steveleedesign

Designing Services in a Changing NHS

2011-03-10T21:04:00.011Z

This article was first published on the Prospect website.

An Opportunity for Preventative Healthcare

Prospect joined GPs, NHS representatives, academics and other service designers last week for an event hosted by Imagination Lancaster, who recently released their report 'Design In Practice' to discuss the effects of the most radical changes facing the NHS since its foundation in 1948.

The event at the Design Council explored how service design can help GPs, local authorities and the public make the most of their new roles and responsibilities and facilitate change for the better.

1. Liberating the NHS

The Coalition Government's white paper 'Liberating the NHS' heralds the replacement of an entire stratum of NHS management with consortia of GPs. It aims to empower those in direct contact with patients to design, procure and provide new, better services. It also re-iterates the need to better integrate local authorities, social services and other partners to provide more holistic, localised and preventative care.

The two challenges on the surface are to help GPs gain insight into the wellbeing and behaviours of their local population to better meet their needs, and facilitating diverse groups of stakeholders to create joined-up and preventative services centred around people.

This is Service Design's back yard‚ and there is much the discipline can offer the NHS. However, this article also explores more complex organisational issues of this radical change programme, and calls for the application of strategic design thinking to resolve them.

2. Removing barriers to innovation and improvement

The removal of PCTs may well reduce bureaucracy and barriers to innovation, allowing GPs to more efficiently set up primary care services that can reduce the number of patients who end up in hospital and more costly secondary care treatments.

But as Dr. Mohammed Ali reflected in his talk, "GPs are a particular type of person; evidence-based, and if you can prove it, you can do it." Such caution is understandable for those in medicine, but it does not bode well for the culture of experimentation and risk-taking necessary to produce innovative new services.

However, using service design methodologies can integrate qualitative and quantitative to leverage new projects, and exploit the direct contact between GPs and patients to produce more appropriate services. Ethnographic-based research uncovers behaviours and service expectations that can inform and define new solutions. Iterative cycles of prototyping and testing allows for performance data, as well as qualitative feedback to be quickly gathered from patients and providers to ensure they are on the right track.

The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement has successfully combined such qualitative, experience-based methodologies with the quantitative data and evidence base required to leverage new projects and develop a business case for change.

3. Taking a longer view for a healthier population

The logic is clear for focusing more effort on preventative healthcare in order to reduce future demand for secondary care. As a representative from the Royal College of General Practitioners

"The lower down the food chain you are, the more difference you can make - we (GPs) have always known this. So much money is spent on intensive surgery procedures... if you took some of that budget and spent it on getting people to live more healthily, you would reduce the number of people who need surgery."

One such example is Activmobs. Developed by RED, a department of the Design Council, it encourages communities and groups to self-organise and live healthier, more active lifestyles. It incentivises everyday activities such as dog walking or aerobics groups for the elderly and augments them with nutritional advice, information and guidance, rewards and even the support of a personal trainer.

Such schemes can reduce the prevalence (and cost) of serious conditions such as cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes, as well as improving the mental wellbeing and productivity of the population. It reverses the cycle of increasingly costly treatment.

4. Fewer patients, but little patience for the long view

The rationale is obvious, but when secondary care funding is based on to the number of people who go through its wards and operating theatres, there is little incentive for secondary care managers to seek to reduce the supply (or ill people as they are also known), as a consequence is reduced budgets, closing facilities and job losses.

The new remit of GPs, however, will empower them to take that direction, scaling down secondary care in order to implement more primary care alternatives. GPs must go further and look 'upstream' - where the conditions from which chronic illnesses emerge - and invest in community care and longer term healthy population strategies to take the pressure off all services.

Measuring the outcomes and quality of experience of those who become ill is complex, but measuring the value of spending on preventing illness is near paradoxical: How many people would have become ill? What might their treatment have cost? Which of the many schemes the population will have interacted with can claim responsibility and secure funding, and how far in the future will they have to wait for their impact to be proven?

5. Shifting from Secondary, to Primary, to Community, to Preventative

The NHS was configured in 1948 with a focus on coping with accidents and injuries, communicable diseases, and provide palliative care. Since then NHS provision has fallen out of step with the needs of the population, and its demographic composition. Less healthy lifestyles have caused a large increase in long-term chronic illnesses; many of them preventable if healthier behaviours can be introduced early enough.

The 'Nicholson Challenge' of finding £20bn in cost savings in the next four years is daunting, to say the least. But the answer isn't found in simply scaling back the NHS and opening up markets to the private sector to occupy the vacuum.

The real challenge of the NHS in the 21st century is to reduce the need for the NHS by encouraging and facilitating a healthier population.

International studies have shown that where primary care is strongest, hospital activity is reduced and the supply of GPs in a region is associated with fewer hospital admissions (Source: RCGP). Data on health populations reducing the need for primary and secondary care is more difficult to produce and obtain.

How the health of a population is measured, monitored and improved requires an holistic approach which reaches beyond the NHS to better co-ordinate with local authorities, social services, police and hospices alongside private and third sector bodies.

The NHS atlas maps variation of healthcare, but also indicates different health challenges faced in different areas.

6. People at the Heart of Services

The Government endorses 'integrated care' as described above. The NHSi recommends the use of a 'Compact' - a more detailed agreement to outline relationships between clinical commissioners and community and partner organisations.

Imagination Lancaster goes further still, to endorse 'Community-Centred Commissioning', which also includes community leaders and public representatives to give their user's view of healthcare provision.

With a diverse group of stakeholders, a user-centred strategy can provide focus, aligning the objectives of different providers and ensuring that services dovetail without any gaps along the user journey.

Co-creative sessions, where designers facilitate the stakeholders to design services themselves, can be used to prioritise issues and collaboratively generate ideas for new services, which can be quickly prototyped, tested and improved.

Source: Design in Practice, Lancaster university

Such inclusive processes help instil a sense of ownership in participants and overcome resistance to change, and can even help mitigate conflicting supplier interests. By understanding the patient's experiences, and combining qualitative evidence such as ethnographic research outcomes with quantitative data, GPs gain the leverage required to justify replacing some secondary care with primary care, and some primary care with community and preventative care.

A user-centred approach to designing services can also filter out un-necessary targets. Over the years these have multiplied to obscure the primary objective of maintaining the well being of the population and staff, instead distracting care providers with the minutiae of meeting abstract targets, which can often get in the way of using good common sense to do their job well.

Conclusion: A Call to Service Design

The Imagination Lancaster event provided an optimistic view of the difference Service Design can make in this period of change to the NHS. However, it also uncovered deeper systemic issues and a labyrinth of entrenched and conflicting incentives and business models.

With the Government's announcement that PCTs are to be phased out, they have already begun dismantling before the Health and Social Bill has gone through Parliament. Those who remain are dis-incentivised to pass on their knowledge, and GPs will consequently have greater difficulty in grappling with these management challenges.

It's time for service design to step up, and apply its design thinking to develop new, balanced, sustainable and user-centred business models. Nothing short of a new proposition is required for the NHS - shifting away from, as one GP put it, "The public perception of the National Hospital Service," and towards encouraging preventative healthcare and a healthier, happier population.

Service Design vs. Bureaucracy: How Human is Your Business?

2010-10-14T16:39:00.013+01:00

This article was published in the international Service Design Network's Touchpoint magazine in October 2010.

From handier tin openers to more intuitive interfaces, the ability of design to humanise ‘things’ is well known and understood. Services, however, in spite of being provided by people in direct contact with users, are often de-humanised by measurements and policies set at an organisational level.

Top-down directives intended to increase revenue, efficiency or measurability can actually undermine experiences for staff and users, and de-couple what organisations aim to achieve from what their users want.

Following are three examples for bridging this gap illustrating how service design can meet such organisational challenges. It affirms that by transforming the front line you can liberate staff, unlock innovation and provide users with the experiences they demand to help ensure that the bottom line looks after itself.

Customer and Organisational Needs

Service users have fundamentally different needs from consumers of products. They seek individual experiences that bring touchpoints and channels together. They require direct interaction (and often human interaction) with the providing organisation.

Organisations inevitably need to divide tasks between departments and as such, develop roles and incentives to keep each of its components moving, employing automation and standardisation to boost efficiency.

These differences in needs and behaviours can cause a gap to appear, diminishing the user’s experience and in turn an organisation’s fortunes.

De-Humanised Services and Market Stalinism

A fixation on operations and efficiencies can mechanise and de-humanise services. Siloed departments can quickly create bureaucratic hoops for customers to jump through. While customers seek customization, longer-term relationships, and largely measure experiences on qualitative grounds, organisations often consider success in quantitative efficiencies and short-term ROI.

Key Performance Indicators would seem to be a happy medium, but can become subverted by target setting and the shortcuts necessary to achieve them. The minutiae of how to achieve something becomes an end in itself, obscuring and even detracting from why you’re trying to achieve it in the first place. Mark Fisher calls this effect Market Stalinism’ [1], after the USSR’s White Sea Canal project. The primary goal of allowing access for large cargo ships and tankers was hijacked by target squeezing, box-ticking and PR concerns. The result was a glorious media review of an efficiently completed canal, but in truth it was only deep enough to accommodate the small tourist steamers on which the journalists sat.

Market Stalinism at work - Wherever you hear these signs.

The above example may be humorous, but this phenomenon is visible from small-scale interactions to life-or-death scenarios.

Gill Hicks, who was injured in the London Tube bombings of 2005, spoke at the NHS Innovation Live conference last year. She explained how it was those who broke the rules, and the moments when rules were broken, which meant the most to her recovery. From rescue paramedics bending resuscitation protocols, to hospital staff later sneaking her out of the ward to improve her psychological well-being, small moments of individual initiative that did not adhere to organisational rules helped her recovery immeasurably.
Although organisations need to have safety procedure and focus on the bottom line to maintain profits and value, being rule-bound can often have the opposite result.

The cost of dissatisfied users is a damaged reputation and a long time spent trying to win their confidence and custom back. By tying the hands of staff with policy, pragmatism, common sense and innovation are stifled and even discouraged.

Re-Humanising Services

Service Design is the vehicle for uniting desirable user experiences and outcomes (bottom-up needs) with operational necessities and efficiencies (top-down needs). Below are three examples illustrating how organisations can be transformed from frustrating empathy-void automatons to empowered, adaptive, innovative helpers.

1. See the design process as an end in itself:
Lewisham Housing Options

Co-creative activities during the process can be as effective as the final deliverables themselves, in establishing the right culture to sustain a service.

Lewisham Housing Options - Transforming services by engaging staff in the design process

ThinkPublic and the Design Council worked with Lewisham Council to understand how they could better serve constituents who required housing, some of whom were in distressed situations and housing emergencies.

Staff members were all given a camera, some training and then went about interviewing people who were waiting for or had just had their appointment.

Through the direct experience of gathering data, footage and insights, the staff were taken away from their desks, databases and forms. Being re-connected with the situations, fears and hopes of those they serve every day, they began literally to see things through a different lens, asking different questions and getting to the heart of customers’ problems in a personal, human way.

2. See services as constantly in “beta”:
Passenger Personas

Transferring tools and knowledge through workshops, training and method sharing is an often-overlooked activity. It greatly improves the sustainability of a service by equipping front-line staff and management with the tools and processes to improve and evolve the service.

One European airport group has an established protocol for understanding and improving their passenger experience.

‘Greeter’ staff are on hand to help and direct passengers as they arrive in the terminal. At quiet times, this staff put themselves in the shoes of a passenger persona, select a destination, and set off through the airport identifying gaps in wayfinding, accessibility or even maintenance and upkeep. Issues are dealt with swiftly, making the job more satisfying for staff and the experience more pleasant for passengers.

Embedding design and empathy tools creates a strong link between an organisation and its users, ensuring needs are understood. Empowering those who have the grass-roots knowledge of a situation to take action to fix problems means solutions are more informed and services are built coherently, not on an ad-hoc basis.

3. Refrain from imposing common sense guidelines:
Just A Routine Operation

Generic guidelines inhibit staff from trying anything new or different. They cannot best serve individual customers, nor fulfil their role as ‘silent designers’ – observing and changing the system incrementally.

Just A Routine Operation from thinkpublic on Vimeo.

This documentary, created for the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, follows a man's experiences during the sudden death of his wife, who suffered complications after a minor operation.

Rather than encapsulate what was observed through the film into another ‘framework for communications protocol' or a 'critical situation checklist', the film has simply been screened to 2,000 NHS staff. By more directly experiencing the situation the staff can draw their own conclusions, which mitigates the need for 'guidance' because skills and empathy are developed more directly.
To those who may balk at a lack of control, consider Nordstrom, a US department store renowned for its customer service. Until recently, its staff guidelines consisted of just 75 words, including:

“Rule 1: Use best judgement in all situations. There will be no additional rules.” [3]

This laissez-faire approach has empowered Nordstrom sales associates to go to the extremes of customer service. By increasing autonomy and lightening the touch of administration, barriers to common sense, ideas and action are removed, enabling a culture of innovation.

Conclusion

By using Service Design to address organisational challenges, you can create direct and dynamic links between operational necessities and what users want are created, reducing waste and increasing demand.

How well this is done is most apparent at the ‘front line’ where staff and users interact. Organisations need to trust and support the people they hire, so that they can efficiently provide effective services that are meaningful and desirable to people. That is true return on investment.

References

[1] Fisher, M (2009) Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (esp. p39, 43)
[2] Just A Routine Operation (2008, Thinkpublic)
[3] Spector, R. (2000) Lessons of the Nordstrom Way
With thanks to Thinkpublic and Sean Miller for case studies and images.

Designing the Future of Knowledge Transfer

2010-09-04T16:20:00.006+01:00

I'm proud to report that a project I have been leading at Prospect to deliver a vision for Unlocking Knowledge Transfer (KT) in the UK on behalf of the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network (CI KTN) is now complete, and the Unlocking Knowledge Transfer Executive Summary can be downloaded. It summarises three robust reports illustrating a number of new services, spaces and tools that will help bring academia and the creative industries closer together.

The three reports can be found in my Projects section - I recommend starting with the third of the three Opportunities for Unlocking Knowledge Transfer and digging further if that whets your appetite.

Summary

CIKTN needed a robust vision of the future of knowledge transfer between the creative industries and academia in the UK. We engaged a wide audience through workshops, online surveys and an online platform to develop future scenarios which inspired a number of new opportunities for KT.
Over the course of five months, hundreds of people contributed to inform the three reports which map out the future of KT in the UK, with 16 opportunities (actionable initiatives, services, spaces and roles) for improving KT in the creative industries.

Problem

Now, more than ever, businesses are investing in the knowledge economy to catalyse innovation. The UK's academic institutions are world leaders in creating knowledge and ideas. The Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network (CIKTN) invited Prospect to lead a strategic project exploring the future of creating, sharing and applying this wealth and better connecting academia and business.
Historically, the Creative Industries have not engaged with 'knowledge transfer' (KT) on the same scale as industries such as sciences and engineering, for example. Add to this a harsh economic climate and the increasing overlapping and competition between business and academia and you have a knotty problem; one that design is ideally suited to solve.

Solution

We used a holistic design approach and methodologies in a way that would engage a broad spectrum of people, and make sense of a diverse range of reactions, comments and ideas. This collaborative, co-creative process not only helped us gather information and insights from these stakeholders, but also encourage them to generate new solutions to possible developments in the future.

The project pivoted around the creation of four future scenarios, based on economic, social, cultural and environmental trends amongst other factors. These were designed to challenge and provoke participants and ask; 'How would you thrive in this new world?'; 'What do you fear?'; and 'What needs to be done?'.

Impact

Online surveys, expert interviews, future scenarios and five workshops conducted around the UK informed the three reports delivered through the project. The first, Baselines, documents today's landscape of knowledge sharing between the UK's creative industries and academia. The second, Scenarios, illustrates possible futures and documents how our participants reacted to them. The third, Opportunities, presents a series of robust reccomendations for future services, spaces and initiatives, balancing a wealth of views with feasibility and sustainability, realised through a powerful strategic design process.

How Social Media Has Made Brands Transparent

2010-08-04T20:59:00.007+01:00

I've been engrossed in work on social media at Prospect over the past few months, and wanted to marry some of the insights and observations there with some ideas I've had in the pipeline for a while. This article is also available at www.prospect.eu, and covers three key points on why truth, not image, is the new branding.

In particular, we have seen how social media has brought about a new age of branding transparency, where the happiness of customers instantly affects the value of a brand. There are three trends which help explain this:

1. Branding Is Returning To Its Roots As 'Reputation'

Brands are simply the reputation of a business as it was upheld at any moment in the minds of its customers. Before the sophisticated brand machinery of advertising, design, semiotics and visual identity, this was entirely influenced by the quality and consistency of a product or service.

We are coming full circle. Social media's effect of increasing transparency has withered the power and persuasiveness of flashy-smoke-and-mirrors branding. Once again, the products and services must do the talking. Brand equity is directly and immediately linked to the quality of experience you provide.

A painful-to-watch example of this is United Airlines. A disgruntled band watched in horror out of the plane window as they saw their instruments being thrown around by baggage handlers. After nine months seeking compensation for broken instruments, they decided to complain by writing a song, which is approaching 9,000,000 views on YouTube. It's also credited as the main cause of a 10% drop in share price which cost United an estimated $180m. United's out-dated response was a schmaltzy ad campaign. Deflatingly, the online comments greeting their efforts were peppered with mischievous wails of 'United breaks guitars!'. The whitewash had not worked.

2. Customers Are The Advertising Campaign

'Happy customers are your best advertisement' sounds like a whimsical old cliché from a village butchers, but word of mouth has quickly re-established itself as the dominant marketing force and is more relevant now than it has ever been. And it's certainly not just about the small-scale and local who have that much face-to-face time with customers.

Apple, who recently overtook Microsoft to become the highest-valued technology company in the world at $152bn, have taken this to heart and apply it very well. For every expensive advertisement you have seen on TV or online you have probably had a dozen friends or colleagues nudge you to show you their latest iPhone app or tell you "PCs are rubbish. Why don't you get rid of that thing and buy a Mac like this one I'm hugging right now?"

These nudges aren't just happening in person. The savvy purchaser will do a little online research while weighing up their choices, and in a few minutes can be exposed to hundreds of like-minded opinions and experiences. What the customer hears in these critical moments holds a huge sway over whether they buy in or walk away.

3. Customers Are The Boss

Imagine your website as a high street shop and a new customer approaching it. Now imagine hundreds of previous customers standing outside, some shouting in protest and warning the customer away, others singing with elation, 5-star rating placards in hand.

You have the ability to influence the crowd, but the more you use the megaphone, the worse things get. You need to listen to every one in turn and try and resolve their individual cases. You cannot win over everybody, but you need to make sure that the new customer will be tempted in, and at the least, will not be scared away.

Moreover, you have the opportunity to get in touch with the disappointed customers, find out what went wrong, and try to convnice them to stay whilst improving your offer in the process. The customer is always right when talking about their personal, subjective experiences. It's up to the business to provide a better experience in the first place.

Conclusion

As this new mainline has opened up between customers and an organisation's brand, it is the customers, not the providers that have taken the initiative. It has accelerated the movement of feet, allowed easy comparison of competitors and lifted the roof of organisations to allow customers to look inside.

While there is much for businesses and organisations to be wary of, the greatest sin of all is not embracing it. Users will reward the provider who gets it right with loyalty, upgrading, compliance and spreading the word. And quickly. In a time of instantaneous brand re-assessment through social media, your reputation is what you do and your brand equity depends upon what your customers think of the quality of experience you provide.

Service Design Drinks London - 28th May 2010

2010-05-28T09:39:00.001+01:00

This evening, come to the water poet near Liverpool street station for some service design thinking talking and drinking! Officially beginning at 7:00, but come straight after work!

Link: <
View Larger Map>

With Jaimes, Lauren and Nick all enjoying well-deserved holidays I'll do my upmost to be a topmost host.

http://www.servicedesigning.org/events/service_design_drinks_london_-_28th_may/

Posted via email from steveleedesign

Beyond Petroleum...No, really we are...

2010-05-25T22:35:00.002+01:00

I miss making things and thought a bit of light humour and green advocacy was the perfect excuse to dust off the old CS4 and make a new BP logo for Greenpeace's latest creative lobbying experiment against BP. Check out their gallery here:

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/tags/bp

I know boycott's a little strong as everything's made out of or runs on the stuff, but if anyone can suggest a word beginning with 'B' that means "understand we're all responsible for creating a need for petroleum in the first place and therefore must reduce our consumption in little ways each day that mean corporations and governments don't do things we don't want them to" I'd be indebted.

Posted via email from steveleedesign

Using Film To Create Change In The Public Sector

2010-03-23T23:16:00.005Z

This evening I attended thinkpublic's screening and talk 'Using Film to Create Change in the Public Sector" and was moved and inspired to share a few thoughts.

I wanted to do this firstly because over the past few years I have helped produce films as part of service design projects and have always been an advocate of the power of showing people what their customers are experiencing and saying about them. This is too often done through cleverly-written and clever sounding documents. What's less clever is that 60 pages of statistics, insights and pull-out quotes are far less effective at achieving this than actually showing people their own customers saying what they feel into a camera.

And secondly, because the talks that followed the two shorts uncovered the power of film as not just the means to an end, where a film is presented as part of evidence at the end of a research phase to validate and unlock the next phase, but an end in itself. The two films each unlocked good points about this.

Just A minor Operation: Karen's Story

Just A Routine Operation from thinkpublic on Vimeo.

The documentary was created by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. It followed a woman's experience during the sudden death of her husband, who suffered complications after a minor operation.

What struck the audience was how it refrained to encapsulate lessons learned into a 'seven point plan' or 'framework for patient dignity protocol' or a 'sensitive situation checklist'. Julia Schaeper from the NHS Institute for Innovation explained how the experiences and events were laid bare for the audience (so far at 2000 NHS staff and growing) to draw their own observations and conclusions.

Rather than giving staff guidelines as a result of the film, which seek to standardise and synthesise common sense, good judgement and empathy, the film was shown directly to staff, so that they experienced it. And from gaining experience we mitigate the need to provide often obvious 'guidance' because we develop those skills and emotions more directly.

The NHS is notorious for guidelines, targets and frameworks. But it's also rife across state institutions. Mark Fisher, in his book Capitalist Realism calls this situation in the UK 'Market Stalinism' - where the obsession with targets and how to achieve them obscures and even detracts from why you are trying to achieve them in the first place. We have already arrived in a place where the micro-motivations of efficiency overtakes the macro-motivation of care.

Lewisham Customer Experiences

Lewisham Council worked with the Design Council and thinkpublic to improve the experiences of those using their Housing Options services. many of these people are in crisis, including people who are homeless, running away from domestic violence or in one case, a woman who couldn't begin the application process until the day her house was reposessed.

Again, watching the film transferred more insight than what would have found its way into a research report. Furthermore, the interesting twist was that those filming the consultations and interviews were the council employees themselves.

Peter Gaddson, Head of Strategy and Performance with the Customer Services Directorate at Lewisham Council explained that the employees were 'looking through a different lens' and were suddenly asking different questions to those they would have asked were they working behind their desks, with databases and application forms. The film showed flaws in the system, sometimes satisfactory, sometimes distressing outcomes and a noisy, even chaotic scene in the background. Peter boldly (and bravely) affirmed that "In order to improve, you need to admit that you get things wrong."

A fantastic sentiment at a time when people are more protective of their performance and defensive of criticism, but in doing so, block the potential for real change.

Share to Grow

2009-11-08T19:16:00.005Z

I've been working a great deal recently at Prospect on the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network, which is assessing how to better connect organisations producing 'knowledge' (universities, labs, etc.) and those who can unlock and apply that knowledge to create new products, services and even businesses. I encourage anyone involved in academia and the creative industries to visit the site and take the opportunity to have your say.

In particular I've been thinking about how the crux of the problem, balancing sharing and generosity with the bottom line and protectionism, relates to the burgeoning cross-disciplinary 'discipline' of service design. Having kept a close eye on the SDN Conference last week, It's even more apparent than usual how disproportionately loudly the community manages to communicate through blogs, tweets and uploaded papers.

For a discipline still in the moulding it's the relatively unspoken principles that have created this culture and environment that interests me. I'm sure much of this comes through the everyday work of being a service designer, which demands more collaboration, transparency and inclusiveness than other design disciplines to ensure quality.

This preaching what we practice has quickly generated a mass of content which can be copied, case studies which can be imitated and even tools which are given away freely for use. It's this open-ness and sharing which reveals how this new industry is being founded upon principles reflective of our increasingly non-proprietary and communities-based world and which go against traditional practices in, say, communications and product design, where knowledge is locked within experts, craftspeople, studios and workshops.

Roberta Tassi’s infographic to describe the origins of design methodologies and tools.

Perhaps it's the intangibility of service design that requires as much evidence as possible to be publicised, to educate future clients and win over organisations that 'get it' already. This challenge is made even more complex when the almost universal aspiration of existing service design studios to move further 'upstream' and become more strategic as well as outcomes-focused and capable, is taken into account. In the short-term sharing such knowledge may seem hazardous, but when considered as a longer-term strategy to grow the market and establish yourself as a thought leader, the benefits will drastically outweigh this if done properly.

the audience at Service Design Drinks - almost entirely practitioners.

Service designers sell process and the tools, methods and expertise to go through it. Their offer is to be confident enough to share their insights, experiences and methods - positioning themselves as thought leaders and focusing their offer on the opportunity to work alongside the designers and experience the expert application of that knowledge.

And so, in the spirit of a 'competitive collaborative community', feel free to comb my Twitter feed and Delicious bookmarks, and I hope you find the following resources as useful as I have. I'll also be increasingly gobby and opinionated as Service design Drinks and Thinks evenings go on.

servicedesigntools.org
service design reading list

Digital futures for health

2009-07-26T19:16:00.005+01:00

As more and more people of all ages become more literate and involved in more complex ways on the internet, the role of digital services and infrastructure has become increasingly integral to the provision of all kinds of services, and essential for others.

Even the most 'analogue' services and traditionalist propositions - those that hold face-to-face and human contact above all else - are utilising the internet to streamline processes, make data more transparent and intelligent and empowering front-line workers and users by providing ubiquous access to information.

Red prototyped 'activmobs' services to establish and support communities organised online to live more active lifestyles and have access to health experts and facilities.

Which is why health provides such an interesting proposition for the burgeoning service design community. There have been some excellent emerging health services, which due to their complex, lifelong and sometimes critical nature require a whole spectrum of touchpoints besides a digital infrastructure.

Services are shifting focus from purely cost-saving, reducing staffing overheads by digitising processes and steering their customers online, to a win-win situation which truly drives better experiences for their users. It provides a number of shortcuts, removes un-neccessary physical journeys and tedious staff roles and duties. But the shift has gone beyond digital services representing a complimentary role to online blueprints and wireframes being the core structure of the provision, informing organisational structure and strategy and when, where and how more traditional experiences and touchpoints should happen.

hellohealth have established a healthcare platform in Brooklyn, "putting context around each point of data, allowing (users) to look at data more meaningfully".

Aviv Katz and I met with FitForSport last week and were greatly encouraged by the scale of their operation - providing in and out of school physical education from activities, nutritional advice and even summer camps - amounting to 1.2 million children involved with the scheme at some level in 2008. Their goals nicely align with Engine's current project with Southwark Council to reduce obesity in the borough, with the first initiatives targeting children and encouraging family support and participation. Despite their excellent on-the-ground work in schools and communities, their online offer falls well short of its potential to ensure the good work done on activity days and in schools isn't being undone by an unhealthy lifestyle at home.

Microsoft healthvault lubricates the flow of infomration and empowers users and healthcare providers with transparent data. They just need to work on their video. And hopefully it isn't as painful to use as most Microsoft software.

Our discussion also focused on the multi-billion pound question - what difference investment in preventative and early-stages care can make in both monetary terms and to the quality of life of people compared to dealing with chronic disease and attempting to cure it later on? Only a long-time study can shed light on what is logically sound and provide those striving to make it happen with the ammunition of hard facts to convince the bean-counters, particularly as the NHS faces 0% extra investment until 2011, when the ringfencing of its budget is again reviewed and will likely drop due to the recession.

Large-scale long-term, quali-qualitative studies on the effects of preventative health are thin on the ground, to say the least, but digitally-oriented healthcare can provide rich data and empowering, transparent services for people at low cost - surely the time is right?

The Service Design Network journal, Touchpoint, will focus its next issue on healthcare. I eagerly anticipate its contents!

Zen and the art of urban cycle service design

2009-07-13T08:32:00.008+01:00

I've been bitten by the cycling bug this summer, and after seeing the sheer numbers at the London to Brighton bike ride last month, as well as experiencing the pitfalls of long distance cycling on top of my usual hair-raising commute to work, I felt it high time to pull together my thoughts and observations on how to support two-wheeled endeavours.

poor motorists...

Cycling is increasingly important as a means to reduce pollution and congestion on city roads and also to combat the UK's increasing problems with obesity and chronic illnesses. Yet infrastructure, support, services and even cultural attitudes fall short of the value cycling offers to the environment, economy and society.

The Experience of Cycling
Cyclists are vulnerable on the road, and while segregated cycle lanes help eliminate accidents with other traffic, they aren't realistic as a solution everywhere. The TFL website and free cycle maps are helpful for London, whilst the charity Sustrans has been developing a national cycle network since the 1970's.

if only it was all like this...

Whilst knowing your highway code and being a confident cyclist will reduce your chances of an injury, all too often cyclists are injured with little idea of what their rights are. How best to act immediately after an accident is still in the realm of hearsay.

Whilst many new inexperienced cyclists will inevitably lead to accidents, there is a great gulf between where motorists' attitudes towards cyclists are at present in London and where they should be. Hit and runs, intimidation and abuse are rife and will only serve to generate reciprocal hostility and generate a downward spiral of behaviour.

Of course, there must be compromise, and cyclists are being given the opportunity to sit in HGV cabs to empathise with drivers who cause many accidents because they can't see cyclists. Simultaneously, such vehicles are being fitted with sensors to fill the blind spots.

Cycling communities such as Critical Mass act to raise awareness, act as a lobby and encourage participation. Montreal and Copenhagen are at the head of the field in achieving (some) harmony between cyclists and the city, largely because of their prioritisation of cultural attitudes to ensure safer roads.

Cycling is an inclusive activity, as long as you aren't bothered by the sneers of Shaun Armstrong wannabes when you roll up next to them on your dad's knackered racer. However, services around cycling and shop environments are largely male oriented, with staff and customers being young athletic and male, which can be intimidating for anyone not in those categories. TfL last year trialled a free outdoors one-day bike surgery, and IDEO even developed a super low-maintenance bike and inclusive purchasing experience to reduce the need for such visits altogether.

Economy (vs) Environment
The cost savings against the car are huge. Personally even the cost of public transport combined with a miserable commute by train what the key to my conversion. You can also have a look at how much you can save in CO2 and money, here. The government has further encouraged cycling through Ride2Work - a slightly painful beaureaucratic process which provides tax incentives for employers and employees to buy new bikes, and has resulted in a huge surge in demand which has left manufacturers struggling to keep up.

Whilst the UK car industry hangs in peril, it is also bloated and unsustainable, both economically and environmentally. It's a real shame that the UK scrappage scheme is another example of how the economy and environment are often pitted against each other.

The Velibre-style schemes, successful in Paris but largely a failure in Barcelona, is an example of how the economy and environment can both benefit. Tourists and day commuters pay to hire bikes for as little as 30 minutes. This helps reduce traffic and keep the air quality in a city cleaner, which attracts more tourists and improves the living environment of locals. The scheme is to be introduced in London next year. I'll be delving into more specific examples in the future, but for the time being, I'd encourage you all to get cycling to help reach that critical mass!

Department of Health Expo at Excel Centre, London

2009-06-24T21:48:00.008+01:00

Last Thursday and Friday I nearly lost my voice talking about the service design possibilities for healthcare at the NHS Innovation Expo. The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement invited some of the old suspects, Engine, Live|Work and ThinkPublic, as well as new-to-my-radar Impact Innovation and it was also great to see Colin Burns and Martin Bontoft launching their new campaign "we are all designers", touring the country with talks and workshops.

We were there to introduce service design to public, private and third sector workers from all kinds of organisations. The response was fantastic (consistently we heard a near-logically spoken response "this is great, there should be more of it!"), and encouragingly a number of visitors had already heard of service design to some extent. Could the discipline be finally maturing?!

Aviv Katz ran workshops for Engine on both days in a space that was shared, as was our exhibition plot, reinforcing the general feeling that all service designers are in this together, as a supportive community, regardless of their studio loyalties! Finishing the week many attended Service Design Drinks, this time up in East London.

In summary, I think service design can particularly benefit health providers and users in the following ways:

Providing the compelling qualitative research required to make a project happen and to ensure it is reliably informed through a variety of research methods.
Engaging end users, front line staff and managers in democratic, open environments and a collaborative design process which helps develop more relevant, useful and appropriate services centred around users.
Transferring knowledge, tools and processes to the institutions and organisations through demonstrative projects. This was sometimes met with initial skepticism, as this and particularly embedding cultural change are very difficult, but it can be done!

Watch this space for a round up of some of the excellent online health services emerging on the interweb. Lauren Tan has also written a report on the day here.

Design Report from Canada

2009-05-04T19:31:00.007+01:00

I've had a recent blogging hiatus as for the last two weeks I've been holidaying in Montreal and Toronto, taking in the sights and exposing myself to Canada's culture, nature and a little of its design scene.

Canada's rolling snow farms produce 53.8% of the world's snow all year round...

There are some reassuringly global trends in both education and practice around service design. On the educational side, there's plenty beginning to emerge, if it is a bit behind the UK.

I was invited to the final exhibition of the Design Management course at Georgebrown University, where I was lucky enough to meet Luigi Ferrara, head of the design school and also course director of the Institute Without Boundaries, set up by Bruce Mau and something I have mentioned many times on this blog. The importance of making sure design processes are introduced to help solve the world's largest and most complex problems is something I can't possibly stress enough.

There's also an emerging appetite for design thinking in business education. Designworks consultancy-cum-MA at the Rotman Business School, UoT is led by Roger Martin, who recently released The Opposable Mind; sorry I have no personal review (it's on order!) but there's a good outline in this interview.

Sorry to repeat a phrase that's everywhere at the moment, but in 'these financially difficult times', of particular interest was the Design Exchange in Toronto, performing a similar function to the Design Council in the UK but also maintaining two large exhibition spaces, which the DC jettisoned a long time ago to pursue its status as the UK government's design 'do tank'.

The comparison between the magnificent old Toronto Exchange building, once powering the economy, and its new role housing exhibitions on urban farming and the connections between architecture and quality of life and well-being were striking. The beautiful art deco trading floor is now empty and quiet, occasionally home to events more concerned with different definitions of value and currency.

I really believe that we're at a crossroads of both the economy and the environment, and the two can no longer be largely opposed in their values, goals and effects. Canada in particular is streets ahead in some parts in its awareness of the environment and miles ahead in others.

We in the UK should be proud of our progress and status in the field of service design, but never complacent. Canada is just one of many places catching up quickly, accelerating its progress with the increasingly intricate mesh of networking and ideas exchange online. Moreover, it has a lot to teach us about establishing a culture of heightened environmental consciousness.

A Bigger Picture

2009-03-30T23:00:00.005+01:00

breathingearth

I was sent this fantastic flash map of the world the other day. It shows births, deaths and pollution statistics in real-time across the world. It quickly becomes unnerving to watch as the truth about our impact on our planet starts to sink in.

Stuart Brand of the Long Now Foundation and Buckminster Fuller pressed the question 'Why haven't we seen an image of the whole Earth yet?' and in 1968 the first image of the Earth was taken and distributed. The impact of seeing the Earth as an 'island' hanging in nothing, the only one we have and not limitless in its size and resources is the foundation of the environmental movement.

the earth form 240,000 miles (NASA Science Photo Library)

Today we have collected millions of images of the earth, showing everything from temperatures to layering it with information on population, seismic activity and ozone levels. Google Earth has gone a long way to show us our imprint on the world, whilst Google Night shows us in brilliant simplicity the major populations of the world (and the light pollution we're causing!).

The biggest picture is often the most difficult to comprehend but the most important to see. Design is about stepping back or zooming out from a problem to try and understand the many other systems and effects that might have influence over it. It's why service designers need to create huge walls of post its. John Meada calls it 'away' in his Laws of Simplicity - 'More appears like less simply by moving it far, far away.'

...just showing off

The key to sustainable design is the ability to change something which doesn't offset the balance of all these related and dependent systems in a harmful way. Of course, there's nothing you can do if a butterfly decides to mischievously flap its wings on the other side of the world, but designers should always ask whether there's another step back they can take.

tasks, teams, transparency, mapping, micro-metrics and motivation (TM x3)

2009-03-18T22:16:00.006Z

I had a discussion recently about small-scale, grass roots community building and how to motivate collaborative, social and even selfless behaviour. It began with noting how a 1970’s large-scale urban block of flats may differ in terms of community and knowing your neighbours from say, houses around a village green. It reminded me of a book I bought a few years ago, full of tips and actions to make your local and wider world a better place.

"It is an ingeniously executed book aimed at galvanising alienated Britons to do something for a society devoid of fellow feeling and good neighbourliness." - The Guardian

All well and lovely, but beyond smiling and nodding in agreement, it's hard to find the time to actually do it. Whilst I could have been enriching my life, the lives of others and the general universe, I've been doing other things like watching rubbish films or mucking about on my iPhone. In fact, a Solitaire application has an horrific function on it which tells you how many games you have won (very depressing once you hit 100) and more alarmingly, how much time you have spent in a social coma, transfixed on a 4x3" screen.

shameful...and I can't believe I lost that many times!

Motivation and incentivising is the key to service design, as services simply don't exist without users and providers being engaged. It's crucial to create value and benefits for everyone involved, as well as ensuring the service as a whole is sustainable. Now If I had a widget that could use the power of such a metric positively to help make me more productive...

In fact, many services are now harnessing this power, from Nike+ visualising your athletic progress to learningtoloveyoumore and wearewhatwedo's websites featuring to-do lists that you can create and join to collaborate on your do-gooding.

They also go a long way to allowing the user to personalise and evolve their own experience of a service, with their actions and input affecting a larger system or network of people or generating visual feedback.

The balance is difficult, but I think the title of this article can be used as a guide (and is by no means a definitive list) of how to encourage user participation.

tasks - find a way of visualising or organising things to be done
teams - allow people to network, share their successes and even compete
transparency - put the users in control by giving them all the information
mapping - use location, time, speed, efficiency, happiness...anything!
micro-metrics - visualise progress and present data in compelling ways
motivation - should come naturally in a user-centred or co-designed system!

And while I await the iPhone SortYourLifeOut App, I'll begin with Google Calendar and some more detailed and frequent blogs.

Ethnography 101

2009-02-24T18:32:00.006Z

Some of us at Engine are getting ready for a very intensive series of ethnographic studies for the Southwark Rise Project, set up to compare Southwark Council's support provision with the end experience of users, and to establish a framework for developing a user-centred approach. Ethnography is the practical end of anthropology and involves immersing yourself in the environment, community, society or culture you are observing and recording very qualitative information regarding how people live their lives. It often uses film and photography to quickly document the subjects without interfering with their natural habits and asking too many questions. It's somewhere between Lois Theroux and a human safari.

Ethnography is powerful because it offers so much qualitative detail on people, creating a compelling and personal account of people's everyday lives. In order to capture everything in its immediacy, from the contents of someone's fridge to a family argument, film, photography, sound recordings and even sketches are often used. This rich visual evidence adds to this power and reality when presented back.

Thankfully for those of us who are less experienced in front line ethnographic research, the studio has been sharing some advice and resources. Here's a summary of what I (and you) may find useful when planning, carrying out and reviewing front-line ethnography.

Erick gave me a really entertaining (if a bit long) movie of Luis Arnal's experiences as an ethnographer, reinforcing a sound set of principles and ethics with some great anecdotes which was presented at IIT last year. He had a simple illustration of the paths of conversation in an interview, probing and branching and gradually becoming more productive:

Empathy - with both participants and clients
Teamwork - briefing everyone and making participants feel on your side, create a buzz
Creativity - reacting quickly and finding a way to get people to open up
Discipline - observing the social code (Arnal covers everything from high society to the favelas)
Courage - know your rights, coping with emotionally demanding research
Social Responsibility - follow an ethical code, all work should improve people's lives, don't engage participants but leave written recommendations; don't keep them
Passion - believe in the project (see Social Responsibility!)

RECOUP, the Research Consortium on Education Outcomes and Poverty provides a useful checklist to prepare you for ethnography and the process of disseminating and discussion what you've seen. The full manual can be downloaded here.

And finally a list of the great and the good, from beginnings of armchair anthropology based on archeaology and 'collecting' exotic material items to what we now see as ethnography.

Franz Boas - developed a theory of cultural relativism, rather than seeing culture as an evolutionary line
Bronislaw Malinowski - participant observation pioneer
Marcel Mauss - worked on reciprocity and gift exchange
Claude Levi-Strauss - structuralism and mythologies

I'm itching to get out into the field now!

Criminal Designerminds

2009-02-15T20:03:00.008Z

The Design Council with help from Live|Work have been working on a project to 'design out crime'. The site is filling up with examples of systems and product re-designs that have help make crime or theft more difficult or less appealing, summarised in this Pdf.

The project takes a number of approaches, from encouraging public vigilance to co-ordinating manufacturers to make products more difficult to sell on (Schools requested that equipment was made bright orange to stem a tide of thefts)

When beginning such a design process, it's easy to talk to, observe and design around the experiences of the victims and also to look at the official data to see which may be the most fruitful areas to tackle. However, I'm intrigued by 'anti-user-centred design' instances like this, where designers have to make a situation as un-appealing or difficult as possible for one user group whilst not compromising the experience for legitimate users. So shouldn't that user segment be included in the process?

At a recent conference I spoke with Thinking Spaces about their work with prisons. When interviewing inmates, they always found the armed robbers and fraudsters the most interesting to talk to.
Such criminals have the potential to be excellent designers. They can spot opportunities, think quickly and laterally and some have proven to be expert systems analysts and exploiters. Their ingenuity is often borne of necessity and from the ground up.

A fantastic example of product design involves an acquaintance's mother, who lived in a flat with a coin-operated electricity meter that was checked every month to be emptied but was always found to have no coins in it at all, despite energy being used. The flatmates had created a ice tray with pound coin sized holes and were dropping these ice "slugs" (fake coins) into the meter, where they would melt and evaporate!

After a mugging, I had a hopeless series of experiences with Lewisham Police, and after six weeks I was finally invited in to identify any of the eight strangers I met late at night in a stressful circumstance. Needless to say I didn't manage to recognise anyone, but I did encounter some excellent resourcefulness to play the identification system.

Mug shots are so-called because the suspects being photographed used to gurn to distort their faces to avoid identification. Amongst hundreds of photographs of frowns and straight faces I was taken aback by someone leaning towards the camera with a beaming smile! The chances are that if he had done anything wrong, he didn't have quite so happy a demeanour at the time!

So if you truly want to attempt to 'design out crime' I'd recommend starting with those who have committed crimes to understand the motivations, drivers and barriers that can make the rest of us so unhappy, but also to harness the creativity and ingenuity of their unique and underestimated perspectives.

Just Coping

2009-02-01T19:17:00.010Z

Esro have produced a insightful report written by Sophia Parker and Robin Pharoah with Tamara Hale on their ethongraphic research into families on the borders of poverty, in partnership with Kent County Council and the SILK lab, set up by Engine. It takes a thoroughly qualitative stance, but the stories used and rawness of the situations of the participants of the research makes for incredibly compelling reading.

It is positioned as a policy development guide, with the end experiences of those 'just coping' in mind, rather than a top-down set of guidelines and approaches. Essentially, this user-centred report puts people before statistics.

The book is inspiring both in the insights it picks out, and also its ability to force to you question your pre-conceptions about people living 'on the breadline'. From some very harsh case studies, there is hope built on the observations of the researchers that the subjects are incredibly entrepreneurial and resourceful, in order to make the best of what they have.

There are also some blatant flaws in the systems and services of local government, which although are set up to protect and support people struggling to make ends meet, can in fact obstruct that very goal and turn vulnerable situations into spirals towards much more serious ones.

Key insights include:

No matter who you are, poor people are always seen as 'other'. No-one wants to admit that they are in that bracket, which would be seeming to concede that they are not trying to get out of poverty.

Prevention strategies can be much more effective both in costs for the providers (councils and national government departments such as the job centre and benefits) and in the experiences of the users, who hopefully can get support in avoiding worse situations before they arrive at them. (Surprise surprise)

Preconceptions of others who are not in poverty (the general public). There is an interesting comparison made to the purpose of the 1970's disability social model, which "demanded that economic, environmental and cultural barriers were recognised as constituting the disability as much as the condition itself."

Putting children first. The book contained some powerful examples of children who were growing up before their time, with responsibilities and situations they should not have to be forced to cope with. However, parents commonly will do whatever they can to ensure their children get the best 'life chances', even if that means skipping meals to ensure their child can get a new school uniform or take the bus to school.

The book ends with a number of opportunities and system challenges to realise them, and calls for a 'Copernican shift' in the way services are delivered, from a top-down approach, to designing services from the ground-up. It can be downloaded for free here.

McMixed Messages: The Breakfast of Champions?

2009-01-19T19:40:00.006Z

I went to McDonald's last weekend. I always feel guilty about it, but currently I am interested in childhood obesity and its causes. (And it was convenient, quick and cheap). Although the health of children is greatly affected by the food children receive at home and until recently, the terribly unhealthy options they had at school for lunch and snacks, I wanted to explore the attraction of fast food.

Fast food advertising aimed at children was banned in the UK in 2006, although these rules are often flouted, particularly online, where fast food websites contain branded games and 'kid-zones'.

Whilst tucking into my burger and chips, I noticed the olympic logo and 'Official Sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics'. Intriguing. Are they suggesting anyone actually taking part in the olympics would have a Big Mac in their nutritionist's regime? Shouldn't the olympics be more responsible for the sponsors it partners with?

Sponsorship's an intriguing proposition, particularly when it marries a brand and context that sit uncomfortably together. Since the advertising of fast food joined the outcasts of alcohol aimed at children and cigarettes altogether, the big fast food retailers have clamoured to recoup the profits lost with the resultant dip in custom from children.

I'll centre this article on McDonald's not for the sake of bashing it, but because it is probably the most interesting and prominent example. They have run sustained campaigns of football coaching, sports sponsorship and touring 'festivals' to encourage children to play football.

But is such sponsorship self-defeating? I imagine the bottom line reveals that such sponsorship is still worth it as kids and parents return to the seemingly less health-hazardous restaurants, ignoring the PR-friendly 'healthy' choices (I did hear a myth that the dressing in McDonald's salads contains more fat than a burger) and having the usual burger, chips and sugar-packed drink. The danger, of course, is that companies such as McDonalds are now being let through the school gates, where they can target all children, interested in sports and exercise or not. 1 - 0 to fast food.

It is too early to tell if legislation has been effective, and it will surely be affected by the resourcefulness and determination of fast food chains to find routes around. The other half of the coin is the need for innovative alternatives.

Education and transparency can help people make choices: healthy foods may not have the single identity, PR machinery and ad budgets to compete, but the product is decidedly better. Lecturing and awareness drives are only part of the battle, and an ugly method at that. Although healthy food may not be as instantly appealing as fast food, the longer life span and healthier body and mind, and what you can do with those things, is decidedly so. Change4Life is trying to sell these longer term benefits, fighting obesity and chronic illnesses on several fronts. They have a difficult task ahead. I'm sold, anyway, and made my way to the running shop and bought these - so is Change 4 Life or McDonald's responsible for that one?

The Big Red Book

2008-12-30T16:19:00.001Z

Whilst working in Portugal the other week, our team was presented with what is possibly the most broadly used service refinement tool I've ever come across.

The complaints book is required in all Portuguese businesses which deal directly with the public, from banks to cafes, shops to train stations. It is required by the Portuguese government, who also stipulate that all complaints are replied to within 5-8 days and that completed books be returned to the relevant government department. Suddenly I could see it everywhere; at cash desks, in shop windows and information points.

I am yet to understand further the provider's inevitable loopholes, the government's powers to remedy bad practice and the complainant's experience and ideally, results. However, given that the UK service sector contributes more to the its GDP (73%) than most countries, that we don't have an independent or state run system like this is lamentable. 'Watchdog', a 30-minute BBC TV show which publicises poor practice and campaigns for resolution just doesn't cut it.

Benefits of a unified, independent body to oversee complaints and responses are obvious, although the methods are complex; they maintain a baseline of performance and should ideally accompany the power to fine or shut down repeat offenders. Services that don't deliver are essentially cons. The baseline could work to guarantee a minimum standard of service, as the kitemark is the official UK mark for safety in products.

A rhetorical poster: Performance on the provider's quantitative terms

Standing in London Bridge Rail Station on my way home from portugal, I don't know where to begin. I look around for a generic complaints form. Nothing. This highlights two key cultural problems.

The first problem is the domain of the service provider. Some forward-thinking organisations use complaints forms (often spun as 'your suggestions') as the opportunity to gain free customer feedback, troubleshooting and the figures to justify an improvement. These organisations are less likely to have regular entries to a red book. Many others put up barriers to discourage complaints, skew figures and in some cases, ignore them. A favourite example is retailers Next, who dealt with a 3 month backlog of complaints swiftly and efficiently by deleting all complaints on the computer system (source: a fantastic article by Anna Tims).

The second problem is ours, the customer. A look at the surreal and shocking behaviour of organisations in Timms' article linked above will show how easy it is for customers to be worn down, to see complaining as futile and to not bother. Indeed, it's not beyond reason to suggest that some of the larger, sector dominating organisations prefer to silently encourage this culture. If we were to introduce such a system, have we become too cynical to embrace it?

Designing Public Services Together

2008-12-15T22:44:00.006Z

Engine have produced a great video around their project with Kent County Council explaining the establishment of SILK (Social Innovation Lab Kent) - a partnership between Engine and KCC to provide service design knowledge, tools and expertise for all areas of the council. It shows Engine in the studio demonstrating some of the processes and ways of working deployed through the project. On my day out of the studio too!

The video was also posted on the Local Government Channel. Let's hope we can widen the great work we do in the public sector by getting the attention of some new councils and government bodies...

The project was also nominated for the London Design Museum's Design of the Year! Though sadly, as with the excellent service design projects that were up for nomination last year (including Velibre, the fantastic pay-as-you-go urban cycling scheme), there isn't a suitable category for service design, which is inter-disciplinary by its nature, and we have consequently been entered under 'Communications'.

This all comes at a very important time for service design in the public sector. The growing awareness of the power of user-centred design in improving and developing new services, coupled with the sad reality that as the recession deepens, more and more people will rely on some aspects of the services their councils and the state provide, mean that innovation is fundamental to meeting the demand and the challenges faced.

Recently, the Design Council launched a new capaign; Public Services By Design, underlining the huge task and huge opportunity before us. The linked article covers a great deal of the issues - personalisation of services, inclusive design processes, and in particular the the call for action below stands out:

"We need to be conscious that today’s problems are just not going to be addressed by yesterday’s ideas and yesterday’s solutions...we need a whole new approach to policy over the 10 years.”

By a 'new approach to policy', I hope that the intention is to develop a culture of innovation, amongst other things such as sharing best practice. Service design's real power is not it's ability to pull from all disciplines of design to create the more tangible elements of a service, but the ability to transform an organisation from the inside out. In order to develop successful, relevant, sustainable services, it's vital to instill a culture of innovation and encourage the open-ness and willingness to change and test new ideas so that a service is never a finished product, but an evolving, constantly refined solution.

use-value vs exchange-value in public spaces

2008-11-26T22:32:00.011Z

Over the past two years that Engine has been located just by Tower Bridge, we've enjoyed the small park outside the Mayor's building, which has a great riverfront view of Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. It's a perfect place to have lunch in the summer and a pleasant walk to and from the studio.

Being designers, we're always analytical about what could be improved (i.e. whingeing)- from the strip lighting that is exactly at eye level so that you can't see into the park in the evening because of the glare, to the increasing yuppification and commercialisation of the site with tourist-priced cafes.

In particular, it seems the architects have had a dramatic lack of vision when it comes to sustainability - from the slate paving which requires the employment of two people and bristle-cleaning machines to be run across it every day to clean out the lichens which would make the surface slippery, to the fact that the mayor's building needs a bespoke crane (with its own housing) to clean it's uniquely awkward windows.

so many ruined photos...

However, a much more disconcerting and entirely avoidable trend of selling the park as advertising space has been on the rise recently. We've seen cars emerging from synthetic meteorite craters complete with lighting rigs and auditoriums, guest only Budweiser 100m races, sculptures such as a giant swimmer gliding through the ground as if it were water, and the space was enjoyably overrun by multicoloured Sony bunnies.

Perhaps it's the council trying to milk the space's prime location for some cash as we enter a recession, but the moments when the line is overstepped are sometimes painfully obvious. I doubt that any of the architectural renders, with semi-transparent families playing and relaxing in the park featured mega-scale PR stunts or the space completely fenced off.

The closing off of the park is a textbook example of how getting the use-value, exchange-value balance wrong can have keenly felt effects for all users.

The space generates money which goes back into the government pot, which is a good thing. A constantly changing space can be entertaining. But this is a publicly-funded park, fulfilling a need for relaxing breathing space in the city and something which no doubt secured the planning permission to counterbalance the massive financial buildings built around it at the same time. The public aren't consulted on these changes, probably due to the sheer number and ephemerality of them.

Poor, poor nature.

The sponsorship of the space is its effective temporary privatisation, meaning that the public lose the benefits, and sometimes, entry to the park altogether. This is most acutely felt by those who live or work locally, and generates bad feeling towards the council, and particularly towards the sheepish-looking Mayor's building directly overlooking the park. In fact, the park is owned by the Potter's Field Management Trust , with a mix of public and private sector directors. It's mission statement to maintain the park in the interests of public welfare, with specific mentions of appropriateness of events may have been subject to some bending because of this mix of interests on its board.

Looking at the recent backlash to a saturation of billboards and advertisements in Sao Paulo, how do we gage the revenue generated against less tangible factors, such as the experiences and annoyance of the public, the loss of trust towards the authorities and the perception of the thousands of tourists who pass the site everyday to see we're selling out (and in the case of the giant New Zealand rugby ball, obscuring) our landmarks?

Engine at NHS / NESTA Innovation Live!

2008-11-20T20:42:00.011Z

Engine, Live|Work and ThinkPublic set up

Last week Engine took part at Innovation Live!, a collaboration between NESTA and the NHS, which focused on how to develop a culture of innovation within all areas of healthcare.

It was an opportunity for NHS management to exchange best practice between themselves and health related charities, but also to meet creative organisations , invited by NESTA, who could hopefully shed some light on how to innovate within the health industry.

The NHS is a fantastic institution in concept, but the reality falls woefully short of the potential and performance possible.

Gill Hicks delivered an uplifting speech on her experience of the NHS after she was critically injured in the June 7th Tube bombings. Her story of how she was supported in learning to walk again, and to gain the courage and confidence to keep going was very inspiring but touched a raw nerve in the room, which was the subject of the conference.

Many examples she gave of the things that best helped her recover both mentally and physically were moments where staff went not just above and beyond to help Gill's recovery, but they went against protocol and even directly broke the rules to help.

The image I had of the NHS as a bureaucratic monster, reinforced by stories I had heard from people who worked within it, and fuelled by the British media, seemed disappointingly accurate. The NHS is falling behind as the health issues and challenges change towards longer term, chronic illnesses. The NHS is an organisation full of ideas and running on philanthropy, but held back by the archaic nature of the institution and crippling bureaucracy.

As a service designer, it seems almost too complex and enormous a problem to take in; where do you start in the fifth-largest organisation in the world, which belongs to the public sector and deals with the most critical moments and experiences of all our lives?

mmm...engaging biscuits.

Since a brief experience with RED's Activmobs service and preliminary roll-out which stalled soon after I've been aching to get stuck in. I don't need to blow the user-centred innovation trumpet again on this blog, but if you want to find out more, England's Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Liam Donaldson explains why he believes the NHS could learn some lessons in customer care here.

Democracy 2.0

2008-10-29T21:26:00.003Z

mysociety created fixmystreet, a link between people and their councils which did actually fix my street (well, Deptford High Street which was a near impasse on my morning bike ride to work), and also theyworkforyou , which is a channel for the public to identify and contact their MPs and officials. And their code is open source. Nice chaps.

They’ve made dozens of simple tools in collaboration with councils and charities that work primarily through their transparency – they could publish which MPs reply to or ignore emails, who are the best and worst performing councils from the public’s perspective, which forces councils to act from a user-centred perspective.

With people taking such direct action to change their local environment, is this eroding democratic processes or empowering members of the public to overcome the UK's world-renowned bureaucracy? Is it right that the active minority should be the ones to shape their streets, parks and local amenities?

I believe that these tools are not undermining or bypassing democracy, but making the interface between politics and the public more dynamic and personal.

Electing a government and MP is a small part of a citizen's potential. Culturally, we are focused on the few big, general decisions and how they will affect everyone and not the small, myriad personal ones. A top-down operation can lack understanding of it's end users' needs - our everyday experiences can be much better affected with a ground-up approach. The majority of eligible people in the UK vote, but many people never contact their councils to say a streetlight's broken or to inquire what happened to the plans to clean up our local park or even to propose improvements.

Cultural issues aside, one thing keeping us from contacting our councils was the feeling of the hopelessness of bureaucracy. Now that the barriers are being removed to allow for a more fluid, user-friendly and frequent dialogue, we shall see with time whether the majority becomes more active, and how governments can utilise this vital feedback to inform more responsive, robust and relevant policies.

Future Flight at the Science Museum

2008-10-12T22:13:00.009+01:00

This week I participated in a talk at the Science Museum entitled 'Future Flight'. Held at the Dana Centre, with three other speakers who were engineering luminaries from Manchester Met, Cambridge and Bauhaus Luftfahrt.

My talk covered the evolution of the design of airports and aeroplanes from a product-based and engineering-driven model, to an experience and service-based and user-driven model.

It described how with most airlines using similar technology (planes), the thing that differentiates them is the services they offer. This was then followed by a description of the complexities of designing experiences, particularly for such massive spaces such as airports and airplanes, which is seen when you take the needs, desires, abilities and mindsets of all the different passengers that will use them at the same time.

The brief introduction to the subject was rounded up with some details of the different methodologies that could be employed to research, inform and design such complex experiences such as working from the bottom up rather than the top down, placing the user at the heart of the design process.

Emotional journey mapping and the principles of co-designing with end users were used as examples of such methodologies, with quick case studies such as Engine's Connections Experience or T5 info zone included to illustrate.

The presentation stuck out from the other three who gave interesting insights into the future of aerodynamics, sustainability issues and how technology is falling behind in comparison to user demand and sheer numbers of people in the air and the environmental effects as a result. However, the marathon one-hour per speaker q & a session that followed was reassuringly passionate, as everyone there has had some good, bad, weird and wonderful experiences of flying, and it is precisely those human experiences that I am interested in.

London Design Festival 24 Hour Challenge

2008-09-23T20:15:00.013+01:00

This weekend I took part in the London Design Festival's Goldsmiths-spawned 24 hour Design Challenge, based in Deptford on the site of a new development beside the high street. Teams were originally allocated by discipline, but the thirty or so designers organically re-shuffled as new projects emerged. Interdisciplinarianism, eh?

It was an experiment to see what such an intensive experience could produce, with the aim of the exhibition being to showcase the pieces that emerge from it and also the process of designing itself. The site was open to visitors throughout, but a low level of awareness with the non-design industry public outside caused a number of us to seek out ways in which we could engage with the local community.

We were keen to avoid a behind-the-scenes 'designers doing some wacky shit then having an exclusive party that is an essentially intimidating environment for locals' and leaving having kept the neighbours up and a mess behind.

Our first task was to use £10 in the local (excellent, amazing and project-saving on several occasions) flea market to bring back objects that interested us and then create devices that helped tell their story. Ours was a beautiful, hand-written title deed to a field in Kent form 1853. Over a couple of thousand words were used to explicitly explain the extent of the estate, without any diagrams, maps, co-ordinates or tables of measurements. It was almost indecipherable.

We did however try to re-interpret it and visualise it in our own ways, which led us to our first design - a table which people from the local community and visitors to the exhibition could use to map the are in their own way. The docking station consisted of a compass made from a clock with the minute hand saying 'north'. This constantly changing north would give us a random sample and spread of the area, with participants heading in 100m (as they estimated) before recording what they could see, who they have spoken to there or are with, what they think of that place, what colours, textures they could see. These 'x' shaped pieces of paper would then be collated, computed and exhibited as a very human, abstract map of the area.

This initial design was a step in the right direction, but our group (installation) merged with product to see how we could develop something that asked less of the participants and offered more interaction and reward. What we came up with was two projects commencing around 10pm - 'Polenta Politics' - a sophisticated voting system involving a catapult, some issues on a board and some messy painted polenta balls and 'Deptford Cares' - some items made to help the community care for its public spaces and express what they like and dislike about them.

At the heart of these projects was the potential for a much larger project, should we choose to undertake it - how to engage a local community to communicate its feelings about where they live in innovative new ways and to provide the tools to co-design, improve and sustain public spaces. Hmmm.

Target practice gathers an audience in the wee hours...

the future of design education...

2008-09-12T19:59:00.002+01:00

Computer Arts magazine invited me to a 'round table to discuss the future of UK design education', which can be found published in this month's edition. It drew an interesting and prominent crowd who were passionate about the state of education in the UK and offered some great insights into their experiences of design students, internships and also some shared their knowledge of being tutors at various universities.

The debate was interesting, but was not the heavier discussion into the future of design education I had expected, and the resultant article was so truncated, misquoted and condensed so as to offer little in the way of advice for the industry. It did however reveal some valuable lessons and things to bear in mind for students and recent graduates trying to establish their work, skills and thinking in the design industry.

Elspeth Belden wrote a similar article for Neoco, the studio she works at, commenting on the mis-quoting and even derogatory way she was represented. Myself, I just thought I was made to sound like a bit of a prat trying to sell out the UK's world-leading creative educational system to corporations. Eesh.

process not product!

2008-09-05T19:36:00.002+01:00

This is a long term gripe of mine, finally given some air at a new project space in collaboration with Jo Harrington, Silke Eiselt and Roma Levin - we're designing a design manifeso to provoke future major design festivals. see ld-if.org for more...
Design is a process not a product. It unnerves me to see the Heat magazine style hype of the modern superstar designer. Not that I'm jealous. Or snobbish for that matter. I feel like the commercialisation of design and the mystification of the designer into a unfathomable abstract genius who performs such magic to be entirely detremental to what design and designers are capable of. It alienates it from people (all people) who have so much insight to offer about how their world can be improved. Frankly it fuels my fire.

A designer said; "It may be the designer's duty to suppress any desire for self-expression" and so I ask you; is it the duty of a designer to be a conduit for people's needs and to take responsibility to ensure you are not corrupted into compromising people's needs into desires imposed and persuaded to by your ego or other, larger influences?

banksy's forum

2008-08-29T19:31:00.002+01:00

Beneath the newly vacated Eurostar Terminal at Waterloo Station, a huge creative space has been made of a tunnel handed over by the owners, who invited Banksy to create an installation. He responded by inviting a small army of graffiti artists to take part.

From Stencilling to freehand to tagging to just making your mark, every surface is covered with messages. Within this seeming chaos there are mutual respect for fellow artists, unspoken etiquettes and expectations, or rather limitations on content.

There are common themes such as corporations, the war on terror, and particularly the spectacle of power mediated through consumerism, tv, cctv and visible authorities such as the police. The space has a haunting feeling of presences and activity that was evidently once there. This keeps the dialogue live and sustains it both by perpetually encouraging participation and, ironically for this subbversive context, enforces the rules. Indeed banksy is seen as the head of this community, and without directly defacing his defacements, others question, comment on, praise and criticize his work and ethics.

What banksy has created is a community with ideas sharing, communication, rules and most importantly, the sustaining and keeping alive of this society by constantly creating new stuff.

British Gas goes Sicilian

2008-08-08T15:04:00.000+01:00

This arrived through my letterbox today, though it may as well have arrived through my window tied to a brick.

Not content with staggering price rises and outrageous profits for its shareholders, it seems British Gas has diversified into running a protection racket. The delivery of the proposition is an insult to even the most ethically-loose advertising designer.

Whilst tugging at the heart strings with its use of stories of families being saved in a hand-made cut-and-paste genuine newspaper article aesthetic which is as semantically subtle as a sledgehammer in the face, it warns us that the solution to this invisible, un-smellable, un-tasteable killer is forking out for 'Homecare(TM) 100 for just £15 a month' which is just a subscription to boiler maintenance.

It finishes with 'Don't wait, sign up today and ensure you are protected.' In context it psychologically translates as 'your family might die in a nasty accident tonight. Give us money and we'll make sure that doesn't happen.'

Rather than pay them da money, I'd plump for a carbon monoxide detector for about £3 a year and check it.

value the intangible

2008-07-22T19:43:00.001+01:00

I wrote this on my holiday in Morocco (so long away now), and it also features on Engine's website.

There's a large open space in the centre of Marrakesh. There are no buildings or beautiful architecture, no fountains, no wildlife or breathtaking scenery. Without people, the Djemaa el-Fna is just an empty, dusty city square. Recently this space was declared a World Heritage Site.

During the day, entertainers, storytellers, dancers, musicians and artists arrive and set up their pitches as far as the eye can see, as audiences begin to gather round. Every evening, temporary structures are erected and suddenly a vast open air kitchen and restaurant is in place, at least for the next few hours.

Unesco described it as a 'masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity'.

It is usually not the physical, tangible elements of a service that are responsible for generating the bulk of an experience. Buildings, interior spaces, products and uniforms are props for people - the users and providers - to interact with and within. However, these elements are all often in place before roles and responsibilities of people are defined, staff are consulted, re-trained or even hired.

People can make an experience in any context, and completely transform it. Communities of residents can make a vast difference to quality of life in an area. Flash mobs go head-to-head with the dialogue of physical spaces, often subverting it using surrealism.

Understanding and investing in people can create a world-class service even without a venue (mobile phones, Facebook). The key to producing effective services is co-creation: the immersion of all kinds of users through the design process. Beyond consultation, co-creation seeks to design with users to develop ideas and prototypes for testing and roleplay on the journey to delivering a service.

It's an interesting exercise to imagine a service as the Djemaa el-Fna, stripping away everything apart from the people and what roles, prompts and relationships they have with users and to ask yourself whether you are making the most of the power of people.

service vigilante

2008-07-11T19:57:00.001+01:00

I recently found myself stuck on an overground train to central London (for those of you who live in London I realise that this is not a unique experience, but bear with me).

The train had been stationary for a while and was overcrowded, and the automated message repeating an apology every few minutes was only adding to the annoyance of the passengers.

After a while the driver interrupted:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your driver speaking. I'm very sorry for the delay to your journey this morning. Rather than make you listen to another recorded message, I should tell you the real reason why we're stopped. There's a signalling problem further up the line at Canon Street, and because this is the busiest time of the day, there's a backlog, but as soon as I find anything else out I'll let you know but we should be moving in the next 5 minutes.

"Again, my apologies - I know it's monday morning and I know you'd all prefer not to start your week this way, but we're doing everything we can if you will bear with me."

By taking the initiative he eased people's concerns and created empathy by explaining a wider systemic problem whilst identifying himself as a human, empathic part of the service. He even relieved the tension later by joking with passengers.

In this situation, which is not uncommon, this member of front line staff appeared to understand how his customers felt far better than the company, and was ideally positioned to deliver a solution. He knew that it's frustrating to not know what's going on and that the company's provision to limit the damage to the experience in this situation was inadequate and impersonal.

So often the ease of working from the top-down means that organisations deprive themselves of true insights into their user's experiences and the invaluable day-to-day qualitative observations of their staff.

Co-creation harnesses the power of these front-line insights and experiences, and designs with users and people throughout an organisation to develop solutions that are effective, desirable and sustainable. It may even help get trains running on time in London...

steveleedesign

Designing Services in a Changing NHS

An Opportunity for Preventative Healthcare

1. Liberating the NHS

2. Removing barriers to innovation and improvement

3. Taking a longer view for a healthier population

4. Fewer patients, but little patience for the long view

5. Shifting from Secondary, to Primary, to Community, to Preventative

6. People at the Heart of Services

Source: Design in Practice, Lancaster university

Conclusion: A Call to Service Design

Service Design vs. Bureaucracy: How Human is Your Business?

Customer and Organisational Needs

De-Humanised Services and Market Stalinism

Re-Humanising Services

1. See the design process as an end in itself:Lewisham Housing Options

3. Refrain from imposing common sense guidelines:Just A Routine Operation

Conclusion

References

Designing the Future of Knowledge Transfer

Summary

Problem

Solution

Impact

How Social Media Has Made Brands Transparent

Service Design Drinks London - 28th May 2010

Beyond Petroleum...No, really we are...

Using Film To Create Change In The Public Sector

Share to Grow

Digital futures for health

Zen and the art of urban cycle service design

Department of Health Expo at Excel Centre, London

Design Report from Canada

A Bigger Picture

tasks, teams, transparency, mapping, micro-metrics and motivation (TM x3)

Ethnography 101

Criminal Designerminds

Just Coping

McMixed Messages: The Breakfast of Champions?

The Big Red Book

Designing Public Services Together

use-value vs exchange-value in public spaces

Engine at NHS / NESTA Innovation Live!

Democracy 2.0

Future Flight at the Science Museum

London Design Festival 24 Hour Challenge

the future of design education...

process not product!

banksy's forum

British Gas goes Sicilian

value the intangible

service vigilante

1. See the design process as an end in itself:
Lewisham Housing Options

3. Refrain from imposing common sense guidelines:
Just A Routine Operation