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No left turns

Just when London's major Boris Johnston announces cyclists may legally be able to make left turns on a red light (makes complete sense, but then I'm a cyclist), I catch a Discovery Channel documentary on UPS Worldport.

I read about this in Alex Frankel's Clocking In which I 'reviewed' here. Great book. Joe was even checking it out as I'd added it to our library. Anyway, I digress.

Apart from the vast organisation of parcels at the 'hub' that is Worldport, I caught many small stories of efficiency, time and money saving that contribute to this great service.

For instance, their freight aircraft landing at Worldport perform a 'continuous descent' where they use the aircraft's natural gliding ability to land slowly, quietly and using minimal engine power, thus saving fuel.

Each delivery driver uses a hand-help computer called a DIAD which helps calculate each days route to maximise efficiency and minimise fuel usage.

But get this - in the US, they NEVER MAKE A LEFT TURN. They do this to avoid all those little hold ups that driving across traffic in the US undoubtedly generate.

How cool is that?

Next time you design a service, where will be your 'no left turn' opportunity?

How to train a Hostess

So scary it's got to be true; this rather harsh but probably very efficient take on behavioural training is just what you'd expect from the nation that's taking the 2008 Olympics VERY seriously.

From the mostly excellent Observer Sports monthly:

Take time to acknowledge all that arduous training when Olympians are awarded their medals, not only the athletes but the red suited 'victory ceremony hostesses' who will present flowers to the winners.

Selected after a long series of auditions, the hostesses have spent months learning how to smile, walk and look bow according to strict rules. Good posture has been ensured by a drill requiring the hostesses to stand with a book on their heads while clutching a sheet of paper between their knees (try it folks, it works!).

Smiles which must reveal 'only six to eight teeth', were strengthened by marathon sessions of chopstick-biting. "By the end of the class, our lips were numb", said one hostess, "but after several days, the smile came naturally".

We've been designing host roles and figuring out behaviours at Engine - using actors, props, costumes, scripts... that's part of the fun of being a Service Designer. I hadn't thought of chomping chop-sticks to train a smile though.

What not to take through Airport Security

As part of a Service Prototype, we'd asked our model-maker to make up a buzzer. This was so that in a service we were prototyping, we could test certain scenarios that would otherwise been initiated by technology that we didn't yet have in place.

We were faking it.

We tried shouting, we tried a whistle - but we wanted a buzzer. Switch, battery, buzzer, case and tape. It all worked a dream.

After were were finished, the little buzzer stayed in my back-pack.

A few days later I was about to go through Airport Security when I thought I'd check the contents of my bag. There was a craft knife, a screwdriver, some  hand gel and a bottle of water which I removed.

I also thought it best to leave the buzzer out.

The future of marketing and advertising etc.

Good thoughtful post from planner Paul Isakson via Armano. Of course experience and relationship is the space where folks like IDEO and Engine are implicitly playing, even if they're talking explicitly about product and service innovation.  As Engine say - Better Services, happier customers.

Of course, notes Armano, the hard bit will be actually delivering, as many of the cornerstones - collaboration and a user-centred approach fly in the face of the skills and business model of traditional marketing and advertising.

Speaks nicely to this blog's 'moving from décor to core'. Anyway... check Paul's presentation...

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Morph - Nokia's Nano phone concept.

Intriguing product-centred nanotech powered concept device called Morph from Nokia  / Cambridge Nanoscience Centre currently featured in The Museum of Modern Art “Design and The Elastic Mind” exhibition in NYC. The whole concept reminds me of what the boys and girls at IDEO might have concocted. Nice.

Flexibility is at the heart of the new device using materials and components that are stretchable, transparent and very strong. (via)

I like the way the device interacts with it's environment and a wearable, stretchable, fold-up-able, self-cleaning 'phone' is of course the stuff of dreams.

Check out the video here - interesting (if slightly confusing?) storytelling... and naturally I'd be very keen to explore what services the device might enable. Also, what's the service equivalent of geeked out product design meets nanotech concepting?

I wonder, is it ever possible to explore future service / experiences and present them in such a way without an engaging physical manifestation?

(note to self - next post will not feature Nokia)

Quick trip: Nokia flagship and Apple store experiences

Just got back from a quick field trip to London's new Nokia Flagship store and the Apple store.

Set myself a research-y task for each store, to help ascertain just how good the customer experience was.

Nokia Flagship

First impressions at Nokia were interesting - I was actually 'greeted' by a burly security guy. Well that felt weird. The store was pretty empty (about 19.00hrs) and it all felt a bit 'obvious' - no delightful surprises. Many of the physical details mimicked the Apple store, except in the overall dimensions - deep and thin compared to Apple's deep and wide. Plus of course the product is so much smaller and Nokia had transposed mostly stills photography at Apple for moving images on plasmas. And I was never going to buy a phone from the Nokia Flagship even if I could, this was primarily about product research.

Staff were pretty friendly (but hey the store's only a few weeks 'old') but it seemed to follow the Apple formula; knowledgeable 'fans' as staff, a few key functional areas and generally 'trying to be groovy' interiors which in so many respects aped Apple's interior strategy and fit-out. It must be said that overall there had been little attempt to break away from this established Apple archetype - shame.

My task to seek a logical upgrade to my SE K800i failed to yield an obvious successor. Sales assistants were moderately knowledgeable / helpful but I did at times feel as though I was being forced down a scripted tunnel.

Apple store

A short dash (they're pretty much opposite each other on Regent Street), and straight into the hustle bustle of the Apple store. In contrast to the (very  new) Nokia Flagship, Apple was still rammed with customers. I must have spent 20 minutes wandering around as staffers were too busy to greet me or ask if I needed help - in fact you need to just as lucky to grab one as find a machine that's not being played with. But that's all OK.

The whole Apple store feels 'just right' - someone carefully selected this space for it's proportions and ability to cater for sheer numbers.

My trip was intentional - a purchase pre-planned but needed confirmation - and at the till what struck me was how readily the staffer dropped what he was doing to talk me through the product over on display.

He had a script - or more accurately a guide but would happily detour from it depending on my responses - and that made me feel in control.

The interaction felt like one between friends or colleagues - not one between a customer and retailer.

Forming a relationship - we traded personal experiences, I found out he studies at the college I attended. (interesting that - fan and user first, retailer second)

I bought an accessory - actually something I needed, nicely explained for a change. One happy, valued customer.

Conclusions?

Apple still wins convincingly. Why? The experience was far more pleasant, engaging and rewarding - the service very customer-centric, the space perfect. You feel as if you're at once front and back stage.

And in addition, (and this is just as important) the products too were probably easier to sell in Apple compared to Nokia. Apple has a (perceptively) tighter product range, easier to differentiate and each with real tangible benefits. Nokia's product range is far broader; differences and benefits harder to discern, which made it confusing.

Apple wins.

Product and service, people and environment all in harmony.

Punching out.

I've finally put down Alex Frankel’s ‘Punching in…’

(that's not Alex in the picture)

For front and back of house tales from UPS, Enterprise, Gap, Starbucks, Apple – it makes for an interesting, enjoyable and worthwhile read.

I’m not going to attempt a robust review of the book, but a couple of things popped out. In all of Alex’s roles, he was providing a service, he was (occasionally) creating a product but it was at UPS that he felt most at home.

“UPS was the only workplace where I felt as if I was actually learning a craft and helping shape the final product, instead of acting the part of a craftsman. UPS was the company that had best married back end technology with what I came to think of as the company’s human front end.”

Clearly this speaks to Alex’s personal aptitude, as I’m sure there are as many hard working coworkers who feel as engaged in their roles as there are disenfranchised. So Human Resourcing, recruitment - is of utmost importance and so are the strategic people frameworks we create.

I’m also intrigued by the potentially phoney ‘act’ that we require of many providing service on the font line. Can we really, really expect authenticity when we implicitly understand that for many (most?) employees, it’s all just an act?

What do you design, Daddy?

We've been thinking a lot recently about how to describe what we do as Service Designers. For such a relatively new discipline, it's important we do ourselves justice; as individuals, as part of a commercial organisation and of a greater industry.

I've always used the ability to describe what I do at work to my mother - as my benchmark. So when I graduated as a graphic designer, I found it easy to describe what I did; designing posters, logos, exhibitions, brochures and the like - chiefly because she had a very good understanding and experience of such things.

When some time later I embraced multimedia, I was still able to describe what I did to her - only not quite as well; because for her, it was more abstract. So I used metaphors. I talked about multimedia, CD ROMs and early websites being like a mixture of magazines, Television, animation and radio - that you could control using a computer (she'd seen my first Mac SE so she even had a handle on that). She had a very reasonable level of understanding

Now, having moved into service design and innovation, it gets a bit trickier. It's even more abstract - but at least my mom knows what a service is - she's spent a good few years experiencing them and delivering them (she worked in a department store for 20 years).

So imagine what happens when my seven year old son asks me what I design.

At least he understands I'm a designer, and at least he's inquisitive (young kids ask the coolest questions - last year he asked me what 'infinity' was).

But my son has almost no experience of services that he can articulate, but in the spirit of fatherhood and inclusivity I attempt to answer the question and the technique I use is my fall-back. To put myself in his shoes (yup, I got 'user-centred'). I use an example.

I talked about the man that delivers food in lots of different coloured plastic bags. I talked about the website where we choose what we want. I talked about the computer that turns that into a list for someone in a warehouse or maybe a store to go pick for us... etc... etc. And I talk about how we pay for it, how happy we are and how we do it a again and again... (Ocado).

Often that's what I do for folks who ask me what I do if the 'I design services...' answer draws a blank. Even for fellow designers, describing the strategic generation of joint value creation by customer and service provider through something we don't own but is really useful and experience over time across multiple touchpoints... doesn't always work. But the example usually does, because there many, many examples - so it's simply the case of selecting the best one. On second thoughts, maybe for my son, Lego factory might have been a better example.

Anyway, what stories and examples do you have up your sleeve when faced with similar questions? Think about it. What's the elevator pitch of what you do. How do you describe service design (or whatever) to a potential beneficiary of that skill, to someone who you just know will open their wallet once they understand the value of what you can deliver?

It's a big incentive. But for those potential clients to buy-in, we need to be able to tell stories, to bring to abstract stuff to life, to be honest and believable.

In fact all the things you do for a seven year old kid or your mom.

Links and Reflections: 19 Jan 08

The Best and Worst Customer Service from Business Week
"Why are some companies champs when it comes to providing customer service and others, well, chumps? We've created this forum to encourage readers to share their most recent customer service experiences—good or bad. And if your experience wasn't good, tell us how you resolved the situation. So join in!"

Clearly just launched but potentially a good source of stories, but why not harvest your own...? Here's personal reputation management from Rapleaf -  and outsourcing your customer service to your customers at Getsatisfaction - ( Via ).

More great research mojo... from Sense Worldwide
An example of one of the current crop of emerging research tools to engage with users on their terms, allowing them control to contribute when and where they wish.



This time Sense Worldwide want your night time party tales - I love to party , following the  I love my format. Just complete 10 quick questions and your name will appear at the end of the book they're producing! The 'I love my chair' book's available on lulu is small and rather nice.

Nice when we share tools and methods don't you think?
Engine  give us insights into the tools and methods they use when designing services. I particularly like the look of Desktop Walkthroughs. Why not give it a try and let them know how it works out?

Apple get it right... designing for specific activities,  not demographics
Again from Business Week; Apple's approach isn't about targeting hipsters, says Donald A. Norman, a professor at Northwestern University and author of The Design of Future Things. Rather, the company's design genius lies in its dedication to making simple, elegant devices for specific activities, not demographic types, he says. Its early markets were learning and publishing; now they're creativity and entertainment. "The proper way to design is not to target an individual type of customer. You want 100 million customers," says Norman.

If they're so good, What should Apple do next?
Business Week asked an eclectic group of analysts, designers, innovators, educators, and marketing experts for their opinions on what products, services, and experiences Apple might set its sights on next. Predictably, suggestions ran the gamut from the highly improbable—a ride on the Apple subway anyone?

A peek behind the 'Service Curtain'

Came across this little card in a large retail outlet recently, I don't know if it was the language or the context but I kept this unintentional little artifact.

I can only guess it's a secret instruction from Quality Assurance to Shelf Managers about some error or omission. It was, however quite puzzling abrupt switched from my browse and shop mode.

Point is, I don't think I (as a customer) was really meant to see it. In fact given my confusion with the tone of voice (mixing formal 'Wrong capacity' and polite / humorous first person 'Please correct me'), I think the communicator was also confused.

So what happens when we get an accidental peek behind the curtain of a service and become privy to it's inner workings? The mis-placed sideways glance shared by hotel check-in staff... the 'staff only' door left ajar.

Surely the service provider could turn this to mutual advantage - an opportunity to demonstrate trust, authenticity, attention to detail perhaps? I'm reminded of auto service centres where the customer is invited to stay and enjoy the spectacle, to share in 'popping the hood'. What examples can you think of?

In services, the curtain is always drawn sightly open.

Just goes to show that equal attention needs to be paid to both backstage and front of house experiences.