here’s an interview I did with Rik Wuts and Andre Weenink as part of their Klatergoud project:
18 minutes Klatergoud #1 from Rik Wuts on Vimeo.
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interview
October 25th, 2008Some first insights on service design
May 19th, 2008Based on one of the tracks at the DMI academic conference in Paris this April, the latest issue of the Design Management Review (which is a special issue on service design) ,and an earlier hunch on the relevance of BDI to service design and vice versa, I will share with you some of the insights I have on service design in relationship to the ‘traditional’ design disciplines (which I categorize according to Olins in Product, Environment, Communication and Behaviour, because it works really well for me).
Where the ‘traditional’ design disciplines are geared towards creating individual touch points, service design seems to focus on integrating these into a complete and meaningful consumer journey. Therefore it is tempting to say that service design is just another word for multidisciplinary design. Tempting but unsatisfying: Somehow it seems to me that the added value of service design lies more in what happens between the design disciplines than within them. It looks at the connections rather than what gets connected, at the white space between the words (the people from live|work confirm this view judging from their contribution to DMR).
At the same time however, I’ve noticed how familiar the tools and methods applied for service design are to those involved in integrated multidisciplinary design management. This suggests that a significant part of the effort of creating meaningful and profitable service models lie in creating the consumer touch points that make the service tangible. These touch points have to be designed, and thus require the ‘familiar’ research/ design/ execution tools and methods. I’ve also gathered from the Design Management Review that many of the leaders in the field have a product- or interaction design background.
This little insight left me wondering what specific methods and tools there are within the domain of service design to connect the touch points. What is the white space between the words? At Zilver have started to prototype our own answers to this question. What we have developed is an alternative to the traditional brand touch point wheel (Davis and Dunn, 2002), or rather, something that comes before it. We’ve baptised it the relationship wheel. It tries to uncover the relationship between your organisation and specific types of end users by looking at how specific kinds of relationships are built over time. We don’t look at pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase, but at getting acquainted with each other, becoming familiar with each other, spending time together, getting to know each other, challenging each other, celebrating together etc. These phases in the relationship are then translated into opportunities for interaction and accompanying touch points.
relationships grow over time, photo by john&mel kots
It is clear that what connects the touch points in this model is the evolving relationship between organisation and end user. This relationship, on a fundamental level, is the brand. The specific consumer journey represents the execution of the brand for that specific product/service/consumer. This puts the brand in a place where it connects the touch points, and forms the white space between the words, whether it concerns a product or a service experience.
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dmi conference summary
May 1st, 2008There’s another nice summary of the DMI paris conference at molecular’s blog, by Brian Gillespie. Go see!
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defining the designer of 2015
April 28th, 2008here is a nice survey for you all to take part in. It will sharpen your mind with regards to the role of design and designers in the future. The survey is initiated by AIGA (the american BNO) and Adobe. Results will be posted by june 2008 under the same link.
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guest post by Jan Buijs
April 28th, 2008
Here’s what prof. Dr. Jan Buijs wrote on the DMI conference. We spent the week with him, he’s a great guy and a veteran in all that concerns design, innovation, creativity and education.
Summary Design Thinking
DMI conferences Paris, April 2008
JB thoughts/ideas/concepts/…. after three days of Paris brain crunching. Both the academic conference on design thinking as well as the beginnings of the professional conference about design as the linking force. And getting back all those old memories of earlier design/creativity and innovation conferences and of editorial comments in the famous design/creativity & innovation (research) journals.
jan buijs and me at dmi paris 08
Design thinking as the linking force
Its a linking force between *):
- all functions inside the company
- all relevant (probably all) departments
- and within the “open innovation-concept”: this goes beyond corporate borders (so with and including all outsiders) (think about Fleur’s PhD project)
- clients/customers/users
- suppliers and distributors
- the whole chain (including pre-sales, sales, purchase, USE, maintenance, cleaning, repair, second (or more) use, recycling and or discharging)
- and all other relevant stakeholders from the outside world
- brand, the products & services and the company as a whole, regarding ALL touch points, and ALL strategic issues (values, planning, mission, vision, HRM, etc) Read the rest of this entry »
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Ask not what design thinking is, ask what it can do for your client.
April 21st, 2008Both at the academic and the business DMI conference in Paris this week speakers were very keen on defining design thinking. From an academic point of view, this is quite understandable: epistemologically (wow!) there’s some very interesting stuff happening when a designer/creative puts his teeth in a problem. (See many articles by Roger Martin on this topic) This merits much research which requires a rigorous approach.
From a business point of view however, I’m not so sure all this talk about what design thinking is will help us reach our goals. Let’s explore what’s going on:
As experienced designers and design managers, we have discovered that in many cases our added value to business and entrepreneurship lies not so much in what we do (eg design artefacts or identities) but in how we do it. It is not our design results that make the biggest difference but the way we go about solving problems, applying creativity, involving stakeholders, and creating opportunities. It’s what zilver’s consultancy practices are based on. We have a great urge to capitalise on these qualities: if only we could bring design thinking to the market, we would be able take upstream what we are best at, and having a great time in the process.
The mistake we are making is that we think we need to know what it is before we can sell it. What we have to watch out for in this context is that we don’t apply ‘traditional’ business thinking to explain design thinking. Imagine trying to sell design thinking to a CEO of a large company using only very strict definitions, measurable benefits, predictable outcomes and proven processes (off course embedded in a nice over the top PowerPoint presentation using a template with groovy fly-in effects, talking paperclips and totally distracting slide transitions). That would be missing the point big time wouldn’t it? Still, that’s exactly the trap I saw some people at the DMI conference fall in to.
My point: from a business point of view, design thinking is not something that needs to be defined before it can be sold. It is many things at once, and none of the above. Like creativity, vision, empathy, excellence and leadership, we all recognise it when it’s there, without having a clue as to how to define it.
If you want to sell design thinking, just make sure it’s recognised: demonstrate what it can do, gather case-studies, ring the bell when it happens, or keep a design thinking diary. I’m sure after seeing these things there won’t be single CEO in the world asking you: “yeah, right, but what exactly is it?”
here’s some thinking on design thinking:
Dan Saffer Victor Lombardi Ralf Beuker stanford but also google it and have a field day!
Rachel Cooper’s mindmap on design thinking, based on our dicussion at the academic dmi conference paris 2008
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DMI conference paris 2008
April 17th, 2008I am in paris right now at the international DMI conference, writing this in my hotel room. I’ve been trying to find time to blog about it but somehow Eiffeltowers, finnish people, lunches, dinner parties and, er, the conference itself got in the way. So for now I will post the presentation I held at the academic conference in the beginning of this week (to quite some acclaim I’m happy to mention). And here’s a pictorial overview of the conference and all the distractions around it.
And check out the new zilver website by the way, it is officially on line!
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creative company conference mindbytes
April 3rd, 2008as promised in my previous novella, some mindbytes from the creative company conference on april 1st 2008 in Amsterdam:
John Howkins: Creativity needs freedom. We dream @ 8-12 hertz, we analyse @ 16-25 Hertz. The challenge is to manage the switch. People in creative sectors are 2-3 times more educated than in other sectors: creativity requires thinking for yourself and confidence. The right setting for innovation isn’t a mechanism but an ecology, a habitat. Western creativity is individual, elitist, about freedom and expression, while eastern creativity is collective, consensual, about harmony and dialogue.
Ivy Ross: getting creativity inside your organisation is about creating an adaptive dynamic living system as opposed to creating a mechanism. Creativity is not so much about the process as it is about setting the right conditions. Creativity requires playfulness, trust, connectivity, immersion, skill, risk, patience, courage, love, surrender. Innovation = play with purpose. Play is not what we do but how we do it. If you want output of a team, you need to provide some input first. Ivy calls herself a visionary who knows how to execute. She wears really pink clothes.
Robert Brozin: you’ve got to understand your past to understand your future. Having his company on the stock market was the worst period of his career. Stock=short term. Great brands are created from the inside.
Arkadi Kuhlman: people like things that don’t make sense.
Richard Reed: 6 rules to entrepreneurship: keep the main thing the main thing; have a purpose (beyond the cash); do the right thing; it’s about people; take care of the details; open up & listen up.
Bill Moggridge: It’s really easy to do a bad job if you forget the end-user. Design can harness tacit knowledge plus logical thinking. From general design awareness (how to choose) to specialist design skills (how to do it) to interdisciplinary design thinking (what to do) to design research (what to know). Prototypes are like stories about people.
Peter Diamandis: The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself. The scarcest resource on the planet is the human mind’s commitment to a goal (”Maybe it’s impossible for you, but i’m going to go ahead and do it”). A 10 mln dollar prize generated a 100 mln worth of innovation: a new businessmodel for innovation.
Paul Hughes: three levels of design: form&function; systems&processes; strategy. You can analyse the past, but what has happened probably won’t continue to happen. The future you have to design. Design thinking is about a loop envisioning the future, prototyping it, testing it and adapting it. Iteration.
Walter Amerika : advertising is in trouble. Offline advertising is down to the level it was in 1959 (?) Design companies are shouting for innovation capabilities.
Marcel Wanders: creatives used to be like your younger brother: funny but a little stupid.
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creative company conference evaluation
April 3rd, 2008For a good conference you need a good topic, a good line up of speakers, a good conference format, a good venue and a good audience. The creative company conference that was held on april 1st 2008 in het Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, organised by Rudolf van Wezel of Bis Publishers and Ravi Naidoo of the South African Design Indaba as part of the dutch Creative Challenge Call, was a pretty damn good conference. With some start-up problems. My evaluation is as follows (on a scale from 1 to 10)
topic: 8
Creative companies have the future. Its great to hear peolple talk about what creativity has brought them. And the topic is still enough of a mystery (how do you organize creativity, how do you convince the board of its added value, how do you get creativity on the workfloor, etc) to guarantee a day of lively discussion. I would have briefed the speakers in a more precise way though. The topic has to be broken down in precise questions if you want the speakers to get to a level where new insights are created.
line up: 7,5
Speakers on a conference have to (1) lead an interesting life or to have an interesting job. They also have to (2) be able to reflect on their lives or jobs, and to destill insights form this reflection that are worth sharing. Then ofcourse (3) they have to be able to communicate these insights in an inspiring way. Most speakers scored high on these three points, with Ivy Ross, Bill Moggridge, John Howkins, and Robert Brozin topping the list with absolutely inspiring and insightful speeches. A delight to experience. In the evening programme Paul Hughes and Walter Amerika were spot on with their observations and insights. Other speakers like Marcel Wanders (award for most tipsy presenter), Jeroen van Erp, Marc Matthieu, Stanley Hainsworth (award for most creative hairdo for least creative person) and Carlos Miele are all very good at what they do but their reflection on their work and ability to share key learnings with a large audience are insufficient to rock my boat. The special award for worst powerpoint slides go to Arkadi Kuhlmann. I think design/creativity conferences should have a powerpoint police that are entitled to undemocratically forbid these atrocities.
In general I thought there were too many speakers, quantity going at the expense of quality. And I think when you put people in a panel you need people with empathy, improvisation skills, the ability to listen to others, and the will to build a story together. Those people are just extremely rare. My respect goes to Paul Hughes, who succeeded in giving depth to the discussion despite of the chaos around him. Then you need some really good chairpeople leading the conversation. the likes of Pauw & Witteman. They may not be design savvy but I am very sure they would do a better job than what the evening audience was confronted with.
conference format: 6
This was not a very creative conference, in the sense that the format was completely traditional. If you take the purpose of a conference like this as a starting point (to be inspired, to meet people, to learn, to step out of your daily comfort zone, to take away something durable) I think we should be able to design a different conference format. With more interaction, more choice with regards to depth vs breadth, more on-line / off-line synergy, and more intense experiences. I’m not saying this will be easy, but no design job is. I for one am challenged to think of new ways to meet as a creative community.
Venue 10
What a beautiful building and what a location. Perfect. (I say this as a Rotterdammer 
). T-mobile should do something about reception in the big room, but I can hardly blame the organisation for that.
Audience 9
I’ve met some really interesting and inspiring people from all kinds of backgrounds, and besides the usual suspects (to whom I am starting to belong so I heard) I saw a great many new faces and companies. I’ve heard the complaint that there were too many suits and not enough creatives but I consider that a compliment to the suits and a pointed finger at the creatives. Very many creatives hate to talk about/think about/discuss/reflect on their creativity. That’s their problem, not the conference’s. By the way: in this light I was amazed at hearing Jeroen van Erp say that it is easier for designers to think strategically than for strategists to think like a designer. What nonsense. Let’s please stop treating design like some kind of closed off fantasy land that only people with strange hairdo’s have the password to.
Another issue is that the entry fee of a conference like this may be high for a starting creative entrepreneur. I think there are possibilities to let these people pay with their creative talents (which they have in abundance) in stead of with money (which they -apparently- have not). The people who do have the money would benefit from this in that they get to meet/see/interact with more creativity in the conference.
This leads to an unweighted average of 8,1 which is high. I had a great day at what is to be the first issue in a potentially groundbreaking series of conferences of which we creative dutchmen can be genuinely proud. Congratulations to the organisation.
Bare with me: my next post will be in the form of mindbytes and will treat the actual content of the conference.
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new article
March 30th, 2008
At the Design Management Institute’s Academic Conference in Paris this april I will be presenting a paper on Brand Driven Innovation, co-authored by Christa van Gessel. It includes our latest insights gained from research and projects at Zilver. It builds on my 2005 dissertation, but goes much further in the specifics of BDI, including its scope, a refined methodology and a case study. Download it here and let me know what you think!
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