#xkovar

During this quarter, I have acquired the basic tools I need to start formulating Service Design pitches.  Using mapping processes like Service Blueprints, Encounter Maps, Desktop Walkthroughs, Service Packaging, and others, I have started to see how I can use graphic design in order to communicate ideas. I have learned how to begin to simplify a large amount of research, as I am usually mainly focused upon details and analysis. By simplifying the information, it make it easier for not only my audiences to understand, but for me to communicate my ideas to them. I have also begun to try to think of ways in which I can use Service Designs to make the world a more pleasant and less wasteful place. By collaborating and strategizing how to make not only customers, employees, and employers happier, but how to make their systems actually more efficient and productive while using the minimum amount of resources, saving not only money, but the Earth's depleting resources. It's easy to say that I think my search for a major has come to and end - I have finally found something that feels as though it is the perfect mix of the artistic and intellectual, with a little bit of compassion for humanity in there as well. I truly believe that Service Design will put me on the clear path of purpose and satisfaction I feel I have been searching for my whole life.

Another idea we had come up with is allowing employees more freedom with their dress, wearing/being able to try out the products they're selling, updating the product information and navigation paths to ease customer and employee stress of having redundant/seemingly obvious questions, putting only one product on display so there is less chance of theft/more time to interact with customers instead of supervising them, as well as having them use the one-floor-display system to interact with the customers by having the customer ask an employee to retrieve an object from the stock in the back. Making the employees job not only easier, but more enjoyable and psychologically rewarding will improve any service tenfold.

For our concepts, we decided to go with our personas that we have been studying so that we can optimize the experience for the users we are each most familiar with. I consequently was assigned with Joe the Old Timer, so I am focusing on maximizing the historical appeal of the Rail Road Museum in order to enhance nostalgia and connect these people to their past. Things like making the entrance of the museum into an actual train station or having the guides dress up in clothes from the time period that trains were most popular are a few way we could transform or optimize the experience for our older users.

For an exercise, we tried using a process known as lateral thinking. This is a divergent method of coming up with ideas that focuses on coming up with and affinitizing random ideas into concept. These concepts are then put through a decision matrix which uses specific criteria to decipher which concept is mathematically most likely to succeed. This is considerably useful when one is trying to think of a large number of ideas and how to combine them, as well as whether or not they would actually work if implemented. 

So, off I was, walking aimlessly around Broughton and City Market to find SOMETHING to satisfy this craving for peanutbuttery-goodness. But alas, I had to settle on Key Lime Cooler's from Byrd's. And I might add that they did not taste as good as I remember them to, since what I really wanted was that pie. It's funny how one singular thing from a service you appreciate or have connected to can make you spend hours looking for something like it. This is the kind of thing that makes Gallery so successful, not only do they have a prime location and a cozy atmosphere (albeit a rather cluttered one), but their actual products keep their customers coming back for more and more.  And as for the feeling of betrayal; it easily subsides when I begin to think of that pie. It reminds me of the cliché our professor told us, if you go to a restaurant you don't care for and they're out of something for the day, you think poorly of them, but if the same were to happen in a restaurant you really like, you wish you would have been there earlier.

Similar to the way that my Film class changed the way I watch movies, Service Design seems to have affected the way that I approach any sort of service. I often think about how the dynamics of different parts of an area correlate or how they give off a feeling of disconnection or confusion. In the humanitarian aspect, it also made me think more about the customers and the employees - what are their needs and wants? How can certain situations be rethought to provide for a smoother flow of operation? How can they be made comfortable and relaxed in whatever environment they're in? This mapping has also made me realize that there is no one right way to do something - many times it is a trial and error system of observations that continually evolves as it learns from its self.  I also now think about places and ask "Why?" After talking about how coffee shops, such as Starbucks, are often consciously built in such a way to either discourage or encourage people to where they are "supposed to go." Asking myself why a place is set up the way it is helps me uncover new insights that can be translated into future problems I may encounter.