Category: design thinking

  • What is a Service? What is service?

    Previously, I have described a service like this: A service is the seeking and receipt of a specific outcome of a customer across a range of interactions and touchpoints over time. It’s a bit dry and analytical, but it has always worked when I’ve applied/used it in public service or community service settings. During the…

  • Not a year in review, because it’s nearly February…so it’s more an annual post! (Still with the long titles though)

    Jiminy wowsers! It’s been a long time since I last published a post here, huh?!. That’s not to say I haven’t been doing, thinking and writing design. In fact, I’d say just about every week I come to desonance to reference something I’ve written or thought through here. So it’s serving exactly the purpose I’d…

  • Sometimes You Just Have To Shut Up

    Sometimes you talk too much and you just have to shut-up. Sometimes you don’t really know what you’re talking about so you just have to shut up. Sometimes you just have nothing to add; you just have to shut up. Sometimes, if you’re having a one-sided dialogue – that’s actually a monologue, because people can’t…

  • What has two thumbs (down) and doesn’t care

    This designer! I recently saw Design & Thinking, the movie. Warning: if your life changed from seeing this movie don’t read on. My life didn’t change. In fact, I’ll never get those 75 minutes back. Some of my favourite things in the world are documentaries and design. I previously waxed lyrical and was genuinely energised…

  • 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…

  • Businessifying Design (Whating the what?)

    NB: A version of this post, written with Justin Barrie, is also published at DMA/We Think I recently saw ‘Design the New Business’ I’d heard about the movie for many months and finally had the opportunity thanks to Damien Kernahan from Proto Partners and the Canberra Service Design Drinks to see it.   A quick…

  • I don’t need a vacation, I just needed my vocation re-energised

    Yesterday* something great happened that reminded me why being a designer is my vocation, not my job. A colleague in Washington DC, Leslie Tergas, attended the Transform 2011 Conference at Mayo. She presented us her highlights. The gist of Mayo, innovation and the conference: Here’s a leading organisation – good at what they do –…

  • 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…

  • 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…