Design Generalist

moving home

2010-09-20T12:29:00.007+01:00

I have moved my blog to a new host for www.designgeneralist.com, so I will stop updating this place.

Thank you for all these years' commenting and supporting, I would love to see you at the new place :)

Thesis published - practices and principles in Service Design

2010-09-20T11:14:00.006+01:00

After three years of hard work and countless editing, finally, my PhD thesis is published in the form of a book via lulu.com publication.

"How do service designers manage multiple stakeholder involvement in complex projects? How do they generate knowledge and disseminate it? What is a Community of Service, and why is it important to the future of service design practice? In this book, based on her PhD thesis, Qin Han examines the practice and theory of service design, identifying three common design approaches to stakeholder management, and the knowledge that service designers need to develop projects and groups. This ground breaking study of the relatively new discipline of service design offers a useful summary of existing literature from related fields and places it in a design context. Dr Han concludes with important proposals for the future study, practice and teaching of Service Design. A must-read for practitioners, academics and students of design, business and management."

You can order the book directly here for £24.65

Free summary for download

Also for those who don’t have the time to read through the whole book, I provide a summary for download here <- it doesn’t cost you anything but a tweet, so please enjoy the work and spread the words.

information is beautiful

2010-08-26T12:30:00.005+01:00

Oh-yes, information is beautiful.

Find this beautiful site from David McCandless, a London'based writer and information designer. Another inspirational place for diagram lovers like me.

And also, if you are a doctor who fan, than maybe want to contribute to his new work on visualising doctor who time travelling here.

favourite visual research techniques

2010-08-17T14:55:00.005+01:00

I was invited to write something about my research for the Design Studies blog at the University of Dundee. So I decide to share some of my favourite visual research techniques with the smart kids at Dundee. This leads to a guest blog post 'Giving Research a Design Twist'.

Go and have a look at their blog because it has a rich resource of design in all contexts: design research, craft, creative enterprise, social innovation... anything you can think of! You may find something interesting for you as well...

The service design of proposing a marriage

2010-08-15T13:47:00.003+01:00

A girl friend of mine told me that a boy asked her for advise on what kind of engagement ring he should get to propose to the girl he loves. And my friend says, ‘it is not about the ring, you boys just don’t get it, it is about the presenting of it.’

Guessing what a girl wants has always been a bit of a mystery to most of the boys. It takes more than a good guess. I suppose many service designer/manager may share similar experiences, you can get statistics about trend, taste and fashion of any ‘thing’, but the difficult part is to deliver the right ‘thing’ to the right person at the right time with the right feeling. What you need is to get advice and inputs from other people. In this case, parents, her sister and girl friends are all V.I.P stakeholders. In some scenarios, blessing or permission from parents are important to this marriage you are proposing. And girl friends will be able to provide useful suggestions from a girl’s perspective, and even probe information for you. Consulting married couples may provide good case studies as well.

And when it comes the big moment, emotions are even more important than the rock (I know the rock costs a lot, but hey…) A sense of commitment is essential, and most of the girls would love to be surprised (just a little bit). After all, it is often the emotion that gets the girl, not the ring. Or shall I say, it is the ‘service’, not the ‘product’ that gets you the big ‘yes’.

Designing a better world at Northumbria

2010-06-24T10:55:00.009+01:00

Last week I went to Newcastle for this one-day conference to pick up some tips on how to design a better world.

The opening session was really about a discussion of what ‘better’ means to different people, I particularly like Julia Lohmann’s idea of ‘nothingness’, where people have more time to think and enjoy life rather than busy getting it stuffed by stuff…

I am rather impressed by the two speakers from Philips. Gavin Proctor talked about their extended product life cycle that goes beyond the line of consumption, but into disposal and recycle of Philips product as well.

The closing keynote was from the brilliant Josephine Green, who previously worked as the Senior Director of Trend and Strategy at Philips Design. She took us through the change we are experiencing in terms of social structure, or in her words ‘from pyramids to pancakes’. Couple of key characters of the pancake society is around the distributing innovation, collaboration, community and sustainability. Well, according to my knowledge, you can find some related arguments in Zuboff’s Support Economy and Gary Hamel’s Future of Management – both talked about the power shift towards stakeholders and their role in open and social innovation. It is quite inspiring to see how international company that previously has a reputation in manufacturing, such as Philips, stand up and talk about what social change means to them and how they face the challenge to move ahead.

And for fans of social innovation, here is a link from her presentation regarding some tools and methods for social innovation that may interest you: www.socialinnovationexchange.org

There was a concern expressed at the conference regarding whether it is too optimistic to this bright future Green presented, as the environmental scientists are basically telling us it’s too late. Well, wonderful Ms Green replied ‘it is our moral responsibility to keep optimistic in difficult times.’ and she also said ‘Life is a bitch.’ – wise words!

Interestingly, the next day of the conference, I found this rather odd little box outside Waitrose in Newcastle city centre full of green tokens. So it was the Community Matters Theme from Waitrose. They ask their customers to help them choose how much they should fund in community projects, so their investment is driven by community for community. Customer who shopped in the store were given a green token to vote for the community project they would like to support, and then Waitrose will invest money in these projects according to the result of the voting. A rather engaging approach to present community development to Waitrose's customers, don't you think?

By the way, I voted for the wild animal one, and then an lovely lady passed by me, put her token into the same box and told me 'nice choice~' - haha!

So supermarket is catching up by placing themselves as an active part of the community and support local development. Why don't we have Waitrose in Dundee? Can we vote for that as well?

Hello again

2010-06-11T19:19:00.005+01:00

It was not my intension to leave this space empty for such a long time, yet, my thinking has not stopped during the absence of blogging. In stead, I have reached some really interesting findings of my research, and glad that the challenging job of writing and reflecting the three-year journey has gained some positive feedbacks.

Yesterday I went to London and visited Participle’s little but busy office at Tanner Street. Participle has a clear vision that challenges the current state of public service and policy making. One of their most famous projects might be the Southward Circle, a social enterprise aims at solving problems for the aging society using the power of local community. I was delightfully surprised when I heard that they actually live prototype services in their little office – turn their office into the headcounter of a social enterprise for a good couple of weeks to find out what’s working and what’s not. It is exciting just to imaging live prototyping a service rather than writing it up in a report or business plan (not saying writing is not important but you know what I mean) This reminds me of We Are Curious’s method of establishing office at their client’s site in order to develop and exhibit their learning with the key stakeholders. Locations for Service Design seems to be a rather interesting topic to have a look at, it does reflects the inspiration of building a community of knowledge around a functioning service system, isn’t it? Maybe someone should collect examples like these and make it a method… how about call it ‘real space for service prototyping’?

Jennie Winhall, the friendly senior consultant at Participle, asked me what do people do with their big thick thesis. I said, well, disseminate it. So here comes the question of how. Getting back to blogging. After the long break it is good to be back and start again with a fresh mind, with a new background (Who wouldn’t love a blue sky?) Also I am preparing some paper for different purpose right now, one about the different aspects of design outcome for Service Design, another one for design education, and potentially another one for designer’s role in change management. But maybe the best way of realizing the value of the big thick book of knowledge is through practice. Here we go, a Service Design PhD looking for a job to make a difference. So if you happen to know of any opportunity to offer, I would love to hear from you.

customer experience touch-point cards

2010-01-18T11:06:00.006Z

Early on, I mentioned that we received a set of cards for creating customer experience touch-point from the AT-ONE project as a gift from the Nordic Service Design conference. Jeff posted some information about what the contents are, and I got really curious about the stories behind the developing and using of these cards, so I contacted Simon Clatworthy, the host of the conference as well as the manager of the AT-ONE project, with a list of questions.

Now let's see what Simon says about these really inspiring cards...

1. Where does the idea of producing touch point cards come from? Who made them? Is there any project context that gave birth to them?

The idea emerged when we started running workshops in the AT-ONE project two years ago. AT-ONE is a project that aims to assist the first stage of an innovation project - the Fuzzy Front End - using service design techniques. In AT-ONE, each of the letters relate to different aspects of service innovation - Actors, Touch-points, Offering, Need, Experience - and we have developed innovation workshops for each letter. As part of the Touch-Point workshops, we found ourselves needing touch-point examples to help with both mapping and analysis work (before a workshop) and for idea generation during the workshops themselves. We started out with lists, then photos and decided that what we needed was a set of cards that could both stimulate new thinking, but also help map out existing situations. When we realised that the conference was coming up, we decided to print up a set for the participants.

The cards were made by Ingvild Støvring and me together, both of us from AHO (the Oslo School of Architecture and Design). She took most of the photos and designed the cards, I created the content list and the tools for their use. We printed at a local printers after trying (and failing) to find a cheap foreign printer.

2. How would you describe the process of developing these cards developed? Were they prototyped or tested?

The development process has been kind of evolutionary over the past two years. We have run tons of Touch-Point workshops together with various companies, and various versions of support examples were developed to help communication and innovation. We have moved from texts to images to the combination shown on the cards. We have also developed several tools to help design teams facilitate new thinking about touch-points, and some of them are included with the cards. So, they have been prototyped several times and improved each time, most recently during our master course in Service Design last Autumn. It seems like the forced association method is the one that the students always like to use. I guess its because it encourages radical ideas and forces you to think in new directions.

3. Who are these card made for? I noticed there are five different ways you suggestedto play these cards, so I guess the card game is designed not only for design teams, would you describe a bit more about the possible situations that thesecards can be used?

The cards are made for cross-functional teams who are at the start phase of an innovation process. When teams come together, there is often an interesting but odd mix of people and varying degrees of design experience. One of the main things that happens in the start phase is team building - finding common ground and pulling together. At the same time, the strategic mandate the project has received is translated into a chosen direction for the project. Its a critical time for the project, since decisions made here have huge consequences for future direction. Hopefully the cards will help the team (or individual members) analyse the present situation (if there is one) and develop ideas for new services or service touch-points. We have tried to design them so that they can be usable by any team member or team facilitator. So far, they seem to work well, and I find myself using them regularly in different contexts.

The contexts for their use are as follows, but we have found that they can be used in other contexts as well.

Firstly, they are aimed to be used at the early stages of the innovation process, the fuzzy front end. This is a divergent stage in a project in which various directions are being explored, and many opportunities are still open. The cards aim to help analysis, reflection and idea generation during workshops in which multiple stakeholders are involved. Generally a design team includes stakeholders from across organisational silos and include a broad set of disciplines. The cards should hopefully assist communication accross these different boundaries, and help create a common understanding regarding various touch-point issues. They also make explicit, what earlier has been up inside peoples heads. This is a common comment about design and its role in process facilitation - the use of images creating a common understanding within a team - and its true. We have found that using the cards helps move the team forwards in a good way.

Use context 1: Mapping an existing situation.

The cards help map out an existing situation. For example, the team can go through each stage of a service (or customer) journey and pick out the touch-points that are relevant at each stage. From this, many aspects can be discussed, such as which touch-point is most important to the customer, which are (maybe) used in sequence, which are most frequently used etc. This helps get the discussion moving around how customers view the service through touch-points, and how they often jump between them. It can also help raise the discussion about who is reponsible for develping and maintaining each touch-point. It is always a surprise for a team to understand that there is often a total lack of touch-point coordination accross an organisation.

Use context 2: Identifying pain points

Once the service journey has been mapped out, then there are loads of things you can do. One of the things we find useful is to identify the touch points along the service journey that dont perform particularly well, and why. This can be a useful means for improving consistency of experience along the service journey.

Use context 3: Whose touch-point is it anyway

One of the things we have found out is that in large organisations, different departments can be responsible for different touch-points. This often comes as a shock to an organisation, but is something that is usually noticeable from the customer perspective. There can be different tones of voice, interaction styles, use of images, typography and especially different terminology. Identifying who is responsible for each touch-point and finding ways of coordinating between them can be very useful. So, what we do is simply to note who is responsible for each touch-point used to access the service.

Use context 4: Touch-point migration

An organisation might get lazy, or might just not have routines in place for updating their touch-points. Over time, a touch-point might become out of date or there could be a better touch-point alternative that can be migrated towards. This is particularly relevant when it comes to use of technology and discussions regarding self service. Going through the touch-point cards can give ideas for new touchpoints and can help map out a migration strategy from one touch-point to another.

Use context 5: Touch-point addition or subtraction

This one is aimed at challenging todays situation by removing important touch-points. Based upon the touch-point mapping, remove the main touch point at each stage of the service journey, and discuss how it can be replaced. Surprisingly, you will find that it can be replaced, and this can give you ideas regarding new facets to a service. It it cannot be replaced, then the team has gained a deeper understanding of the touch-points importance and role. The opposite of this is to pick a random card at each step of the service-journey and discuss how it could be used to improve the service. We have added some specific touch-points for this, such as "service integrated into a product" or "smart phone". This can be a useful task in many ways, particularly to help challenge todays situation, which might have deep historical roots and need updating. Thinking about how an iPhone app could improve the service is never a bad thing anyway.

Actually, a bit of a sidetrack here, but when we started the project we had one card for mobile phone. However, we realised quite quickly that technological development has moved so fast that there are mobile phones, internet enabled phones and smart phones running apps. We had to create several categories of phones, and will probably have to add even more over time, such as tablets perhaps.

Use context 6: Forced association to create new services

This one is a favourite in workshops, even though it doesn't always generate that many relevant ideas. In this task you are forced to create a service based upon random cards: pick two (or more) random cards from the pack and design a service for your client based only upon these two cards. Forced association is a well known technique to force you away from logical thinking, and doing this with the touch-point cards is a good way to force yourself to think differently. Quite often you will end up with useless combinations, but its easy to put the cards back and pick again. Its a fun and challenging way to look at touch-points, and often unearths useful reflections regarding a service.

As you can see, the cards help stimulate both understanding and various kinds of innovations. They can be used for anything from analytical approaches to idea generation to impulsive and radical new solutions, depending upon the project and project context. They can be used alone or in teams, and work well together with clients.

4. Have these touch point cards been used in projects yet? (for example student projectin AHO?) It would be great to have some examples of these cards being used indifferent context or projects.

The cards have been used in student projects and together with several service providers. The project has a collaboration with several organisations in Norway, but two main ones - a large insurance company (Gjensidige) and the National Lottery (Norsk Tipping). We have carried out two iterations of the methods used in AT-ONE per year, so have already run through 5 iterations of the process. The experience so far is very encouraging, and we are in the process of validating the process and individual tools at the moment. This is not an easy thing to do, since innovation is not always easy to measure. Where do ideas come from, where do they go, and do how do they become adapted underway? Is organisational change a more important innovation than the number of ideas generated? Does the focus upon touch-points that this particular tool encourages (there are tens of other tools too) lead to better consistency in a service over time? What we have found is that the tools help generate a lot of ideas. They also help give new perspectives and understanding, and particularly help companies understand how customers view their company through touch-points and over time. So far, we are pretty happy with these cards, and we will definitely print up some more quite soon. In addition, we will make them available as a download on www.service-innovation.org, together with the other tools we are working upon.

If we were to remake them, I don't think I would change many things. There are some formulations that could be improved, and we have only scratched the surface when it comes to how to use them. I think its a good idea to set them free, so that people can add cards and add tasks. In that way they could continually evolve, which would be nice.

( from Simon Clatworthy, 18 Jan 2010)

Nordic Service Design Conference 09

2009-11-26T19:32:00.008Z

My horribly busy writing schedule has kept me from doing many things that I should have done for weeks, and... this is one of them... I haven't got time around to report any thoughts on the conference, well, now much of them are already lost in the mist of my memory.

But, there are three good blogposts of this conference online now from others:

1. Jeff Howard's Design for Service: some useful links of presentation and pictures from the conference, and most recently a post about the Service Design Touch-point cards.

2. there is a round-up one the Service Innovation blog - the host of the conference.

3. This one is from a friend of mine (shared with Lauren Tan and JB!) Joyce Lee from the Northumbria University. We met at the conference and made dinner together - the good old days, now seem so far away!

Some materials from me if you are curious what happened:

Flick photos

[some really nice picture of service designers co-creating their own dinner at the conference!]

conference paper for download

[here are all the conference papers, I found some really good ones, already used in my thesis as quotes!]

and finally my PPT presentation available here:

Qin, Nordic Service Design Conference

View more presentations from Qin H.

sweet sweet gifts

2009-11-23T18:55:00.003Z

To be honest, I was quite impressed by the organisation of Nordic SD Conference - received this little pack shortly after arriving at the hotel. Couple cute gifts from the organisor, including a pair of over-shoes to 'protect your favourit e shoes regardless of weather conditions' (shame that my Timberland seem too big for them...) and a set of design cards around touch-points from the AT-ONE project.

It seems that card making is the new 'black' in Design now. we all know the famous IDEO cards, as far as in Service Design, I know of two other sets of cards. One is the SILK method cards made by Engine with Kent city council. The other one was Lauren (Redjotter)'s Master project: Making Service Sense, a set of postcards of SD case samples. Both brilliant projects - I would love to see more likely projects, and also see these methods find their way into organisations and make tangible differences. It would be great if the use of design card becomes as normal as using SWOT Analysis. well... if you know of any other similar card sets, I would love to hear from you!

I mean it's a good thing. It's a sign that designers are preparing to share the authority of being the 'gifted ones' with more people and moving into a facilitating role in order to encourage innovation at larger scale, well and democracy as well. I consider it as a sign of this profession becoming more and more matured, and am happy to see that Service Design is honest to what it claims to be: co-design, and empower others.

Really look forward to tomorrow, yet, have to prepare for my own speech first... left the speech notes in the UK, so gotta work from scratch again... Well, let's enjoy the next three days!

two questions to Service Designers...

2009-11-22T18:42:00.003Z

After trying gto put an conclusion down on paper for the past weeks, I still have two questions in my mind. Think it might be a good idea to share with you guys to see what you think... Let gather the brain power around the world, and see what we get!

1. How far should service designer go in service implementation?

For my research, I interviewed a couple of service designers. It seems that not all designers actually are actually designing the touch points or carry out training workshops. Many service designers work only in the research stage of a service development project and then hand it over to other people - either the client or the so-called ‘traditional’ designers - to deliver the implementation stages.

I had an interesting conversation with one of my participants who was a practicing service design about this. It seemed that the designer was fairly happy to stay as a mainly researcher role rather than getting into the details of designing the actual touch-points or running trainings for the client. Of course I am not saying it represents what all service designers are thinking, but it did make me think how far would and should service designer, as a professional, go in service implementation?

Hypothetically, there is a role of actual producing in service development, either producing the actual touch-points (physical products or it is a piece of software) or producing the process of implementation details (the criteria of the service or a roadmap of how change would be carried out in the organisation). But in the case studies out there, I did not see a whole lot of stories about how the implementation is carried out. So why? Well, it can be that service designers do not consider the producing as Service Design job, even though they sometimes does it, they would rather let ‘traditional’ designers to do it. Or… they cannot do it, because they do not have the skill to produce. Let’s be honest, roadmap of organisational change is not really in designer’s skill set, isn’t it? Of course there is a third option that the client does not want designer to be involved in the implementation – if so, how do we overcome it?

So, my question is… if you happen to practice as a service designer, how far do you normally go in service implementation? Or, how far you think service designers should go?

2. How is Service Design related to knowledge creation and diffusion?

One thing I often hear service design say about their project is to ‘change people’s perception of service’. Service, like branding, is socially constructed in people’s mind.

Developing a new service obviously involves creating new recognitions of that service among different stakeholders, and new knowledge about how to delivery, market, operate it. And that knowledge has no value unless it is diffused to all parts involved in day-to-day service delivery. After all, designers are not the ones who handle the users or supply materials/information in the backstage. Then the ultimate goal of designing service is actually about creating and diffusing the knowledge about a new service. Visual methods, blueprints, workshops, whatever service designers use, they are just means to let the knowledge flow.

So… it seems that Service Design is actually closely related to managing knowledge creation and diffusion. But so far, Knowledge Management does not seem to be a popular topic in Service Design... I found Debowski’s Knowledge Management theory interesting. It suggests that building capacity in knowledge development can be influenced by social capacity (e.g. organisational culture), technological skills (like IT systems), leadership (vision, and strategic stuff) and project/problem-based learning (that involves designer and all stakeholders I suppose).

Have any of you guys used any similar structure to analyse or plan your Service Design projects? Say, like evaluate or predict the social capacity of the service provider while putting together the blueprint?

Or… maybe you guys have some practical tactics to go about understand knowledge creation and diffusion in Service Design process. Care to share the trick please?

a heaven of design concepts - beautiful and insightful

2009-10-22T18:00:00.004+01:00

Maybe I am not the first one to discover it or to be impressed by it, anyway, I am so happy that I saw it today!!! and can't wait to share with you~

http://www.dubberly.com/concept-maps

I rememeber years ago I came across a report produced by Debberly Design Office (ddo) on design process and was impressed by the nice way they articulated the evolving complexity embedded in different proposals of design process.

Guess now I am off to have a close look at all these diagrams - have to say as an information architect I love diagrams ;-)

By the way, this one is my favourite - was looking for something that present a rather distributed pattern for design process, and it's there~ right there~

image from Dubberly Design Office website, access via http://www.dubberly.com/concept-maps/creative-process.html

Thesis 3.0 ?!

2009-10-22T12:09:00.004+01:00

I was writing the Research Design chapter last night and had a sudden panic - realized that I will need a third round of sampling ( well... theoretical sampling this time) to further some inquires around the recognition of KM in SD practice... Still working on the best way to ask these questions... trying to find a way to grab some data quickly by the end of this year :-S

Any suggestions on how to do it? I am thinking of skyp interviews or email interviews... maybe kidnap some people on SDThink night on 19th Nov will be another solution ;-) By the way, anyone who is going that night (and perhaps want to be kidnapped as well...)?

Good news is that the categorise are coming together - slowly... my god... time, time, time...

Last week, I made a revisit to the thesis structure and here we go, a thesis 3.0:

Interdisciplinary Discovery Through Design

2009-10-10T11:58:00.013+01:00

This workshop was hold on 28 September by the Design for 21st Century in the Imperial War Museum. The workshop aimed to collect the diverse knowledge in the room to contribute ideas for developing new design policies by (1) presenting five design research project in the Design for 21st Century initiative to share their empirical learning (2) stimulate discussions about topics of the contribution of design researchers on reflections of these five projects and in general.

Amongst the five project presentations in the morning - all interesting projects - I was especially impressed by two.

The BikeOff project was based on the idea of design against crime. The project looked at design for bike riders' security issues, and developed ideas that can go on to further commissions in manufacturing. At first glance, it was a typical multi-disciplinary design project with inputs from crime scientist, designer, engineers, social scientist and many other extended stakeholders. What I find interesting is the way the project was managed with what they called 'An Open Innovation Research Approach'. The project demonstrated how using overlapping research processes carried out by different stakeholder groups achieved the transformation from multi-disciplinary to inter-disciplinary, where the hybrid ideas start to emerge in prototyping stages, and also the design outputs became more diverse. Especially the approach was good at efficiently develop product (perhaps services as well) to explore unrealized marketing needs, rather than develop predicted outputs as planned in the first place. Guess this is what was missing in many NPD and NSD literature. We were taught to be so busy controlling and defining the process of design that it becomes so easy to forget to enjoy the discovery, the iterative exploration that leads to new territories.

The other one was the Design for Services project presented by Lucy Kimbell – I believe most of you guysa are familiar with this project. In her presentation, Lucy talked about the designer’s unique approach to generate knowledge through practice, which was not really discussed much in other of her publications. Although I temporary moved my research focus a bit away from the whole knowledge creation literautre, it was still nice to hear other's reflections on a similar subject.

We were then asked to discuss in groups and to fill in paper that describes the contribution of ‘design researcher’ – and somehow this is a confusing term. As some people in the room came from an academic background, thus researcher means ‘people who studies design’, but others (like our group) saw the role expended into the researchers who actually worked in design processes and contribute to the design outcome. If we look at the five projects presented in the room, all reflected a part of knowledge on the ‘study of design’, but most of these learning come from actually conducting the design practice. So did it mean ‘design research = design’ then?!

Out of all the answers we put on the paper, I personally found ‘giving people a voice’ is the one that capture design reearcher's perspective the best. As it could suggest the use of visualisation but keep the empathy and the central focus on people (either as user, stakeholder, or research subjects…) When one of the participants in the final discussion part pointed out that ‘imagination or creativity’ is missing from the key skills of designers. Is that we are just too close and we don’t see it anymore? No, I don’t think design profession is all about creativity or imagination. Everyone is creative and imaginary if they have the confidence and the voice to communicate, to share, and to impress. The value many of the pioneering designers in the field – a lot of them in Service Design but also many from other design areas – is to give people the voice and the confidence to be creative and imaginary so that they can see, create and implement solution for their own problems.

One of the highlight of the event to me, personally, was actually meet many of old friends who share a similar interest in Design and Research. Lauren Tan, a PhD in Service Design as well as good friend also blogged her thoughts on her blog. A pleasant surprise was to meet Ahmad Beltagui from Nottingham University Business School at the event, who then introduced me to a really helpful paper on 'What is not a Grounded Theory', which motivated me to kick off the Research Design chapter this week. Sometime, I do wonder why we keep going all over place to attend these events and perhaps we thought we know the presentations so well already. But what I often found out is that when a group of people with a similar interest were put in a room under a certain task, good stuff do come out from somewhere we didn’t expect.

... more picutres on Flickr ...

Take a bow

2009-09-11T13:16:00.004+01:00

I still remember the night, it was a Friday just like today.

I was standing in the crowds in the Lower Gallery when Lily went up to me and said: 'would you like to work for MDes as a teaching fellow?' I said 'yes' - which is one of the best decisions I have ever made. That was my own year of graduating Master of Design, and the night was the Master exhibition openning. I was simply enjoying the celebration and looking forward to the back-pack trip around Europe the next week. At that time, I perhaps didn't yet realize that what happened after I got back to Dundee was better than the most amazing journey I have ever dreamed of.

It was exactly three years ago.

Tonight I am witnessing a new group of 13 students enjoying their celebration and planning for their next step. So am I. This is my final week of being the ‘teaching fellow’ of MDes at the University of Dundee. Again I am at the point of facing a new journey in front of me. I am so happy that I still have courage to step into all the unknowns of my life, to make changes and to look forward to adventures.

Master of Design has been and will always be part of me. I had truly enjoyed every minutes spent with my brilliant colleagues and my inspiring students. I hope that they had enjoyed my company as well.

It is the time, the time to take my bow and start a new journey, maybe a completely different one but I know I will enjoy it just as I have enjoyed this one.

the end of design? the re-brith of design!

2009-09-11T11:57:00.005+01:00

Yesterday we had a truly inspiring lecture from my brilliant colleagues Tom Inns and Mike Press in University of Dundee, as part of the Master of Design student project exhibition opening.

Tom took us back to his river of Design History. He also predicted that the sunny but highly pressured area of emerging design archipelago (service design included of course) which looks at real issues in our complex life is suggesting a re-birth of Design as a discipline. The world is witnessing an revolution brought about by new ways of communication, of living with the natural and artificial environment around us and of operating corporate, thus new generation of designers are exploring their ways into the challenging but exciting future – the best examples of which is right here on the Master’s exhibition.

Mike suggested that we were here not looking at the end of a master programme, or the end of design, but were celebrating the new beginning of a different journey ahead of our Master graduates, as well as us as designers and design researchers. Design is about the vision, the imagination of what the world was like, should be like and could be like. Mike introduced some of his design heroes (well, in fact most of them were not really recognized as ‘designers’… ) who believed that design is valuable to improve life by different means of, for example public services, engagement and empathy. ‘Nothing was too good for the public’ as Mike stated in his speech, there was a time when designers and artists were actively engaged in communities in public services to deliver effective, efficient and empathic solutions and motivations. It is time we look back upon these heroes, and set out a new phase of design which described as ‘Social Design’ by Mike. How do we create alternatives to social issues? There were principles suggested in last night’s presentation as:

Empathy and user-centred,
Co-creation and co-design,
Service focused,
Cultural inclusion,
Socially engaged,
Empathasis on well-being, and
Connected.

These principles as well set out the guidance of the 13 projects undertook by the Master of Design students for the past year. If you are interested in having a look at these projects in more details, please visit http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/design.htm

As well for more information about the Master of Design course at the University of Dundee, please visit http://www.masterofdesign.co.uk/

The one-hour lecture was videoed and it is expected to be made available online soon. I am providing a lecture note just to easy your waiting ;-]

The End of Design

2009-08-31T17:36:00.006+01:00

I had a really busy but exciting start of the week today, we are puting together the Master of Design Exhibition!

Here is an invitation for all:

you are invited to an exclusive preview evening showcasing the work of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design Master of Design students alongside an exciting lecture by Professors Tom Inns and Mike Press.

Drinks Reception & Exhibition Preview 10th September, 2009, 5.15pm – Lecture 6-7pm – Dalhousie Building

Modern design has run its course. The challenges of our age demands a new design; in place of designing for desire we should design for inclusion, understanding and real world problem solving. The power of design thinking presents us with new opportunities for the future.

As Scotland's top rated institution for research design, the University of Dundee is uniquely placed to set out a new vision for the future of design. In this special lecture, Professors Tom Inns and Mike Press - both internationally acknowledged writers, researchers and broadcasters on design - provide a provocative and visionary of design in the 21st Century.

Evidence of this new design is seen in the work of this year's graduating Masters of Design students. The lecture accompanies their masters exhibition, providing vital contexts and insights into their work. Together, the lecture and exhibition emphasise Dundee's unique approach to the research and practice of design.

More info: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/lecture.htm

Don't worry if you can't make it, there is the project profile that will give an overview of what we are doing up here~ Enjoy!

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/mastersshow/design.htm

PhD summer school

2009-08-26T18:08:00.005+01:00

I was in the PhD Summer School last week for four days, had a nice eye-opening on the PhD projects going on in Dundee and also couple of from elsewhere in Britain. The first day we were asked to bring in a poster, thus, there is my homework:

On the second day we watched a video explainning the process of viva, and it was really great to see how the process is likely to be and what are the tips we can take. I am only writing up, but it's always good to know the next step.

I also did a 10 min presentation on the project, and got a lot of feedbacks - especially useful comments from Seaton. He also commented on the idea of 'unity of the diversity' - exactlly what I was look for in the case studies, that holding idea that makes Service Design Service Design, it can be a ideology or just a believe... mmnnn... Eva who did her PhD on craft and visualisation was saying 'to craftman the craft practice is a lifestyle', so what is Service Design to service designers?

We had two finishing PhD coming in talking about thesis writing and viva experience as well. Some good tips here:
* add a biographical note - it's nice to let the readers 'know' you as a human and understand how many decisions in the research process are influenced by where you come from;
* have a thesis outline as part of the introduction - I have done that, and my supervisors and I are using it as a graph tool to communicate the achieves of my writing, it works really well!
* bring evidence to viva - one of the outstanding characteristics of Art and Design research lies in the visual thinking process, therefore, it is reasonable to show that process as supporting material in the viva. I guess all my big big A1 sheets and wallpapers are getting into the room with me!
* prepare some tea or coffee, make sure the viva environment is as comfortable for conversation as possible. Sometimes viva can go over 2 hours, so having some water by hand is always handy (for you and the for your examiners...) also it is ture that the purpose of viva is to give the candidate the chance to indicate their ability of taking part in academic debate and defencing their arguement, so it is more like a discussion you can pick up in the conference rather than a question-answer type of interview.

Well... the future seems bright so far... Aiming at first draft before November, so... go go go~ this week I hope to hit at 20,000 words!

a bit of travelling this winter in Scandinavian area

2009-07-28T15:38:00.008+01:00

Got a bit planning going on - just to relax my fingures from writing...

Am off to Oslo for the conference 24-26, and will be spending 23th -28th there... gotta enjoy the city, don't I?

And I also got a really lovely invitation from Katarina Wetter Edman to visit the Service Research Center - CTF at Karlstad University... excited! So spending two days there will be my plan.

After Karlstad, I quite fancy heading to Stockholm and maybe spend 4-5 days there, just wondering around the Christmas markets!

So basically I have about 3 days free in Oslo and 4-5 days free in Stockholm…

To be honest, I don’t know these areas quite well, so any of you have suggestions of must-visit-places? Or even another invitation to show me around your place?

Definitely would love to make some new friends as well ;-]

Got another invitation to visit Fabian Segelström in Linköping - this journey is becoming more and more exciting now!

people centered design - a bit discovery

2009-07-23T19:35:00.002+01:00

just found this very informative blog:
http://peoplecentereddesign.net/

First time I came across the term 'people centered design' was in the conference in Beijing, I think one of the presenter was talking about the different among co-design, participantry design, user centered design, people centered design and a lot of other weird-named design approaches... well, this reminds me that I haven't got the time to read through that really thick conference procedings yet... eh... more readings, more readings...

Thesis Outline ver2

2009-07-13T14:36:00.005+01:00

Here is an update of the thesis outline, after a really helpful chat with my dear supervisors.

We had a in-depth discussion on Research Questions: what are they for in a thesis - I mean after I have done all that research, it is not simply where I started, it is somehow where I will end up going back to discuss in the final chapter as well. I, guess as well as many PhD researchers, started with a huge research question collection in the first year into the research, then we somehow end up focusing down a bit in order to concentrate our energy in actually carrying out some sort of actions to find out answers to some of the questions – well, whether we find the answer is another story yet. But when it comes to write up, it is about telling the story of this journey of finding, which means the research question here serves a different purpose. Somehow we are post-rationalize our research and try to make sense of it with very limited time and materials as we could manage to achieve in three years of learning-by-doing. It doesn’t mean that the answers we could find shapes the questions, but they do influence how we select the research questions to present in a 80,000 words thesis.

As I sign posted in this image, the literature give birth to research questions, so when we write up, each piece of literature we quoted has an aim and the findings point at the questions, which then will be structured and lead to Research Design – sometimes called the methodological approach in some thesis. The findings answer a selected group of these question collection, the discussion structure the answers again. So in terms of writing, it is very likely that we actually start from the answers and return to the questions – not that we invent research questions along the way, we select and refine them. The criteria is that they are important, they are relvant and they are interesting to read!

Any writing is about telling a story, sometimes we can start from the end of the story rather than from the start.

PhD Thesis & Originality

2009-07-11T15:14:00.006+01:00

I spent the whole day re-structuring my thesis outline. Here is a taste of the result:

I was told that writing up process is tough, but I have a really ambitious deadline and am still confident in achieving it. I felt very lucky that I have friends to discuss different views and progress about writing up ‘the big book’. The other day, Lauren and I talked about the originality of a PhD in our email exchanges. To be honest, I have never really seriously think of ‘protecting’ my thinking or my PhD progress – tell me that I am wrong and maybe I am! But I do consciously select things that I would like to tell in this blog, simply because I don’t want to cause misunderstanding due to the immaturity in my thinking. Originality in a topic like Service Design seems to be easier, compared with working in a well-established knowledge, as the theoretical models and concepts are relatively underdeveloped, and most importantly people are more open to new suggestions and research approaches. My understanding of originality is that if you can *prove* that your thesis is original then it is fine. I mean we all know that our research question and its landscape changes, especially in a project lasted for 2-3 years it’s almost impossible that no other individual in the world, at certain point, had a similar idea to what we are doing. But our literature review suggests our originality of the inquires, our empirical studies ensure the originality of our findings. Nobody knows my research better than me. Even if there are others out there doing similar research, there is always something original about all these works. We just need to be confident enough to claim it and work hard enough to prove it. After all, PhD is a learning process as well as a research process, we are not working towards Nobel Prize level breaking throughs…

Well, I don’t really know what I am saying here is right or wrong… if you have done a PhD already, maybe it would be great to hear what you say about this matter.

Re-public's special issue: Innovative Service Design for All

2009-07-08T13:29:00.004+01:00

I got a paper published on Re-public's special issue of their online journal: Innovative Service Design for All. The title of my article is 'Mind the Gap: Theories and practices in managing stakeholders in the service design process'.

All the articles are very interesting, two draws my attention especially:

Nicola Morelli's 'Beyond the experience: In search of an operative paradigm for the industrialisation of services' , which talks about the industrialisation of services in the public sector. Morelli says:

"The process of building the service starting from the customers’ experience can
be compared with a process of reverse engineering of such experience. The
experience is de-composed in elementary modules. A set of competences, knowledge and technologies is associated to each of those modules. [...] The
disaggregation of service systems in modular structures makes it possible to
shift the production process for those services from a centralised and vertical
logic to a decentralised and horizontal one."

This is very true in some of my case study experience, and also interestingly ties into the three themes of my findings: People, Process and Knolwedge. although mine still needs a bit thought-through ;-]

Soumitri Varadarajan proposed a design for the new university design programme of Service Design in India. A nice piece to read if you have the ambition to set up Service Design programme in your own university or maybe like what we do here in Dundee - integrate the elements of Service Design into the teaching of all kinds of design courses.

Service Design reading list

2009-07-03T14:45:00.021+01:00

I was building up my Endnote database yesterday to get ready for writing up 'the big book' - yes, welcome to hell...

Not very surprisingly, my database covers a lot of management books, some design books, some experience books and couple of economic books... it makes me wonder if you are a Service Designer/student, what kind of books are you reading?

So here I would like to collect your comments on a reading list for people who are interested in Service Design and maybe want to do a bit reading for it. It would be great if you could spare 2 seconds recommend two books (or journal articles) you think every Service Designer should read - not have to be Design books, can be anything really!

Think I might kick off first here:
Bernd Schmitt, Customer Experience Management - not exactly a Service book or a Design book, but it presents a very interesting framework to build 'experience platform' which then spread the seeds of customer experience into different business functions.

Bill Hollins, Total Design. Perhaps also couple of his more recent books... to be honest, although I am not a big believer of standardisation, this little book does provid a nice flavour of the many other issues along with the design process that any development processes will have. Plus, it is a small book that doesn't look scary!

This list will go to our librarian for furture purchase and I will keep update the comments into this post here!

Alright, you turn now... Thank you in advance!

From Arne Van Oosterom (DesignThinkers):
Linked , Albert-László Barabási
The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins

From Tom Allen:
A summary of the past thirty years of service design literature. http://bit.ly/hHm0J

From Nick Marsh (Engine):
These are two pretty heavy going books that are worth getting:
http://www.choosenick.com/?action=view&url=two-non-design-service-design-books-every-service-designer-should-read
Here's more:
http://designforservice.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/books-for-service-designers/

From Deborah Szebeko (ThinkPublic):
The Tipping Point -Malcolm Galdwell
It's Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be – Paul Arden

From Ben Reason(Livework):
http://www.howardesign.com/exp/service/
Natural Capitalism - Paul Hawkin et al
Reassembling the Social - Bruno Latour

From Todd Johnston:
The Timeless Way of Building (Alexander),
Biomimicry (Benyus),
Out of Control (Kelly)

Lauren Tan:
I would recommend the Designing for Services reader that was distributed in the early stages of the project and also the report which combines reflections on the project from the designers, academics and the project leads (Lucy Kimbell and Victor Seidel).

Designing for Services - Multidisciplinary Perspectives: Proceedings from the Exploratory Project on Designing for Services in Science and Technology-based Enterprises, Saïd Business School (2008) Edited by Lucy Kimbell and Victor P. Seidel

I would also highly recommend:
Boland, J., Collopy, F., Ed. (2005). Managing as designing. California, Stanford University Press.
This book is more general in terms of design in a business and management context but very helpful where ever design is crossing into other disciplines.

Richard Randolph:
• The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore. This is the one that started it all.
• Experiential Marketing, by Bernd H. Schmitt
• The E Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What To Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
• Brand Sense: Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound by Martin Lindstrom

Tom Kiehl:
My view is that good service design must balance customer satisifaction, profitability, and associate morale, particularly in businesses where front line associates are key to delivering service.
- Four Things a Service Business Must Get Right by Frances X. Frei, Harvard Business Review, April 2008
- Zero Defections, Quality Comes to Services by Frederick Reichheld and Earl Sasser, HBR, Sept-Oct 1990
- The Trader Joe's Adventure: Turning a Unique Approach to Business into a Retail and Cultural Phenomenon by Len Lewis
- Nuts! Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success by Kevin Freiberg and Kevin Freiberg

James Samperi (Engine):
2 books which aren't focused on 'design' but any service 'designer needs to understand and know about. The latter book is comprehensive and pretty accessible - i can't vouch for the first but recommended by my colleague.
New Service Development and Innovation in the New Economy
From Products to Services: Insights and experiences from companies which have embraced the service economy.

Sarah Drummond:
simplicity- edward de bono
'In an increasingly complex world 'simplicity' is going to be a key value. The pace of change is not going to stop so we have to make a conscious effort to make things simpler.'

Marc Fonteijn(31VOLTS):
* The experience economy
* Subject to Change
* Everything is miscellaneous
* 10 faces of innovation
* The knowing-doing gap
And I second Sarah with simplicity as a must read

proto partners:
Wired to Care by Dev Patnaik and Pete Mortensen of Jump Associates,
The Loyalty Effect from Fred Reicheld

Lucy Kimbell:
Vargo, S. and R. Lusch (2004), “Evolving to a new dominant logic in Marketing,” /Journal of Marketing, /68, 1-17
Vargo, Stephen L. and Lusch Robert (2008), "Service-dominant logic: continuing the evolution," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 36 (1), 1-10.

Jeff Howard :
John Thackara's book "In The Bubble: Designing in a Complex World" and a bi-monthly magazine published in Los Angeles called "Good."
http://www.good.is/

Isaac Arthur:
Adaptive Path's 'Subject to Change' is the best all around service design book I've found,
Neumeier's 'Brand Gap' and 'Zag' are indispensable books for all designers, regardless of their specific discipline'
And a great article from NextD on design 3.0 (transferable philosophies and processes to service design)

Paul Thurston(ThinkPublic):
Designing Services with Innovation Methods

Garrick Wood:
'How Designers Think: The Process Demystified' by Bryan Lawson
'What Designers Know' by Bryan Lawson

Lorne Mithell:
One of the main folk I track in this area is John Seddon (Vanguard Consulting) who is visiting Professor at Cardiff University. He has adapted the Demming/Ohno Toyota Production System philosophy to Service Design in both the Private and, more recently, Public sectors. He is an excellent speaker as well. You can get his material at Vanguard Consulting - and you can see him on video at: http://www.vimeo.com/4670102

Bhavna Bahr
In the Bubble - John Thackara
Naked Brain - Richard Restak
Buyology - Martin Lindstorm
Why We Buy - Paco Underkill
The Hidden Dimension - Edward T Hall
How Customers Think - Gerald Zaltman
Universal Principles of Design
Ten Faces of Innovation - Tom Kelly
Visual Ethnography - Sarah Pink

Jonathan Norman:
Maybe too far off for your pusposes but we are publishing: Design for Services, edited by Dr Anna Meroni and Dr. Daniela Sangiorgi in March 2010

http://www.gowerpublishing.com/isbn/9780566089206

Birgit Mager
Touchpoint . The Journal of Service Design, Köln: Köln Interntional School of Design
Miettinen, Satu / Koivisto, Mikko (Hrsg.): 28Designing Services with Innovative Methods, Keuruu: Otava Book Printing,

any Service Design in China?

2009-07-01T18:43:00.003+01:00

I was looking at this world map of Service Design activities [via Jeff's blog], and was surprised that there is nothing about Service Design from mainland China...
I notice some visit of this blog from Shanghai and Beijing... so... anyone know anything like that happening in China?