fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Choose your own adventure — the web edition
By: Stephen Ratcliffe
Tags: User Experience, UX, Strategy, Service Design

If you were a child who learnt to read any time after 1975, then like me, you would have been unable to avoid the ‘Choose your own adventure’ book phenomenon.

Rather than following a linear progression from page 1 to page 342, these books would contain decision points where the choices made would jump the reader all over the book from page 5 to page 84 and then back to page 61.

Why did the story never end the way I wanted it to?

I remember that there were countless times when I wasn’t impressed with my ending in a story. I’d go backwards in the book and keep trying over and over making different decisions in pursuit of an altered outcome.

Despite my best efforts, all of these attempts seemed to inevitably lead me time and again to an unfortunate descent from the edge of a cliff or becoming a means of satisfying a vampire’s insatiable thirst. These books were somehow cleverly programmed so that regardless of the next steps I chose, I always ended up where the author wanted me to be.

Choose your own website adventure

Most websites have a small number of key user actions that they are aiming to achieve. These are usually customer calls-to-action, such as buying a product, subscribing to the newsletter or contacting the business with an enquiry. For all of the whiz-bangery and doo-gidgets on a website, all we really want is for the user to end up at that final pre-determined call to action step.

Visitors to your website typically do not want a prescription on how they should use and navigate your collection of pages. As website users we want to be given the freedom to make choices about which content we view on a website and the order in which we access it.

You are the author of this interactive story

People can be nudged into certain directions, and this is where we can learn from the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Just as the Choose Your Own Adventure stories used to always lead me to an ending resulting in a horrific death, your website can guide a user to complete your desired goals. Without forcing someone into a linear pathway, you can still strongly influence where they are heading through clever use of visual cues and persuasive content.

You could map out a Choose Your Own Adventure book using a flowchart, where the reader can branch out into many different story arcs that converge back into a few endings. Similarly, you can map out your website as a flowchart with your goals being the endings. You can then map out all the different ways someone can arrive at these endings. If you have some ‘story arcs’ that aren’t linked to an ending, you may have found some gaps in your website linkage.

Likewise, next time you’re visiting another website and find yourself signing up for a newsletter or even buying a fluffy phone case, think about the pages you turned to arrive at this ending and how you might be able to write a similar story for your website’s visitors.
Can Spaces Speak The Language Of Service Design?
By: Basoli Dhirai
Tags: Design Thinking, Customer Engagement, User Experience, Experience Design, Service Design

A holistic approach to planning a physical space

“Let’s add more tables’’, my client said to me. We were working on a hospitality project at that time.

Something was missing! The puzzle didn’t fit right. We were at max capacity as per the standards, and my client wouldn’t agree. He kept insisting that we fit in more tables. I would think to myself, how would the waiters cater to the tables with a cramped setting. Also, what about the customers? Would they like being overheard by the people sitting on the next table? Well, there goes the recurring clientele the restaurant would want!

The holistic approach of planning a physical space, in tandem with the service, considering both the business and the creative standpoint; was the missing piece.

The more I thought about adopting this process; I noticed a resemblance to a museum design project that I had worked on earlier. Creating an intricate and carefully crafted experience required the application of best of UX & Service Design practices.

That’s when I started questioning. Shouldn’t we think of the complete package, from development to maintenance and everything in between, to create a blockbuster customer experience?

Museum design process: Using the holistic approach for a spatial experience

If I have to put the process in a double diamond, this is how it would look.

Starting wide with research on and off-field we would dive into defining WHO would come to the museum, WHY would they visit and WHAT they would expect? On the business front, we would ensure that we filter all design choices through the intent and messaging of the project.

Threading the journey — How might we build an engaging experience with a recall value!

Building a narrative is defining the customer journey, their reactions to space, what emotions it would evoke in them!

Visitors in a museum do not buy a physical product, they absorb the experience of touring through the space in a couple of hours. Visitors not only come to see the exhibition but also to walk through galleries to reminisce later.

We would build on a story-line that would seamlessly connect the spaces, keeping the museum-goers engaged.

Ideation -

The next challenge would be to ideate keeping in mind how we could best convey the story to our audiences — the medium, the colours, the tone, the font size, and so on.

Following this, we would prototype and test.

Service Design x Spatial Experience

As consumers, we often come across moments where the space and the service tell two different stories.

Developing a layered perspective when diving into a segment; be it healthcare, transport, fitness, or banking, would allow us to bring distinct physical elements and digital interactions together to create meaningful experiences.

Working alongside various professionals — engineers, analysts, architects; service designers have the weapons necessary to tackle wicked problems of the future.
Say Its Name: White Supremacy
By: Chris Tsuyuki
Tags: Racism, Race, Design, Social Justice, Service Design

Racist = Bad/Not Racist = Good

One of the damaging ways in which our understanding of racism has evolved across generations is through the development and consumption of the “good/bad binary.” Like so many things that our thinking has evolved on, racism can be perpetrated, experienced and tracked along a spectrum. This good/bad dichotomy is a fallacy. “Racism is a structure, not an event” (Kauanui as cited in DiAngelo, 2018, p. 20). This structure has been designed by and for those in power — white heterosexual cisgender males. We call this structure white supremacy.

Defining White Supremacy

What is it, exactly? What springs to mind immediately is the bad part of the binary: lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, Neo Nazis and the “n” word. And yet it’s much older than the first African slave ship arriving onshore in 1619 (the Native Americans were the original enslaved in the new colonies here) and has continued to play out in a variety of forms, moving underground in our awareness of it. This is a false equivalency people make, that “good” people cannot perpetrate racism.

Critical race theorist Frances Lee Ansley defines white supremacy as:

“[By] ‘white supremacy’ I do not mean to allude only to the self-conscious racism of white supremacist hate groups. I refer instead to a political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily reenacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings” (1997, p. 592).

Look at the below triangle of white supremacy. The few things above the line are instantly recognizable as white supremacy and are to be called out as egregiously racist. They are not socially acceptable in most contexts, especially for self-identified progressives. Everything below the line are covert practices and mental models that are also white supremacy, but the kind that we can turn a blind eye to or be ignorant of.
The Four Approaches to Fill the Missing Middle of Service Design
By: Peter Horvath
Tags: Strategy, Business Strategy, Service Design, UX, Product Design

During its growth, Service Design focused heavily on definitions and its toolkit. But it failed to define what lies between these endpoints. While this is enough for practitioners, it falls short in the boardroom. Here we propose to fill this missing middle, by focusing not on the usual ‘how’, but rather on the ‘why’. As a result we define a remit and four approaches to Service Design (inside out, outside in, top-down, bottom-up), to facilitate discussions between Business and Service Design professionals.

What is Service Design? It is a relatively young and ambitious human-centred discipline, brought to life by the service sector’s increasing prominence. It uses a holistic and collaborative approach to generate value for both the service user and the service provider throughout the service’s lifecycle. It choreographs processes, technologies and interactions driving the delivery of services. Service Design has many definitions, from the Nielsen Norman Group, through Interaction Design Foundation, or the UK Government, to UX Collective — there is even an entire book dedicated to its definitions.

Something is missing

Have you ever felt something is missing from Service Design (SD)? I know, how could something be missing, when Service Design already encompasses or touches upon almost all aspects of an organization? And yet, there is something strange about it. It can be introduced in one sentence… but then one must dive straight into the toolkit. An ever-expanding, detailed, hands-on toolkit.

But there is a cliff in the unfolding storyline. Between the high level definitions and the detailed toolkits, the middle of Service Design seems to be missing.

We set out to fix that. For this we examined the many service design definitions mentioned earlier, approaches and toolkits, to provide a proposal of our own to fill up this ‘missing middle’. But this is just the beginning — see our call to action at the end of this article.

There are a number challenges with Service Design:
Case study H&M
By: M. Eren Ozyoldash
Tags: Case Study, UX, Speculative Design, Designprosess, Service Design

Curated fictional service for the utopic future. It is a new ATM & Banking experience designed for H&M. In the near future, H&M creates cafes that have NFT/ATM machines, it is warm cozy, and secure cafe supports the local artist by 3D scanning or photo shooting their artwork and educate people on how to conduct Blockchain trading.

The idea comes up from quick ethnographic research and my interaction with recent NFT development news from Turkey and Sweden. I aimed to challenge currently existing negative experiences while people interacting with ATM machines. I wanted to present a speculative future where there is a more regulated policy implemented around blockchain trading to both protect people’s rights, regulate environmental impact and manipulation. Imagining service solutions more accessible and community-driven. aka community of practice experience.

I see the final visual as a probe to use in the presentation. Presentation as a discourse platform to extend and mature concepts by discussion and co-creative activity.
A case for the craftsmen
By: Russell Clark
Tags: User Experience, Business Design, Humblebee Case, Service Design

Client: ESSVE

Industry: Construction and Craftsmen products

Duration: 8 Weeks

Delivery: UX, Design, Development of Progressive Web Application MVP

Problem Space

ESSVE provide a multitude of quality products for professional craftsmen, engineers and more, over a variety of industries. The challenge is to provide at least as highly innovative services to help the ESSVE customers.

This particular project focused on professional craftsmen as the user group, and in particular helping them with the calculation of materials and being able to present together with customers.

Solution

The solution, named ESSGUIDE, guides the tradesmen through decisions about building wooden decking. The tool helps users develop a complete list of the right amount of building material for their project.

The aims of the app:

1. To get the right amount of material. The craftsman does not want to make extra trips to product suppliers unnecessarily. That is bad for everyone involved in the project.

2. As a sales tool. The tradesmen can, in a pedagogic manner, take the customer through the process IRL and discuss the project.

Technically the build of ESSGUIDE is a progressive web application (PWA). As we’ve written about before there are many excellent reasons technically, and from a business perspective to why a PWA is a smart choice.

For ESSVE’s perspective, it makes the product long-term scaleable in the most efficient manner. When adding new “chapters”, functions, languages etc a PWA is a smarter, more efficient long-term technical undertaking since changes can be immediately made to users.
A Challenge in Collaboration: Sharing Understanding
Tags: Collaboration, Communication Skills, Collaboration Tools, Coworking, Service Design

How does misunderstanding happen?

Generally, in order to deal with problems, we have to know why it has happened. When it comes to collaboration work, there are a plethora of issues taking place within human interactions. One of the most general issues would be misinterpretation because of the diversity of team members.

For example, when I did a project related to Electric Vehicles, surprisingly, every team member imagined different pictures of EVs. Jen who is from the United States, where it has been a while that EV cars take over from the car market, she imagined how her neighbours, who are EV owners, are satisfied with their EV experiences. It could be interpreted that her understanding is already a level that is able to sympathize with the users. On the other hand, Judy and Jesse who are from China, where the technologies are highly developed, they came up with some high-tech Chinese products suggesting innovative ways of charging.

Many interpretations of an agenda are not bad at all. This issue, which occurs naturally in a multi-diversity environment, has the advantage of producing universal as well as creative outcomes. For this reason, many companies now consider team diversity as an important condition for successful collaboration. Researchers claim that it can improve organizational flexibility, creativity and problem-solving skills, improve resource availability, improve marketing benefits, and reduce costs(Horwitz and Horwitz, 2007)

On the other hand, there is a point of view that seeing team diversity involves a paradox. Diversity in the workplace is also the cause of misunderstandings, doubts and conflicts, which can result in absenteeism, low quality, low morale, and low competitiveness. (Bassett Jones, 2005).

In order to prevent this paradox, we must ensure that various interpretations do not lead to misunderstandings. If we leave the diverse understanding intact and keep going through the work, gaps arise in all subsequent processes due to the difference in the underlying understanding of each person. This is a very small spot, easily overlooked in the process, gathers and causes problems at a later stage of decision making, where people can not easily agree with each other, makes the team feel uncomfortable due to this reoccurring disagreement. Therefore, misunderstanding may not be a paradox of team diversity but just a failure of adjusting this small gap which actually could be the solution of causing misinterpretation.
‘Accessibility’ — the new legislation and why it’s the right thing to do
Tags: Service Design, Local Government, Accessibility, Digital Transformation

Written by Dave Ferguson

Photo by Ben Kolde on Unsplash

Accessibility and the concept of inclusive design has been around for a while but now it’s a must. This means that every public sector organisation must ensure their websites are accessible and meet certain standards and need to be designed to support all users with disabilities.

The new guidelines are known but for websites that have evolved over time, this means massive change and challenges.

We know it’s the right thing to do making the website and services more accessible to all.

I guess we are lucky that our website is an existing one, it gives us more time than if we were creating or had just created a new one.

Although we are just unpicking what this means to us in North East Lincolnshire, it is clear that we need a plan and a framework to deliver the changes needed.

We think there are a number of parts to the work:

· Technical platform changes that can resolve many issues by changing the template that supports all pages

· Technical changes at a page level

· Content and supporting transcripts for sound, video, pictures, forms, charts and tables

· Ensuring compatibility with all devices and making all content responsive

As we have a strong author model which is centrally based we have great advantages over other councils who operate a distributed author model across all services. This helps us be more consistent with design and user experience meeting the principle of operability.

But with so many changes to make, capacity is a premium so we need to be smart and tackle the work on the basis of doing the things that make the greatest impact, be clear in our accessibility statement about where we are compliant and where we are not and what our plan is to deal with it.

There are some big challenges:

· 5,000 plus PDF documents that need to be edited to make them accessible or the content delivered through other means.

· Video transcripts for any embedded video

· Similar for audio recordings

· Making pictures and infographic accessible

· Changing the culture of the organisation from making things look pretty to meeting the needs of users

· Third party software and content that we have procured and working with the providers to ensure accessibility

Whilst we are feeling trepidation about what needs to be done, we think we are in a good position for our North East Lincolnshire Council website. We feel we have the skills, the capability and framework in place to meet the challenge.

If you want to find out more, follow us on Twitter @SDNEL1.
IDEO U Human-Centred Service Design Course — The Art of Observation
By: Charlotte Ong
Tags: Ideo, Courses And Training, Design Thinking, Service Design

After being a practitioner for more than 9 years, I decided to sign up at IDEO U for the Human-Centred Service Design course.

I’ve decided to write up some of the highlights of my experience doing the courses in case anyone out there is curious about the courses offered and what they are like.

Today’s entry is on Art of Observation.

As part of this lesson, I had to look at a series of images and make observations in this format:

I see (object/interaction/person) It inspires me to (think about/do/try)

For each image, I’d first make observations based on the above format. The next step involved scrutinising certain items in the image highlighted by the IDEO U team.

Once I’m done, I check my observation notes against those made by the IDEO U team.

Getting a chance to review IdeoU’s observations against mine helps me to see new things through service design lenses.

No matter how many years of practice, I always learn something new from the observations made by others. The feeling of discovery, of realising there is still so much more to learn, is fuelling yet humbling at the same time.

On reflection, I realised IDEO U’s observations were much more service-oriented. Mine were more focused more on the product even though we picked out mostly the same items in each photo to scrutinise.

I wanted to share this particular activity in the course as I think it’s a really terrific way to get practitioners and those new to service design to look through service lenses.

It’s also a wonderful reminder that we all see things through our own lenses and a diverse team can help us get a more holistic, richer view.

If you’d like to ‘try this at home’, here are the steps:

Find a shop Take a photo of the shopfront Make observations using the “I see ____ and it inspires me to ____” format Select some items in the photo to scrutinise to build on your observations Guess the service values of the shop based on observations Get a friend or buddy to do the same Discuss your observations Have fun!

If you’ve got any questions about the course, drop them in the comments below. I will try my best to answer them.

The Human-Centred Service Design course instructors are Melanie Bell-Mayeda and Illya Prokopoff. The Teaching Lead is Jack Gerber. Jack shares resources which are also very useful every week.

I enjoy facilitating design thinking workshops, especially for digital transformation projects involving cloud technologies, data lakes and machine learning. If you’ve got a gig coming up and looking for a facilitator, or if you’d like to have a chat about the IDEO U courses, it would be wonderful to connect.

— To infinity and beyond
Give me enough space to sort my shit
By: Daniele Catalanotto
Tags: Travel, Customer Experience, Airport, UX, Service Design

The security area of airports is maybe one of the most frustrating and stressful experiences that exist out there. There are long lines. You are scared that you’ll do something wrong. There is police everywhere. And if you want to check your bag you just don’t have space for it.

One of the London Airports fixes in part this very frustrating experience. Before the security area, they have a so-called “Preparation area”.

There, travelers have desks where they can put their pieces of luggage, open them and verify if they don’t have items which won’t pass the security. If it’s the case, enough trash bins are available. And there are even tips and guidelines shown on the walls to help travelers sort their shit out.

One spot of the preparation area in a London airport with tables to sort your shit out

A smart Service Design piece

This little “Preparation area” is a smart piece of Service Design. Usually, people sort their stuff out in the security line or just in front of the security line on the ground. This creates a bit of a sense of chaos and shows to other people that going through security is shitty.

By adding a specific space for preparation it makes the security line smoother and there aren’t crowds of tourists on the floor with open luggage.

Make everyone pass through it

Everyone has to pass through this preparation area. And that’s smart too! As you’ll pass through the area you’ll see other travelers sorting their shit out wish reminds you that you maybe forgot a bottle of water in your suitcase too.

What does it mean for you?

There are experiences which can be difficult for people. Usually, you have to jump right into these experiences. There is no “preparation area” before.

Think about what parts of your service are usually stressful for your users. How could you help them to prepare themselves by giving them either mental or physical space for it?
Three important words for designers
By: Anton Schubert
Tags: Collaboration, Sustainability, Future, Design, Service Design

Three important words for designers

Sustainability

I’ve spent 27 years designing stuff without any consideration of the impact of those designs on the environment. I was taught to design for the user and the business, not the planet. The success of my designs was based on how much money they made and how many people used them. The more the better. I believe that we need to now work together to slow down consumerism, or at least change the direction of consumerism toward a more sustainable model. A model that gives back to the planet rather than always taking.

Responsibility

We as designers are the creators of the future. We have incredible power to decide the direction we take and to make the right decisions. It is within our grasp to change the future as we see fit and to solve the current issues with over consumption and fossil fuel based energy. As designers, why would we ignore this exciting opportunity? Let’s be brave and embrace it.

Collaboration

Designers need to lift up their heads, open their eyes and look beyond the screen or the features of the product. Every designed experience is part of a connected system, made up of a multitude of elements and people. To design for sustainability we need to design for systems and consider the whole picture. Identify where the sustainability issues are in the system and design them out. Yes, collaboration is hard but designers are naturally good at it. Systems collaboration is the key to sustainability.
Game as a service — A UX designer Perspective.
Tags: Game Development, Gaming, UX, Gamedesing, Service Design

The problem as I see it is that the game company had gotten worse at hiding a fundamental fact that they are there to make money. Take the example of EA one of the most recognisable publisher in gaming which came under a crackdown after their release of ‘Star Wars Battlefront II’.

It got massive attention from every corner of the world and spark numerous discussions. in short, the thing that got them deep into the fire is their own greediness and the approach that they took in designing the game. From start it was designed as a Game as a Service in mind which should mean a long life span and a constant updates with new content and character been added to game eventually but what they did was create a game where there is scarcity of content and One of the worst progression system implemented in games that I have experienced.where player will have to grind for the loot boxes to get the content in the game which will help character progress. After being called for their practices EA didn’t admit straight on the problem that causing this game to bomb instead they shifted blame from one entity to another and it got attention of general media which spark debate about if we should consider Loot boxes as gambling and some countries had made some changes to their legal system.

“ As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay. We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets. ”

This is comment that EA made after initial rage from players comments on reddit which eventually become the most downvoted post on reddit.

Let’s break down why the game as a service, A necessary monster that the game industry need to slay or figure a way to make amends with it.
You are not your user: subway edition
By: Sarah Kistner
Tags: Design Thinking, User Experience, UX, UX Research, Service Design

This type of situation is quite common in the business world. Until recently, most companies made decisions based on what stakeholders “thought” their customers wanted in products and services. Even if they tried to get in the heads of their customers, their logic was based on flawed interpretations of customer needs and was actually rooted in their own assumptions and biases.

Now, let’s spell out the subway debate into UX terms.

Assumptions: Bautista assumed everyone would agree on the “perfect seat” based on his own preferences and experiences. If you’ve ever worked with stakeholders who don’t quite understand the value of UX Research, this might sound familiar to you! In UX, actually talking to users is paramount in designing solutions for their needs.

Research: Bautista heard from people! Users responded to Bautista on Twitter with their views, unveiling opinions unique to their own personal experiences. Since the post went viral, the data was both qualitative and quantitative in nature to help generate meaningful insights with a large sample size. A mixed methods dream!

Insights: Different user types valued different seats. Some people liked Seat #1 because it was close to the door, while others preferred Seat #4 because it was isolated from other commuters. One Twitter user wrote, “[Seat #4] is for petite women with multi-borough commutes and no one else should be allowed to sit there.”

But taller users (looking at you Bill de Blasio) noted that “4 and 5 don’t exist when you’re 6’6’.”

Bill De Blasio avoiding seats 4 and 5 due to his tall stature. Source: Twitter.

And then there are the users who didn’t even like to sit at all — Michael Bloomberg responded “I always stand”.

Bloomberg avoids the seats on the subway entirely! Source: Twitter.

There was some consensus, however, that Seat #2 should be avoided at all costs. No one wants to squeeze in between two strangers, especially in the age of manspreading.

In the UX research process, we would aggregate these insights and begin developing “personas” to help us better visualize and empathize with our various user types.

But, as always, context matters. Each user will make their seat decision based on a number of factors: how many seats are already occupied, how long the trip is, how smelly is the person in seat #4 … the list goes on. These types of considerations would also be factored into the design process.

Design: How might we design the “perfect subway car” for these different types of New Yorkers? Could we redesign Seat #2 so it’s bigger? Could we build entire cars specifically for standing room only? What if we borrowed Amtrak’s “quiet car” concept for New Yorkers looking to get through their books in peace? What would the perfect subway car look like to you?
Yucha Village — A service design case
By: Liang Ce
Tags: Study Case, Planning, Tourism, UX, Service Design

Design Overview

What is the service design of Yucha village:

This is a project in cooperation with the matcha factory in Yucha Village, which has the largest matcha production line in China.

Centered on the matcha factory, our team-of-four developed an overall picture of the tea-theme resort and designed the corresponding service and experience flow for the target user group.

Why we started it:

Our client is the investor of the matcha factory. He hopes to develop an industrial tourist resort by exploiting the resources of the factory and Yucha village. He needs some inspirations to conceive what resort it can be.

How do we approach the design:

After the field study, we formulated the market positioning from competitive product analysis. In the stakeholders' research, by conducting both qualitative and quantitative methods, we envisioned a better stakeholder relationship and further figured out the value propositions.

With user journey maps, service gaps were discovered. Cooperated with potential tourists, we identified design four design points.

My role:

In this three-month service design project, I participated in the whole design process from research to design. I contributed significantly to innovating service projects, shrinking design goals and conceiving the overall framework.

Background

Our client — Mr.zhang, is the investor of Matcha Factory and Breaker dessert chain cafe. The Matcha factory produces high-quality Matcha in the Yucha village and Breaker sells Matcha desserts in cities.

Matcha factory in Yucha village
Teach me something before you hang up
By: Daniele Catalanotto
Tags: Customer Service, Customer Success, Customer Experience, Customer Support, Service Design

Phone calls to customer support are done to fix problems that customers have right now. But they could also help people avoid future problems. How so?

In an article from the Harvard Business Review, the author shares how the telecom company Bell reduced the number of support call it receives:

“The company’s service reps now give a quick tutorial to customers about key aspects of the feature before hanging up. This sort of forward resolution enabled Bell to reduce its “calls per event” by 16% and its customer churn by 6%.”

Use every interaction to teach something

I find this idea pretty inspiring. We could use the interactions we have with our clients or users in order to teach them something about our service or product.

By using other interactions to share tips and tricks or teach something you’ll help your customers better know your product and service and therefore avoid future problems.

And you don’t have to use moments of interactions which are only about customer support. You can share tips and tricks also in moments when people are not experiencing a problem.

It’s a bit like these little information messages you get when you log into an app that shares with you a little tip. Now imagine having that when someone comes to the counter in your shop. Imagine sharing a little tip when you said a monthly bill.
Pandemic resistant services with a trace of viral DNA woven in.
By: Joe Heapy
Tags: Service Design Futures, Design Thinking Mindset, Service Design Tips, Coronavirus, Service Design

Apparently, human DNA is about 8% virus. In other words, hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of viral infections have woven themselves into the human genome. Viruses break-in to our cells to tinker with our DNA leaving traces of their DNA in ours. This disgusting fact made me think about businesses and the services they produce.

Once in a while a new business contagion appears, a recession, a cyber threat, an annoying sector disruptor or the ebb or flow of the threat from terrorism. In each case, ‘the virus’ washes through a sector or economy. Some businesses are unable to cope, but thankfully the majority do. Once the peak has subsided, the virus becomes somehow woven into the DNA of each organisation; it reshapes the operating model and the products and services it provides.

Right now, many businesses are infected. They are reacting, slowing down, reallocating or burning-up resources, putting up barriers, closing doors, imposing new rules and spraying disinfectant to subdue the virus and limit its impact on employees and customers. The actions many businesses have taken are what’s needed to protect lives and job, but it’s hard to imagine tolerating and sustaining this level of response.

There will be a new normal, so how will this coronavirus have tinkered with the DNA of businesses? While we reshape services at pace what indelible traces will the virus leave behind? Do all of these ‘mutations’ need to have a negative impact? Could some of the changes businesses have had to make result in the design of better services for the new normal?

Pandemic-resistant services will guide customers with new service etiquettes and expectations. Performance thresholds and SLAs will slacken, and supply chains become more localised, making localisation and service variability marketable virtues. Symptom tracking and contact tracing will be designed-in as standard, and there’ll be an element of public service in every service. An internet of physical services emerges as Zoom becomes a customer service platform. And, assuming this isn’t the last time, sectors develop ‘herd immunity’, so responses are faster and less disruptive next time. New operating models emerge with a little viral DNA woven in.

Service Design Futures
Simplified for Complexity
Tags: Service Design, Product Development, Product Management, Software Development, Product Design

Building products and services is a complex task. At Finlabs, we as a team, have a wide range of experience from working at telecommunication giants, to advertising behemoths, to Fintech startups, to Innovation labs, not to mention our own individual technology passions that breach into our professional lives. In short, we live and breathe this stuff, and have done so for a very long time. What does that length of exposure and experience bring to the table? A deep intuitive understanding of the nuances and pitfalls that can ultimately shape the outcome of what started as a “great idea”.

This is where we see the quagmire of complexity having a very negative effect on many of the products and services we see in today's market. The reality is that the “ideas” are not coming from those of us that build them. Because of od that, these ideas are not fueled by the nuts and bolts of how to get them done. They are driven by opportunities, impact, and desires. And frankly, that’s as it should be. Even within our own ranks at Finlabs, we’ve witnessed this divide between the visionary thinkers looking to craft an emotional connection and the practical builders who are focused on making things work (and not break) first. We are also conscious that without the freedom to dream and create these fantastic ideas, the products we are building will fall short. We need to bind the two worlds together and that’s what we have done successfully at Finlabs.
Creating a design system: 5 lessons we’ve learnt
By: Sam Newman
Tags: User Experience Design, Atomic Design, UI Design, Design Systems, Service Design

Getting buy-in

A lesson in tenacity (and a bit of luck).

To encourage buy-in across the business, our design leadership:

Gave presentations on the value a design system can add

Talked to the right people (including informal chats in the stairwell)

Dedicated resources into pushing the design system forward

This all helped make the concept of a design system with dedicated resources and a centralised team into a reality.

Of course having a leader who ‘gets’ design in the business always helps and our case has been no different.

Learning from the past

Got a dusty old component library? We did.

So we dusted it down and learnt all we could from it. We sent a survey to all the relevant designers, developers and QAs to understand where it went wrong and why it was no longer used.

This has proven invaluable because we now know the potential pitfalls. For example, we had no real way to onboard new starters with the old component library. We’ve addressed this by creating clear onboarding processes, which detail what people need to get started.

We also applied service design thinking in various ways — both to map out the current experience and map out our ideal process across all the different stages, internal users and tools.
Product Design Consulting: Achieving Stakeholders Agreement (No Step Back)
By: Guilherme Theodoro
Tags: Service Design, Design, Consulting, UX Design, Product Design

Inside the previous article Product Design Consulting: Tools for Stakeholders Persuasion, we have covered several tactics for forming your response as well as some of the most common ways that we can respond to design feedback.

If we combine all of these practices together, we can see how this will form the basis for a standard response to stakeholders that establishes a formula for success.

For UX discussions, I want to suggest you a useful formula to help you make your case to Stakeholders without going back (hopefully). Read below.

Identify the problem

We must always remain focused and ensure that our stakeholders are aware of the problem we’re addressing; otherwise, the conversation can quickly become counterproductive. Very briefly state the problem that your design addresses for the purpose of getting everyone on the same page.

Describe your solution

This is where your specific design can be connected to the problem that you’re trying to solve. Make a clear connection between what you did and how it addresses the issue. Without a clear solution, the design is useless and ineffective.

Empathise with the user

Stakeholders can forget about the people at the other end of our products. Our job is to represent them, to feel so burdened for them that we’re driven to action. State how your solution solves the problem for a specific user by calling to mind the people at the center of your design process.

Appeal to the business

It’s not enough to just fix stuff. All our decisions must be motivated in part by a need to grow the business or organisation. This is where you describe how your decisions are meant to affect goals, metrics, or key performance indicators (KPIs). Bring it up, tie them and show value.

Lock in agreement

After clearly making your case, directly ask for agreement from your stakeholders. You don’t want to leave this conversation open ended, without resolution. Ask them directly, “Do you agree?” Put them in a position of needing to respond to you, and keep the project moving forward.

Formal agreement

To get agreement, you need to directly ask your stakeholders for their buy-in. The simplest way is to ask:

“Do you agree?”

Put them in a position of needing to respond to you before you move on. Further, it should be clear that you’re asking them for a specific response (agreement) and that you expect an answer.

It’s easy for a design discussion to casually devolve into a handful of random ideas until eventually the conversation feels like it should move on. However, if you don’t have agreement yet, do not let the team move to the next item on the agenda. You need to be the one who pauses the chatter long enough to say:

“Before we move on, are we all in agreement?”

Getting that verbal confirmation is important to make sure this item doesn’t come up again during the next meeting because someone forgot what was decided.

If you have any questions or want to know more about me, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Show me the whole price from the start
By: Daniele Catalanotto
Tags: Retail, Ecommerce, Customer Experience, UX, Service Design

A study by WorldPay presented by Statista explored why online shoppers leave without paying. The number one reason that was true for 56% of the respondents was that they were presented with unexpected costs.

Many online shops show you the price of the product alone. Once you selected the product and want to buy it, they then add taxes and shipment costs to it. And this often sucks as the price is much higher than what you expected!

How can you fix this?

Show the whole price from the start

For most small companies you already know the additional costs like taxes. Such costs don’t really change. So include them from the start in the price. You might say that your competitors don’t do it…

Okay, let’s just remember that this is the biggest reason why people leave without paying! So by showing the right price from the start, you will not lose these frustrated customers that your competitors might lose.

And if your competitors don’t include taxes in the initial pricing, make sure to advertise this difference to your customers. Show that this price includes already everything, including taxes! This will surprise your customers and show that you propose a different and more smooth experience.

Mention the average price

For some businesses giving the whole price from the start might be hard as the price changes with the number of items you bought, the shipping address or any other variable. In such a case, you might say: “It’s not possible to show the whole price from the start!” Yep, I agree with you. But there is a simple tip that can help: show the average additional costs.

You can show the product price and then show that shipping can cost between 20 to 50 bucks depending on where you want to ship it. By doing so, as a customer, I already know that additional costs might be added. And I already can imagine how big these additional costs might be.

Another Service Design principle

This study can inspire us to come with a new Service Design principle for e-commerce shops:
Service Design: Pick up in store for Gramedia.
By: Arnold Saputra
Tags: Ecommerce, Service Design, Gramedia, UX Design, Indonesia

Process:

Since designing a services are more complicated and holistic than creating a product ( web or app ). Our principle when designing are caring about what people need, and making beautiful, engaging experiences for them. We decided to do workshop that introduce service design and create service blueprint for our current process.

4 things that we highlighted are user journey, front stage ( it can be UI in app and process that stores employee meet the customer), Back stage we divide it to technology and our stores employee both in the store or warehouse. Back stage are the process that invisible to our user. The fourth are support, we divide the support to tech and store employee too.

Service blue print workshop. Every stakeholder are attending and participating.

The second step are we doing some observation in our ware house in Cakung and our target store in Central Park, West Jakarta. We validating how the services blueprint are working especially in back stage process. We find there’s some misalignment from the SOP and how the employee doing. We also ask about the common problem that happened from our employee in warehouse, stores and our online customer services.

We also thinking about the stock updating and sales for each store. If user bought item by pick up in store in Gramedia app; should the sales profit goes to Gramedia app ( the main store ) or the store that user pick up the product? After few meetings with Board of director and stakeholders, we decided to gave the money and profit to our stores but, Gramedia app have some percentage of commission.
Service Design for Estonian e-Democracy
By: Mike Ramos
Tags: Estonia, Interaction Design, UX, Ixdma, Service Design

Help Estonia to define democracy in a digital age.

Onboard is a concept for the e-Democracy system in Estonia. It is a component for EIS that focuses on simplifying the draft management in the policy-making process. The project is a service design effort, done in collaboration between the Estonian Government Office and IxD.ma in the first semester of 2018.

Briefing

EIS (Eelnõude Infosüsteem) or “E-consultation” system for drafts, is a digital working environment for ministries, which allows the discussion of domestic and EU legal acts with other ministries and/or the public, and the submission of legal acts to the government and the parliament. The system is Estonia’s example to the world of transparency and e-Democracy, however, the system was not yet intuitive enough to foster high public participation, and still had room for optimization for officials to work with it.

The general target audience for EIS.

Discovery

In group work, qualitative research has been conducted with different stakeholders, with the objective to understand all the parties involved with EIS, what are their needs, behaviors, and expectations. This includes officials and specialists from inside the Government Office and also general citizens.

Organizing insights from a team research effort with an Affinity matrix

In the policy-making process, officials have to deal with multiple systems for different purposes. Constantly documents and information need to be searched, however, to find information in EIS is often not easy. So among government officials, email ends up as a shortcut to contact a person involved to ask for a specific piece of information, rather than looking up in the system.

Define

The result of the research was a compilation of insights from different interviewees who were involved directly or indirectly with EIS. The insights were then used by the teams to identify the personas and later move to individual solutions.

Defining a shared knowledge of the picked target audience: the policymakers.

Among the needs found on the research phase, one focus issue was chosen for this project: the difficulty for an official or government specialist to keep track of the progress of a legal act draft using EIS in combination with other related internal systems, such as Delta, Pinal, e-cabinet, email, etc. A great part of the time spent with routine activities could be applied to public engagement and impact in the e-Democracy as a whole.