#user value

Any holistic user experience - especially when designing for 'transformation' - should create shared value. That means: Solutions for users do not only have to be aligned and negotiated with the economic realities of the service provider, but also with its attached partner ecosystem and society in general. The clever and resilient configuration of "value flows" in business ecosystems will therefore more and more become a prerequisite for the development and delivery of truly "new" and complex value propositions (e.g. service design for health care, environmental matters, etc.). A problem however is: Everyone talks about "shared value creation" (especially since Michael Porter made the concept famous). Yet only a few people so far have developed practical and/or theoretical approaches that help you tackle occurring trade-offs (e.g. "superior user value a.k.a. desirability" +/vs. "feasible technology" + "financial viability"  +/vs.  "responsible eco-footprint") when trying to either find the »sweet spot between all of them« - or better - finding creative resolutions that makes our conception of mutual exclusiveness obsolete . I personally believe that a good starting point is to develop a holistic and clear understanding of what actually "value" is, how the staging of user/actor experiences contribute to its perception and on what levels it can be experienced by the different actors (e.g. of a business ecosystem). Knowing this may also give first hints on how to master the delicate balance/resolution of fore-mentioned trade-offs for the creation of new offerings with service-market-fit AND benefits for society/environment. The slides are from a workshop presentation, I recently prepared for the World Usability Day 2012 in Berlin. I haven’t included all the (illustrative) examples yet, but the main key messages/concepts should become clear. I’m really looking forward to getting some feedback (critique, more examples, papers, links, etc.) on this! I'm especially interested on practical (but not as oversimplified as e.g. in advertising "creative briefs") value (proposition) frameworks, templates, checklists from your recent research/projects …

d.confestival d.note, Friday 21.09.2012, Potsdam, Germany

Product Service Systems (PSS) are nothing new – they basically exist as early as we can think and with a wide variety of offerings. However, up to now the focus of design has often been on the product with a mere attachment of service. Today this seems a bad idea, as in the sheer mass of available consuming options product attributes alone aren’t a guarantee for differentiation anymore.

How many times have you heard people and organisations talking about the superior value they or their business are supposed to create? And how often do you end up terrified by how trivial, unconvincing or insubstantial their claims a.k.a. value propositions are? And do you also have the feeling that the term value suffers a fuzziness that invites its abusive use? Well, this book finally brings some substantial structure to the »value mess« …