Service Blueprint

A service blueprint was created as part of the proposal document. It visualises the various user actions as they interact with the service via touch points. The frontstage and backstage staff actions are shown as well as the supporting processes that are required to make the service run smoothly. As well as being a live document that has developed throughout the project, the blueprint can be used by the service provider when implementing the new service. 

Service Prototype

A service prototype was used to visualise the main touch points in the proposed service and the customers journey through it. The visual service prototype makes the service proposition more tangible and allows it to be communicated to the stakeholders. 

New Website Design

I mocked up a website/app to visualise the proposed website for the improved restaurant service. The mock-up highlights some of the new service features that are delivered through the website and app.

The homepage of the website shows the main features. 

Improved nutritional information including calories, allergy information and more. 

'My' account page for topping up account for fast meal payment.

Feedback page to encourage feedback by rewarding customers with extra reward points  which can be redeemed to purchase food or drinks from the restaurant. 

Improved Service Proposal

After analysing the ideas generated during the stakeholder workshop and developing the feasible ideas, the following service features are proposed for the improved restaurant service:

The Concept of Value in Design Practice

Here are my thoughts on the paper The Concept of Value in Design Practice - An Interview Study.

The article is concerned with value in design practice and how designers express value in use. From the authors findings from interviews with 8 designers, insights and empathy are recurring themes so I will discuss these points. 

The designers seem to agree that being able to see things from the users perspective and having strong empathic skills are very important in the design process and indeed in identifying and generating insights. Insights, as defined by the author, include future trends, technology and customer findings. This is the value that the designers say they contribute to a project.

I agree with these comments. However, not only are empathic skills required to gain user insights but so are strong ethnography skills. There are plenty of tools and techniques to help designers empathise with users which can help discover insights through seeing a problem through the eyes of the user. But I think that user interviews and observations are where the real insights are found. I'm sure the designers have these skills but I'm surprised that none of them mentioned ethnography as a tool for building empathy and obtaining insights and therefore adding value to design practice.

Throughout my service design project I interviewed a wide range of stakeholders including numerous users, the restaurant general manager and a manager of the work community campus where the restaurant is situated. I was able to use the techniques which I learnt from service design workshops and seminars, and from other courses taught on the Product Design Engineering MSc. Having recently started to develop design ethnography skills I can appreciate how important they are in getting the most out of an interview and obtaining genuine insights rather than getting the ones that you want through leading the interviewee (this can be unintentional), or not having the skill to get to the insights. My project would have looked very different had I not interviewed the key stakeholders effectively!

A final point I'd like to make is that the designers also talked about their ethical obligations as designers - most of them are industrial designers. I think ethical service design is difficult to define and is much less tangible than ethical industrial design. This is mentioned in the paper and I think this is an area that requires further research to be better understood. 

Stakeholder Workshop/Focus Group

I organised a stakeholder workshop with customers to facilitate co-creation of new service features and solutions to friction points in the existing service.

The friction points taken from the user journey were summarised on Issue Cards and given an emotive user experience rating (from 1-10) as illustrated below.

I discussed the Issue Cards with the stakeholders who then put the Issue Cards onto a Priority Grid. The vertical axis represented priority (from low to high) and the horizontal axis represented the ease of issue resolution (from easy to difficult). 

Once all of the Issue Cards had been placed onto the Priority Grid, an exhaustive list of solutions was created for each of the friction points. After the workshop I performed further research to assess the feasibility of the solutions and developed the most promising ones.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis was performed on the WTMS restaurant. The personas were used, with service and user research, to create empathy with the user whilst generating ideas and completing the analysis.   

I also plan to run a stakeholder workshop to get customers involved in generating ideas and co-creating the service. 

User Journey

A user journey was created from the output of 22 completed questionnaires and 3 user interviews. 

The user journey helped me to identify the positive customer experiences and friction points along with their corresponding touch points. The customers emotive experience was mapped out and this helped to visualise the customers experience over time. Aspects of the service that had not been considered such as its social presence became apparent as weak links in the service. 

Summary of the Service Friction Points

Queues & waiting times during peak times prevent some customers using the service 

Problems with the menu

- There are too many options which confuses customers

- Mixed menu with meat and vegetarian dishes makes it difficult to order

- The online menu only shows daily specials

Potential customers are not aware of what the restaurant has to offer. The restaurant website and general internet presence are not promoting the restaurant and its positive features such as use of local produce and sustainable practices - both are important to the professional customers but many are not aware of this.

The walk to the restaurant is seen as a negative experience for some as it adds to the waiting/queue times.

Although feedback can be left on the Facebook page it is not encouraged/rewarded enough.

Storytelling as a Communication Tool

Some thought on the paper Spicing up public journeys – storytelling as a design strategy

As the title suggests, this paper is about the use of storytelling in service design and, more specifically, designing urban public experiences. 2 uses for storytelling are described; gathering and creating stories, and for creating concept ideas. 

An example explains how the Ritz hotel chain use storytelling to communicate the brand philosophy and culture to all of their hotels through an engaging story. The stories are not specific to different hotels, rather they convey the brand identity and allow interpretation by the individual hotels based on their own environment and context. The stories were communicated by photograph workbooks. This is an example of creating a story to visually demonstrate to internal staff what the organisation is about and the image and culture which it wants the user to experience. The staff are the vehicle for delivering the service and hence play an important role in the users service experience.

The author explains 3 reasons to use storytelling in design:

1. Collecting stories from the user to gather information and to inspire.
2. Using story telling methods such as story boarding to prototype often intangible services.
3. Designing touch-points to create user experiences.

Visualising plays a big part in service design. This is probably because services can be intangible and often there is no physical product or artifact included in the service. So capturing user experiences by illustrating them makes the service feel tangible and evokes emotion which is why storytelling is a great way to prototype services and design user experiences. 

An Opportunity at Last!

I discovered through interviewing the general manager for WTMS and a Skypark manager that the WTMS restaurant will be leaving the Skypark and going back to the main GSA campus in December 2013 when the GSA move into a new building. 

This presents a real opportunity to create a new or improved restaurant service for the Skypark, aimed at professionals rather than students (as WTMS is) and involving stakeholders in the design process. 

Skypark management are considering buying out the restaurant to keep it on sight. Whether the restaurant is bought out or a completely new service designed, the service will be aimed at professionals. 

Through analysing the existing WTMS service from the users (Skypark professionals) point of view the positive user experiences can be identified and retained in the new service and the negative user experiences, friction points, can be improved by co-creating new service features or solutions with the stakeholders.

Personas & Insights

Personas were created after the initial questionnaire to capture some of the main user needs and insights and for empathising with the service users throughout the design process.

The personas were used to identify potential opportunities based on the questionnaire results, and to show their possible responses to new services to make them feel more tangible. 

Research Questionnaire & Analysis

I think work community campuses, such as the Skypark in Glasgow, would be the ideal place for introducing a new co-created service.  They currently provide a host of services for resident employees including massage days, beauty days, site social evenings, car valet service and prescriptions deliveries to name a few.  

Skypark does seem to be missing one service though; a healthy, sustainable and convenient food service. And I also think that there is scope for additional entertainment services. 

I invited Skypark residents to complete a questionnaire to get an idea of what people currently do for lunch, gauge interest in a new healthy food service and to ask for their ideas on any new services that they would like to see in the future.

A sample of the online questionnaire

I asked Skypark residents:

What they currently do for lunch

Are they satisfied with available food service options

Would they use a healthy, sustainable and convenient food service

Are there any services that they would like to see at the Skypark

Analysis of Results

What they currently do for lunch

• Over 60% of people who completed the questionnaire either take packed lunch or heat food in their company kitchenette
• 20% use the Glasgow School of Arts temporary restaurant 'Where The Monkey Sleeps' which will be moving from the Skypark at the end of 2013

Are they satisfied with available food service options

• Two thirds of participants are satisfied with current food service options
• Unless bringing in healthy packed lunch, most other options are not healthy

Would they use a healthy, sustainable and convenient food service

• Almost 80% of participants would use a healthy food service at least once or twice a week
• 42% would use the service most days

Are there any services that they would like to see at the Skypark

• Food trucks like in the US and London
• Wrap bar/station with salads and fillings
• Sofas to relax on at lunch time and more activities,  "an excuse to leave my desk"
• A vending machine

Overall a good response to creating a new healthy food service for Skypark residents. I like the idea of giving people the opportunity to leave the desk - and office - during their lunch break. Getting away from the computer for 30 minutes and having a break from thinking about work must be a good thing!

Bill Moggridge Keynote on Service Design

Bill Moggridge (co-founder of IDEO) talking about a holistic approach to service design, service design as a narrative, and people and prototyping - definitely worth a watch.  

Visualising User Reseach

A review of the article Communicating through Visualisations: Service Designers on Visualising User Research

This paper investigates how and why service designers use visualisation techniques to communicate user research. It also attempts to categorise the techniques based on the intended recipient. As an example, for internal purposes post it notes and rough sketches can be used to visualise ideas and user research. In contrast when communicating with stakeholders, and specifically the client, the output is normally much more aesthetically pleasing and only relevant information is presented in a summarised form. To gather evidence for the paper, the author interviewed 14 service designers.

There is an interesting statement that claims visualisations have received little interest by the academic service design community. This is quite surprising because I would have thought that academics would create service design concepts and theory, and therefore the visualisation tools. From my experience in engineering and management, it is academics who create the concepts and theory behind the subjects and professionals in industry use and develop them.

I would at least expect academics and professionals to collaborate when developing theory, techniques or even the service design language. A divide between academic and professional service designers has been discussed in the paper Beyond the experience - In search of an operative paradigm for the industrialisation of services.

Making services tangible by visualising is cited as the main goal of the visualisation techniques. A similar point was also mentioned in the Spicing up User Journeys paper.

The author thought that the goals for visualisation can be further broken down into three main objectives:

1. Communication within the design team
2. Communication with ones memory
3. Communication with stakeholders outside of the design team

As I’m currently working on a service design project I completely agree with these objectives. I can particularly relate to numbers 2 and 3. I performed a lot of user research, interviews, questionnaires etc and visualising the information and insights has been important in actually remembering what I had done, who I had interviewed and the insights and conclusions gathered from the research. The visualisations such as stakeholder maps, user journeys and personas where really helpful when explaining my progress to colleagues and tutors.

Coming from a technical and non creative background it was also useful to learn about when and for what purpose the various visualisation techniques are used. All of the tools were new to me so reading this paper was very insightful. 

Competitor Research

Having trawled the internet looking for healthy food delivery services in Glasgow I have not found any direct competitors to the healthy and sustainable lunch delivery service that I am considering developing. 

There are a lot of companies around Glasgow that offer sit-in healthy foods and delivery of corporate buffets (often less healthy than the sit-in menu) usually with a minimum spend of around £30. My research to date suggests that there isn't anything set up for individuals or small groups of people wanting to order healthy food to the office. 

If there are comparative services I still think there would be plenty of space for the positioning a new healthy food service. 

The below image is the menu for Martha's in Glasgow which is a good example of fresh healthy ingredients with at least 1 portion of fruit and veg per meal. The menu has been put together by a nutritionist with the aim of avoiding the afternoon carb crash; crucial for a productive afternoon! 

I actually went to the restaurant and tried the red dragon pork. It was really tasty and filling yet I didn't have an afternoon 'slump'. Ideal.

Although there are food services with a similar philosophy to what I am proposing, I think a healthy food delivery only service would need to have much less divergence in its meals and snacks to be cost effective.

The Industrialisation of Services

Review of the conference paper - Beyond the experience. In search of an operative paradigm for the industrialisation of services.

The article aims to highlight the need for a universal framework for service designers and proposes a ‘toolbox’ to help bridge the gap between conflicting areas in the development of service design.

The first area is the need to develop methodological tools for analysing, designing and representing services – I see this as a theoretical aspect, or academic. And the second, focusing on real projects where service design thinking is used in the creation/development of the service  – so very much practical or occurring in industry.

User experience, co-creation and front and backstage aspects of services are discussed. It is stated that in practice the backstage of a service is often overlooked. I think it is too easy to focus on the frontstage activities when designing for user experience since front stage activities are where the user interacts with the service. I think this point is strengthened by the fact that many service designers do not have a proper design background and without a framework in place could find it difficult to use visualisation tools and looking at the service holistically.

Co-creation with the service stakeholders is hugely important in service design but, again, without a structured framework this could distract from the backstage elements of a service. If the backstage activities and supporting processes are not ‘designed’ in harmony with the frontstage interactions, the service probably won’t be delivered to its potential and could in fact be detrimental to the user experience. 

A final point discusses the need for designers to communicate with customers, and other stakeholders such as engineers, to make clear what their roles are. Representation or visual tools are a simple and engaging way of doing this. I have to disagree with the author that this is still a problem.  Having started to read around the subject it is apparent that there is a wide range if representational tools that are used across the service design industry and although each service design company and even individual designer may have their own take on the tools the end result is very much the same. The article is almost 4 years old so it is possible that developments have been made since the article was written. 

Thinking and Doing Ethnography in Service Design

The following discussion refers to the paper 'Thinking and Doing Ethnography in Service Design' by Segelstrom et al. 

Problem 

Working on a service design project to improve the quality of life for elderly people in a run down area of Sweden, the design team came across a problem. It was proving difficult to find participants for necessary ethnographic research and hence creating empathy. 

Solution
The designers contacted a social club for elderly people living in the area and managed to arrange to take part in walking quiz. The design team added a research question between every normal quiz question and accompanied the participants through the walk. 

They found that in addition to answering quantitative research questions on the quiz sheet, participants discussed the research topics in more detail which led to some important insights both during the walk and in follow up interviews. The follow up interviews might not have been possible without the success of the walking discussions.

Analysis

I think this is a good example of a creative solution to a problem that most designers will face at some point - having difficulty finding participants for ethnographic research. 

What is also interesting is that once the participants started to answer the questions they were happy to discuss the topics in a lot more detail. Their quality of life and feeling safe in their  neighborhood is obviously important to them and I think most people would engage with designers who are creating a service for them if the circumstances are right.

This is Service Design Thinking

I came across this video on YouTube, it is a trailer about a service design textbook called This is Service Design Thinking. Interestingly the analogy about the two coffee shops that I quoted in my first blog was mentioned. A nice 1 minute summary of what service design is about!    

Service Design Project

I will be using the service design methods and tools that will be presented in workshops and seminars throughout the project to improve an existing service or create a new one.  A key part of the project will be co-creating the service with stakeholders over (hopefully!) several workshops. The deliverables will include presenting my proposal verbally and in a written report.

In typical service design style I plastered my wall with post it notes to generate some ideas of which I selected several areas to research.  

The two areas that I have decided to focus my research on are:-

A healthy and sustainable lunch delivery service for people in Glasgow.

Introducing a new service for a work hub/work community campus.

Journal Review

Thoughts on the journal article Service Positioning through Structural Change.  

The first thing that caught my attention was the age of the article; it was published in 1987 before service design existed as a quasi discipline. The author talks about marketing, service positioning and process design rather than service design per se. The article is about market positioning and differentiating a service from its competitors by strategic selection of the service complexity and divergence. Complexity being a measure of the service process steps and sequence. Divergence is the amount of variation in the service steps and sequence. A high divergence service would be discreet while a service with low divergence would be standardised. So clearly adjusting the complexity and divergence of a service can have an enormous effect on market position and success.

The author also talks about the use of a service blueprint to visualise processes and develop positioning strategies to differentiate the service from competing services. Blueprints look at a service as a system and can help to make intangible processes or aspects of the system more tangible.  

The importance of involving the service user in the process design is discussed and several methods to facilitate designing a services complexity/divergence strategy.

The article was written before the emergence of service design as it is today. After reading the article that is evident due to the lack of actual design input in the process such as co-creation workshops, service mock-ups and prototypes, and it feels more like marketing and change management. However, the aim of the techniques discussed is the same reason that modern day companies use service design; to gain a competitive advantage through differentiation from the competition.

Customer Satisfaction: Misconception or Ignorance?

Each week I will be talking about interesting points I discover from the material that I am reading as part of my service design research. From the paper Service Design as an Emerging Field I found the following statement quite remarkable:

"...it seems that many companies have an amazing misconception regarding customer satisfaction: while 80% of all companies believe that their service is good, only 8% of the customers think so".

So how exactly are companies assessing customer satisfaction? Are they guessing or simply assuming customer satisfaction? If not, who are they talking to and what research are they doing? 

I'm somewhat circumspect of the figures in the paper. However, if they are accurate, it seems unlikely that companies with misconceived customer satisfaction levels are placing the customer at the centre of their services. Without doing so it will be difficult to improve their services and significantly increase customer satisfaction, as most customers would go else where for a better experience. I think service companies that do not embrace service design will lose any competitive advantage they have over companies that are integrating service design into their business. 

Having said the above, if the success of service design continues to grow and the field itself becomes more widespread then its hard to imagine businesses not adopting service design thinking. Then the disparity between perceived customer satisfaction and actual customer satisfaction will have reduced significantly.

What is Service Design?

So what exactly is service design? Change management, design consultancy, interactions design, operations management?? 

Here are a few quotes I came across whilst trying to find an answer to the same question...

"Service design is all about making the service you deliver useful, usable, efficient, effective and desirable"   -  UK Design Council

"When you have two coffee shops right next to each other, and each sells the exact same coffee at the exact same price, service design is what makes you walk into one and not the other"   -  31 Volts Service Design

Great. But if a service is not a product or even something you can keep, and therefore not really tangible, how do you go about designing one and how do you know if it is any good?  How do you make sure that your coffee shop is the one that people "walk into"?

Over the next 3 months I will be studying service design and working on a project simultaneously. Hopefully when my project is complete I will be more than able to answer these questions - no pressure then.