"This book is likely to become the quintessential service design textbook for students, educators, and professionals alike. In this column, I'll share highlights from the book, along with some of my own interpretations, and tell you why you should add this book to your own personal collection."

(Laura Keller a.k.a. @ServiceDesignLK ~ UXmatters)

Posted on September 19, 2011 | Permalink

Great Customer Experiences Learn Continuously

Humans just have one mission in life and that's to learn. From the beginning 'til the end.

From Apple's poster for its retail employees. - "All of these experiences have made us smarter. And at the very center of all we've accomplished, all we've learned over the past 10 years, are our people. People who understand how important art is to technology. People who match, and often exceed, the excitement of our customers on days we release new products. The more than 30,000 smart, dedicated employees who work so hard to create lasting relationships with the millions who walk through our doors. Whether the task at hand is fixing computers, teaching workshops, organizing inventory, designing iconic structures, inventing proprietary technology, negotiating deals, sweating the details of signage, or doing countless other things, we've learned to hire the best in every discipline."

(Mike Wittenstein a.k.a. @mikewittenstein)

Posted on August 30, 2011 | Permalink

Desktop Summit: Claire Rowland on service design

Service design as holism applied to man-machine studies, HCI, UI and product design for Linux pros.

"Like it or not, the vision of the interconnected future is coming, and our mundane devices and appliances are going that route as well. Making those things work well for users, while still allowing user freedom, is important, and it's something the free software community should be contemplating."

(Jake Edge ~ LWN.net)

Posted on August 25, 2011 | Permalink

Designing for Service as One Way of Designing Services

Seems this issue has been in the works for almost two years. Therefore, it's a major achievement.

"This paper considers different ways of approaching service design, exploring what professional designers who say they design services are doing. First it reviews literature in the design and management fields, including marketing and operations. The paper proposes a framework that clarifies key tensions shaping the understanding of service design. It then presents an ethnographic study of three firms of professional service designers and details their work in three case studies. The paper reports four findings. The designers approached services as entities that are both social and material. The designers in the study saw service as relational and temporal and thought of value as created in practice. They approached designing a service through a constructivist enquiry in which they sought to understand the experiences of stakeholders and they tried to involve managers in this activity. The paper proposes describing designing for service as a particular kind of service design. Designing for service is seen as an exploratory process that aims to create new kinds of value relation between diverse actors within a socio-material configuration. This has implications for existing ways of understanding design and for research, practice and teaching."

(Lucy Kimbell a.k.a. @lixindex ~ International Journal of Design August 2011)

Posted on August 17, 2011 | Permalink

A Service Design Approach Is Required To Deliver Great Customer Experiences

For commercial contexts, that's true. But there is so much more...

"Internally focussed business tools, processes and systems are often thought about and designed in isolation from the design of the things customers interact with. Or to put this another way, projects that focus on improving the customer experience often don't fully consider the tools, processes and systems staff use in the delivery of the experience."

(Iain Barker ~ @Iain_barker ~ Meld Studios)

Posted on July 26, 2011 | Permalink

What we can learn about service design from Google+

The impact of G+ is noticed on the social web and beyond.

"The tools that weave themselves deepest into the way humans communicate, do so with our help. The designer releases their invention into the world with a few bold statements, and then it's up to us to tell them what the significance of the tool is, and how best to use it. Google+ is no exception: it's a relatively compact first release of just a few core concepts. Like many, I look forward to watching millions of people build on these concepts with improvised hacks, shorthand and other homemade enhancements, to complete a product story started by what may have been just a few dozen in Mountain View. When taking a look at some of the decisions Google made, I found five ideas worth keeping in mind when designing any new service."

(Chris Palmieri a.k.a. @cpalmieri ~ AQ)

Posted on July 22, 2011 | Permalink

The End of Client Services

G+ is a great example of the importance of UX in social.

"(...) a new economic paradigm in which the act of producing and consuming are one and the same, and he believes it's upon us right now. I subscribe to this theory, and I believe its most fascinating expression takes the form of social software, in which there is no consumption unless its users produce, and there is no production unless its users consume. The secret sauce that starts this virtuous cycle is not just technology, but also user experience design."

(Khoi Vinh ~ Subtraction)

Posted on July 21, 2011 | Permalink

What is Service Design?

Having an eagle eye reading through it might improve the post.

"Service Design is still a relatively new and emerging field within the design industry. Many people are unsure what exactly service design is and how it helps their business and their customers. Put simply, service design is planning, organizing and improvement of a service. Service design is not just about fixing the existing services of an organization, it is also used to provide new and innovative ways to fill unmet customers need."

(Gary Davies ~ Article Base)

Posted on July 20, 2011 | Permalink

Service design is Dead. The New Product is Alive.

"So, I changed my job title a few months ago. I dropped the 'service' bit. I'm now just Sidekick's Design Director. I'm now MASSIVELY EXCITED about a new thing - designing products. But not your old products. No, I'm excited about designing a new type of evolving, networked product that requires a multi-disciplinary team just to keep it alive, let alone make it awesome. I'm calling this the New Product. Let me explain."

(Nick Marsh a.k.a. @choosenick)

Posted on July 04, 2011 | Permalink

Service Design: Setting The Stage For The Consummate Experience

"Mention service design to your UX colleagues and you may find yourself unwittingly engaged in a game of Buzzword Bingo. Whether you call it 'service design,' 'holistic design,' 'multi-channel experience design' or 'cross-channel design,' chances are you're all talking about the same thing. And your next challenge is defining exactly what you mean when you say 'service design.' The field of service design is still young and evolving. And its interdisciplinary nature makes it difficult to define. In fact, (...) no common definition of service design exists."

(Megan Grocki a.k.a. @megangrocki ~ UX Magazine)

Posted on June 07, 2011 | Permalink

Ubiquitous Usability

"For too long usability has been the preserve of geeks – a specialism confined to websites and screens, form factors and devices. We need to realise that usability – in other words 'how easily people can use something to achieve a goal' shouldn't just be restricted to the lab and the engineer. It should be something that everyone expects to get, and everybody strives to provide. Usability should apply to all walks of life and everything that we encounter – it should be ubiquitous. It needs to be about the services we use and the spaces we inhabit."

(Daniel Letts ~ live|work)

Posted on May 30, 2011 | Permalink

Service Design and User Experience: Same or Different?

"One designs the interface of the experience and the other the service and organization behind it..."

(Oliver King a.k.a. @ollyking ~ Engine service design)

Posted on May 20, 2011 | Permalink

Bill Moggridge: Prototyping Services With Storytelling

"The storytelling supports the exploration of the service idea. Through the use of simple workds, the teller will illustrate the solution as it is a story. This allows the communication of the idea inside a group but also the preparation of the first sketches for the storyboard. The storytelling leaves some blanks to be fill in by the suggestions of other stakeholders and users." (think + design + change)

Posted on April 13, 2011 | Permalink

How Design Thinking Can Help Prevent Another Mortgage Bubble

"Here was a chance to remake a tool that plays a vital role in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every year. But what happened that day turned out to be much more than streamlining a critical form in the home-buying process. Even much more than the redesign of a vital 'touch point' within the larger 'user experience'. What happened was that the symposium's attendees discovered just how radical a solution Design Thinking could offer; not only to the problem of a broken mortgage process, but to public policy at its highest levels." (Monica Bueno ~ Co.Design)

Posted on April 05, 2011 | Permalink

Why UX Professionals Should Care About Service Design

"I'm very excited to be kicking off my new UXmatters column, Service Design: Orchestrating Experiences in Context, with this discussion of the value of service design to UX professionals. In my column, I'll explore the concepts of service design and how to leverage its practices to optimize the user experiences our companies and clients look to us to create." (Laura Keller ~ UXmatters)

Posted on March 21, 2011 | Permalink

My So Called Service Design Life

"There is a fierce debate about the relationship between service design (SD) and interaction design (IxD) here in the United States, particularly among interaction designers. The discussion often devolves into hostile crossfire between two camps: one that believes that the service design is a type of interaction design, and another that believes that the two disciplines are separate and distinct. When a teenager is a smart, compelling, interesting, independent, charismatic, hardworking, analytical, talented, humorous, knock-kneed being, a parent would rightly feel a great sense of pride. Interaction designers — and those whose careers, and sources of income are indebted to that practice — have very good reasons to hold strongly to the idea that service design is indeed a chip off the old block." (Renna Al Yassini ~ Cooper Journal)

Posted on March 09, 2011 | Permalink

Prospecting in the 21st century

"Service design is the natural progression from UX – taking interactions across platforms and concentrating on the invisible and tangible connections around customer or user interactions. Information architects should be at the heart of this design work and don’t be surprised to start to see IAs appear in companies that you didn’t even think of as 'digital'. (...) It is not just interface design. It is not just about making the world more usable and ethically correct. It’s all this and more. It is a force for changing business in its approach and to make it economically stable by providing for needs but also satisfying wants beyond the present day. This is the business value of UX. How you interpret the data you collect, and create something truly unique, relies on the teams skill set and experience." (James Kelway ~ user pathways) | courtesy of petermorville

Posted on February 18, 2011 | Permalink

Service Design: Social Innovation is our Motivation

"Sarah Drummond one half of Scotland based dynamic duo Snook presents a case study about the implications and challenges of using Service Design for Social Innovation in the community of Wyndford, UK." (Think Design Change)

Posted on December 08, 2010 | Permalink

Touchpoints Bring the Customer Experience to Life

"Taking the time and effort to look at your touchpoints not just as isolated mini-experiences, but as a collective whole, will help you shape them for a better customer experience, and perhaps even point to opportunities to invent new types of touchpoints, as Progressive did. Or, perhaps there are some touchpoints you have been overly reliant on third-parties who are not not upholding their place in the journey." (Adam Richardson ~ Harcard Business Review)

Posted on December 03, 2010 | Permalink

Social business & service design

"Economists, capitalists, entrepreneurs, public servants and policy makers are on their way to recognize the new source of (economic) value, 'human experience' and the designers are delivering the tools & mindsets to create them. Great times for designers and design thinkers, great times for a new kind of multidisciplinary collaboration of formerly opposed mindsets, great new business and public service opportunities and a great moment in human development and history." (Sylvain Cottong ~ ServiceDesign.lu)

Posted on December 01, 2010 | Permalink

Beyond Roleplay; Theatrical Tools in Service Design

"The links between service design and theater are clear, frequently cited, and often misunderstood. We explore the practical differences between simple role play and iterative rehearsal - a powerful tool which can be used to both analyse and develop service experiences."

Posted on November 19, 2010 | Permalink

Let's Get Physical (With Services)

"It is no secret that services, even for manufacturing organizations, can be the key differentiator between competition and the primary generator of income. Customer loyalty depends on good service; not only do customers expect it, but it is part of their values. Recent economic and environmental turmoil is shifting people from passive consumers of products to active co-creators of experiences." (Adam Little ~ fastcodesign)

Posted on November 10, 2010 | Permalink

Should service design explain everything or become obsolete?

"There are numerous ways of being a good designer. Perhaps the common denominator for all design competences is the ability to reify and prototype. It is important to note that design competences do not constitute good business skills or strategic expertise." (Tuomo Kuosa ~ Servicedesign.tv)

Posted on November 08, 2010 | Permalink

What is Service Design?

"Our economy consists of both goods and services. Traditionally, design has focused on one, not the other. Laura Forlano talks to leading practitioners in this emerging field. (...) services require designers to empathize with users, to understand interactions as a series of 'touchpoints' and to develop a holistic understanding of the ways in which our relationships to services govern everyday life." (Laura Forlano ~ Urban Omnibus)

Posted on October 28, 2010 | Permalink

Service design at a crossroads

"There are a number of competing stories about service design. One is that it's a new interdiscipline, a mix of concepts, methods and tools from several different fields, brought together to address the challenges that organisations face as they try to improve and innovate in services. As an interdiscipline it is presented as a happy fusion of the best bits of management or business, design and technology, and the social sciences. In this version of service design, the incompatibilities between the values and worldviews of these different disciplines are smoothed away to produce a better user experience and increased business value." (Lucy Kimbell)

Posted on October 21, 2010 | Permalink

Richard Buchanan Keynote: SCAD 2010

"Designers are great facilitators of conversations among people who have wildly different views about the world. That's a definition of a "wicked problem" by the way. A wicked problem is where there are essentially contested values. Not accidentally contested, not arbitrarily contested. But essentially contested, meaning that there are fundamental differences that cannot be resolved. That to resolve them would be to violate the truths that have been discovered by different people. Designers work with wicked problems. They work with them by the use of dialectic (...)" (Jeff Howard ~ Design for Service)

Posted on October 13, 2010 | Permalink

Visualisations in Service Design

"The thesis provides an academic basis on the use of visualisations in service design. It is concluded that it seems like the service design community currently sees services as being not-goods, a line of thought other service disciplines have discarded the last ten years and replaced with a view of services as the basis for all transactions. The analysis highlights areas where there is a need to improve the visualisations to more accurately represent services." (Fabian Segelström)

Posted on October 05, 2010 | Permalink

Jodi Forlizzi on Service Design

"Interaction design encompasses human interaction with objects, people, environments and systems. It's not a widely held perspective outside of the Pittsburgh diaspora." (Jeff Howard ~ Design for Service)

Posted on August 26, 2010 | Permalink

A user's guide to service design

"If you don't, it might sound like something that's complicated, difficult and costly to get involved in. To help you get to grips with service design, we've talked to the experts, read the academic papers and compiled a set of case studies of some well designed services. This users' guide to service design contains lots of information about how we at the Design Council are demonstrating that design can improve our public and consumer services. But it also contains great examples from design agencies, universities and businesses and public services who've used design." (Design Council)

Posted on June 11, 2010 | Permalink

The Philosophy of Service Design

"(...) on a theoretical level anyway, the benefits of service design over conventional 'style led design' or 'industrial design'. Perhaps such more established forms of design have a philosphy and perhaps even succeed in representing that philosophy or design intent, but what they lack is the story or narrative that will engage users with them." (Ferg's Public Engagement Blog)

Posted on May 27, 2010 | Permalink

The Service Blueprints Overview

"For some time now I've been collecting interesting service design visualizations. But having them stack up on my desktop just doesn’t add a lot of value. As I've noticed that this blog attracts a lot of people with an 3 year old article on service blueprints I decided that would be the best category to start with. So I've compile an overview of the service blueprints I've stumbled upon so far." (Marc Fonteijn ~ 31volt)

Posted on May 14, 2010 | Permalink

The Future is Already Here: Three Trends in IA

"(...) my opening keynote slides and the talk I wrote out which I gave at the German IA Conference in Cologne, Germany May 14, 2010. I speak about experience design, social design and service design. The theme of the conference is Service. Design. Thinking. What I actually said may have been slightly different than the text here but the intent was the same." (Erin Malone)

Posted on May 14, 2010 | Permalink

Service Design and the Customer's Journey

"In short, just step up to the plate and own the passages that make up your customer's journey. By the use of some straight-forward tools and processes (which are mostly extensions of items that should be in your user experience toolkit already), you can incorporate service design thinking and deliverables into your overall practice." (Fritillaria)

Posted on April 26, 2010 | Permalink

Sketching in Screenwriting

"Screenwriting is a bit of an outlier when it comes to my investigation of sketching and the performing arts. After all, a screenplay by itself isn't a performance. But it has a lot to teach us about sketching and the structural aspects of service." (Jeff Howard ~ Design for Service)

Posted on April 21, 2010 | Permalink

Ubiquitous Service Design

"Decades later, these concepts remain relevant, and yet we must adapt for new contexts. As Glushko and Tabas explain, today's service systems may include interrelated sub-systems (e.g., person-to-person, self-service) across multiple locations, devices, and channels; and customer satisfaction is influenced by the extent of integration and consistency across those channels." (Peter Morville ~ Semantic Studios)

Posted on April 19, 2010 | Permalink

Service design goes mainstream

"Reading with interest an unfolding flameup at Design for Service caused by Jeff Howard's post entitled UX Rockstars need not apply. The gist of the conversation is a few folk getting all hot under the collar about disciplines and domains. Especially the emerging challenges in the US by this new fangled idea of Service Design and it seems to be freaking people out. Which is a good thing in my book. The argument was instigated by sweeping statement from an interview with Jesse James Garret of Adaptive Path, that went like this (...)" (Paul Sims - Made by Many)

Posted on April 01, 2010 | Permalink

Seven Contexts for Service System Design

"Many of the most complex service systems being built and imagined today combine person-to-person encounters, technology-enhanced encounters, self-service, computational services, multi-channel, multidevice, and location-based and context-aware services. This paper examines the characteristic concerns and methods for these seven different design contexts to propose a unifying view that spans them, especially when the service-system is information-intensive. A focus on the information required to perform the service, how the responsibility to provide this information is divided between the service provider and service consumer, and the patterns that govern information exchange yields a more abstract description of service encounters and outcomes. This makes it easier to see the systematic relationships among the contexts that can be exploited as design parameters or patterns, such as the substitutability of stored or contextual information for person-to-person interactions." (Robert Glushko 2009)

Posted on March 29, 2010 | Permalink

Rock Stars Need Not Apply

"The world needs talented, passionate service designers but it can do without rock stars. Service designers are humble. They embrace participatory values, particularly the idea that we should be designing with people rather than designing for them. The practical upshot is an evolutionary divergence in approach to research, sketching, design and prototyping." (Jeff Howard)

Posted on March 29, 2010 | Permalink

The Guardian supplement on Service Design

"We are happy to announce that the British newspaper The Guardian has released a ten page supplement on Service Design today, Monday, 15th of March! In co-operation with the Service Design Network The Guardian has produced a supplement themed on Service Design and Innovation in partnership with organisations from the Service Design and Innovation markets. Included are many interesting case studies and best practices with perceivable business impact but also enjoyable and easy understandable examples. 10 Pages, 350.000 copies... great stories! " (Service Design Network) - courtesy of ronverweij

Posted on March 15, 2010 | Permalink

Sketching in Film

"My next bit of insight into how to sketch a service comes from the intersection of ethnography and cinema." (Design for Service)

Posted on March 12, 2010 | Permalink

Meaningful Innovation Relies on Interaction and Service Design

"Interaction designers can play a key role in creating a more meaningful, sustainable, and post-consumer world. come learn about frameworks and approaches that help designers make real change for customers." (Nathan Shedroff - Interaction10 videos)

Posted on March 01, 2010 | Permalink

Service as Design

"Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot from watching.” Over the last several years, a unique set of students has been challenged to think about design for healthcare services. In my role as a professor at Carnegie Mellon I had the opportunity to observe their work and it offered many insights into design, design thinking, and just how big the healthcare service challenge is. In my new role in Microsoft's FUSE lab I’m looking at the future of social experience. My experience with the students and healthcare exposed the underlying notion that people participating in service—whether providers, consumers, or others that are actively involved—are actually designing as they participate in the service. If we accept the service as design lens, designers may need to see their role differently—from one of developing static objects and environments—to one of creating new methods for modeling experience, and skilling everyone to be active participants in design during the service experience." (Shelley Evenson - Interaction10 videos)

Posted on March 01, 2010 | Permalink

Designing value beyond the inflection point

"In 1999, Pine & Gilmore presented a model for the progression of economic value in their bestseller 'the experience economy'. The model explains the generic progression of economic value that any business in our society goes through sooner or later; the shift for commodities to experiences. Prehaps the most used example is the progression from raw coffee beans to the starbucks 'experience'. The great thing about this model is that it's easy to use and applicable to almost any industry." (Marc Fonteijn - 31Volts)

Posted on February 22, 2010 | Permalink

Service Design: An Interaction Design Perspective

"What is service design? How is it different from interaction design? As an interaction designer with service design education and experience, offer my insights into what role interaction designers have in this emerging area of design." (Jamin Hegeman)

Posted on February 15, 2010 | Permalink

Innovation is Served

"(...) a good model for spreading the word about service design to a lay audience. I’d prefer a bit more detail in the case studies but 31Volts has done an admirable job hitting the design highlights and staying out of the weeds." (Jeff Howard - Design for Service)

Posted on January 21, 2010 | Permalink

Service Design Neue

"I suppose there's nothing stopping UX designers from doing the same thing, or anyone else for that matter, but for service designers taking the holistic view is our raison d'être." (Jeff Howard - Design for Service)

Posted on January 14, 2010 | Permalink

Choruses from the rock

"This echoes the frontstage and backstage fundamentals of service design. He interacts with everyone, frontline staff (waiters), backstage staff (chefs) and the customers, gaining opinions from all sides to build a holistic picture of the restaurant, focusing on the product, the service, the experience." (Sarah Drummond - Inside the head of a designer)

Posted on January 07, 2010 | Permalink

Beyond the experience: In search of an operative paradigm for the industrialisation of services

"The contributions to the definition of a disciplinary corpus for service design come from two main directions: the first focuses on real cases, developing projects that are advancing the practice of service design and making service design visible to private business and public administrations. The second area concerns the definition of a methodological framework for service design. The main concern in those studies is on the development of methodological tools for analysing, designing and representing services." (Nicola Morelli - Re-public) - courtesy of markvanderbeeken

Posted on November 30, 2009 | Permalink

The Service Design Thinks Videos

"Alice Casey and Jo Harrington introduced a range of new tools, perspectives and ideas from their public service design projects at Involve, NESTA and Barnet Council. Joel Bailey gave us a brisk tour of service design on the front line of one of the UKs biggest websites - businesslink.gov.uk - and Karl Humphreys talked us through his two killer apps for service designing - Propositions and Prototyping through his work on the Heathrow Personal Rapid Transit programme."

Posted on November 24, 2009 | Permalink

Service Design Network Conference 2009: Videos and presos

"Missed a presentation? Didn’t quite catch something? Enjoyed the conference so much you just have to see it again?! Go for it! Find below downloads of the presentations and videos of our speakers (some are not available due to client confidentiality). Videos are available of the plenary session presentations only." (SDN)

Posted on November 18, 2009 | Permalink

Report on Service Design Network Conference 2009

"I raise what I believe are important questions for an emerging community seeking not just to survive but also grow, as it thinks about how to create new institutions and ways of validating its knowledge." (Design leads us where exactly?) - courtesy of markvanderbeeken

Posted on November 18, 2009 | Permalink

Customer journey mapping

"Customer journey mapping is the process of tracking and describing all the experiences that customers have as they encounter a service or set of services, taking into account not only what happens to them, but also their responses to their experiences. Used well, it can reveal opportunities for improvement and innovation in that experience, acting as a strategic tool to ensure every interaction with the customer is as positive as it can be." (Cabinet Office)

Posted on November 11, 2009 | Permalink

Science and Design

"But as the world grows more complex, more interconnected, with the underlying infrastructure less and less visible, hidden inside electronic and optical mechanisms, conveyed as all-powerful yet invisible information and knowledge, design more than ever needs a body of reliable, verifiable procedures. Science is the systematic method of building a reliable, verifiable, repeatable, and generalizable body of knowledge. Science is not a body of facts: it is a process. Design is the deliberate shaping of the environment in ways that satisfy individual and societal needs. Scientific methods can inform design. Designers can create a science of design." (Donald A. Norman - IASDR09)

Posted on October 30, 2009 | Permalink

Would you like service design with that?

"Service design is a new discipline which focuses on understanding what customers want, then designing services which meet their needs. Sound familiar? Web designers have focused on user-centered design for years to create websites and applications that are user friendly. Service design is well established in Europe and North America and there's already a handful of Australian businesses offering service design. What is it? Does experience in designing for screen interaction translate to designing services too? Will service design be the next big thing?" (Service Design Hub)

Posted on October 20, 2009 | Permalink

Preso: Visualization Tool or How communicate the service design concepts

"(...) the slide comes from the input package materials for the workshop CHITA08, mobile services and digital communities, that is taking place at Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China, as a research and didactic experience beetween School of Design at Jiangnan and Design Faculty at Politecnico di Milano." (Francesca Valsecchi) - courtesy of wichertvane

Posted on September 17, 2009 | Permalink

Participatory Design

"As I've read more about the history of PD it seems to be focused almost exclusively on the development of digital computing systems. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising given the time period; in some ways it seems more akin to HCI than service design. But while the techniques don't always seem to be a match for the problems service designers encounter many of the principles still seem to resonate." (Design for Service)

Posted on September 14, 2009 | Permalink

The Amsterdam Centre for Service Innovation opens it's doors

"The opening attracted a crowd that you would expect just by reading the description. The ratio suits vs. jeans was about 25:1. I think service designer need to be in these kind of surroundings. Like Larry said, they need to step forward to the playing-field. Being at these events also keeps you connected with the rest of the world (the non-designers). We truly need those guys who eat the business side of services for breakfast!" (31Volts)

Posted on September 13, 2009 | Permalink

The Philosophy of Service Design

"If we perceive any inconsistency in how a service appears, or if we perceive an inconsistency between the touchpoints of a service and the service itself, we render the service design inauthentic and we lose faith in it. This impacts on our ability as users to engage with the service and therefore impacts on the value it generates both for it’s designers and/or for the bottom line of company who provide it." (Freg's Blog)

Posted on September 13, 2009 | Permalink

Service Design Conference 2009: The Programme

"At this year's SDN conference, participants will experience  experts in the Service Design field presenting and explaining, partly together with business partners, compelling examples of their Service Design projects in depths." (Service Design Network)

Posted on September 08, 2009 | Permalink

Service Design: A robust way to build brands

"It appears that brand builders have a powerful new process to help them build strong brand relationships. The design methodology called service design gives every indication of being a robust methodology for delivering high levels of brand value. In fact, as a method of value delivery it may be more effective than traditional brand practices based on communications and persuasion." (Brian Phipps - Brands Create Customers)

Posted on September 03, 2009 | Permalink

The Ambivalence of Engaging Technology: Artifacts as Products and Processes

"In this paper, I will discuss several cases in order to explore how technological artifacts engage and are engaged in larger sociotechnical arrangements. I will show how they inscribe a certain relationship between users and designers and a certain level of engagement." (Cristiano Storni - Nordic Design Research Conference 2009 Engaging Artifacts)

Posted on September 01, 2009 | Permalink

Systems Thinking: A Product Is More Than the Product

"A product is actually a service. (...) In reality a product is all about the experience. It is about discovery, purchase, anticipation, opening the package, the very first usage. It is also about continued usage, learning, the need for assistance, updating, maintenance, supplies, and eventual renewal in the form of disposal or exchange." (Donald A. Norman - Interaction Magazine XVI.5 Sep/Oct 2009)

Posted on August 31, 2009 | Permalink

The Gap in Service Design Education

"(...) it's become increasingly clear that there's something missing from service design education here in the United States. Co-design is barely on the radar." (Jeff Howard)

Posted on August 31, 2009 | Permalink

Preso: Design and Emotion

"Presentation that I gave at the Design and Emotion 2008 conference in Hong Kong. May be hard to understand from the slides alone... I'll try to add speech when I can. Content was from my thesis paper that I wrote for my Master of Interaction Design degree at Carnegie Mellon University." (Carrie Chan)

Posted on August 27, 2009 | Permalink

Preso: UX design, service design and design thinking

"What is UX design, service design & design thinking? How are they related?" (Sylvain 'Sly' Cottong - IntegratedPlace)

Posted on August 26, 2009 | Permalink

Service Design: 10 Principles

Presentation by Hugh Dubberly - "ISO 2008 was a great success. Workshop participants joined us from all over the globe for three days of intense design activity." (People Centered Design)

Posted on August 11, 2009 | Permalink

Change: moving on to the next level

"The HCI community has always been quite successful in adapting to the constantly changing technological opportunities, human needs and trends in society. By discussing our work amongst colleagues we have incrementally improved our methods and techniques, but apart from that it is important to respond adequately to changing practices and thinking in other fields. At the moment there seems to be a big opportunity and urgency for HCI experts to contribute to the development of the relatively new field of service design. We should not let that opportunity go to waste. This talk is an appeal to the pioneers in the community to get involved in this new area. A lot of the thinking and practices of HCI naturally fit in, and may even lead the way for some of the other disciplines involved." (Geke van Dijk - STBY)

Posted on August 06, 2009 | Permalink

Videos About Service Design

"(...) a few video excerpts of Bob Cooper, founder and CEO of Frontier Service Design, from a recent panel discussion related to the origins and purpose of service design. Each video is approximately 2 minutes in length and range in topic from the high level need for service design in today's economy to specific tactics used in understanding our client’s customers." (Frontier Service Design)

Posted on August 05, 2009 | Permalink

Mental Models, Service Design & The Problem With Convergence

"What do consumers expect when they buy a bundle of services like Internet, Telephone and TV from a converged provider? Is there a gap between their expectations and what they actually get? And what can the providers do about it?" (Harry Brignull - 90percentofeverything)

Posted on July 15, 2009 | Permalink

Service Design Tools

"An open collection of communication tools used in design processes that deal with complex systems. The tools are displayed according to the design activity they are used for, the kind of representation they produce, the recipients they are addressed to and the contents of the project they can convey." (About SD Tools) - courtesy of tvtongeren

Posted on July 08, 2009 | Permalink

Service Modeling Language 1.1

"This specification defines the Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 (SML) used to model complex services and systems, including their structure, constraints, policies, and best practices. SML uses XML Schema and Schematron. (...) The Service Modeling Language provides a rich set of constructs for creating models of complex services and systems. Depending on the application domain, these models may include information such as configuration, deployment, monitoring, policy, health, capacity planning, target operating range, service level agreements, and so on. Models provide value in several important ways." (W3C)

Posted on July 08, 2009 | Permalink

Abandoning Service Design

"Service design faces an uphill battle here in the US. There's plenty of interest on the design side but we need more voices speaking to the business side of the equation. For better or worse, Merholz is one of the few people with access to a platform for making that argument." (Jeff Howard - Design for Service)

Posted on July 02, 2009 | Permalink

Service Design / Customer Experience Design

"(...) the term 'service design' has succeeded in the UK and Europe because there have been government-sponsored public sector service design projects which have demonstrated its value." (PeterMe)

Posted on June 30, 2009 | Permalink

CMU/Mayo Clinic Podcast on Service Design

"The Lab A6 series from College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University presents a podcast on service design featuring Shelley Evenson from the School of Design and CMU alum Maggie Breslin from the Mayo Clinic. The podcast covers some familiar 'what is service design' ground but also delves into the service design course at CMU and the Advanced Medical Home project that Mayo and Continuum sponsored last year at the university." (Jeff Howard - Design for Service)

Posted on June 30, 2009 | Permalink

Service Design

"Service design, while often talked about in academia, is getting more and more attention from design companies and service providers, as the impact of experience design has been proven to increase customer satisfaction and brand perception." (Jennifer Bove - Creativity Online)

Posted on June 29, 2009 | Permalink

Preso: Reiss On e-Service (UX London)

"Service is 100% about user experience, although user experience is not 100% about service. But as UX designers, we can learn a lot from the service-management gurus of the 1980s, who (lucky for us) don't understand digital media." (Presos tagged 'UXLondon')

Posted on June 29, 2009 | Permalink

Maps as service design: The Incidental

"From the early brainstorms we came up with idea of a system for collecting the thoughts, recommendations, pirate maps and sketches of the attendees to republish and redistribute the next day in a printed, pocketable pamphlet, which, would build up over the four days of the event to be a unique palimpsest of the place and people's interactions with it, in it." (dark)

Posted on June 23, 2009 | Permalink

The Service Designers

"While far more attention is still paid to the design of products, there is an argument to be made that we’ve entered a service economy. It's not only products that are designable experiences; services are creating new challenges for designers and are increasingly demanding attention. As the line between products and services blurs (if it ever was there before), the emergence of service design has risen to demand a need for new ways of working to make for more meaningful services—whether those services are tangible, intangible, or a combination. Four designers engage in 10-minute discussions about the service sector and its different design challenges." (The UX Workshop)

Posted on June 19, 2009 | Permalink

Why is service design so heterogenous? And does it matter?

"In the end, I don't think we should be surprised to see a lot of heterogeneity in service design. Heterogeneity is a strength, not a weakness - it allows service design agencies (and service designers) to constantly reframe their offer, adapt quickly to the market and tackle the most interesting, most complex challenges. Pinning all of that into a simple definition seems rather silly really." - (Choosenick)

Posted on May 11, 2009 | Permalink

The Journey to the Interface

"The pamphlet argues that service design can offer policy makers and practitioners a vision for the transformation of public services, as well as a route to get there. It outlines an agenda for action which spells out how service design approaches can be applied systemically." N.B. Working podcast link. - (Demos)

Posted on May 07, 2009 | Permalink

Introducing the off-stage experience

"Imagine having a friendly chat while waiting in line at the local bakery store or sitting next to someone with a too loud iPod in the public transport. In both situation your service experience is influenced even though you don’t have any direct interaction with the company providing the service. Companies and Service designers alike are missing out on a opportunity to improve the service experience while it’s unfolding right before their eyes." - (Marc Fonteijn - 31Volts)

Posted on April 29, 2009 | Permalink

Designing Service Design Principles

"Principles appear at different stages of a project and can be used in a variety of different ways. Being able to develop useful principles is, in my opinion, a core skill for all service designers." - (Choosenick!)

Posted on April 17, 2009 | Permalink

Seeing Tomorrows Services: A Panel on Service Design

"Whether it's healthcare, energy, tech, or even governmental, services are the way people experience, consume, and pay the output of most organizations. This diverse panel of experts will divulge the basics of new approaches to managing and improving services, plus share ideas that you can take home and make immediately applicable." - (Slideshare)

Posted on April 15, 2009 | Permalink

Seeing Tomorrow’s Services: Recap

"Probably the main distinction between CMU and the Berkeley iSchool is the focus on frontstage experience versus the backstage system." - (Jeff Howard - Design For Service)

Posted on March 20, 2009 | Permalink

Creating a better service experience by providing less choice

"It's very common in service design to map the touchpoints in a journey and try to optimize every single one. Designing for the perfect balance in the number of function overlapping touchpoints (FOTP) is often overlooked (or forgotten) while it holds great potential to even further improve a service experience." - (Marc Fonteijn - 31volts)

Posted on March 19, 2009 | Permalink

ETech 2009: The Dotted-Line World

"I presented a talk at ETech today. It links the capabilities of ubiquitous computing and intersects it with service design to come up with a justification for creating subscription-based services out of (certain) everyday objects. (...) We must think of service design as going beyond functionality and beyond monolithic lock-in, but as a process of addressing specific needs." - (Mike Kuniavsky - Orange Cone)

Posted on March 11, 2009 | Permalink

Establishing a Service Design Methodology

"Okay, there it is; there is no design process!" - (David Nichols - itSM Solutions)

Posted on February 26, 2009 | Permalink

Bad service disguised as good service

"In a world where products are becoming more and more alike, service is often the only differentiating factor. So don't let someone con you into thinking that you are receiving good service when the opposite is actually the case – well-intentioned or not. If we don't demand better service, we will never receive it." - (Eric Reiss - FatDUX blog)

Posted on February 18, 2009 | Permalink

Touchpoint: The Service Design Journal

"Finally! - We can now herald the outcome of the new Service Design Journal, Touchpoint, for March 2009. In cooperation with Continuum, we took some more time in order to make Touchpoint a really professional, entertaining and gainful magazine for all readers. The journal aims at creating a forum for discussion and debate amongst service organizations, professionals, students and educators of service design." - (Service Design Network)

Posted on February 11, 2009 | Permalink

Service Thinking

"In the private sector and in the public sector there is enormous opportunity to increase the competitiveness and improve the effectiveness of services. The answer lies in Service Design and Service Thinking. (...) Our thinking is often a product of the past. This is compounded in a world where that past is all about product thinking. The future demands fresh perspectives. Service Thinking provides just that." - (Ben Reason, Chris Downs and Lavrans Lovlie - live|work) - courtesy of risd

Posted on February 05, 2009 | Permalink

Process not a differentiator?

"The design process and methods are not very difficult to learn. For those who want to learn them and for design firms that believe them, there is not much room to grow in the process arena. Sure, new methods are created all the time. But I don't think they revolutionize the process as a whole." (Jamin Hegeman)

Posted on February 02, 2009 | Permalink

Detangling the meanings around the design of services

"From the technical perspective, a service is an atomic unit of unctionality. (...) From the user experience perspective, a service is an atomic unit of activity." (Mike Kuniavsky - Orange Cone) - courtesy of markvanderbeeken

Posted on January 29, 2009 | Permalink

Three Questions to the Service Design World

"(1) How do we change our understanding of the design process in Service Innovation?; (2) What are the designer's new roles while working with multiple stakeholders?; (3) How would design's value be recognised and accepted by other disciplines in Service Knowledge?" (Qin - Design Generalist)

Posted on January 15, 2009 | Permalink

Service Design at HRO

"Two weeks ago I had to opportunity to give a lecture on Service Design at the Hogeschool Rotterdam. The presentation was recorded so hereby I'd like to share the footage with you." (Marc Fonteijn - 31Volts)

Posted on January 05, 2009 | Permalink

Service Design Conference 2008: Vids and Presos

"Missed a presentation? Didn't quite catch something? Enjoyed the conference so much you just have to see it again? Now you can! Below you can find links to videos of our speakers plus downloads of their presentations (some are not available due to client confidentiality)." (Service Design Conference)

Posted on December 22, 2008 | Permalink

Service and Theatre: Shared Mortality

"Just as a stage actor and the audience co-exist in the moment to create a live theatre experience that is unique to that particular evening, so does the service provider and the customer." (Frontier Service Design)

Posted on December 19, 2008 | Permalink

Economizer: A Cooper service concept

"People are looking for ways to economize in these uncertain times. We can all see the evidence of environmental crisis brewing alongside the economic downturn, and it's easy to feel powerless in the face of such global forces. With politicians and businesses seeking avenues to a sustainable future, Cooper wondered how design might help individuals cut costs while also encouraging behavior that was environmentally responsible." (Cooper Journal of Design)

Posted on December 16, 2008 | Permalink

Figuring out Service Design

"I'm sensing that designing for services is the Next Big Thing for UI designers. (...) Service design is principally about the choreography of situated moments of customer & business activity as a structured sequence (process) across multiple physical and digital 'touchpoints' (ex: signage, logo, store rep, phone call experience, customer service, packaging, instruction manual, website, etc.) which constitute a 'service string' or 'customer journey'. The key term here is 'choreography' which implies a dramatic or theatrical quality of enactments of people over time." (Uday Gajendar - Ghost in the Pixel)

Posted on December 11, 2008 | Permalink

Service Design: What's Next?

"I had several conversations about what service design is and how it might be different from other forms of design. This is a question I and others have had before. As a trained interaction designer, it was not difficult to transition to service design. In fact, there were only subtle differences that might be identified as different from interaction design. No one I talked to offered a clear definition, or a true distinction." (Jamin Hegeman)

Posted on December 02, 2008 | Permalink

Service Design takes centre stage

"We need to spend less time talking to ourselves and each other. There is still too many fruitless conversations spent defining disciplines and labeling people; it doesn't matter how we define it." (Redjotter) - Sounds familiar.

Posted on November 28, 2008 | Permalink

Service Design: Perspectives on turning-points in design 

"The aim of this article is to outline overall understanding of the changes taking place in the field of design. In addition, it tries to determine how service design is linked to developing tourism and the tourist industry." (Jari Koskinen - servicedesign.tv)

Posted on November 21, 2008 | Permalink

ISDN3

"Over the last two years, the ISDN series of events has formed an exciting platform to explore the emerging field of Service Design. (...) ISDN3 investigated broader issues that contemporary designers face, with special focus on how designers are addressing the complex situations that arise when designing with what John Thackara of Dott 07 calls 'real people' - as opposed to 'users' - in the design process. We invited some cutting-edge speakers to share reflections on their recent design research work, and we structured the event to maximise productive debate about the key issues arising when designing in this way." (International Service Design Conference)

Posted on October 20, 2008 | Permalink

What is Scenography?

Replace performance with information - "Scenography is the art of creating performance environments; it can be composed of sound, light, clothing, performance, structure and space." (Sceno:graphy)

Posted on October 07, 2008 | Permalink

Service Design via the Global Web 

"For international companies, the Internet is an essential but inherently complex interface. In the framework presented here, Brian Gillespie critiques a range of options related to gateways, scope, user research, uniform versus local presence, language, content development, design, site implementation, domains, and URLs. It is an enlightening overview for both executives and managers." (Brian Gillespie - DMI Review)

Posted on October 01, 2008 | Permalink

Don Norman on Service Design

"Now that I've listened to the lecture a couple times I've got a better idea where Norman is going with this. He makes some good points about the importance of back stage operations but I don't agree with his assertion that operations and design are the same topic. He seems disappointed with much of the existing service design literature and treats Pine and Gilmore with mild disdain. The lecture goes on a rambling tour of theme parks, fast food, hospitals, hotels and banking, with some great anecdotes and pointers toward interesting research." (Jeff Howard - Design for Service)

Posted on September 30, 2008 | Permalink

Service Design and Experience Design: Starbucks vs Le Pain Quotidien

"What is service design? Particularly those that is delivered through a digital interface or through a peer-to-peer network. It requires a very different approach from traditional operations management and the economics is very different. Service is becoming a key part of any customer experiences. Many still find the concept a little abstract. Little attention is paid to service innovation or seeing services as structure." (Idris Mootee - innovation playground)

Posted on August 04, 2008 | Permalink

Interaction Design and Service Design: Expanding A Comparison of Design Disciplines 

"Interaction design encounters service design in business innovation, e-government, and a whole range of other settings. There is a range of service settings in which interactive artefacts are used to perform service, and a set of business innovation strategies combining process innovation and interactive technology. In the meeting between these the service perspective becomes a challenge to interaction design, and technology usage becomes a challenge to service design." (Stefan Holmlid - Nordic Design Research Conference)

Posted on July 24, 2008 | Permalink

Designing better services

"Service Design is a new holistic, multi-disciplinary, integrative field. It helps to either innovate or improve services to make them more useful, usble, desirable for clients, as well as more efficient and effective for organisations." (Stefan Moritz)

Posted on June 26, 2008 | Permalink