Category: design stuff

  • This blog’s job – For Realising and For Remembering

    Hey! Long time no write! Potted History Update: I last posted here in 2018, but had posted about all things design and service design on my work site Design Managers Australia (DMA). In 2021 we closed DMA – those posts we wanted to preserve are now here. I moved home to Aotearoa/New Zealand from Australia…

  • You’re so design, you probably think this post is about you

    Reader warning: I’m not even sure what this post is about. I’m categorising it as ‘captured musings’ that seem to go together 😉 Let me just say at the outset, when I thought about doing this post the other week I thought it was a riff on research, listening and hearing. On Feb 19 I…

  • Six Principles of Principles

    I love a good principle. They’re fundamental in nature. Sometimes simple, often deep. They guide behaviour. They help make decisions in the complex world of multiple decisions required. They’re better when there are more than one – because nothing is ever black and white (if is it then they’re rules not principles). So when I found this…

  • A state of service design (view from the top of the world)

    This top of the world! It’s been a busy month of many dialogues, conversations, presentations, seminal decisions, great client work, painful service design moments, great service design moments. That means this post has gone through some incarnations: From love letter To surprised yet slightly reserved observation To rant (strewn with swears galore…galore I tells ya!)…

  • Design research: sorting your shoe walking from your talk talking

    We’re currently doing field research for a pretty cool project and client – it’s government so I can’t share too much. But it’s government that potentially touches everyone and they effectively want that touch to be a gentle shoulder pat, not a punch (even though the current design represents more of a wave from the…

  • Earning my money where my mouth is

    Over the years on this blog I have banged on about some topics with some regularity: Service design and in particular public sector service design Collaboration Techniques such as Mapping, Blueprinting, Frameworks – and just a love of the process What inspires me especially where design is about making meaning and making a difference to…

  • My Top Aspirational Design Companies

    Emma Jefferies is an “an award winning researcher, designer, educator, writer and more recently filmmaker” according to her blog. She is also a very active and inspiring twitterer – which is how I ‘know’ her (or of her in the tweequaintance-sense). Her site is a great resource and repository of curated design and research sources.…

  • Creative Innovation conference (Melbourne 2011) – Highlights & Ruminations

    It’s probably saying something that the above title is the most creative label I can think of inspired from my recent attendance at the two-day Creative Innovation: ‘The Challenges and Opportunities of a Super-connected World’ conference in Melbourne last week. Let me be up-front and say my comparison point for conferences are the amazingly transcendent…

  • Promised an experience; given a map: Filing a Tax Return Experience Map (Part B)

    In my last post: Promised the world; given an atlas: A personal service experience (Part A) I shared my service experience as I attempted to file a tax return online in a new country. In this post I share how I captured that research as a Customer Experience Map. Interestingly as I worked on the…