The document discusses service design and the shift from expertise to experimentation. It notes that Palmu is a service design company founded in 2009 with 40 service design professionals from various backgrounds. It emphasizes that no service concept survives its first contact with customers and that defining problems is more important than solutions. It advocates for taking a customer-centric approach, experimenting rather than guessing, and making mistakes in trying new things. The document recommends measuring changes in behavior from the backstage service interactions to customer experience to business impact. It concludes by thanking the reader.
2. Hello, I’m Reima. I come from
• founded in January 2009, 100% owned by designers
• 40 service design professionals
• service design, service production, service strategy
• backgrounds in industrial design, ux design, ethnography,
psychology, cultural studies, teaching, diplomacy,
marketing, technology, media, consulting, startups…
This big shift started already 10 years ago. No more cheap resources. From the age of production efficiency to the age of value in customer experience. Companies have hard time to adapt, Nokia is one proof: they had all the features, and were able to make more products to market at the cheapest cost, but that wasn’t enough…
How organizations can create more unique value with less resources?Pressure from two sides: need for design of better customer experiences + total reorganizing the structure of service production and innovation
The way companies are organized to produce services, develop, and innovate, and compete with each other is from the old age. The change is painful. Also in the public sector. We are in trouble.
So this is pretty obvious to all of us… This is why there is a new breed of designers, who tackle design problems that are much more complex. And the material of design has changed, it’s now intangible.
So this is on example of the world we work with nowadays. Design of service systems… Holistic way of developing something new that creates value to customers. Products are just frames. Value and competitive advantage is created in intangible. Products, environments, services, information, have all become materials for design. And touchpoints get clever, have sensors… Platform for service
Bit dangerous, but… At least services are connected to almost everything. And all business is service business. And services are the compulsory future for organizations.
When we think about service design it’s good to make this distinction.Traditionally design has been something that done with what and how…
People (customers) are always part of the service production.Materials for design of service+ why question. Stories and meaningful experiences are born based on how can the service address our needs and help to achieve stuff that we want to achieve. Not so much on design made on touchpoints. And people don’t really want to use services, they want to live happy and meaningful lives. How can we help them with that? Can’t design services without humans. With services, co-design is the only design there should be.
The more complex the setting, the more important the why question gets. With services design there is a huge risk to solve wrong problems.
Worstthing to do: use time, money and effort to solve totally wrong problem. And to do it over and over again expecting different results!When you find the right problem, you don’t really have to do much ideation. The solution is already contained. But of course we should use iterative design process, not only research, to find the right problem. Learning by doing.Service R&D should be problem centric, not solution centric.
Customer/human centric approach is actually just about asking why
My advice is not to buy of sell service design. …At least if you want to help the organizations with big issues. Because we are in a trouble and we need radical innovations.
Wicked problems: people getting older, healthcare, diminishing resources, global warming. Micro and macro level.Generalist (who come from outside) are often better in building different possible futures = what ifs. If you know a lot and look it from inside, you can generate less possible future scenarios.Development culture challenges: Too many devils advocates, thinking “why this cant be done”
Familiar picture? Innovation and service development and production is done in silos. They don’t talk with each other, they might not even have the same language. They have different short term goals. Looking the customer trough the existing offering only leads to incremental innovation, not radical. This is why service jam can have such powerful effects!
Death of experts and professionals? Expertise vs. involving customers.Professionalism is dangerous - engineers, developers, civil servants, designers, all experts… Our roles and identity as professionals. It’s hard to give power to the people. “Will they need me anymore?”
We need to learn: Upside-down innovation.Work with the materials of service (especially humans)Much faster learning curve (mistakes)Stop predicting, start experimenting ability to create different possible realities
Do first. Design later. And culture that appreciates learning from mistakes as much as possible.This is familiar from startups and lean development. But for most of organizations this is extremely hard, because us as individuals want to succeed. Failing is not fun?! Or at least not rewarded and appreciated.
A couple of cases and personal learnings…How to make people buy bathrooms instead of components?This could have been a interior design project…
Challenge: how to change to way the bathrooms are sold, and how people buy them? Not actually so much about fancy environment and customer experience but about changing behavior and creating better business. The new selling process, tools, how the retail environment makes a sales person a better sales person?Pilot and experimentations in the real environment really actually helped us to identify the right problems. Should start it much earlier, should involve people even more
Ideas are free, everyone has one..Can we accelerate the process of making mistakes and learning from them. I guess it’s the thing caller iteration?The more we dare to use service design tools develop stuff that is incomplete, the better results we will get.
How to make the most painful part in the airport customer journey a service and a pleasant experience?Btw. there is also a business case: each minute in the queue is 70-80 cents less spent at the airport.
Airport service jam. Modeling, thinking with hands, experimentation with people…
Training the network of service coachesWDC pilot line in terminal oneMeasuring all the time, learning
Could we have an on going service jam?? More power to people.Two examples from retail service design.Learning from previous projects: test it even faster. Actually get out of your design studio. Move the service design from backstage to live environment.Prototypes are important, but more as a way of thinking with your hands. People don’t necessarily behave like they say. The live environment is the real test.
With services measuring is the main tool for design. Because each service situation and customer experience is different. Without measuring you are blindfolded.It’s always about changing behaviour. So you need to measure that change!
Another big learning from my career… Couldn’t agree more.
How to implement the concepts faster and actually test the ideas with real customers!
Pop-up business unit: a startup company within a company.Can create its own culture, own values and tools. And have professional there beside you to help the ideas come alive, test, measure, learn, and iterate.Not trying to advice from outside. Go inside, to the frontstage, develop and design there. Back to basics.
Service design is done too much in meeting rooms and workshop rooms. With post-its, not with people. By professionals who want to claim the design to themselves. Let the people do the design!
Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO: ”The model of design has changed. We used to design for them (applied ethnography). Then with them (co-creation). Now designers are facilitating design by them (enabling behavioral change which is self directed). Create a setting where people realize their goals, get motivated and change Service designer becomes a facilitator…We already see this in SD project in many organizations where we realize that in order to change the customer service we need to change the culture. And you can’t change culture from outside. You can define goals, but not tell people what they should be motivated about.
This is maybe the most difficult change.My prediction: simultaneous pop-ups