Tim Brown on design thinking

“It’s remarkable how often business strategy, the purpose of which is to direct action toward a desired outcome, leads to just the opposite: stasis and confusion. Strategy should bring clarity to an organization; it should be a signpost for showing people where you, as their leader, are taking them — and what they need to do to get there. But the tools executives traditionally use to communicate strategy — spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks — are woefully inadequate for the task. You have to be a supremely engaging storyteller if you rely only on words, and there aren’t enough of those people out there. What’s more, words are highly open to interpretation — words mean different things to different people, especially when they’re sitting in different parts of the organization. The result: In an effort to be relevant to a large, complicated company, strategy often gets mired in abstractions.” Tim Brown

You can download the presentation here

Making magic happen

I spent easter in Normandy where I had the most exhilarating gastronomic experience of my life. We found this tiny restaurant on top of a cliff, next to a lighthouse facing the Normandy beaches (which was quite difficult to find, but it gave a bit of an ‘adventure’ feel).

The owner, a lady whose dream was to convert her country house into a restaurant (which she obviously accomplished) was the perfect host: always smiling, making you feel completely at home.

The food was perfect. My only thought after finishing the desert was: “I’m in heaven…” The price was very reasonable: 38 euros for a 4 course meal.

The service was great, no long waits, really polite and nice waiters.

As a service designer, I would give this restaurant a perfect 10 out of 10 in terms of the experience I had (in every aspect). Yet, they didn’t have anything ’special’ going on, no fancy designer furniture, no Michelin stars kind-of-thing, no English speaking staff…

The point I want to make here is: there is a certain element of magic that make customers have a great experience. And yet, we don’t know exactly how to define it. My guess would be: to make magic happen you need to have great products, great services, but still, leave some room for a few ‘imperfections’. Just like anything we see in nature.

storytelling

Nice, cool, innovative way of telling a story. Check this out:

six authors, six stories, six weeks.

via plot

Health Vault - the facebook version for healthcare?

Microsoft launched a really cool service called Healthvault. It allows users to upload detailed information about their health and share it with friends, family and health professionals (hospitals and doctors).

” HealthVault isn’t just a Web site - it’s the hub of a network of Web sites, personal health devices and other services that you can use to help manage your health. HealthVault lets you store the information in one central place on the Web. You’re in control of what information you store and can decide who else can see, change, or help manage it. HealthVault never lets other Web sites or programs see or change the information in your HealthVault record without explicit permission from you or a record custodian invited to share your records.”

It also has an interface that allows you to upload information from a number of devices, such as blood pressure and heart rate monitors.

I can imagine that this might bring peace of mind for lots of people. Imagine how nice it would be to check how your granny (who lives far away) is doing. Just log on the website and check info such as glucose level and blood pressure. Should something get a bit out of control, the system triggers an text message to you. Well done Bill Gates.

Prototype thinking

I was watching a TV documentary yesterday about Frank Gehry, and what really struck me is his approach to prototyping as a creative process. Frank and his team use lots and lots of really low-fi, quick and dirt prototypes to translate their ideas into tangible shapes and formats. So far, nothing new.

The interesting fact is that Frank and his team always work with different types of prototypes simultaneously (models in different scales or different media) to remind them that those models are only representations of their ideas. In some way, this helps them keep their minds focused on the real building, avoiding going off on a tangent and designing something suitable for a model maker, but not for humans.

Service design also relies on a number of prototyping techniques: storyboarding, role-playing and acting, amongst others. But I guess that the message here is: the use of several types of prototypes simultaneously might help you get the bigger picture. A single prototype has limitations, and the use of different media and techniques might help you cast a more holistic view of the solution you might be looking for.

Service design metrics

Last week the CIID (Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design) hosted a Service Design Symposium. The presentations seem to have brought good discussions to the table. One of the topics that emerged during those discussions was the creation of tools and techniques to gauge the value (and more especifically, the monetary value) that service design can bring to companies.

Service design is still a young practice with lots of areas that remain unexplored. Service metrics, or methodologies to enable service designers to measure the added value of service design, is still something that needs further exploration.

CIID will be posting the materials presented during the symposium, so watch this space.

For more info on the conference, please visit the CIID website