Category: design process

  • Collaboration – that’s the name of the game

    Oh, no wait – that’s multiplication. But in a funny way, it still works. Cue quote: “The range of our collective vision is far greater when individual insights become one” Andrew Carnegie. Amen Andy. As designers we espouse the value of collaboration. But what I’ve noticed in my years in the game is sometimes a…

  • Emergence: revelations, percolations, bunnies & unicorns

    There are three notions my design mind oft returns to: ‘Time’ in the service design context – time taken, time spent, time saved (both from the design process and within the delivery of a service) Design evaluation – what is it, how do you do it What’s different about design in business that makes it…

  • Maps, shmaps, pathways, shmathways, etc, shmetc

    I write this post with a conflicted heart. The post is ostensibly about language. And making sense – which simultaneously is precisely what this blog is for me; a record of my thinking, and thoughts in progress. But, I’ve just read Nick Marsh’s post on service design is dead, and while I don’t agree necessarily…

  • Service Design & UX Design; Po-tay-to/Po-tar-to or as umami is to salty*

    I have recently found myself working in the same physical space with some user experience practitioners.  Good people, nice people. As a service designer I have been listening to them talk, hearing familiar descriptions of activities and outcomes sought. Familiar but not the same. ‘Contextual enquiry’ and ‘affinity diagramming’ are expounded in such a way…

  • I heart frameworks

    My most popular post is about customer experience maps – it gets about 50 hits a day (I’m blogging plankton in the scheme of things so 50 is a lot for me). I’m chuffed about that because maps and frameworks are just about my most favourite thing in design. They’re even a form of info…

  • Ideas and insights and concepts, oh my

    I recently re-discovered this basic diagram I did a few years back entitled, ‘Solving the problem by moving from ideas through concepts to solution’. The audience was new/entry-level design staff and the context was a world where terms such as ‘iteration’ and ‘concept’ made people physically squirm, a world where people said “why can’t we…

  • Customer Experience Map example – high res

    As promised here is a link to a high-res version (as PDF) of the customer experience map I low-res published the other week. Update 15 July 2012: I have updated this version again with a better version. Context: The map should be seen as part of the solutioning process representing a current state customer and…

  • Customer Experience Mapping &

    See also: & Service Blueprinting What follows is my approach to customer experience mapping. I’m not saying it’s perfect – or easy, and I am most certainly saying it doesn’t and can’t exist in isolation from other techniques – research gives you the evidence, frameworks help sort the interpreted and synthesised information and good old…

  • & Service Blueprinting

    See also: Customer Experience Mapping & What follows is my approach to service blueprinting. It’s a companion technique and output to customer experience mapping. And as with experience mapping it doesn’t and can’t exist in isolation from other techniques. Both blueprint and map provide a tangible means for businesses to assess the impact of change…