Memorable Experiences

the power of services // loyalty // in-house // body and soulco-creation is key // picks of the season // and more...

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MemorableexperiencesService design as the one genuine differentiation strategy

Service Design

Humberto Matas,

Head of Strategy and Innovation,

Designit Madrid

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There is initially something almost counterintuitive about the concept of service design. For many strangers to the world of design, services are thought of as too intangible to approach from a design perspective at all. For practitioners and clients, including some of the world’s most progressive and innovative companies, the concept is no longer shrouded in mystery. It is totally tangible and of potentially almost infinite value.

Even though service design is no longer a novelty as a discipline or area of expertise, it is fast becoming professionalised. The skill levels among practitioners as well as the depth of their understanding is increasing swiftly and in parallel, it seems, with service design’s increased importance.

This importance stems from several things, among them the fact that it is far more difficult for your competitors to copy your service than it is to copy your product. More and more companies realise this while often struggling to differentiate

themselves by lowering prices and/or improving the product. Your services hold tremendous power over your brand and by initiating processes which will improve your services – often because of a deeper understanding of your users and their needs, desires and aspirations – you have embarked on a journey with the potential to increase the value of your brand dramatically while creating a base of extremely loyal users.

Think of services as experiences and make those experiences memorable. If you accomplish that you have begun to build an, in the words of César Astudillo, elusive emotional bond between your client and your company.

This issue of Briefing is a collection of - we hope- timely thoughts on service design accompanied by some recent examples of service design projects we have carried out with our clients.

Enjoy!

The power of services

The entrepreneur's little helperww

When the patient takes center stage

A matter of experience

care, importance & trust

A global market for services

A school for applied thinking

rethinking communication about pregnancy

A welcoming experience

service designers at your table

pics of the season

co-create it to make it happen

education as a service

A radically different idea in a conservative industry

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Memorable Experiences – Service Design

O n the surface of things it is simple enough at this point: Service designers design services. But two decades ago the practice had not yet been

conceptualised and thus there were no service designers. Even though there were lots of people designing services the term hadn’t gained recognition. 10 years ago it was still a brand new idea. It is true; service design is only a novelty in the sense that service design has become a conscious activity thus leading to the emerging professionalisation which we are witnessing today. But this professionalisation is taking service design to new levels, dramatically improving the quality of services and creating amazing value for the companies and organisations that understand its importance. Service design is still an emerging design practice with an interdisciplinary heritage and in order for service design projects to become successful you need to build on skills from several disciplines. “As service design becomes more established as a practice, we can deduct how it draws on insights and inspirations from other disciplines, such as interaction design, user research, product design and architectural and grapic design. For each of them there are on one hand the knowledge and practice that professionals develop, and on the other hand the set of skills that help create the various deliverables.” says Ione Ardaiz Osacar, Service Designer at Designit Madrid. nobody owns it When users interact with organisations – across the rapidly increasing number of communication channels and platforms – they take part in a constantly evolving, complex social system. The relationships between individuals, communities and organisations are dynamic and influenced by an even wider social context. That understanding, which

comes from interaction design, is one key element when designing successful services. "From interaction design we learn the importance of mapping connections and intercommunications for the service. On one hand between the user and the artifacts in the service (known as touch points), and on the other hand between the various stakeholders involved in the service in the form of an actors’ map.” According to Ione Ardaiz Osacar it is a significant advantage for the service design discipline that it is still in the process of becoming properly defined. “The field is characterised by a very inspiring openness, it’s like nobody owns it. There is nobody around to say that there are things you can’t do because it’s not in accordance with the orthodoxy. That is very valuable as the world we design services for is rapidly changing and developing and calls for new answers all the time. The inspiration for the right solution can come from unexpected corners of our understanding unhindered by an established practice.” she says. always new tools This is not to say that there is anything amateurish about how service design processes are approached. On the contrary, each contributing discipline must be on its best form and each is rapidly developing individually. There are always new tools to dig out of the toolbox and test in the real world. New looks and new conceptualisations from graphic designers and new methods and insights from the rapidly developing area of product design. And, not least, constantly new ways to improve the co-creation processes with users and clients. “There's so much inspiring work and so many inspiring insights to draw upon. Service design is growing and

The pOWer of servicesservice design draws from a wide range of other disciplines in order to improve interactions with users. There is always room for improvement and, thus, potential for gaining a competitive edge.

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Service design is characterised by a multidisciplinary heritage and a remarkable openness. No orthodoxy, just lots of ways to get inspired.

maturing into a powerful force for organisations looking for ways to distinguish themselves from the competition,” says Ione Ardaiz Osacar, who follows the developments within countries like Germany, Italy, Austria and the UK, where the discipline first began to become conceptualised. extend the reach A common way to look at service design is to focus on utility, as in what the service does or offers, usability, as in how easy it is to interact with the service and pleasureability, as in how much pleasure the user derives from interacting with the service. Service design processes will often have as their starting point an analysis of the

The inspiration for the right solution can come from unexpected corners of our understanding unhindered by an established practice

existing service with at least those three elements present. And there is always room for improvement. “Traditionally there is a strong focus on the quality of the physical product but less attention is dedicated to the services surrounding the product. But these services are growing strongly today, for reasons such as the emergence of new platforms for providing those very services. Services are in themselves powerful means of extending the reach of the physical product. Consultancies with the necessary – quite broad – set of skills and with the necessary openness to inspiration can bring tremendous value to clients because of the power of services.” says Ione Ardaiz Osacar.

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G lobalcaja, a major Spanish regional savings bank, has been looking for ways to do business with entrepreneurs but kept coming across two major

obstacles. The Spanish banking system is very conservative and the risk assessment of young entrepreneurs is that of a private bank client. Entrepreneurs not only find the doors closed for financing, but also do not even try to knock at those doors. For entrepreneurs, banks are simply not an option. The challenge was to help Globalcaja to serve and work with entrepreneurs in a different way. And the response was a service design approach. "This wasn't only about developing a fancy website, but dealing with a more complex interaction adapted to the entrepreneurs’ need for personalised solutions, and aligning the business objectives and the resources of Globalcaja to deliver a valuable service," says Charlotte Schoeffler, Design Consultant with Designit Madrid. David de Prado, Managing Partner, adds: "Not often does one have the opportunity to design a complete service from scratch with the possibility to create a brand new concept built on users’ needs.” When Designit started to do research with Globalcaja’s team, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders, it was clear that the need for financing should be the main focus, but to assure the success of the new business, and enter the inner circle of entrepreneurship, other needs should be taken into account, like training, networking, mentoring, psychological and emotional support.

a chain of entrepreneurial energy Globalcaja and Designit worked together mapping both internal and external resources available to cope with the needs of the clients and creating the pivotal figure of a sort of “entrepreneur’s coach”. The coach is the human contact of the savings bank with the entrepreneur, who guides and helps through the various stages of the service to successfully develop their business ideas and companies. The blueprinting of the service took into account the necessity of a sustainable service, based on the resources of Globalcaja, the resources offered by other entities with whom Globalcaja will act as a facilitator, and the knowledge, experience, and participation of the community of Globalcaja entrepreneurs itself. The design of the service also took into account the moment when the entrepreneurs no longer need such strong support. “Once the entrepreneurs end their relationship with this service, they still belong to the community and have access to the online platform. We are looking for ways to encourage them to help other entrepreneurs making their way through the system, which they have recently emerged from. We are hoping to establish the platform for a chain of entrepreneurial energy,” says Charlotte Schoeffler.

The entrepreneur’s LITTLE HELPERA brand new service for Spanish start-ups will soon be presented by Globalcaja. The outcome of an intense design process aiming at creating a new service that would transform the way banks approach and finance entrepreneurs.

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12 chief physicians at Gentofte Hospital just outside Copenhagen have recently been familiarising themselves with a set of tools

and methods quite different from what they came across at med school. Through a series of workshops they have learned how to uncover users’ needs, how to generate new and innovative ideas and how to observe and interview users using approaches from within the realms of anthropology and ethnography. When you look at the list of things which chief physicians have to take care of during a regular workweek, it is overwhelming. Not only do they meet with and treat patients, function as managers for their younger and less experienced colleagues, ensure that the work at the hospital meets the highest scholarly standards, and take part in the global exchange of knowledge about their respective fields, but they also have to conduct their own research. So when Gentofte Hospital wanted to develop its processes to become more patient-oriented and their practices to become more innovative the task has to be carried out while recognising that time is of the essence. "This project has been developed to equip the chief physicians with tools which they can apply in the context of their daily work. They can’t go off and study patients for weeks at a time, but through the project they have nevertheless had the opportunity to conduct actual field studies, for instance observing the first meeting between patient and physician or observing what actually happens in a waiting room. Not much on the surface perhaps, but it is the scene on which patients sometimes brase themselves for a fatal diagnosis,” says Rikke Bastholm, Senior Innovation Consultant at Designit Copenhagen. fresh eyes and new angles For a wide variety of reasons, political and demographical ones among them, there are certainly limits of a financial nature to what changes hospitals can initiate. Naturally then the focus on the project has been on innovations which have the biggest impact on the quality of the patient’s interaction with the system for the smallest

investment. Most bang for the buck, to speak frankly. “We are looking for immediate, low-cost changes and they come out of looking at the system with fresh eyes and from new angles. It can be very simple questions like how to change the fact that when the physician is working on his computer during the consultation his back is almost inevitably turned towards the patient. That’s a problem, when the patient is under emotional stress but it doesn’t cost a lot of money to change,” Rikke Bastholm explains. It makes no sense to raise expectations, given all the limits, but the chief physicians will walk away from the project not only with an additional set of tools but also with a new understanding of what the system looks like from the patient’s point of view. From a long-term perspective, that new angle might lead to yet more changes. It may be small and insignificant on the surface but it has a strong impact where patients need it the most.

When the patient takes CEnTER STAGE chief physicians from Gentofte Hospital have been through an intense introduction to user-centered innovation to qualify their search for small innovations with a big impact.

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Services have been with us since always. The proverbial “oldest profession in the world” was a services job. However, in the industrialised world, services are not provided in a handcrafted fashion anymore, but on an industrial scale, so you must specify how they must be repeatedly provided. And you must put into place the infrastructures, the procedures, and the people, to have them delivered in accordance with a set of criteria, which are not very different from the criteria used to specify industrial products: quality (do things in a consistent way) and efficiency (optimise costs to maximise margin).


A matter of experience

In mature service markets it is difficult to signifi-cantly stand out when it comes to quality and efficiency. But there are other paths to travel.

Like delivering memorable experiences.

Essay by César Astudillo, Managing Partner, Designit Madrid

E experience seems to be in fashion these days. It seems that everyone aspires to be in the experience business. You know the drill: “These Starbucks guys

are not about coffee, they’re about experience”, and so on. And your travel agency doesn’t tell you they’re going to send you to Costa Rica but they tell you they’re going to provide you with an experience, and the bank tells you they can’t give you the loan but they can give you an experience instead. But isn't experience really more than just another buzzword? The concept of experience is central to Service Design.

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But sadly, your competitors do the same. They match your quality and your efficiency, customers don’t really care about choosing your service or your neighbor’s, prices fall and margins plummet. At first, you raise the quality a little bit, you improve efficiency another little bit, and things get better. But soon, every time you attain such improvements, the margin increment you gain is a little lower, until all your personnel are fed up with quality and efficiency regulations and, despite that, margins are still abysmal because you’re dealing in quality differences that people don’t appreciate, and efficiency differences that don’t make the difference. Meet the world of diminishing returns. So you try to get people to remember you, to somehow grow attached to you. You try to improve your brand, to establish an emotional bond with people, and brand consultants charge you a fortune for a pretty awesome logo, and you don’t know whether it costs a fortune because the logo is pretty awesome, or the logo looks pretty cool because you paid a fortune for it. Inexplicably however, people keep on not caring too much about choosing your service or your neighbor’s, in spite of your new logo’s objective level of awesomeness. Then another consultant suggests that you launch a loyalty program, and you give points that can be redeemed in exchange of a fleece jacket with your logo, and the customer gladly takes the jacket, but inexplicably the jacket does not loyalise him, he puts it in the basket where the dog sleeps. You paid a fortune for the logo and they give it to the dog, people have no heart. It’s an interesting paradox that one of the things in which different companies of an industry look more alike, is in their attempts at differentiating themselves. What can we do to get people to be happy to pay a price premium for your service, when the silver bullets of brand identity and loyalty programs have failed? Service design addresses this challenge not by putting something foreign on top of the service, but by improving the service experience itself. But this has one important prerequisite: that you get to know your customers better. So go back to your organisation and talk to your own people (who are up to their eyes in quarterly objectives and quality procedures and efficiency norms), and ask them to help you acquire that knowledge about customers and transform it into innovation, to sit with you and think how might you reinvent the service’s features and the small details in how you deliver it. - “What for? To improve quality and efficiency?” - “Not really, it should be for giving people a reason to remember us and grow attached to us, if only because awesome logos and fleece jackets don’t seem to work”. - “Okay, I’ve been thinking, if we’re in an insurance company and this is the claims department, if you start not pressuring me so much to process one thousand claims more per day, and instead begin to ask me what can we do to get them to remember us and get attached, well, here are a couple of ideas: When people call us for a claim they’re very nervous, they feel vulnerable, they’ve just had an accident, so instead of yelling “policy number???” at them because you’ve told me to make data gathering as fast and efficiently as possible, if we take it a bit easy and we let them tell us the story of their misfortune and

we go “ffff… boy, that’s just outrageous, why did this have to happen just when you were picking the kids up from school? OK, don’t worry; we’re taking care of everything. Do you happen to have your policy with you, or shall I just look your name up in the computer?” Well, if we make this effort to genuinely focus more on people, good things are going to happen. What’s going to happen is people will remember that, in a very emotionally loaded moment for them, you cared more about making them feel a bit better than about filing the claim as fast as possible. And people remember that. This is delivering a memorable experience. In every touch point between your customers and your service there is a running theme, a common personality, a reason to remember you and start to get attached to you. Experience after experience, you patiently build that elusive emotional bond between your client and your company. Channel after channel, in person, on the Internet, on the phone, in your correspondence. Moment after moment, when you let them know that you exist, when you explain them your service offering, when they book your first service, when you deliver it, when they have problems, when they complain. Experiences. Moments in your life that you remember. Little events with a before and an after. They are the locus of attention of service design, and one of the keys to sustainable competitive advantage. Systemic, culture-based, made with people: three features of good service design. Today, brand building is a major interest of corporations. And guess what, well-done service design does build brands. You may well have the ugliest logo in history; if you get the experience well, it won’t matter. Your brand will have an incalculable value, because every time people see your pathetic logo they’re going to remember that yours is the company that is willing to look a little further than operational efficiency and try to become a part of their affective map.

it’s an interesting paradox that one of the things in which different companies of an industry look more alike, is in their attempts at differentiating themselves.

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Good service design in three not so easy steps At least three conditions have to be met in order for service design to add genuine value. It has to be systemic, culture-based and made with people. Here's why.

Service design can’t be like an experience varnish you apply in a thin film on the surface of your service. Experience must be an ingredient of the stuff the service is made of, and be consistent with it. Don’t put on a disguise, don’t be what you are not. Service design is not an external use medicine, like an ointment. It’s a

systemic drug. You must deliver it into your bloodstream.

Second, the stuff with which service design is implemented is corporate culture. In this world, in which information technologies have so much specific weight, many advanced services depend to a great extent on technology. But even in those services, the most critical factor in delivering the desired experience, the service

chain’s weakest link is not technology, but culture. This is why the competitive advantage arising from good service design is so sustainable. Because it’s much more difficult for competition to copy a good culture than to copy a good bunch of lines of code.

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Thirdly, from a service design perspective, even more than from a product design perspective, you need a people-centered approach. Because the service is for people, of course. But also because it is going to be delivered by people. And people have motivations, interests, habits, and

if you row against them you won’t have the service you want. You can’t successfully implement services that are against the habits, interests and motivations of your clients. But you can’t either implement them against the habits, interests and motivations of your employees. That’s why designing services not just for clients and employees, but with them, is enormously helpful if you want the service to eventually jump out of the blueprint and be out there, generating memorable, and of course, profitable experiences.

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Care, IMPORTAnCE and trustThe service you provide is infinitely more difficult for your competitors to copy. Just remember that good service consists of both body and soul.

care The first time the user opens the pack-age with your product is a very impor-tant touch point and a fine opportunity to demonstrate that you care. If it is easy to get the product to function properly, if the manuals are clear and well written, it indicates that you care. “And it’s a good investment in its own right because your users won’t have to call you for help. Instead you can call them a couple of days later to ask if everything is ok with their home alarm. Not – I repeat, not – to sell anything. Just to check that they’re ok. Some service providers will tell you that such a call is difficult for them to make with the way they’re organised and everything. But if they really care, they can change that,” says Jesús Carreras.

importance One way of indicating that users are important to the service provider is to invest a little in knowing them. For the security company it was, for instance, about knowing whether the user lived in a house or an apartment when they received a phone call. “One way of getting this right is to pay the user a visit. Again, it will cost you short-term but you will receive fewer calls about alarms that aren’t working and you get to indicate that the user is important. Because, and this is essential, your competitors can copy your products, but it is much more difficult for them to copy your service.”

trust It’s the most difficult element to develop but it’s the most fatal if you fail. If you communicate that you don’t trust your user he is far more likely to find another provider. “One thing you can do is to let your users test new services for free for three months. That is a clear indication of trust. The exact opposite of the clothes hangers in hotel rooms, which you can’t take out of the closet, because they fear that you'll steal them. The messages of Care, Importance and Trust are a way to make your service tangible. Good service design is about caring about the details of those messages,” says Jesús Carreras.

Service design is often understood in terms of a series of touch points. Instances where client and service provider interact with each other. But as in product design – and many other equally

important aspects of life in general – it's all in the detail. If you’re looking for a competitive edge however, you need to look beyond those touch points. A one-eyed focus on getting all the touch points right, a somewhat formalistic approach, might lead you to forget something important. “The touch points are the body of the service you provide, but the story that emerges through everything the user experiences, that is the soul of the service. Getting that story right is what every ambitious service design project should strive to. It is worth it,” says Jesús Carreras, User Experience Consultant with Designit Madrid. Research done for a major Spanish security company illustrates the importance of getting the story right. Jesús Carreras suggests a framework with three elements, introduced by Design Researcher Kathy Pui Ying Lo, to help service providers do exactly that. Basically it’s all about Care, Importance and Trust.

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A welcoming experienceThe initial phase of a relationship between client and organisation often defines that relationship for its entire duration. In the framework of a huge service design project with Designit, Verti decided firstly to look very closely at how it welcomes new clients.


V erti is a recently established and successful online spin-off of Mapfre, Spain and Latin America’s leading insurance company. Verti’s focus is on providing

a self-service with as much human touch as possible. When that is your ambition as a company, the end user’s 'welcoming experience' is of course quite significant. After defining the framework of a big service design project covering the user’s entire experience with Verti, the Verti team decided to start working on this very first interaction with the client. For this first project, the team went through a research phase and a co-creation exercise involving Verti’s clients, people from sales, customer service, internal processes and marketing. A complete user journey and service blueprint has been built to cover the users’ needs, solve problems and anticipate potential pitfalls. “From the moment you become a client, many questions arise. Maybe there are problems with your previous insurance, you have to figure out the specifics of the coverage you have purchased, you might not know if the payment has been received and if the insurance is valid yet, and how do you document the coverage when no paperwork has been received? We looked at many potential problems like that and coherent solutions to them,” says Charlotte Schoeffler, Design Consultant at Designit Madrid. one mixed team The 2011 service design project takes place under an unusual framework. It is not the common relationship 'company and consultancy' but one mixed team made of people from Verti and people from Designit working together as if they were one team working inside Verti. For such complex projects this is a valuable solution. It is almost like having a service design team in house. “It provides us with very valuable insights about what is happening in the frontline with the user. And no insight or design choice is lost! Also we don’t waste time writing

reports or making nice presentations, we can really work with paper prototyping and make decisions in an agile and efficient way.” says Charlotte Schoeffler. It is also easier to anticipate risks and the implementation is more efficient. “We decided to work with the team on action plans to make things happen. In that very moment it is really exciting to see the team involved and motivated to implement the designed artifacts,” continues David de Prado, Managing Partner at Designit Madrid. Now the project moves on. There are many, many more moments of truth in the relationship between a user and its insurance company, which deserve to be understood thoroughly and profoundly in order to figure out how to deliver a good service experience.

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I f you have no idea of the emerging Chinese service economy, go visit one of the immensely popular Haidilao Hotpot restaurants. There's always a line, but waiting is

a part of the experience. While waiting you are served food and drinks. You can get a massage; have your shoes shined, play chess or have your glasses or cell phone cleaned. You can even get a manicure. Clearly, the Chinese are no strangers to high quality service. “China is changing into a service economy. This is a conscious, strategic effort from the Chinese government. They have understood the potential of the service economy in a global context, they have looked closely at India’s success in this realm, and they have decided that it is a sound strategy to diversify away from being too dependent on manufacturing,” says Marcela Machuca, Interaction Design Consultant at Designit Madrid, who has recently studied the global export potential of services. She has been surprised to discover that this potential seem to go largely unnoticed in the West, while countries like China and India seem to be very conscious of what’s going on. “Many Chinese come back from the West to establish companies, which are replicas of companies here. The Chinese government is giving massive subsidies to those

certain types of start-ups while at the same time focusing on the necessary changes in corporate culture. China has understood that the corporate culture of a service economy is radically different from an economy based solely on manufacturing and they are working on that,” says Marcela Machuca. a level playing field What China has learned, to be specific, is basically that if you get services right there is a huge potential in selling those services to the rest of the world. The international trade of services is growing fast. As a consequence, the Chinese government has taken a strong interest in educational efforts related to a service economy and seem in general eager to learn, while the West seems to a large extent to have forgotten that this is an area where they have been leading the field as they made the transition to service economies a long time ago. “India has done well because they've been able to sell quality at a low cost and because of their language skills of course. But now, as the global playing field levels, there will be a global market also for services sold at a premium. Western companies are still well positioned to grab this market but the competition is catching up. “Like products you need to constantly develop the quality of your services, through a conscious, strategic effort, and now that effort must be directed at a much bigger, multicultural market. If you don’t someone else will,” is Marcela Machuca's conclusion.

A GLOBAL MARKET

for services

china understands the potential of selling services worldwide.

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M ore and more providers of services realise that it is vital to the quality of their services to dedicate a lot of attention to them. And for a few of those

companies, the solution has been to employ service designers themselves. One such organisation is the English NHS Institute, an entity focused on improving the National Health Service in England through innovation. “The NHS Institute employs a team of service designers designing bottom up solutions to real problems, such as an example on how to efficiently deliver the meals in an hospital. It’s a big advantage for the NHS Institute that these changes are initiated by their own staff because they can be immediately implemented,” says Charlotte Schoeffler, Design Consultant with Designit Madrid. Lots of service designers use product design to describe their role and activity. Actually it is an easy way to explain this complex practice, as we are more or less all used to product design culture and concepts. Designing a service is like designing a product in the sense that you create something relevant, attractive and easy to use for your customer and to do so, you work with materials, production restrictions and costs. In the case of the service, you design an interaction between your client and a system that happens through different moments and channels and with different meanings (known as touch points) and your material is your organisation, your frontline and all your service evidence. not only designed Companies with physical products at their core often have huge R&D departments and a long and often fruitful tradition of working with internal designers as well as external consultants. Service providers might be moving in that direction and apparently the first steps on the road to such recognition of the potential of service design have recently been taken. The explosion of the service economy and the need for true customer loyalty require services to be not only designed but well designed and companies have only recently decided to employ service designers internally.

“Basically, when you are involved with designing services you have the same ambitions and the same mental framework as a product designer. Just like the product designer will go from a sketch to the actual product and study, for instance, the user’s need, the materials, the feasibility and aesthetics of the product, the service designer will create the concept, work on the service delivery system, design the service encounter and, ideally, implement it, test it and watch it unfold its potential in the real world. At this point, however, very few companies have decided to conduct those processes in-house,” says Charlotte Schoeffler.

a service design ambassador This is unfortunate, because there are many advantages of having service designers on the pay roll. For one thing, service design being a strategic issue, it definitely requires an ambassador inside the company. Service design potentially has a huge impact on the organisation as it can change the way people work and relate to the end user. Re-designing services or creating new ones implies big challenges for a company and definitely demands strong efforts and abilities to sell a project internally. On the other hand, the 'material' you work with in service design projects is complex and requires a multidisciplinary team. People from marketing, human resources, processes, IT, clienting, sales, management, etc. are needed at a very

service designers at your table A few companies and organisations are beginning to employ service designers. Even if working with design consultancies has lots of benefits when it comes to service innovation and design, having service designers on board is a good and sound investment.

Designing services is challenging, because unlike products, they are intangible and therefore difficult to visualise

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early stage of the design process. As such, there are big advantages to having a service design team in house – or at least an internal service designer working with a design consultancy. They know the company culture well, are conscious of the company’s challenges, understand the service and speak the company’s language. archaeologist of the future Designing services is challenging, because unlike products, they are intangible and therefore difficult to visualise. “The ability to be a sort of ‘archeologist of the future’ is fundamental when it comes to design services. You need to have the tools to visualise and anticipate situations that do not exist already in order to anticipate problems, find solutions and create great experiences. Having this ability in house is a tremendous advantage for a company,” says Charlotte Schoeffler. The in-house service designer, or team, can play a fundamental role in the implementation of the service while maintaining the initial vision of the service. When working with external service designers, co-creation between the company and the consultancy particularly helps.

“For some services, it might seem that some details are insignificant but they can be at the core of the innovation and key aspects for a user. If you change some of those things you risk deteriorating the service you’ve designed. That’s why the implementation phase is crucial and benefits a lot from having people on board who have been part of the complete design process.” don’t forget the user The major French transportation company Veolia Transdev developed a technology for mobile phones to purchase tickets for all transportation systems in an area in the South of France. The engineer-driven project was quite far into the process when all of a sudden the question of the user was brought up. “So they hired a service designer who began by placing the user firmly on center stage. Her perspective is radically different; she brings empathy at the center of the problem and also works on defining scenarios for the future, which brings inspiration to the engineers to unfold their technology-focus within those scenarios. It’s an entirely new perspective for Veolia Transdev and I think it will be of

An internal service designer has a key role to play both when it comes to developing the services of the company and implementing work done by external consultants.

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I t's unconventional to think of education as a service but when it’s done, new perspectives and new valuable insights emerge. Both students and staff, even businesses

and society in general, depend on the quality of that service, which is why it made sense for the University of Nordland to look for ways to improve by applying a service design methodology. “We conducted extensive user studies to identify their needs and, thus, the opportunities for the University to create value for the different groups of users,” says Kaja Misvær, Partner and Service Innovation Manager at Designit Oslo. One of the major challenges the university was facing was how to attract students. Bodø is a small town – although the second largest in Northern Norway – the climate is harsh and although there are a wide variety of cultural events, nightlife etc., the supply does not compare with, for instance, Oslo. The students’ user journeys were investigated thoroughly from arrival, studies, social activities to traineeship and many other aspects in order to figure out what influenced their decisions about where to study. “Not surprisingly we discovered that geography is hugely important for the students who have chosen the University today. They apply either because it’s safe and close to home or because it’s exotic and far away. The university must work on communicating the quality of research and education to come across as a serious academic institution. Students and professors should choose University of Nordland because of the high academic level, not because of its location,” says Kaja Misvær. a shared understanding Another key element in the process was to bring the academic staff together. It turned out that previously there had been very little cooperation, even dialogue, between the different faculties. They were lacking a common goal for where the university was heading as one institute, and not as four different faculties with different identities and ambitions. “It was somewhat unintentional that focus groups and workshops had a big impact on the university’s experience of belonging together, sharing ideas and visions and finding ways to develop the university’s value proposition. But the academic staff is to a large extent the group who delivers the actual service so it was essential that they share an understanding of what University of Nordland has to offer,” Kaja continues. The outcome of the project was an identity platform for the university and a description of the service innovation potential. Equally important was the ownership and enthusiasm which was generated through the process. “There was a much stronger awareness of belonging, that challenges are best faced through working together and that the university really has a lot to offer,” says Kaja Misvær.

Education as a

serviceFar north in norway, Bodø University College changed its name to University of Nordland and went looking for ways to attract more students. A deeper understanding of the users was essential to delivering a better service.


The outcome of the project was an identity platform for the university and a description of the service innovation potential.

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P regnancy is one of those few defining passages in life with an easily identifiable 'before' and 'after'. It’s a massive change in people’s lives. That’s reason

enough for why the 'during' should be as dedicated as possible to great expectations without too much worry about logistics. This caused Aarhus Midwife Centre at Skejby Hospital to look closely at their service offered to pregnant women and all other parties involved. There was a strong desire at the centre for heightening the level of service and care and to improve communication between doctors, midwifes and the pregnant. The tools were to be digital, centered on a new website with all the necessary information in a very accessible form and specific functionalities such as 'My page', a calendar with all appointments etc. “This was a great opportunity to rethink those key moments, when the right information in the right format is essential. To start over with a new approach focused on the user and her needs,” says Rikke Bastholm, Senior Innovation Consultant at Designit. In order to get as comprehensive an understanding of those needs as possible, a wide variety of tools from within design research and anthropology were applied. The actual experiences of pregnant women and their partners, midwifes and doctors were studied – even during the night – and workshops, interviews and photo documentation all served to deepen the understanding.

a really important moment Thus, the user’s journey was thoroughly mapped, and based on these insights, Designit conducted an innovation process focused on developing new service concepts and a new digital platform. The solutions were then conceptualised during a series of co-creation sessions. “Because we were given the chance to look deep into those somewhat complex processes, Aarhus Midwife Centre has acquired extensive knowledge and inspiration as well as the necessary materials to procure the web solution when given the approval and funding. Now the centre is well-equipped to provide services, which are very significantly improved,” says Rikke Bastholm. The project has been executed as a so-called public/private innovation project (OPI) supported by regional authorities and the ambition is for the insights and the understanding acquired to inspire similar work elsewhere in Denmark. “To communicate and inform in correspondence with the users’ needs is really an area where institutions like the midwife centre can make a huge difference at a really important moment in those peoples’ lives. To me it’s a fine example of the potential for genuinely improving essential services through service design,” says Rikke Bastholm.

Rethinking communication about pregnancyThe Midwife centre at Skejby Hospital was searching for ways to improve communication and provide a better service to pregnant women. The solution was a series of new service concepts and digital platform proposal.

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I n Mad Men, the celebrated American television series created by Matthew Weiner, the clients always return to Don Draper and the ad agency after a month or

two and are either thrilled or appalled by what the team has come up with. That was then, this is now. Today’s ambitious creative processes require an entirely different commitment from the client. They have to roll up their sleeves and prepare to get their hands dirty. It’s all about co-creation, which makes sense for a wide variety of reasons. “The most obvious is perhaps that in order for a creative process to be successful it requires a lot of knowledge both about users and about the organisation delivering the service or product. Co-creation is a very efficient way of getting in touch with all that necessary knowledge,” says David de Prado, User Experience Consultant at Designit Madrid.

But that’s just one thing. Co-creation is also a strong weapon against the sad tendency that work done by external consultants always risks dying quietly on the shelves behind the CEO’s desk. When people co-create they become committed to what they have helped create. They want to watch it come into existence. “Co-creation is vital for the quality of the service or product, which is the end goal of the process, but it’s much more important than that. When you co-create, you dramatically increase the likelihood of things actually happening,” says David de Prado. a privilege There are at least two sets of ambitions at play when you co-create. One is about striving for excellence in everything

Ambitious, creative processes today build on the client’s insights in an active, collaborative process. Co-creation leads to a strong commitment from the client – and to great design.

co-create itto make it happen


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that’s related to the product, whether physical or in the form of a service. You must fight for what you want to put into the world to become as innovative and as viable as possible in order for it to stand a chance of survival. The other is the potential transformation of the people you work with through their experience while co-creating. “The challenges you face when working with ambitious client companies are always complex and genuinely interesting. It’s a big privilege to do this kind of work, we love it and we want our clients to feel the commitment too. Not only with regard to the result but also the love for the process. The feeling of immersing yourself in a set of complex challenges, battling problems that have a genuine impact on people’s lives. It affects both you and the client,” is David de Prado's belief. convergence Today there are many different tools available for such processes. Storyboarding, role-playing, prototyping and many more in endlessly different formats and variations. And clients are a lot more savvy with regard to these methods and a lot less afraid of becoming involved. When you come across skepticism it is in general easily overruled by the quality and quantity of results from Co-creation. “In most cases, clients are used to working like this and facilitators are very skilled, also at addressing the skepticism and working with and around it,” says David de Prado, who points to two significant advantages of this kind of process. “You get lots of great ideas and you establish consensus. The latter is as important as the former. Consensus comes out of convergence, which comes out of all the ideas being funneled in a process with, potentially, much iteration. Through this process, many early obstacles are removed,” explains David.

more than a new face The consultants will sometimes have some studying to do early in the process in order to be up to speed about the specific industry and the needs and characteristics of the users. Once that is established, however, it is often surprising what comes out of merging those two sets of insights, one about the industry and one about the users. There is also great value derived from merging the client’s and the consultancies’ creativity. “Without working closely with the client it is unlikely that you will do great, innovative work today. We are never hired to put a new face on an old body but to make a real, significant change. In order to do that, we need the client’s insights but we need to maintain an outsider’s perspective. Great work comes out of getting that balance right,” is David de Prado's conclusion.

The complete process of the prototyping of Verti's website was done in co-creation workshops.

When people co-create they become comitted to what the've helped create. They want to watch it come into existence

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P roviders of textiles to hotels and hospitals navigate in a tough, rather conservative market with a strong focus on prize and reliability. It’s a B2B-market, and

the buyers are savvy and competent. Breeze is a Norwegian supplier to this market dedicated to innovation and with a clear intention of standing out from the crowd. By having both an explicitly green profile, for instance offering towels made out of bamboo as a more sustainable alternative to cotton, and by trying to rethink the entire process bringing clean towels, sheets and more to the clients. The people at Breeze have seen that there is room for improvement. “Basically the intention has been to try to create an automatic textile supply system for hospitals, for two reasons: One is the hygienic consequences of a lack of routines when it comes to changing textiles. The other is that space at hospitals is a very valuable resource and that if a more efficient supply system existed there would be less need for storage space,” explains Kaja Misvær, Partner and Service Innovation Manager at Designit Oslo. It had to be a system with a certain intelligence and it had to genuinely save time and resources for the hospital staff. In addition the project included designing closets that were easily accessible and made it easy for staff to putting the textiles in their right places.

intelligent closets For service design projects to be successful, you have to have a profound understanding of the client’s value chains. Both in order to identify pain points and to figure out what changes will have a significant impact, financial and otherwise, for the client. But it is equally important to understand the interests of other stakeholders. “We interviewed not only hospital staff but also patients, their family and relatives to acquire an understanding of what elements of the service that was most important to them. There are many dimensions, some of them emotional or psychological, to take into consideration when designing such a service,” says Kaja Misvær. The closets were to be placed in the hallways of the hospitals in order to free up space, and they are intelligent in the sense that they inform Breeze when there is a need for a fresh supply of clean sheets or towels. Issues such as safety from fire, how to transport the textiles to and from the closet and where to place damaged textiles etc., were also taken into consideration. “For the textile suppliers it is essential never to fail. It’s been quite fascinating to aid an industry with such a small margin for error in constructing an entirely new infrastructure capable of yielding superior results,” says Kaja Misvær.

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A radically different idea in a conservative industryThere are better ways to deliver textiles to hotels and hospitals. Here's how to find them.

The intelligent system for supplyig textiles to hospitals solves problems with hygiene and saves space for other purposes

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H 2i is Designit’s own school – or perhaps rather training centre – for postgraduate students. Focused on Human Centered Innovation, H2i also functions

as a research space for companies interested in developing projects within the field. There are never more than 18 students at a time and the courses are very intensive with students taking classes in the morning and working on their projects in the afternoon. Everything the students work on is eventually applied to the real world. Because, as a foundation for a lot of the thinking behind H2i, innovation can only exist when applied. “A big part of the reason why H2i came into existence in the first place is simply that we couldn’t find a framework or an education, a place to learn those skills, which are very much needed today,” says Marcela Machuca, Interaction Design Consultant at Designit Madrid, who teaches service design at H2i. The students are drilled in co-creation, design research,

analysis, visual thinking and many other disciplines for the duration of their stay and everything is taught in a context of real problems. “It only makes sense to teach these disciplines in practice,” says Marcela Machuca. why start from scratch? The methodologies, skills and tools taught at H2i are developed by the most prominent academics within their respective fields but they have also been tested by reality. That duality is emblematic of the school, which, because of this constant interaction between theory and reality is also valuable as a think-tank for the companies associated with H2i. The students must have some work experience beside their academic credentials in order to stand a chance of getting accepted. A new group of students are about to begin their time at H2i, and Marcela has great expectations. “It looks like a very diverse group with lots of interesting backgrounds. We have physicians, artists and mathematicians coming to learn about Human Centered Innovation. Our approach is more centered in the how – as in how to do this – than in the what and in that sense we are quite different from the few other education initiatives out there. That’s also part of the reason why we had to start from scratch, when we decided to establish the school. It’s challenging but it’s a great teaching experience,” says Marcela Machuca.

A school for APPLIED THInKInGAt H2i, Designit’s own school for human centered innovation, up to 18 students at a time work hard to un-derstand not the what but the how and why to apply theoretical insights to the problems of the real world.

Designit at work

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Picks of the seasonThere is more to Designit than service design. Here are some recent examples of other work we've done with clients. They're all projects, which we are proud to have been part of and they are all, in different ways, examples of what we talk about when we talk about business as unusual.

A proper product rideDesignit is designing a new ride-on lawnmower for the Stiga brand after winning a design competition held by The Global Garden Products Group. The GGP Group is the manufacturer of one of the largest range of lawnmowers and garden machinery in Europe. Stiga, their flagship brand, is well known for the quality and reliability of its products – giving Designit a nice challenge to live up to. .

putting a global diabetes congress in your palmFrom 12-16 September, one of the world’s largest diabetes congresses hosted by The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), took place in Portugal. More than 18,000 delegates turned up. Novo Nordisk, a leading diabetes care company, hosted numerous events and knew from experience that it’s difficult to keep track of all the things going on at the congress. The answer? A Novo Nordisk events app.

Through the app, the user was able to add events to their calendar, scan QR codes (to interact with Novo Nordisk’s booth), access scientific abstracts, add content to a list of favourites, and set up event notifications. It also allowed users to play a catching game at the Novo Nordisk booth by using the app as a game controller.

Page 23

service Design event at Designit copenhagenOctober 27th Designit will throw a service design event at our Copenhagen location. We have invited Verti, a key insurance player on the Spanish market along with colleagues from Spain, Norway and Germany to share international experiences with service innovation. Verti is a new direct sales company specialising in the motor and home segments, which operates solely via the internet and telephone.

Verti is a spin-off created by Mapfre, a major European insurance company in Spain and Latin America with a keen focus on innovation to transform the way insurance companies do business. The audience will be representatives from a long list of varied companies who have one thing in common: they are interested in how to use services as a weapon in the competition battle, how to offer more value yet save costs, how to rethink their offerings and how to survive globalised competition and pressure from the ongoing credit crunch. See the full programme on the news section of designit.com

new website for radiometerRadiometer is a global provider of solutions for acute care testing. The company’s corporate website reaches approximately 2,200 employees worldwide and countless consumers and healthcare professionals. Thus, it is vital that the site’s wealth of information is presented in a user-friendly way, targeting these diverse audiences.

Designit designed and implemented the site and held workshops with Radiometer developing a messaging hierarchy based on segments and product categories. The company’s overall communication concept was also evaluated. In accordance with the findings, the new website aims at repositioning Radiometer as focused on delivering solutions rather than products.

Making quick check scanning simple Carrefour is the world’s second-largest retailer with over 15,000 stores. The company wanted to ensure the introduction of quick check scanning to their flagship stores in Spain as smoothly as possible and wanted to make sure that their customers would welcome and understand the service with the minimum of effort.

In order to complete this objective a methodology based on ethnographic techniques were designed and successfully implemented.

Designit at work

Page 24

Picks of the seasonThere is more to Designit than service design. Here are some recent examples of other work we've done with clients. They're all projects, which we are proud to have been part of and they are all, in different ways, examples of what we talk about when we talk about business as unusual.

A proper product rideDesignit is designing a new ride-on lawnmower for the Stiga brand after winning a design competition held by The Global Garden Products Group. The GGP Group is the manufacturer of one of the largest range of lawnmowers and garden machinery in Europe. Stiga, their flagship brand, is well known for the quality and reliability of its products – giving Designit a nice challenge to live up to. .

putting a global diabetes congress in your palmFrom 12-16 September, one of the world’s largest diabetes congresses hosted by The European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), took place in Portugal. More than 18,000 delegates turned up. Novo Nordisk, a leading diabetes care company, hosted numerous events and knew from experience that it’s difficult to keep track of all the things going on at the congress. The answer? A Novo Nordisk events app.

Through the app, the user was able to add events to their calendar, scan QR codes (to interact with Novo Nordisk’s booth), access scientific abstracts, add content to a list of favourites, and set up event notifications. It also allowed users to play a catching game at the Novo Nordisk booth by using the app as a game controller.

Page 25

service Design event at Designit copenhagenOctober 27th Designit will throw a service design event at our Copenhagen location. We have invited Verti, a key insurance player on the Spanish market along with colleagues from Spain, Norway and Germany to share international experiences with service innovation. Verti is a new direct sales company specialising in the motor and home segments, which operates solely via the internet and telephone.

Verti is a spin-off created by Mapfre, a major European insurance company in Spain and Latin America with a keen focus on innovation to transform the way insurance companies do business. The audience will be representatives from a long list of varied companies who have one thing in common: they are interested in how to use services as a weapon in the competition battle, how to offer more value yet save costs, how to rethink their offerings and how to survive globalised competition and pressure from the ongoing credit crunch. See the full programme on the news section of designit.com

new website for radiometerRadiometer is a global provider of solutions for acute care testing. The company’s corporate website reaches approximately 2,200 employees worldwide and countless consumers and healthcare professionals. Thus, it is vital that the site’s wealth of information is presented in a user-friendly way, targeting these diverse audiences.

Designit designed and implemented the site and held workshops with Radiometer developing a messaging hierarchy based on segments and product categories. The company’s overall communication concept was also evaluated. In accordance with the findings, the new website aims at repositioning Radiometer as focused on delivering solutions rather than products.

Making quick check scanning simple Carrefour is the world’s second-largest retailer with over 15,000 stores. The company wanted to ensure the introduction of quick check scanning to their flagship stores in Spain as smoothly as possible and wanted to make sure that their customers would welcome and understand the service with the minimum of effort.

In order to complete this objective a methodology based on ethnographic techniques were designed and successfully implemented.

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References Designit is Europe's largest and most international

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