A culture of service innovation

Service Design Advisor, Design Wales, UK

1. In your view, how is your research/work related to Service Design?

I’m the programme lead for an initiative by Design Wales called The Service Design Programme. Through the programme we work with manufacturing companies of all sizes from across Wales to support the use of service design as a tool to achieve innovation, growth and development.
Service design is a new discipline and has successfully established itself in organisations and industries where service innovation is prevalent; such as transportation, public services and hospitality. However, within more product focused sectors such as manufacturing, innovation is predominantly viewed as new product or material development, a trend that is even stronger within SME’s.
The Service Design Programme is working to change this situation and has been funded by The Welsh Government to work with manufacturers across Wales to establish a culture of service innovation. Design brings an established set of tools, methods and approaches that can be used to help companies shift their thinking from products to services and provide a clear path to service innovation.
Prior to establishing The Service Design Programme I worked at the service design agency thinkpublic in London as head of design. During my time at thinkpublic I led projects on service design and innovation for organisations such as the NHS, NESTA and the QCDA.

Check out www.testyourservice.co.uk for more information about the programme

2. In your view, what is the most/less interesting aspect of Service Design?

I’m interested in service design because it brings creativity and business strategy together in new ways, moving design from production or marketing areas of a business and into the boardroom.
For me, the exciting bit about service design is the new stuff. The thing that makes service design unique is that it’s all about the future state and designing new offers that customers or users will buy into. Service design has been happening for years, but only recently has it become established within the design community. This surge in client interest within design agencies has occurred because the designer brings creativity, new ideas and an established and engaging process that ultimately results in better outcomes for the client.
In my view, service designers get too caught up establishing processes and methods of working, losing focus on the end goal and the design outcome. That’s why we started designing in the first place isn’t it? To create new and exciting things that are better than what exists already?

3. Can you tell us about a Service Design research project(s) you did or read about?

I’m currently using The Service Design Programme to research the return on investment (ROI) for businesses in service design. By using a robust evaluation process with companies new to service design we have been able to demonstrate the impact of ‘service thinking’, one company where this has been particularly evidentl is Aggrelek.

Aggrelek are an SME manufacturer based in Swansea, who after completing a collaborative service design project with Design Wales can identify some simple but powerful statistics. For example, after investing £50,000 in a new offer for customers, the company saw sales of £500,000 from the service within six months. The aim is to use this evaluation process with all companies engaged in The Service Design Programme to generate an evidence base for design-led service innovation.

My colleagues Anna Whicher and Gavin Cawood have also co-ordinated large amounts of research into service design at a European Policy level through the SEE project. There is an extensive archive of bulletins, case studies and reports available through: www.seeproject.org

4. Are there area(s) that you would like to do or see research on?

The obvious answer here is return on investment (ROI); all design disciplines suffer from the inability to nail returns directly onto the investment in design. This has to change and if marketing and sales can do this why can’t design?
If you’re the director of an SME and you want to grow your business, how do you spend your money? You could spend it on a lean expert who can cut out waste within your production process, resulting in measurable cost savings. Perhaps you could spend your budget building a better sales team, resulting in increased sale? Or you could spend it with a service designer creating new customer experiences?
I believe that design offers the best solution and a well presented case study and persuasive presenter may be able to convince the company director too, but form their point of view it’s still a gamble and that’s all down to a lack of solid research into ROI.
It’s a tough sell when pitched like this but the message is clear, if I invest in service design what is my return on investment?

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Your suggestions for the blog:

Who would you like to invite in this conversation about Service Design Research?

John Sneddon (Systems Thinking)
He comes from the world of lean but his arguments and thinking is all about good service design. John established the concept of systems thinking and has written a large amount of material on this. He is also quite a character and a great speaker.
www.systemsthinking.co.uk

What is the question do you have about Service Design?
“What happens when everyone stops thinking service design is new?”

Keywords: service innovation, servitisation