Category: techniques

  • Protos Typos: When first impressions don’t need to last

    NB: A version of this post, written with Justin Barrie, is also published at DMA/We Think Recently at work we did some service prototyping with a public sector client. We wrote about it on our blog. It’s a topic I’ve often wanted to capture here because, in my experience, prototyping and service prototyping in particular…

  • 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…

  • Promised the world; given an atlas: A personal service experience (Part A)

    I thought it was about time I did a post on service experience. Yeah, I talk a good rap about technique and philosophy, but how about capturing some (non-client) service experiences for dissection. And so like Marie Curie exposing herself to radioactive material (albeit unknowingly) I chose the service experience of filing my tax return…

  • 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…

  • What is a service? – an exercise

    When talking about a service surprisingly few people can easily rattle off a definition. In my experience, people generally have some concept in mind but don’t think about it very consciously. No surprise because it is intangible, open yet time-bound, and a mix of things, feelings and goals. The definition I like (an amalgamation of…

  • 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…