visual thinking - are we thinking in the same way?

Wonder if they are referring to designer and their client...
When visual thinking becomes the new buzz word in business world...
Are we really talking about the same kind of thinking?

Thanks to Ralf Beuker for the source :)

Design Dictionary

See how the Design Dictionary defines Service Design...

http://www.service-design-network.org/fileadmin/sdn_webmedia/pdf/Design_Dictionary-Service_Design.pdf

It takes four pages !!

information resource: Service Design Network

Experiential Service

Prof. Chriss Voss and Leonieke Zomerdijk published this review on innovations in Experiential Service from London Business School. They introduced the concept of Experiential Service, where services focus on fulfilling customer's experiential needs rather than carrying out service transactions in the traditional definition. The interesting bit is the five areas they point out as having important impacts on customer experience: physical environment, service employees, service delivery process, fellow customers and back office support.

I am thinking of how to build this into Schmitt's Customer Experience Management Model... and also how it might work with the whole 'sensing, feeling, thinking, acting and relating' themes from Experiential Marketing... mmm...

transfer presentation

Just realize that I haven't left anything for the transfer presentation, which is about a month ago... the title is Mind the Gap: theories and practices in service design. The presentation is mainly used to associat with a 9000-word writen document.

The presentation and the document mainly report the results of the literature review, research development (or let's say actually it is research agenda focusing down), the proposed methodology and timeline. Literature review consists six essays. Five are synthesis of different literature themes: service, experience economy, experience design, design and design management. The six is a brief review of current service design consultancies in UK.

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...

Strathclyde Service Science Workshop

Got a call on Sunday and I was on my way to Glasgow on Monday... ignoring the promise of transfer report delivering deadline on the same day...

It is a workshop under the name of 'Service Science'. And according to the key presenter Raymond Fisk, the name doesn't really matter, you can add whatever you are doing after the 'Service ____?'... so basically 'service design' is a correct term in this sense...

In the morning a presentation was given by Prof. Ray Fisk, a marketing guy from Texas State University. Starting with the story of the elephant and the blind men... ha ha... which is surprisingly suitable to describe the situation in service ____? nobody really knows what they are doing, everyone just see a part of the whole thing, while the whole thing is just too complex for one discipline/perspective to totally understand. His proposal of changing 'service science' to 'customer science' particularly interets me, as the argument in my research is always putting the customer in the heart of organisation operation. Also, he touch the importance of arts (design included), in terms of embracing emotions and creating joy.

the main point of the afternoon discussion are: the concept, the cross-discipline collaboration and the T-shape professionals who can realize the former two. Our group discussion is mainly focused on cross-discipline/function units collaboration: its efficiency, its effects (overall maximisation), and the power of organisational culture on these issues. Very interesting discussion among the group, we've got a manager from RBS, two academia from marketing, one from NHS doing risk management, one IT engineer and me, designer. I notice the use of language is possibly the main bia in communication, each profession has its own glossary to describe the same thing with slightly different words... somehow it becomes confusing. Although within 'service science' most of the jargon are agreed, still once the concept was understood with the existing knowledge in different disciplines.

A paper comes with the workshop is the white paper from IBM and Cambridge University, called Succeeding with Service Innovation. Worth reading! Funny enough that it starts in almost the same time as I started my PhD, and this publication is out in April,2008. Most of the arguments in the paper are the same as mine -- only in more beautiful sentences... I am happy that it means I am on the right track here. Although disappointingly, the definition of Service Science is the short for SSME-- Service science, management and engineering. In the footnote, it says SSME can be extended into SSMED -- Service science, management, engineering and design. Seems that the theory construction of design is still a dearth.

giving feedback

It is not easy to give feedback to the others... especially students...
you have to be positive, and constructively critical... and patient...
In general I did fine today with the help of my lovely colleagues, well, couple of feedbacks on my performance there:

'don't talk too fast' - when I gets nervious, I start to talk fast like hell... pause with questions like 'do you understand?' or 'you know what I mean?' help to give other people some time to *think* what I just said... God... I sometimes talk faster than I think... scary,isn't it?

'dont sit too close to others, leave them personal space' - I obviously dont have a issue with personal space, which... then cause trouble to others... I get to close to them -- damn it... too eager to show that I am friendly... I gotta be a bit teacher here... right!

'sit face-to-face to the people you talk to, so that you can see their reactions' -- very good one, and solve the problem of getting to close to them... will do that!

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 ;)