisco, CA SCAD University, Savannah, GA Skyworks Solutions Inc., Woburn, MA THE MEME, Cambridge, MA Mexico Afirme Financial Group, San Pedro Garza Garcia Colombia Los Andes University, Bogota Brazil Driven Design Intelligence, Belo Horizonte Igorsaraiva.com, Brasilia ISG Consulting, Rio de Janeiro UFRJ/COPPE- Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - DESIS group, Rio de Janeiro UFSC, Santa Catarina Chile Procorp, Metropolitana Ireland Centre for Design Innovation - Institute of Technology Sligo, Sligo Portugal Novabase, Lisboa University of Madeira – Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, Funchal

Spain FunkyProjects, Bilbao

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United Kingdom Capita, London Design London | Imperial College Business School, London Design Wales, Cardiff Engine, London Eurostar Group Ltd, London Flywheel Ltd, Beaconsfield IDEO, London live|work, London Naked Eye Research, London NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, Warwick Prospect , London Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield Seren Partners, London STBY, London Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd, Crawley

Germany Fjord, Berlin gravity, Munich Hoffmann Consulting, Hamburg KIT - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe Köln International School of Design, Cologne Macromedia Hochschule für Medien und Design, Munich MetaDesign, Berlin Rudolf Haufe Verlag, Wolfsburg service works, Cologne Southwalk., Rheine StrategicPlay, Hamburg Sturm & Drang, Hamburg tackle | Service Design - Jan Krause & Cordula Brenzei, Ravensburg Tieto Deutschland, Eschborn T-Labs, Berlin Volkswagen, Wolfsburg Work•Play•Experience, Schwaig ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Kiel Sweden Bisnode AB, Stockholm Business & Design Lab University of Gothenburg, Göteborg Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg Ergonomidesign, Bromma Design Västerbotten, Umeå Doberman, Stockholm Linköping University, Linköping Tieto Corporation, Älvsjö Transformator, Stockholm Slovenia Gorenje design studio d.o.o., Velenje Finland Culminatum Ltd Oy , Espoo e21 Solutions Oy, Helsinki Grey Direct & Digital, Helsinki Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences, Jyväskylä Kuopio University of Design, Kuopio Lahti University of Applied Sciences, Lahti Laurea University of Applied Sciences , Espoo Palmu Inc., Helsinki University of Art and Design Helsinki, TaiK, Helsinki Yatta Corporation Ltd., Helsinki Estonia Brand Manual, Tallinn University of Tartu, Pärnu College, Pärnu Poland Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny w Poznaniu, Poznan Italy Experientia, Torino Domus Academy, Milano Politecnico di Milano - Facoltá del Design, Milano Turkey KIRMIZI KALEM, Istanbul China Guangzhou Acadamie of Fine Art, Guangzhou Jiangnan University, Wuxi TUSD Tsinghua University, Beijing

Austria DTF Business Development GmbH, Vienna IITF - Institut für Innovations- und Trendforschung, Graz ISN - Innovation Service Network GmbH, Graz MCI Management Center Innsbruck, Innsbruck Mobilkom Austria, Vienna tourismusdesign, Tulln an der Donau Switzerland customfuture SA, Baar Dimando AG, Zurich Luzern Universtiy of Applied Sciences and Arts, Luzern Stimmt, Zurich Nigeria House of Logic, Lagos Intels Nigeria Ltd., Port Harcourt

Korea Creative Design Institute, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon Handong Global University, Pohang Hyun Kim, Seoul i-CLUE DESIGN, Seoul Kaywon School of Art and Design, Gyeonggi-do Korean German Institute of Technology, Seoul Kyung-jin Hwang, Seoul NCsoft Corporation, Seoul SK Telecom, Seoul teaminterface, Seoul Xener Systems, Seoul New Zealand Ministry of Justice New Zealand, Wellington Taiwan Chili Consulting Corp., Taipei Institute for Information Industry, Taipei Taiwan Design Center, Taipei Australia BT Financial Group, Sydney Huddle Design, VIC Melbourne Meld Studios, Stanmore Proto Partners, Sydney Russel Baker, Canberra Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne University of Canberra, Bruce

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service design conference student day: october 19 conference days: october 20 – 21 members day: october 22 This year’s Service Design Conference will take place at San Francisco, California, USA. The topic From Sketchbook to Spreadsheet is about exploring the critical relationship between service design and business.

The registration is open now! Book your ticket at http://service-design-network.org/conference2011

About Service Design Network The Service Design Network is a forum for practitioners and academics to advance the nascent field of service design. Our purpose is to develop and strengthen the knowledge and expertise in the science and practise of innovation.

Service Design Network Office | Ubierring 40 | 50678 Cologne | Germany | www.service-design-network.org

Photo: Calibas, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Golden_Gate_bridge_pillar.jpg

SAN FRANCISCO