Tag Archives: Design thinking

Service Design Thinking: Thanks to the University of Auckland Business School for the shout out

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exec-logo

Updated: In collaboration with the University of Auckland Business School, get 10% off the course fees for Service Design Thinking at checkout by using this code before the end of 2018: GRAEME10

I blogged recently about the Service Design Thinking course I did through the University of Auckland’s Business School and Executive Education programme.

It was a great two-day programme and I learned a lot. They’ve featured my blog on their LinkedIn Showcase page. Thanks, team…!

For easy and quick reference, here are all the links to the seven posts I’ve written so far on Service Design Thinking.

Introduction

Some Basic Service Design Tools

Got any Service Design Thinking tips or tools? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

What is Service Design Thinking…? Part 4

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2018 Tu Maia Workshop IMAGES on Service Design.008.jpeg

Service Design Thinking Guidelines

Updated: In collaboration with the University of Auckland Business School, get 10% off the course fees for Service Design Thinking at checkout by using this code before the end of 2018: GRAEME10

This is part 4 of a follow up on the Service Design Thinking short course I did through the University of Auckland‘s executive education programme.

Above are some service design thinking guidelines drawn from the book I mentioned in the previous post.

I’ve put my own spin on this, but there are a couple of things that the graphic above does not show:

  • One is that the creation and concept design phase includes making mistakes. Sometimes you need the freedom to make these mistakes in order to do the learning you need in order to refine your prototype.
  • The other thing is that the process is not really linear. I’ve dropped in the icon with the circular arrows to suggest this. But I think the reality is quite messy as you flip back and forth across different phases in the design process. More like the squiggle image below.

squiggle

What is Service Design Thinking…? Part 3

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What is SD doing

What’s a good book or reference on Service Design?

Updated: In collaboration with the University of Auckland Business School, get 10% off the course fees for Service Design Thinking at checkout by using this code before the end of 2018: GRAEME10

This is part 3 of a follow up on the Service Design Thinking short course I did through the University of Auckland‘s executive education programme recently.

As I’ve read a bit more about Service Design and bought a bunch of books, there are a couple that really stand out. This is one of above. You can order through the website but also they have a massive PDF file of practical stuff that they are giving away for free. You have to submit your email to get this.

Here are my notes from the first part of this book looking at some basic principles for service design thinking. And here’s a question to consider, if you’re reading:

  • How do these principles and values align with your own personal, organisational or other kaupapa?

Service Design should be…

  1. Human-centred.
    • Consider the experience of all the people affected by the service. This requires empathy, listening, and relationship.
    • And we need to agree on a common language… it’s the language of the service user.
  2. Collaborative.
    • Stakeholders of various backgrounds and functions should be actively engaged in the service design process.
    • Who are the customer groups, service providers, stakeholders?
    • Who are the customers in education? How do we even define “customer”?
    • A customer is someone who pays. But in service design, a customer is someone who is transformed by the service.
  3. Iterative.
    • Service design is an exploratory, adaptive, and experimental approach, iterating toward implementation.
  4. Sequential.
    • A service should be visualised and orchestrated as a sequence of interrelated actions. The best way to do this is to imagine the service as a movie. It takes place over time and has a rhythm. Some parts are slow. Others are fast. Too slow = bored. Too fast = stressed.
    • Storyboarding can help with this.
    • Consider: Pre-service, service, post service.
  5. Real.
    • Needs should be researched in reality, ideas prototyped in reality, and intangible values evidenced  as physical or digital reality.
    • This includes how to make the intangible tangible. E.g Hotel backstage services.
  6. Holistic.
    • Services should sustainable and address the needs of all stakeholders through the entire service and across the business.
    • Cf Te Whare Tapawha for an example of holistic model from Te Ao Māori.
    • Services are intangible, but they take place in a physical environment, using physical artefacts and [usually] generate some form of physical outcome.
    • Also consider alternative customer journeys, touchpoints, approaches.

Any thoughts…?

What is service design thinking…? Part 2

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Why do we need service design thinking?

Updated: In collaboration with the University of Auckland Business School, get 10% off the course fees for Service Design Thinking at checkout by using this code before the end of 2018: GRAEME10

This is part 2 of a follow up on the Service Design Thinking short course I did through the University of Auckland‘s executive education programme.

In Part 1 I talked about what service design is and how a service is different to a product. Here I want to outline some of the reasons why we might need service design thinking.

What’s a good definition for service design?

First, though, I want to look at a definition. There are academic definitions, but here’s a non-academic definition that I prefer.

When you have two coffee shops right next to each other, and each sells the exact same coffee at the exact same price, service design is what makes you walk into one and not the other. (31 Volts Service Design, 2008).

Now substitute swap out coffee shops for education providers. And allow for the fact that “right next to each other” in an internet economy includes online and blended education opportunities.

You get the idea… But see the short video above if you need some further elaboration.

How can service design thinking help me?

Drawing from my workshop notes again, here are some of the reasons why I need to embrace service design methods, tools and techniques. I’m not saying everyone needs to, but here are some of the reasons that stand out for me personally.

Service design thinking tools and methods could help me by:

  1. Giving me the tools I need to increase productivity. This includes my own and others that I work with. Actually, we need to increase our national productivity if we want to compete internationally.
  2. Giving me a competitive edge in a world characterised by increasing change. This applies personally as well as in terms of my organisation.
  3. Allowing me to embrace the increasing rate of change in the worlds of education and business and actually gain some leverage off this in my own work. If you’re about the status quo and business as usual then service design thinking is not for you.
  4. Helping me deal with the negative aspects of an educational culture characterised by “she’ll be right” and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
  5. Helping me learn how to recover effectively and quickly from adverse circumstances. This is a tricky one. No one wants to fail. But it has to be a given that in a world characterised by increasing change that we’ll all fail more frequently.

 

 

 

How can design thinking improve teaching practice and education outcomes?

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Just like Lean Thinking could work within adult education to improve teaching practice, so too could Design Thinking. Again, I’m particularly interested in my own perspective which is the professional development relating to adult literacy and numeracy education for trades and vocational training.

Design thinking

According to the Wikipedia entry:

Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analyzing knowledge, and positing solutions in the design and planning fields. As a style of thinking, it is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context.

This approach seem perfect to me for engineering solutions to teaching contexts where there are complex issues such as with foundation education.

What would it look like if we applied a design thinking paradigm to a narrow educational context like embedding literacy and numeracy into trades and vocational training? Again, from the Wikipedia entry:

An example of a design thinking process could have seven stages: define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement, and learn. Within these seven steps, problems can be framed, the right questions can be asked, more ideas can be created, and the best answers can be chosen. The steps aren’t linear; they can occur simultaneously and can be repeated.

Let’s see how these steps fit. The following is adapted to for my context in education so I’m talking about learners rather than consumers, but the idea is the same.

Define

  • Decide what underpinning literacy, numeracy, or foundation skills issue we are trying to resolve.
  • Agree on who the specific learners or other target group is.
  • Prioritize this project in terms of urgency.
  • Determine what will make this project successful.
  • Establish a glossary of terms as required.

Research

  • Review the history of the issue; remember any existing obstacles.
  • Collect examples of other attempts to solve the same issue.
  • Note the project supporters, investors, and critics.
  • Talk to students in order to get the most fruitful ideas for later design.
  • Take into account thought leaders’ opinions.

Ideation

  • Identify the needs and motivations of your learners.
  • Generate as many ideas as possible to serve these identified needs.
  • Log your brainstorming session.
  • Do not judge or debate ideas.
  • During brainstorming, have one conversation at a time.

Prototype

  • Combine, expand, and refine ideas.
  • Create multiple drafts.
  • Seek feedback from a diverse group of people, include your learners (the end users).
  • Present a selection of ideas to the learners, or other stakeholders.
  • Reserve judgment and maintain neutrality.
  • Create and present actual working prototype(s)

Choose

  • Review the objective.
  • Set aside emotion and ownership of ideas.
  • Avoid consensus thinking.
  • Remember: the most practical solution isn’t always the best.
  • Select the powerful ideas.

Implement

  • Make task descriptions.
  • Plan tasks.
  • Determine resources.
  • Assign tasks.
  • Execute.
  • Deliver to learners and stakeholders.

Learn

  • Gather feedback from learners and stakeholders.
  • Determine if the solution met its goals.
  • Discuss what could be improved.
  • Measure success; collect data.
  • Document.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments…