Innovating User Value

Phew! What. a. crazy. year. I never did that before but here it is: My recap of personal highlights in business of this year. I learned a big deal and feel grateful for many things that happened. On that score, I somehow felt the need to write it down. And as not everything I did…

I just gave a brief glimpse into S-D logic at the recent Service Design Drinks, Berlin. Below you can find the slides and a record of the video stream (quality isn’t the best unfortunately).

http://www.slideshare.net/ServiceDesignBerlin/strategising-with-service-as-business-logic-service-design-drinks

It’s done! It took us a while but we just published our study on design thinking adoption in organizations. It’s called “Parts Without A Whole – The Current State of Design Thinking Adoption in Organizations.” Having been the main author of the report I’m not only happy and relieved that this major milestone is finally accomplished. I’m even more glad to finally find time again for neglected things, like spreading “service logic” or pushing our website thisisdesignthinking.net. And there is more to come … the next months will be exciting!

    Here’s a sneak peek into the results as a slide set:

http://www.slideshare.net/janschmiedgen/parts-without-a-whole-the-current-state-of-design-thinking-practice-in-organizations

The last two days I had the pleasure of getting updated again what has happened in 2014 within our research program. The range of topics, which are examined within this small community is very broad – as is design thinking. All of them are important but some – at least for me – are outstanding. So here is my very subjective and retitled list of current projects that I really liked:

Augmented reality wound care with Google Glass

Exploring interaction pattern for the upcoming (and moving!) Internet of things

Enabling fast electronic tiny task prototyping a.k.a. build stuff in seven seconds

How to measure design thinking, creative agency and output?

Exiting stuff! Looking forward to March 2015 and the next meeting in Stanford. Became also a fan of Susanne Katharina Asheuer: She captured the essences of all these wild and diverse presentations in her great graphic recordings. Oh, in case you’re interested in our contribution: We talked about different ways of design thinking appropriation.

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 .

Shared #value creation in #ecosystems? Know what is value first!

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Some nice literature on the topic

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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 …

Lara Lee, Chief Innovation Officer at Continuum makes design thinking look sexy. Her passion for human centered design has helped companies like Pampers and Harley Davidson redesign the ways they deliver value. Always accepting failure as part of the process, Lee is fearless when it comes to trying new things...

"By combining deep insights about customers, competitors, and costs, a few leading companies are finding the “sweet spot” in product development: lowering costs while designing better products that customers value more. Along the way, these companies are strengthening organizational capabilities that will help them thrive in an era of heightened global competition."

Sounds familiar, huh? However - again a typical McKinsey article, focusing on "product attributes" and design as a means to create value in terms of "optimization" (e.g. the "sweet spot" in terms of customer satisfaction à la KANO). No word about user experience or an accompanying innovation of meaning ...

d.confestival d.note, Friday 21.-22.09.2012, Potsdam, Germany

“The goal must be to build frame creation ability into organisations! In the end one can view companies as a series of frames: Frames for resilience.” – Kees Dorst

Kees Dorst, industrial designer and professor from the University of Technology, Sydney is a man who is studying things thoroughly. All the more the d.confestival participants were listening reverently when he gave exclusive insights into his profound knowledge from 20 years of research into the practices of designers. With the objective of developing a design-based innovation method for governments, institutions and companies, he focuses his research on the pattern of what expert designers are really doing.

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.

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

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

“In my other life I gave people ‘knowledge’. I was disempowering them. There was no way for them of being like me: the professor. […] D.school is different. After the second day they know more about the project as I do. This is very empowering and life changing.” – Bernie Roth

Bernie Roth, the Director of the d.school at Stanford University, probably gave the most moving and remarkable d.note of this year’s d.confestival. No other speech had such a strong human and emotional touch. The whole d.circus was listening spellbound when he told those stories and facets in remembrance of Bill Moggridge that usually aren’t known to the broader public. For him and many others Bill wasn’t just the »designer of the first laptop« or one of IDEO’s early co-founders. He moreover was a friend, family father and an incredibly inspiring and empowering person. And especially this latter unique characteristic of Bill Moggridge is the one Roth considers most important. “In the end”, he said, “it is all about empowerment, about making people feel good about themselves – something Bill was very good at.”

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

In the last years there has been written and spoken a lot about the importance of design. All the more it was another highlight of the d.confestival to get a perspective on its future from the dean of an institute that has one of the longest traditions in teaching and preaching design thinking: Patrick Whitney from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

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