Compassion

The public sector is investing heavily in Information Technology (IT) systems to increase efficiency. Unfortunately their IT systems continually face difficulties due existing  bureaucracies and politics within the public sector. The Actor Network Theory creates a research process to understand how networks are built, assembled and maintained. It describes the interplay of socio-technical dynamics that influence the service system.

Technology and the Public Sector

There is a lack of research and understanding on the value of technological implementations for innovation, especially research on their success. Technology alters the relational dynamics of power, risk, responsibility, and accountability. Within the public sector the procedural quality within the bureaucracies makes it difficult to implement technology seamlessly. There is an inability for administrative and political persons to collaborate, thus losing users in the system. The success of IT networks as effective and efficient systems comes from organizations working towards a communal goal and ability to share information. ANT attempts to visualize the interests, actants, procedures and values of public sector organizations.

ANT lies in between, technology and humanity. It follows the decisions we make regarding technological implementation and their agency within the system. There are two schools of thought on information technology and social factors known as technological determinism and constructivism. Technological determinism means that technology drives human change. Services are thus co-enacted, meaning procedures are inscribed and technology has agency over users. Constructivism says that we create and control technology; thus services are co-created with equal agency.

Project Grow’s next step in redesigning the experience at the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, the Co-creation 3 was based on the development of solid concepts that were aligned with the stakeholder needs and objectives as well as the opportunity to test each concept through a mid-high fidelity video.  Upon previous research as developed further in the Co-creation 1 within the discovering process, and in the Co-creation 2 within the brainstorming of new ideas and establishing framed problems, the Co-creation 3 outlined a good mental picture of the future service concepts.

On May 6th we were gladly met with Carl Miller and 3 of his associates to present and discuss the concepts. The session started with a quick game of "Cards Against Humanity". It involved a group of players picking out the most abstract and humorous responses to the topic question. Working as an icebreaker, the game match up its expectations being an energetic game to all the participants.

After that the team presented eight different concepts based on three primary categories such as, Wayfinding, Interactive Tours and Community Involvement. For each concept Carl Miller and his team together with the class had a open space to further discuss about each concept and provide feedback. In fact, as a service has its value on the co-produced process we wanted to ensure the consistency of each concept as well its visualization through the videos. Next to that, we gave  a hand out concepts description for all the participants in order to facilitate the development of the decision matrix. Time to rate all the concepts!  Based on categories on a scale of 1 - 10 (Viability, feasibility, acceptability and others) the class as a whole helped us to rate the best concepts, and thus complement them. We concluded our Co-creation 3 by summarizing the final results and selecting the best concepts according with the primary criteria.

Next Step: In-class exercises for Project 5: Deliver, Brief and Planning

“Project Grow” goal is to redesign the Ralph Gilbert Mark Civil Rights Museum experience and bring it back into the 21st century. Two weeks ago we had our first Co-creation session where we met Carl Miller and his associate Edward with whom we had the opportunity to discuss the current situation of the museum, analyze what was and wasn’t working and establish some key points that needed to be addressed. After affinatizing and analyzing all the information through different service design tools (fishbone diagram, bi-polar opposites, archetypes, bubble diagrams, among others) the class came up with multiple insights and framed problems.

Last week during our second Co-creation session we met with Carl again to further discuss the insights found and to brainstorm new ideas together. The session started with a “story” game where the goal was to collectively create a story based on words that were selected from a bowl randomly. This game allowed the class to break the ice and raise the energy in the room. After that, the team presented to Carl some of the research and methodology used to establish what we thought were the most relevant problems the museum was facing. After agreeing with us, Carl and the rest of the class proceed to start the brainstorming session.

Lauren Bush Lauren, CEO and creative director of FEED projects, came to SCAD Style this week to join in conversation with Anne Slowey, fashion news editor at ELLE Maagazine about cultivating a stylish, philanthropic business. Named one of Fortune Magazines “30 under 30″, Lauren cultivated her business with the focused goal of raising awareness of global nutrition through her passion in fashion and accessory design. Through her successful business she has organized the delivery of over 88 million meals through the UN World Hunger Food Program and provided 3.6 million children around the world with Vitamin A supplements. Lauren has won several awards for Social Entrepreneurship, and has become a well-known name in both fashion and in advocating for those who suffer from hunger and poverty around the world.

Lauren continued on to explain how much more extreme the issue of world hunger is compared to how most Americans perceive it, stating that 805 million people world-wide are going hungry, while 49 million people in the United States are food insecure and rely on food stamps and government aid to eat every day. Through out her travels understanding the volunteer process and how much it really costs to give a meal (often including dietary supplements), she spent a fair amount of time contemplating how she could use her current status as a young graduate interested in design to help the world she had seen. Realizing how little it could cost to feed a child abroad (about 25 cents in US Dollars), she decided to start her own business where the ultimate goal would be to donate profits to feed children around the world.

This sort of productive problem solving is what lies at the very core of service design-- evaluating a situation and reorganizing it to create the best possible outcome for every party involved. Lauren has created a business, cultivated a stylish brand that people can desire and purchase with a purpose to brighten the lives of malnourished children all around the world.

Take a moment to imagine the future and the technology of the future. Can you imagine your morning alarm telling the coffee machine to start a cup of coffee while simultaneously starting your shower? Or maybe your car drives itself to the office that morning? One key element to these visions of the future is connectivity. All devices and products must communicate with another for this vision to work. It is evident in the products being designed today, like Philips Hue and WeMo power outlets, that our society is preparing for a new era of connectivity.  Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a key infrastructural change that is enabling this revolution.

What is IPv6?

Internet Protocol (IP) refers to the methods in which computers communicate to the Internet. In basic terms, it is a language that allows computers to send data across the Internet. Each computer is given an IP address, similar to houses and their individual street addresses. IPv6 specifically refers to Internet Protocol Version 6. Traditionally computers used IPv4, which are identified with 32-bit numbers.  IPv4 has over 4.3 billion IP addresses but with the increased number of personal devices being connected to the Internet, IP addresses are quickly being exhausted. IPv4 was intended for experimental and government use (Internet Society) and not for way the world uses the Internet today. As of 2010, 95% of IPv4 addresses were sold.

The solution is IPv6, which operates using 128-bit numbers. This means over 340 undecillion addresses are available (that’s 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 IP addresses). It is designed for the growth of products that connect to the Internet.

How does this affect the average user?

In 2012, The Internet Society held the ‘World IPv6 Launch’. Larger Internet providers and online companies (i.e. Google, Yahoo) launched IPv6 sites. Even though that was over three years ago, the average Internet user probably has not realized. IPv4 and IPv6 are currently running simultaneously. It is not simple to switch to IPv6, companies must purchase new IP addresses, hardware, software, networking equipment and testing. Eventually though, all devices will run on IPv6 in order to maintain high speeds and connectivity (CNet). The exhaustion of IPv4 addresses made the switch inevitable.

IPv6 and Services

The ultimate reasoning behind the creation of IPv6 is the ability to connect more devices in the future. We no longer have IPv4 addresses to assign. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next generation of connectivity, allowing physical devices and the digital world to seamlessly connect. Each will have its own IP address. Many products will be transformed with services (Bosch).  Traditionally, products competed by being the best quality or the best price, but that will change with the IoT. Consumers now want products that are the best for specific goals in specific contexts. According to The World Economic Forum’s report on the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT):

“Businesses compete on their ability to deliver quantifiable results that matter to their customers in a specific place and time…companies will be able to take advantage of growing data streams to apply powerful analytics for insights that can enhance existing services, enrich customer experiences and create alternative revenue streams.”

Within the next decade, we can expect to see the number of devices connected to the Internet rise from 12.5 billion (2010) to 50 billion devices (Cisco). IPv6 is vital to enabling this growth and will transform the way we see the Internet.

As new tech products enter the market every year, we can thank IPv6 for enabling the innovation at your fingertips, like Philips Hue and FDA-approved BodyGuardian. Wilson Gibson put it best, “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

Sources: Cisco: Internet of Things Infographic The World Economic Forum The Internet Society Cnet Accenture Bosch Software Innovations Re/Code

The course project for SERV311 (Architecture, Ecologies, and Touchpoints) this Spring 2015 is to work with the Ralph Gilbert Mark Civil Rights Museum to redesign their entire museum experience and bring the museum back into the 21st century. We have named this project GROW for several reasons... on top of being a kick-butt acronym  (Gathering Insights, Revitalizing, Opportunities, and Working Together) the word grow also ties the subject back to the subject of the Civil Right movement in general. Our main goals working with the museum is to update the current information to transform and optimize the experience of coming together to educate multiple generations of the story and the difficult work accomplished behind and within the Civil Rights movement when it began and how it’s message continues to grow and blossom in society today. 

The goal of CoCreation Session 1 was to meet with and get to know several members of the Board from the museum to then enter the Discover phase of the Double Diamond Design Process. In this particular phase, the objective is to gather as much information as possible to later establish deeper insights as to what problems exist in the service being provided and how, as service designers, we can resolve and improve them. 

Carl Miller and his associate, Edward, came to Gulfstream to co-create with us, and (not to toot our own horn) it went rather swimmingly! Together, we got to know each other playing a few games, and spent a long while brainstorming and discussing the inner architecture of the museum with a stakeholder map and potential touch points to work with after establishing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats with a group SWAT analysis. 

Service Design Pitch

Final project for SERV711. Create a video pitching service design to a traditional design firm not currently offering service design as a part of the their client services.

Project timeline: 7 days spanning weeks 9 and 10

Approach: Deliver a succinct presentation introducing service design, sharing a process and tools, touching on measurements, and a call to action.  The pitch should serve as a quick, high-level overview of an entire process as a foundation for further discussion.

What I learned: 

How to use after effects, sort of.

Introduction to measurement tools (KPIs, RATER, and Triple Bottom Line)

In the article, Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing by Stephen Vargo and Robert Lusch published in 2004 we are given a view of how goods are valued during the early 19th century. Up until the late 19th century the dominant school of thought among economist is that value derives from the customers’ use of an object. This is illustrated well in a quote by Bardon, “nothing has a price among men except pleasure, and only satisfactions are purchased.”

Around that time another economist, Adam Smith, publishes a work that shifts the dominant view of value from use to value in exchange. This view establishes a mode of thought focused on maximizing exchange shifting the view of customers to consumers. This shift in economic ideology is referred to as goods dominant logic, and is prevalent even today. A way to model the embedded value and exchange ideology is shown below.

This goods centered view establishes the following as its base concerns:

The purpose of economic activity is to make and distribute thing that can be sold.

To be sold, these things must be embedded with utility and value during the production and distribution process and must offer to the consumer superior value in relation to competitors’ offering.

The firm should set all decision variables at a level that enables it to maximize the profit from the sale of output

For both maximum production control and efficiency, the good should be standardized and produced away from the market.

The good can then be inventoried until it is demanded and then delivered to the consumer at a profit.

Looking at this list we can immediately recognize the innumerable poor experiences a customer could have as result of this philosophy. This model simply produces a commodities race.

In contrast to the goods centered view is the services centered view which establishes the following as its base:

Identify and develop core competences, the fundamental knowledge and skills of an economic entity that represent potential competitive advantage.

Identify other entities (potential customers) that could benefit from these competences.

Cultivate relationships that involve the customers in developing customized, competitively compelling value propositions to meet specific needs.

Gauge marketplace feedback by analyzing financial performance from exchange to learn how to improve the firm’s offering to customers and improve firm performance.

What we see here is the emergence of service practices. As these foundational views become ingrained in the processes and psyche of companies the value of exchange dramatically shifts toward relationships and value in use again. Companies recognize they are services within service that create their product and that product itself provides a service. This happens as a result of specialization throughout the production process.

What is emerging is a service dominant logic with focus on relationships internal and external and value placed across that entire spectrum. From this perspective stems 8 foundational premises:

The Application of Specialized Skills and Knowledge Is the Fundamental Unit of Exchange

Indirect Exchange Masks the Fundamental Unit of Exchange

Goods are Distribution Mechanisms for Service provision

Knowledge Is the Fundamental Source of Competitive Advantage

All Economies are Service Economies

The Customer is Always a Co Producer

The Enterprise can only make value propositions

A Service Centered View is Customer Oriented and Relational

Today the services dominant logic enables sustainable and scalable business practice and is the source of competitive advantage. This produces a greater need for the service perspective, tools and methodologies that service designer employ. To illustrate this the author provides the below model to show the many intricate relationships and multiple points where value is created.

This is the compilation of the reading I did for one of the service design class (711, Winter 2015). The books were 'Service design from Insight to Implementation’ and ‘This is Service Design thinking’.The former talks about service design in detail and the latter give a summary of the whole process in the form of five principles.

Andy Polaine talks about the saturation level we have reached with respect to wealth and material. How our focus has shifted to maintaining good health, designing sustainable systems and reducing energy consumption, which is challenging.

When we were focusing on our needs, we were busy building more and more products. Our way of perceiving the design, process, implementation was all product-centric. We are now curious about services and feels the need to shift our focus. But have we thought of re-learning everything?

A Service is entirely different from products. Product works in the form of silos, but services are designed overall, it's about how everything works together.

"Overall in most of the product services, each bit of the service is well designed, but the service itself hasn’t been designed. The problem is that customers don’t just care about individual touchpoints. They experience services in totality and base their judgment on how well everything works together to provide them with value. The division of the silos makes sense to the business units, but makes no sense to the customer, who sees the entire offering as one experience." From 'Service design from Insight to Implementation’ by Andy Polaine.

The service experience is made up of the customer’s interactions with many touchpoints, and service quality can be defined by how well the touchpoints work together for the customer. From 'Service design from Insight to Implementations’ by Andy Polaine.

Services are co-produced by people

Service around us can be of different types. In every service, every participant plays a critical role in producing the service. Even the consumer. If a designer is not considering the consumer One example quoted in the book 'Service design from Insight to Implementation’ by Andy Polaine, is car-sharing club. "In this service people are co-producing the service. To persuade people to switch to this new way of using a car, the customer experience had to be better than buying and owning a car."

A New Technological Landscape

The Network Today, technology is a critical component of every business, right from small enterprises like brick-and-mortar stores to big corporate giants like banks and airlines. Technology has given us new ways of delivering a service to the customer. Modern service delivery is dependent on digital platforms.

The technology to merge & store vast amounts of related consumer data stored in different domains, and present it to a user through easily accessible web/mobile portals has a huge impact on daily lives of customers. However, merging and correlating such data has a fair amount of complexity involved in it. This is one of the key factors influencing the quality of service offered.

The service economy

"In developed nations, service sector constitutes around 75% of the economy with maximum number of new jobs. We can clearly see that good service design is increasingly becoming a key differentiator in the market. Physical elements and technology can easily be copied whereas copying service experience is difficult since it is more rooted from company's culture.” quoted in the book 'Service design from Insight to Implementation’ by Andy Polaine.

In the service economy, services have to evolve continuously to retain the competitive edge in the market. Opportunities where a business model can be changed from a product model to a service model, prove to be a worthy investment of time and money. Example is a car sharing services, cloud computing services where the business model is changing from selling car/servers as a product to offering access to ride sharing/managed computing power.

Core service value

One way to understand services better—and what differentiates them from products—is to examine them and their utility from customer's point of view. Core service offerings can be grouped into three primary spheres: care, response, and access.

Services That Care: This group consists of services who offload the work of 'caring' for people or things from its customers. Healthcare is the most obvious example. "A famous example of a care service is the Rolls Royce aviation engine service that monitors aircraft engines in flight and has spare parts ready to be fitted as needed when a plane lands, anywhere in the world,” quoted in the book 'Service design from Insight to Implementation’ by Andy Polaine. Services That Provide Access: Many services enable people to use/interact with something, or a part of something, temporarily. An example would be airline ticket aggregators, they provide access for you to compare and book airline ticket providing you access to a seat on the plane. Services That Provide a Response from People or Things: These services are usually a mix of people and things that are able to assist us when we are in need: a customer care executive helping a customer on phone call or a store assistant finding a customer a pair of jeans with the right fit. These are fundamentally different from products since these are not pre-programmed or pre-designed but are created at the moment in reaction to a request.

These categories aren't hard boundaries such that one service fits only in one category, but more that the service has different core values at different times.

Making the invisible visible

Most people recognize services when they see and experience one, but it is still useful to describe and analyze them in this way precisely because services are present everywhere.

This omnipresence leads to user and providers taking them for granted and not realizing their true importance. Thus, they become almost invisible elements of life. Utility services such as water and electricity are excellent examples of these kinds of services.

Service designers frequently need to make the invisible & vital role that these services are playing in the lives of their customers visible to the customers by showing them what has gone on behind the scenes. Same applies to the staff by showing them what is happening in the lives of customers and how their service is making it easier. Service designers also need to highlight to the customer and the staff, the resource usage that is abstracted behind the service. Many of these aspects become the important part of the business and marketing case for the service (the service proposition).

The performance of a service

Performance as experience

In this, we evaluate the style or way in which the service was delivered to us. This is more about the esthetic/face value of the service delivery. Something which we experience at the very first level. This service is related to front-stage.

Performance as value:

This measures the actual performance of the service. This consist of both front stage and backstage performance of the service. This also includes the tangible and intangible aspect of the service as well.

Five principles of service design thinking

The book 'This is service design thinking' was a short read but after reading 'Service design from Insight to Implementation.’ I feel the below point summarizes it well.

It is User-entered: Services should be experienced and evaluated from the perspective of the customer.

It is Co-creative: The input of all stakeholder should be included and considered in the process of service design.

It is Sequencing: The service should be visualized/imagined as a sequence of interrelated actions relating to the user which together constitute the complete service.

It is evidencing: Intangible services should be visualized in terms of physical artifacts.

How to successfully manage people for service advantage

Why service employees are the mostimportant factor for both customers and service providers

Frontline employees are a key input for delivering serviceexcellence and competitive advantage. Customers’ encounter with service staff is probably the most important aspect of a service. While from the firm’s perspective, the service levels and the way service is delivered by the frontline personnel is a key for variation and competitive advantage. Frontline employees:

• Is a core part of the service. Often, the service employees is the most visible element of the service, delivers the service, and significantly determines service quality.

• Represents the service firm and brand. Frontline employees are the service firm with a brand. From a customer’s perspective, they are the firm.

• Affects sales and productivity. Service employees are of great importance for generating sales and determining frontline operations productivity.

Frontline work is difficult and stressful because they often have conflicting roles

• Organization/Client Conflict. Frontline employees need to both delight customers, which takes time, and maintain/improve productivity that requires to be efficient.

• Person/Role Conflict. Service employees could face conflicts between what their roles requires and their own personalities.

• Inter-client Conflict. There are always conflicts between customers and it, in most cases, is the service employees have to be the judge. And it is almost impossible to satisfy both sides.

How to get the right human resources management

• Hire the right people. The right people are your most important asset.

• Be the preferred Employer. A firm has to first gain the most talented people. Therefore a firm needs to provide competitive offers and packages in order to win the best candidates.

• Select the right people. Allocate personnel to positions that most suite them.

• Use tools to identify the best candidates.

 -Multiple structured interviews.

 -Observe behaviors.

 -Personality tests.

 -Realistic preview of the job.

• Train service personnel actively.

 -The organizational culture, purpose and strategy.

 -Interpersonal and Technical skills.

 -Product/Service Knowledge.

• Empower the front line. It allows seamless and efficient service recovery from a failure.

• Build high-performance service-delivery team.

Service leader ship and culture

Charismatic/transformational leadership could inspire employees’ creativity and boost their energy during work.

CUSTOMER COMPLAINING BEHAVIOR

When a customer is not satisfied about the service he/she received, he/she might complain about it in a few ways.

Customer Response Options to Service Failures

• Public action (including complaining to the firm or to a third party, such as a customer advocacy group, customer affairs or regulatory agency, or even civil or criminal courts).

• Private action (including abandoning the supplier).

• No action.

Why Do Customers Complain?

• Obtain restitution or compensation

• Vent their anger.

• Help to improve the service.

• For altruistic reasons.

CUSTOMER RESPONSES TO EFFECTIVE SERVICE RECOVERY

Service recovery means the efforts by a firm to fix a problem occurred with a service failure and regain a customer’s goodwill. It is of great importance of gaining/regaining customer satisfaction.

PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE SERVICE RECOVERY SYSTEMS

When complaints are solved satisfactorily, the customers tend to remain loyal. However, a firm should always try to avoid a service failure at the first place.

Make It Easy for Customers to Give Feedback

Many customers are reluctant to give feedback even when they don’t feel happy or satisfied with the service for a variety of reasons like the inconvenience of feedback system, doubtfulness about the system itself. So it is very important to create efficient feedback channels for customers.

Enable Effective Service Recovery

• Be Proactive. The ideal case would be recovering service even before a customer complains it.

• Be Planned. Plans for recovering service should be developed in advance, especially the ones that happen again and again. So frontline staff know how to deal with it when it happen.

• Skills must be taught. Effective training would prepare frontline employees to face unexpected cases and properly resolve the problems.

• Requires empowered employees. Empowered employees are able to recover a service failure efficiently and seamlessly since there is no need to ask for other authorities for permission.