Visualising Information

Came across this piece about Information Design via Puting People First. Being a follower of Tufte and Wurman, I always believed the power of visualisation when it comes interprate complex information. As a typical diagram freak, I am very keen on getting the story behind the image across to the audience. A good piece of information design work should allow the reader to read the meaning and also tell a story in great details while combining the media materials with their own imagination.

Also thanks to JB, I found this beautiful video that presents the wonderful use of motion diagrams to tell a vivid story about how the world is changing from Hans Rosling on TED.

stupid research

The importance of stupidity in scientific research, by a PhD surviver, Martin A. Schwartz... wonder if it applys to design research as well ?! Guess most of the designers are hit by the 'nobody did' problem on an everyday base...

Thanks to Naida for the link... we are on the same boat of being stupid, productively hopefully :o)

power and creativity

"... no one can give us democracy, we must learn democracy. To be democrat is not to decide on a certain form of human association, it is to learn to live with other men..." by Mary Parker Follett (re-print by Graham, 1995)

Confession

I have been trying to understand Service Marketing as one of the major component of the theories around service management. Now I have a confession to make... it seems that Service Marketing, somehow like Service Design, is growing into this vague grey area where everything becomes a part of Service Marketing.

In The Evolution and Future of Service, Fisk and Grove argue that the science of studying service systems starts in the study of Service Marketing. The marketing managers are the first ones devoted to improving the situation of angry and unsatisfied service consumers in service operations. The study of customer needs and the implementation of all kinds of marketing tool that influence customer behaviours in the service system, slowly extended into the involvement of other subjects such as service engineering, information system, human resource management, financial analysis, policy science, even social science. Gradually, the publications on the topic of Service Marketing seem to have a say on everything in the service system, from employee enrolment, business strategy, to branch office interior environment. In his book on customer relationship, Gronroos proposes this idea of everyone in the organisation taking the responsibility of a ‘part time marketer’. Interestingly, Gronroos’ idea looks very similar to the concept of ‘silent designer’ – a popular concept used to describe the managers who takes the design jobs in organisations.

I wonder if in the real world the marketing employees, even marketing managers, have such a big impact on the service system development. It seems that the role of putting together a cross-departmental cooperation is still often left to the CEOs. A vision that requires everyone in the service system to share cannot be achieved just as simple as coming up with the brightest idea around any single stakeholder, such as customer. I am confused, yet, I love the word ‘nudge’ used by Lisa, a bright colleague of mine, when it comes to describe the designer’s impact in multi-discipline project on not-so-design topics.

Ok, here is the question I really want to ask, what do service designers do to maximise the impacts that they expect on the service system, after they become the ones who know everything about the customer?

the Culture of Design

I was given this book to read in order to help out the lovely DHTP guys next year with some teaching. It was a book for the Level 3 undergraduate students to read. My job is to host seminars for discussions, linking their own design practice with the content of the book.

Going through the first three chapters, I found that Julier gives much in depth review on how design comes to shape, as an academic discipline and as an industry. His ability of weaving architecture, product design, and advertising all into the stream of design history throughout the early 30's till now is pretty impressive. This holistic view it takes can provide the students an snap shoot history of the field that they are going to step in after graduation, and it also echos the 'big design' idea we try to get through during the teaching.

However, I would not describe this book as a easy-reading... so... good luck reading :-)

the rising far east

Divya, a former MDes took a senior design position in the first experience design consultancy in Inida - Idiom. The company has been using customer experience researches as the base of their design practice. Most of the clients are in the field of retail and identity. You will be able to find couple of pages in their webspace talking about their Design Philosophy and about Desig Thinking in Inida.

In China, the next Design2Business Conference in Beijing will be 'looking at evolving frames of reference in which both Asian and Western organisations are grappling with new concepts in product and service design.'

Clearly, the rising design force from Asia has been quickly developed with the same quickly boosting economy and the fast growing marketing needs. How will the new generation of Asian designers be able take the chance of the changing global evironment and, in the same time, develope new insight within their unique local economic, cultural and social environment in their design practice?

Coincident or not... the Design Management Journal published this November has a special issue discussing the topics of 'Managing Design in Global Environments'. In this issue Song and Chung (from KAIST South Korean) talked about how CEO can play a role in Design Management exercises and clearly suggest the importance in approaching design practice with a close cooperation with the hight level management roles. Griffith and Tan discribed how the western design methodologies do *not* work in the Asian market - the 'Simple Complex', as what they call the situation.

the Economist, again, 'predict' the world power tranfer from the U.S. and the European countries to the other countries like China, Russia, India and Brazil in the lately published 'the world in 2009'. In this coming new year, every individual, organisation, country in this world perhaps will have to work out (then adjust again and again) where they can fit in this changing world, so do us designers.

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!

in India now...

Hello~ I am in India now... and finally the hotel internet get working ~
Say hi to everyone and I will see you soon!
Also I am going to meet a M.Des from last year - Divya.
Will be unreachable on internet for about two weeks time since now...