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

I studied product design for four years at the Glasgow School of Art, the course had a strong emphasis on designing experiences for people and a focus on sociologically understanding people. Most of my work produced a service outcome, my route to this result involved using participatory tools and techniques affiliated with the service design process and working closely with a range of users. I am currently studying a Masters in Design Innovation, working for the public sector organisation, Skills Development Scotland. I’m exploring how the skills/process/tools and most importantly the mindset of a (service) designer can be put into the hands of frontline staff to see and think differently. I’m pushing for much more user focused service delivery within the public sector and a power shift to the bottom of the pyramid. For me, service design naturally lends itself to this idea due to its participatory nature and user driven approach as a catalyst for more co-produced services.

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

The most interesting and rewarding part of service design is watching non-designers become part of the process. I’m conscious when holding a co-design event that participants can walk away with a new skill, or perhaps even a slightly different way of thinking and transfer it into their own lives. It is interesting when people recognise the value in visually communicating information, or changing their opinion from designers as ‘felt tip fairies’ to ‘this lego really helped me to communicate and spot opportunities to make this system better, I’d never thought or had the opportunity to look at it this way before’. The least interesting aspect is the constant talk and buzz word nature around service design. I think as an industry we need to be aware of what each of us are doing and really help to push a clear understanding of what service design is. I fear the practice could be tokenised and simplified. The most important thing we can be doing is open up our case studies in a transparent fashion, showing what worked, and what didn’t. This doesn’t happen often enough.

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

I am the founding director of a company called Mypolice which won Scotland’s first Social Innovation Camp. The development for this idea has been a reversal of the way I would normally conduct a typical service design (research) project. I saw several opportunities in the use of web2.0 tools to collaboratively build a better police service between service provider, relevant stakeholders and the public by creating an online platform. Winning SI Camp gave me the opportunity to take it forward. What the idea wasn’t at this stage was fully developed or based on concrete research. What it needed was an intense period of research. I built relationships with police by shadowing them at work, immersing myself in their culture, mapping out the police landscape and the relationships they have with other organisations. I built personas based on user interviews and experience prototyping the site in different locations, building a bank of stories which would inform me how the site could potentially be used. The most interesting part of this period was ‘customer journey mapping’ victims of crime experiences and system mapping large organisations to discover where public/police interaction points were to spot opportunities for where Mypolice would work well. (more at http://mypolice.org)

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

MyPolice lives underneath Snook. Myself and Lauren Currie set up Snook (http://wearesnook.com). We both see a need for service design to be developed and incorporate a more transformative and social agenda to start challenging the way the country is run, the services we use are developed and how our skills as service designers are valuable within the public sector. For this to happen there needs to be more research into how we are educating young designers and new teaching models developed so they are prepared for new environments. Places are often entrenched in old systems and governance, so designers must ethically understand the implications of their work. I’d like to see more coproduction work by designers and this communicated through education. I think service designers are fantastic facilitators of a creative and collaborative process and should really be pushing for sustainable service outcomes, where working with users isn’t just a codesign workshop to create new ideas, but is about building networks within communities, passing over new skills and creating lasting initiatives that can be maintained by communities or organisations. I’d like to see how service design will become more transformative and how this movement might evolve.

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Your suggestions for the blog:

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

If you haven’t already asked, I’ve always appreciated Nick Marsh’s (ex Engine and writer of choosenick.com) thoughts on service design and his thinking about the public sector and the bigger picture.

What is the question do you have about Service Design?

My question is should we be defining service design so that it is easily communicated and understood to prospective clients and members of the public? Or by defining it, are we cutting its potential short? Is the potential of service design to become something new, like transformation design and has service design really been mostly about the participatory method and approach that has made it so appealing to designers and both private and public sectors in the UK?