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?

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

For the past 10 years I have been working  in different social design projects: developing craft production in Lapland, Namibia, Caucasus area with EU and World Bank funding. Lately I have been working to innovate service based products related to tourism industry linking tourism with the creative industries.

My research work took a new direction when I started to work in autumn 2007 in a new research project called “Experiencing Wellbeing – New Service Platforms and Mobile User Interfaces for Leisure” funded by Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. During this project  I have been focusing my research on developing service design methods to be applied  with technology-based and service businesses. This research project has been extremely interesting, allowing me to  go deeper in the world of service design and opening up soon new possibilities for research as the project progresses.

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

I think that the most interesting aspect of Service Design is its user orientation and the possibility to innovate both through the development of new kind of service products and service models; exploring for example how services can be co-produced within the user community. As a researcher and as a designer, I’m enjoying the possibility to develop and reflect on new methods to work with users and to visualize and reflect on the design process itself. This user orientation is a key ingredient for Service Design to deal with relevant contemporary social issues.

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

I’m currently working in a two year research project called “Experiencing Wellbeing – New Service Platforms and Mobile User Interfaces for Leisure”. The aim of the project is to develop service design methods to generate new solutions to enhance wellbeing, developing product applications with companies such as Hudle Oyj, Nokia Oyj, Kunnonpaikka and Kuopio Tourism, and developing Service Design capabilities for the Region. We have developed four product applications and tested prototypes of the services. You can learn more about these cases reading the publication: Designing Services with Innovative Methods. The business cases outcome are still confidential but we have developed new tools and knowledge that revealed to be critical for our Region and SMEs. Our next task is to produce a working book on Service Design in Finnish language to be used by SMEs and public instititions.

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

I’m working on a research proposal on service design to generate new models for Public Services in our Region. In this research area I would like to co-operate with organizations and researchers that have been already involved in these kind of projects. My main interest is on how to develop new ways to produce services that can benefit the society while enhancing personal wellbeing. For this reason I am interested to connect Service Design with the existing area of Social Design.

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Your suggestions for the blog:

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

I would like invite  Aare van Oosterom from Designthinkers. I think it’s good to include doers from the field to the academic discussions.

I recommend also to link with REDJOTTER

What is the question do you have about Service Design?

My concern is that we recognize our common roots in Design Research and have enough space for free thinking instead of relying on very specific definitions. How do we manage to maintain this openness?