Service Design = Good Business Investment

Despite the fact that our readings this week were - logically - design centered, I couldn't help but continually come back to the advantages and ramifications for businesses that I picked up from the readings.

As a starting point, I would like to reference Whitney Hess' article addressing the misconceptions about user experience design. (As a side note, I will probably refer to user experience design and service design interchangeably in this post. I'm not educated enough about either area to know the precise differences. It seems that service design is more encompassing, but for this post, I feel that they are interchangeable.) I found this article to be very informative and actually pretty easy to understand which seems important considering her profession. :) The first thing that stood out for businesses was Dan Brown's comment that user experience design isn't "a discrete activity, solving all their problems with a single functional specification or a single research study. It must be an ongoing effort, a process of continually learning about users, responding to their behaviors, and evolving the product or service." Lifelong learning is an education buzzword, but a business must be committed to lifelong learning in order to remain competitive. Learning about new opportunities and technologies, new and existing customers, competition, and what is happening within your own walls must be a continual process. Obviously though, learning is useless without action. That's where the "responding" and "evolving" come in, the steps where the design in service design becomes more tangible. The point is that this process never truly ends for a company that wants to reach the top and stay there. It makes sense then for a business to build this idea of continual reevaluation into their vision, a point made in Hess' article by Livia Labate. Thinking that user experience design is the responsibility of a department or a designer "is evidence that it is not part of the organizational culture and hints to teams not having a common goal or vision for the experience they should deliver collectively," she states.

I suppose I should back up a step and define the purpose of service design for this to make sense. I liked the UK Design Council's definition, particularly the end which states that service design delivers "services that are built around the real needs of clients, that simplify complex problems and deliver solutions that are future focused and cost conscious." I've emphasized real because to me that is the essence of the entire profession, and the challenge. Sometimes it may take significant work just to discover what those real needs are, much less fulfill them. Even the customers or users may not be able to identify their real need, so it is not always as simple as asking them.

The task doesn't end with simply filling a need at a good price though. Users/customers have so many choices in every aspect of their lives now, that they are continually looking to maximize value - of which, price plays only a small role. Additionally, customers expect to "be heard" by companies, whether that involves demanding transparency of a corporation's environmental stance, requests for cleaner restrooms, or input into the company's visual identity (think Gap rebranding debacle). Customers are finding increasing value in companies that are accessible - a direct result of service design no doubt. This is really what I think Richard Buchanan was getting at in his Emergence keynote when he stated that service design is "a discipline that everybody can participate in. Everyone is affected by, and if we do it right, we increase human's access to their own rights. Economic, cultural and social rights." Empowerment, customer relations, connectivity... whatever terms is used, service design seeks to maximize the product of these relationships. Companies that don't take the time thoroughly research and reach out to customers, companies that refuse to have a Facebook page or provide easily accessible contact information, companies that are too stubborn to enlist the help of service design professionals in any capacity are headed for hard times. As Josh Porter matter-of-factly pointed out, "the biggest misconception is that companies have a choice to invest in their user's experience. To survive, they don't."

Information Design, Interaction Design, Graphic Design, Oh My!

I would certainly not label myself an interaction designer. Or an information architect. Or an interface designer. But after reading the articles assigned this week, I feel a greater sense of shared purpose with those "professions."

I had always considered that - as a graphic designer (which is how I have typically referred to myself) - I am generally in the same field as these other designers, but their work seemed very foreign to me. Listening to Jesse James Garrett deliver the 2009 IA Summit Closing Plenary helped me to realize that - although we may use different media in most cases - our purposes are the same. Garrett told the audience (fellow information architects) "There are no information architects. There are no interaction designers. There are only, and only ever have been, user experience designers." I particularly liked this statement because it re-opened my eyes. I say re-opened because, of course I knew that the success or failure of my work was dependent on whether it generated the desired response from the audience. But how easy it is to forget (especially when working as the sole designer in a workplace) that the choices in each work should have nothing to do with ME. An interaction designer's work in creating software interface, while it may make use of more scientific testing and studies, is really no different than my work when creating a poster or a brochure in that both have a specific purpose to achieve. Garrett realized this overarching purpose across media when he said "there are lots of materials - media - we can use to shape experiences. Saying user experience design is about digital media is rather like saying that sculpture is about the properties of clay."

I also enjoyed hearing the perspective of Garrett's business partner, Peter Merholz (as much for how he handled the passive-aggressive digs of GK VanPatter as for what he actually had to say about design!). In their interview titled Ladder of Fire: Unpacking Advocacies, Merholz spends significant time discussing experience design. What I liked most about Merholz was his insistence on the importance of other disciplines and other experiences to create effective "designs."

Although Merholz had many great things to say, his one statement that immediately jumped out at me was that "I don't define myself by my degree, though, because it really was just proof that I survived four years of college." This is something that I would like to reemphasize to all those designers just finishing college. The name of your degree can be such a limiting, restrictive force in your career if you allow it to be. Having a degree in graphic design does not mean that you should feel pressured to find a job with that same title. I worked a variety of jobs that - in appearance - had nothing to do with graphic design. Yet they helped build MY unique set of skills and perspectives. I have never held a job where I couldn't find something useful to take away. Moreover, I always found some little way that I could incorporate my design skills (essentially problem-solving skills) in every job.  The pressure to find employment after graduation can be intense, just know that accepting a job in another field can really add to your arsenal if you use it for that.