Service Experience Conference 2017 Closing Keynote
I had the pleasure of giving the closing keynote at the Adaptive Path Service Experience Conference 2017. There was a fantastic line-up of speakers and now all …
50 Posts
Service design
Service Design Now in Korean
Our book on service design was recently translated into Korean by Dr. Grace Bae from CMU HCII and Dr. Younkyung Lim from KAIST Design, Korea. It’s great …
The Service Design Show
I had the pleasure of chatting with 31Volts’ Marc Fonteijn on the Service Design Show the other day. We talked about the possible boundaries of service …
Services need to manage reverse ID better
Having finally relocated to a permanent address in Sydney and re-docking with government and utilities, I’ve been experiencing the whole gamut of customer …
You drive me crazy — considering the brand and human experiences of autonomous cars
Photo: Steve Jurvetson When Google’s self-driving Lexus cut off Delphi Automotive’s self-driving Audi, forcing it to take “appropriate …
Switching hemispheres
I have some big news to announce. After six years teaching and researching service design at the Hochschule Luzern I will be leaving my post there at the end of …
Getting from here to there – from hunch to research direction to design concept
The most common issue my students face is project paralysis in the face of infinite possibilities and the synthesis of a mass of research material. Services are …
UXpod podcast interview
Gerry Gaffney interviewed me about service design and UX for the UXpod podcast a few weeks ago and it’s now online. You can play it on the UXpod website …
Service design combined with smart resource usage
My older brother Matt works as Lead Researcher, The Circular Economy at British Telecommunications (yes, he is older than me, although I get the bald head and …
Capital One's acquisition of Adaptive Path shouldn't be news
Last week’s announcement by Adaptive Path that they have been acquired by Capital One sent, if not shockwaves, certainly large ripples through the tech …
Customer service experienced in bits
Dr Drang tells two stories of failed customer service. The first one involves him trying to assist his mother getting to the gate at the airport. I use flying a …
Service Design in Japanese
I’m happy to announce that our book, Service Design: from insight to implementation has just been translated and published in Japanese by Maruzen …
Chris Risdon on Orchestrating Touchpoints
Whilst I’m at it, here’s a great talk by Chris Risdon from the same conference talking about orchestrating touchpoints. His anecdote at the …
Smart companies trust people
I just backed David Hieatt’s upcoming book, Do Purpose on the crowd-funded publishing site, Unbound. David is a smart guy and a kind of serial …
Mentalism for service delivery?
I hope I have left enough time between the broadcast of Series 3 of Sherlock, but just in case you are waiting to binge view, the following contains mild …
Services that fix services and the inverse experience umbrella
I often use air travel as the archetypal example of a multi-channel service that unfolds over time. Modern air travel consists of lots of minor annoyances that …
Lamy's attention to detail in customer service
Several years ago my wife bought me a Lamy 2000 fountain pen as a birthday present. It is a design classic created by Gerd Alfred Müller, released in 1966. If …
Journeys
Journeys is a useful collection of customer/user journey maps on Pinterest from Jamie Thomson. (Via Simon Clatworthy).
Service Design Workshop at Webdagene, Oslo
If you’re involved in Web work and UX and interested in Service Design, live|work’s Lavrans Løvlie and I will be running a workshop on service …
Touchpoint Observatory: ICE restaurant car
Breakfast on the German ICE train While there are a few things not to like about German trains - officious staff, annoyingly slow ticket machines - it’s …
Design Research: What Is It and Why Do It?
Design Research: What Is It and Why Do It? is a good piece from Panthea Lee arguing the case for design research in the public and international development …
Touchpoint Observatory: Badly Hand-Drawn Signs = Ruined Branding
You have spent thousands on your corporate branding, you keep a tight reign over the usage of your logo, you ship out expensively produced marketing materials …
Touchpoint Observatory: Service Sold in a Box
When companies struggle to get their heads around service, they often end up marketing services as if they were products. The above image is for television …
Touchpoint Observatory: UK Lift Engineer Bodge Job
This lovely piece of work is in a multistory car park in Ipswich in the UK. There are two lifts next to each other and something must have broken or been …
Touchpoint Observatory: SIM Card Vending Machine
In Germany, mobile phone contracts are 24 months by default, not just for an iPhone. Additionally, there is a culture here whereby contracts are automatically …
Touchpoint Observatory: Velobox
My home town of Offenburg has a whole load of Veloboxes at the station (at both entrances on both sides of the tracks). On one side they even have a Velobox and …
Derek & Clive's Labels sketch
Derek & Clive’s Labels sketch is Peter Cook and Dudley Moore tackling service design in a discussion about the use of labels. (Note:This is very much …
Touchpoint Observatory: Send your post from the restaurant
This restaurant in Freiburg, Germany, called Omas Küche (Grandma’s Kitchen) was super family-friendly, but what caught my eye was the first page of the …
Touchpoint Observatory: Armed Ticket Collectors
These people - five in total - were ticket inspectors on an early afternoon bus in Luzern, Switzerland, very much a tourist destination. So why are they dressed …
The Irony of Neuroscience & Behaviour Change
I have been enjoying the Brain Culture: Neuroscience & Society series via BBC Radio 4’s podcasts recently. In the series Matthew Taylor looks at how …
Pre-digital versus digital services
Seth Godin has written an interesting observation about a common experience of hospitals in a piece titled Pre-Digital: A brief visit to the emergency room last …
On Insurance Lying
(Photo: Steve Rhodes) I have a friend whose father used to be an insurance underwriter and he used to always complain about people lying about their insurance …
Nest – Why Product Designers Don't Design Products Anymore
By now most of you will have already seen the learning thermostat, Nest, designed by Tony Fadell, who led the team that created the first 18 generations of the …
Onlab's Animated Infographic for the Audi Urban Future Summit
onlab produced a lovely animation for the Audi Urban Future Summit at the Frankfurt international motor show. It’s often hard to get across abstract …
Talking Service Design at Parsons NYC
On my way back from the (very good) Interaction ‘11 conference in Boulder I’m stopping by in NYC and giving a talk on service design at …
Writing a new book on Service Design
I’m thrilled to be able to announce that myself and live|work’s Ben Reason and Lavrans Løvlie have signed with Rosenfeld Media to write our book on …
Come and Study in Luzern, Switzerland!
If you are interested in studying service design or product design, textiles or animage and living amongst some of the freshest air around, we’re …
Not More Products - Uncovering Local Networks
I spent a day last week with Lavrans and Ben from Live|Work putting our brains together for a project we hope will help spread lots of ideas about service …
Creative Waves - COTEN - Call for Participants
When it comes to thinking about higher education designers – or perhaps just design academics – seem to suddenly forget everything they know. We teach the value …
Dial4Light
There was an interesting report on 3Sat here in Germany the other day about street lighting. Many cities save on energy costs by cutting the amount of time …
PaperC - Replacing the Library Photocopier
A recently launched service in Germany called PaperC (Twitter: @Paper_c) looks like it might become a pretty handy resource for students and researchers. It is …
Is Design Research Useless for Innovation?
Don Norman has just posted a very provocative and thoughtful piece about the value of design research, or not. “I’ve come to a disconcerting …
Time-shifting payments with Sprize and Swiss Rail
Gap’s new pilot service, Sprize, deals with an age-old irritation. You buy something at full-price only to find it reduced in a sale a few days later. It …
Your Failure of Service Is Another's Opportunity
Some of you have no doubt read Dustin Curtis’s post about the incompetence of American Airlines & The Fate of Mr. X. American Airlines fired Mr. X for …
How much is good service worth? £25m for Amazon UK.
(Photo credit: xrrr on Flickr) Amazon’s entire offering really boils down to two things. The first is to facilitate a person in a warehouse somewhere …
Teaching Service Design at Lucerne School of Art and Design
Regular readers of Playpen may have notice things have been somewhat quiet around here recently. There are two reasons for this. One is that Twitter has made an …
Service Means Survival
(Photo credit: dos2kx) Lauren posted a linke to BusinessWeek’s report, When Service Means Survival. The basic thrust is that in a tight economic …
Interaction Design for Behavioural Change
Interaction design is all about changing people’s behaviour. Without the action > reaction part, there is no interaction. Whether you click one button …
PayPal, A Customer Service Nightmare
Companies like PayPal are basically all service and no product, so it makes sense that they should spend a lot of their time on it as do First Direct. Sadly, …
Purchasing Pleasure
I recently bought the very useful MarsEdit external blog editor from Red Sweater. I’d tried an earlier version and wasn’t so enamoured, but my …