Share to Grow

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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?

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?