Table of Contents Who is this for? What makes Services Different: Service Characteristics How to Design a Service: Service Components The Service Mindset Service Design Tools Conclusion Next Steps 1. Who is this for? While respecting the difference between knowledge and mastery of a subject, my goal in this article is to give readers an... Continue Reading →
A Handy Experience Design Framework
Back in college, I was taught "The 5 P's of Service Design" by my professor, Dianna Miller, as a useful method for considering the ways in which an experience can be understood, designed, or modified. Since then, I've often thought of these "P's" as the levers and dials that can be pulled or adjusted to... Continue Reading →
Amusing Offering: Sephora “Assist Me” Baskets
Similar to my previous "Choose-your-own Uber Experience" post, this is another case of a service experience being improved by letting customers dictate some terms of the interaction. "[Not only can Sephora] create differentiated experiences for different types of customers... [but they] can also gain efficiency by better distributing the attention of their personnel...—https://www.waveguide.io/patterns/else/entry/assist-me-basket Design Considerations:•... Continue Reading →
Yosef’s 11 Design Principles
Good design is both comprehensive and ethical.This is how to do it. Put Persons FirstBe a champion for improving quality of life. Everything else is secondary.Seek DiversityEngage and work with a wide range of people – especially extreme users, positive deviants, the overlooked, and the disenfranchised.Collaborate ContinuouslyInvolve and empower stakeholders throughout the entire process.Keep an... Continue Reading →
Amusing Offering: The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders
"All of our servers are people living with dementia. They may, or may not, get your order right. However, rest assured that even if your order is mistaken, everything on our menu is delicious and one of a kind. This, we guarantee."— from: https://kottke.org/19/08/the-restaurant-of-mistaken-orders https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su34Gx-STQk "They expected mistakes, so [they] were ok with it."— Shiro... Continue Reading →
Experiences aren’t Quantities
(Originally published in September 2015) “A fundamental problem in business is that business tools are nearly completely quantitative. . . The qualitative is almost ignored completely or nonexistent in any kind of organization’s decision-making process — but it’s always driving customer decisions.”— Nathan Shedroff, Chair of the MBA in Design Strategy at CCA To improve the depth of understanding... Continue Reading →
How do you know when you’re successful?
This blog post (originally published in April 2015) is the first of two parts about alternative metrics. “What you measure affects what you do. If you don’t measure the right thing, you don’t do the right thing.”— Nobel Prize Winning Economist, Joseph Stiglitz Part 1 — The Shortcomings of Traditional Metrics When gauging the value and success... Continue Reading →
Amusing Offering: Tesla “Dog Mode”
Service Dominant Logic (SDL) might say that Tesla now provides short-term pet watching services. Design Consideration:Using the tools, technologies, and resources already available, how might we expand our offerings by meeting additional needs?
Amusing Offering: Scapegoat Employees
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/98f5lf/til_of_professional_fired_men_that_were_used_as/ “Well, you see it’s this way, Tom happens to be the store’s professional fired man. There isn’t an hour goes by but some disgruntled customer comes in with a complaint about some error and demands that the person who is responsible for the error be reprimanded. That’s where Tom comes in. He is sent... Continue Reading →
Amusing Offering: Choose-your-own Uber Experience
Sometimes it is hard to navigate the boundaries between social norms and service culture. What is allowed? What is correct? What is repugnant? A sense of humor usually helps. Design Considerations:• How might we improve a service by providing experiential options?• How might we improve experiences by humanizing the relationship between service providers and recipients?•... Continue Reading →
Interesting Service Characteristics
(Originally published in November 2014) As stated in an earlier post, a service is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “the action of helping or doing work for someone.” By breaking this definition down, we see a service is comprised of three things: an intangible good (the outcome of the action), a provider, and a... Continue Reading →
Amusing Offering: Wag Brigade
Pig greets travelers at San Francisco airport: LiLou is the first swine to join the airport’s a team of therapy animals, and is believed to be the only airport porker in the country. Adorable. Memorable. Unexpected.The Wag Brigade brings joy to an otherwise stressful environment. Design Considerations:Sometimes called "surprise and delight" - how might we... Continue Reading →