Designing a better world at Northumbria

Last week I went to Newcastle for this one-day conference to pick up some tips on how to design a better world.

The opening session was really about a discussion of what ‘better’ means to different people, I particularly like Julia Lohmann’s idea of ‘nothingness’, where people have more time to think and enjoy life rather than busy getting it stuffed by stuff…

I am rather impressed by the two speakers from Philips. Gavin Proctor talked about their extended product life cycle that goes beyond the line of consumption, but into disposal and recycle of Philips product as well.

The closing keynote was from the brilliant Josephine Green, who previously worked as the Senior Director of Trend and Strategy at Philips Design. She took us through the change we are experiencing in terms of social structure, or in her words ‘from pyramids to pancakes’. Couple of key characters of the pancake society is around the distributing innovation, collaboration, community and sustainability. Well, according to my knowledge, you can find some related arguments in Zuboff’s Support Economy and Gary Hamel’s Future of Management – both talked about the power shift towards stakeholders and their role in open and social innovation. It is quite inspiring to see how international company that previously has a reputation in manufacturing, such as Philips, stand up and talk about what social change means to them and how they face the challenge to move ahead.

And for fans of social innovation, here is a link from her presentation regarding some tools and methods for social innovation that may interest you: www.socialinnovationexchange.org

There was a concern expressed at the conference regarding whether it is too optimistic to this bright future Green presented, as the environmental scientists are basically telling us it’s too late. Well, wonderful Ms Green replied ‘it is our moral responsibility to keep optimistic in difficult times.’ and she also said ‘Life is a bitch.’ – wise words!

Interestingly, the next day of the conference, I found this rather odd little box outside Waitrose in Newcastle city centre full of green tokens. So it was the Community Matters Theme from Waitrose. They ask their customers to help them choose how much they should fund in community projects, so their investment is driven by community for community. Customer who shopped in the store were given a green token to vote for the community project they would like to support, and then Waitrose will invest money in these projects according to the result of the voting. A rather engaging approach to present community development to Waitrose's customers, don't you think?

By the way, I voted for the wild animal one, and then an lovely lady passed by me, put her token into the same box and told me 'nice choice~' - haha!

So supermarket is catching up by placing themselves as an active part of the community and support local development. Why don't we have Waitrose in Dundee? Can we vote for that as well?

Nordic Service Design Conference 09

My horribly busy writing schedule has kept me from doing many things that I should have done for weeks, and... this is one of them... I haven't got time around to report any thoughts on the conference, well, now much of them are already lost in the mist of my memory.

But, there are three good blogposts of this conference online now from others:

1. Jeff Howard's Design for Service: some useful links of presentation and pictures from the conference, and most recently a post about the Service Design Touch-point cards.

2. there is a round-up one the Service Innovation blog - the host of the conference.

3. This one is from a friend of mine (shared with Lauren Tan and JB!) Joyce Lee from the Northumbria University. We met at the conference and made dinner together - the good old days, now seem so far away!

Some materials from me if you are curious what happened:

Flick photos

[some really nice picture of service designers co-creating their own dinner at the conference!]

conference paper for download

[here are all the conference papers, I found some really good ones, already used in my thesis as quotes!]

and finally my PPT presentation available here:

Qin, Nordic Service Design Conference

View more presentations from Qin H.

sweet sweet gifts

To be honest, I was quite impressed by the organisation of Nordic SD Conference - received this little pack shortly after arriving at the hotel. Couple cute gifts from the organisor, including a pair of over-shoes to 'protect your favourit e shoes regardless of weather conditions' (shame that my Timberland seem too big for them...) and a set of design cards around touch-points from the AT-ONE project.

It seems that card making is the new 'black' in Design now. we all know the famous IDEO cards, as far as in Service Design, I know of two other sets of cards. One is the SILK method cards made by Engine with Kent city council. The other one was Lauren (Redjotter)'s Master project: Making Service Sense, a set of postcards of SD case samples. Both brilliant projects - I would love to see more likely projects, and also see these methods find their way into organisations and make tangible differences. It would be great if the use of design card becomes as normal as using SWOT Analysis. well... if you know of any other similar card sets, I would love to hear from you!

I mean it's a good thing. It's a sign that designers are preparing to share the authority of being the 'gifted ones' with more people and moving into a facilitating role in order to encourage innovation at larger scale, well and democracy as well. I consider it as a sign of this profession becoming more and more matured, and am happy to see that Service Design is honest to what it claims to be: co-design, and empower others.

Really look forward to tomorrow, yet, have to prepare for my own speech first... left the speech notes in the UK, so gotta work from scratch again... Well, let's enjoy the next three days!

a bit of travelling this winter in Scandinavian area

Got a bit planning going on - just to relax my fingures from writing...


Am off to Oslo for the conference 24-26, and will be spending 23th -28th there... gotta enjoy the city, don't I?


And I also got a really lovely invitation from Katarina Wetter Edman to visit the Service Research Center - CTF at Karlstad University... excited! So spending two days there will be my plan.


After Karlstad, I quite fancy heading to Stockholm and maybe spend 4-5 days there, just wondering around the Christmas markets!


So basically I have about 3 days free in Oslo and 4-5 days free in Stockholm…


To be honest, I don’t know these areas quite well, so any of you have suggestions of must-visit-places? Or even another invitation to show me around your place?


Definitely would love to make some new friends as well ;-]

Got another invitation to visit Fabian Segelström in Linköping - this journey is becoming more and more exciting now!

D2B2 impression

I presented a paper  in the D2B2 Design Management conference in Beijing last week and also heard a lot of very interesting speech from presentors from all over the world.  Together with the keynote speakers, there were over 50 presentations in total, covering topics from branding to sustainability to a bit of Service Design. Most of the presentations are inspiring, although I guess the use of double languages (Chinese and English) makes it a bit complex when it comes to question time. Happy that I actually benefited from both languages- ain't doing a degree abroad for nothing ;] 

One of the most impressive presentation might be James Woudhuysen's critical insights towards  Design Management by saying" design is not going to save the world, technology and science might save the world, but design can help them". I can't say that I completely agree with him, but I do admire the courage to start a contradictory argument in a conference basically show casing the benefit of design to business. However, it is true that we not only study what design can do, but also study what design cannot do. The role of design is changing, which is also true to many other professions in the world, but it doesn't mean that we can either over or under estimate what design can do. 

This reminds me of John Thackra's talk on Design Council's podcast suggests three lessons they learnt from DOTT, which might give us some thoughts on what design might become.

"

1. We are not going to innovate in the desert. It's already here. In the country our job is to discovery and accelerate the existing grass-root innovation by bring in design skills, bring in technology platforms, bring in resources s and when they are needed.

2. Build unlikely connection (innovation!) and build trust.

3. Think about how do we want to live. Start conversations at local, not telling people how they want to live. "

By the way, James Woudhuysen is having a new booking coming... Energise! it is about energy, science, and our future society. I have not read it yet though... let me know what you think if you did ;]

Richard Buchanan on the 'Four Boundaries of Service Design'

< image from Jeff Howard's Design for Service >

Richard Buchanan's closing keynote speech on the Emergence 2007, very insightful.

Just couple of notes and quotes I put down here while listening... would like to hear what you think :)

Buchanan point out Four Boundaries of Service Design as:
1. information visulisation - build conversations following the visual presentation among community that lead to actions;
2. artefact and service - shift the foucs towards the context and consequences of using artefacts;
3. the different between a system designer and a service designer - system design? organisation design? service design? environmental design?
4. service design and management - is good service design good management?

so this is the bit that makes me interested... Buchanan askes what's things that designers do that managers don't do? He talks about the the lost wholeness of organisation operation in management studies... so are we designers getting it back to the service development? Also designer use visualisation to stimulate meaningful communication. Embodyment of the intagibles, designers re-connect the managers to the day-to-day human interactions on the working grounds.

Buchanan then moved on to ask the big question: what is the definition of Service Design? and then he claims that he was not troubled by it, so the anxiety to define it lost its point. He suggests us to be careful about feeling the need to categorising design, but spend time to find out the core quality of design, not the metaphores. As designer, we talk about techniques, talk about methods, what we don't talk about is the strategies that sets above the techniques and the methods. Methods always contains a conceptual framework, often come from another context. Well, the strategy is the art of using methods - how we involve methods and people in our practice.

Value is central in service design, according to Buchanan. One of the central features is about making people more active in their communities, to become agents of change, to be given the power to act. Designer needs to be very self-critical on how much power we retain. It is about justice.

"We can only act well if we have the right information and know how to use it wisely."

"Service design is adding another bit of understanding to this evolving practice of design thinking."

A ture design thinker.

Nordic Conference on Service Design

A new Service Design conference coming up in Oslo, called Service Desin 09, organised by Norwegian Design Council.

This conference has couple of themes around research, education and management perspectives along with the business showcase. The themes includes:

• boundaries, foundation and constituent parts of the emerging discipline of service design


• history and trajectories of service design


• critical views


• methods, tools and processes


• case studies


• relation to design thinking, design leadership and design management


• education and research perspectives

Abstract deadline is 20th April... am thinking of putting in a paper on reflection/conclusion of the empirical data on Service Design Managmemt - should be interesting!

If anyone is going or submitting paper as well, please give me a shout! Especially the lovely guys from the PhD corner in Amsterdam, we shall meet up again!!!!

Look forward to meeting you :)

conference and tourism

Just got an invitation from a design workshop in Taiwan - DeSForM.
what interests me is that they have a half-day scheduled on the programme doing guided tour in Taipei as part of the workshop. This then reminds me that the D2B2 conference in Beijing has scheduled a whole day for guided tour in Beijing... I am not quite sure whether it is a cultural thing or not, as I never recall any tour schedule in European conference (maybe they should do it?) May be it is simply because the Asian are very keen on impressing the foreigners with a cultural shock... It is very interesting how the host to make the city itself as a saling point for a conference! Guess if we host a conference/workshop in Dundee, we shall get everyone hike along the Tay or something ;-)

D2B2 keynote speakers

Just got the list of Keynote speakers of D2B2 - looking interesting...

Dr Bill Hollins - I guess that we are all familiar with his commnet on Service Design on the Design Council's website. Also he is behind the British Stadard on Service Design and Design Management.

Gordon P. Bruce - Design policy and strategy specialist. Gordon has been involved in many extrem complex and large scope projects with IBM, Mobil Oil and Samgsung... think there will be interesting insights from him in project management involving multiple stakeholders!

Yao Yingjia - the leader of the first industrial design team in Lenovo... ops, they took over the laptop manufacturing from IBM years ago, wonder how they are dealing with the future of PC now?

Kathryn Best - the author of the brilliant book 'Design Managment', I love the book and have to say it is impressively beautiful as a management book (which is not an easy thing)!

Dr Thomas Lockwood - the president of DMI, another design management guru. DMI just had a feature on Service Design last year in one of their seasonal review.

Professor James Woudhuysen – another big name in social innovation, to be honest, I don't know much about him... gotta do some research…

Kobayashi Takayuki – from Sony’s VAIO group, I wonder how Sony is position themselves in the market now? Haven’t heard much about them after they lost the mp3 player war to iPod… although the legend of Walkman still go round in the text books for Product Design students :)

Anyway, it seems that I am going to the right place to meet the right people. Fingers still crossed for the paper acceptance and the funding to go to Beijing!

Cambridge Service Science, Management and Engineering Symposium

http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/ssme/materials.html

"The field of Service Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME) has made substantial progress in recent years. There is a growing perception, however, that it is time to take stock and to explore the possibility of bringing some coherence into the emerging strands of knowledge and experience. "

It was a SSME conference in 2007, lots of paper from marketing and operational management.
Special attention paid to 'Services Science – The opportunity to re-think whatwe know about service design' by Chris Voss - a name you should know from the famous report on Experiential Service from London Business School. Find his idea of 'Service Achitecture' is very interesting... I actually used this phrase in my research discussion before (with a slightly different meaning) Mmmnn... may do a post on it later...

Good News ~!

Got an abstract accepted for the D2B conference next April~ shall be busy with writing again!

By the way, am going to Amsterdam for the Service Design Conference tmrw... early flights from London... eh... happy that Jonathan is coming as well as the 'local' guide - seems that he already has the trip planned!
Also plan to meet another PhD student from Swedem for a chat - should be good!

Questions & Hypotheses Conference Snapshot

Kowning that I only have 5 hours before my flight to India... I still want to provid a really quick snapshot of the Q&H Conference I attended in Berlin. I am happy that all the 15 presentations really reflect the on-going rich design research with a large varity of methodological approaches. The research questions, although some unmatured at the early stage in the research process, are all very interesting and largely human-centred.

I was especailly impressed by Dag and Cucuzzella from the first day presentation. Prof. Findeli, as the keynote speaker, talked about the relationship among research questions, design questions, design answers and research answer in PhD study. I learnt a lot from his talk.

The second day we had our own Lisa - who did excellent and impressed everyone! I particularly found second day presentations interesting, since many of them are very similiar to what we do in Dundee...

God... the taxi is waiting outside... I shall be back in 3 weeks and will refelect more on this wonderful event in Berlin! By the way, the next Q&H might be hosted by Dundee :-)

Oops... that is me and my poster in the conference!

See you later!

I will be off for conference + vacation + conference for the next five weeks!!!

Germany: 22nd Oct - 27th Oct, Berlin, Cologne
India: 29th Oct - 19th Nov, Chennai, Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Bundi, Bijaipur and on and on...
England: 21st Nov - 23th Nov, London
Netherlands: 24th Nov - 28th Nov, Amsterdam Service Design Conference

Good girl go wild~!

Questions & Hypotheses

Questions & Hyphoteses is a conference I am going to attend this week. My second visit to Berlin - should be good. Also I will visit Cologne to have a chat with the Service Design guru in Germany - Prof. Birgit Mager from KIDS. Excited~!

The main body of the poster I'm going to present in the conference:

What's in my paper ?

This is a piece of software that really sum up what I wrote in an abstract for a conference in Korea:



A great way to get the key words out automatically... wonder if I write the paper first, will it product the abstract for me ?!

Add in another one, made from a other abstract for the Design Connexity Conference next April... a bit editing on the text and see very different result this time - although service design is still the theme...

Here is the solution and what was the problem?

I found this quote in the poster of the Questions & Hyphothesis Conference, organised by Design Reserach Network. I am currently writing up an abstract for them... Fingers crossed for me!

It states a interesting but ture situation in design research (eh, I guess it is the same in many PhD researches in the field of social science):
"Design Research has been self-conscious about its lack of systematic methods and theories in comparison to other academic disciplines. This self-consciousness, on the one hand, to a certain degree, has advanced the quality of design discourse; on the other hand, it has resulted in much research that is methodologically rigorous but conceptually weak. ‘Here is the solution and what was the problem?’ seems to describe the unfavourable character of much design research. It is forgotten that it is questions and ideas that give meanings and values to meticulously executed research."

I can clearly recall a discussion with my surpervisors about how PhD is sometimes a pot-rational process... Ooops... promised not to tell ;)

Service Design Conference 2008

Just find this conference seems fit perfectly into my research...however, I am not going...wish that I could though...
All the presenters are quite heavy-weight researchers and practioners in service design...
Hope to go next year if they still have one!

" This year the service design conference takes place at the Hong Kong Design Center.

The conference will explore a range of issues in the customer’s journey such as how to look at the service process through the eyes of the customer; how to create visible evidence of customer value and lasting impressions of the service provider at touch points; and how service design can offer policy makers and practitioners a vision for the transformation of public services. Case studies will show how design-specific competences can be systematically developed within service organisations including those in the public sector. "

see the website of Service.Design.Network for details...