Exploring the O-Gap.

De O in O-Gap staat voor Organisation. ‘Hoe zorg je ervoor dat je prachtige plan niet struikelt bij de uitvoering in de organisatie.’
2 presentaties, afgewisseld met opbouwende discussies. De sprekers zoomden elk in op een methodiek; één vanuit design perspectief en een vanuit business perspectief.
Het was een inspirerende avond, met 2 presentaties, goede discussies en napraten met een drankje.

31Volts was ter plaatse en bracht verslag uit voor de site van het Service Design netwerk Nederland.
Het verslag is hier te lezen, inclusief presentaties. Ook kun je hier aankondigingen van nieuwe activiteiten volgen.

Info
Datum: Donderdag 18 februari 2010
Tijd: 18.00 – 20.00 uur
Locatie: Waag Society, Nieuwmarkt, Amsterdam.
Let op: het aantal plaatsen is beperkt. Geef je dus snel op via de events pagina’s op Facebook en/of Linkedin.

Programma
We beginnen de bijeenkomst met een aantal presentaties van recente service design projecten, en daarna is er gelegenheid is om gezamenlijk te discussieren over actuele ontwikkelingen in het vakgebied. Ten slotte willen we ook graag jullie mening horen t.a.v. toekomstige activiteiten van het Service Design Netwerk Nederland.
Na afloop van de SD Thinks sessie zijn we van plan om vrolijk door te gaan met een goeie ouwe SD Drinks sessie in een café in de buurt.
Een preciezer programma volgt binnenkort.

Nieuws
Ten slotte, er is nu ook een website van het Service Design Netwerk Nederland. Daarop staan alle nieuwtjes en activiteiten tot nu toe. Laat het ons weten als je aanvullingen of opmerkingen hebt.

Tekst: Geke van Dijk

P.S. Hartelijk dank aan de Waag Society voor het beschikbaar stellen van hun zaal!

“Design for Conversion is a highly interactive conference aiming to collectively (as one big family) deepen our knowledge of Persuasive Technology, Experience Design and Evidence Based Marketing, and how these disciplines can learn from each other. With heavy doses of design thinking, cognitive psychology and statistical knowledge we are very serious in taking up a worldwide conversion challenge.”

What is it about?
As Arjan first time explained Design for Conversion to me: “I’m wearing a Kuyichi jeans. I became an ambassador; not only for this nice pair of jeans, not only for the brand, but even for their philosophy…!”
This year will be the ‘Mobile Edition’ and a (slideshare) framework of the organizers’ view on design for conversion can be seen below:

Although obviously my share will be in the field of service design, I think it will become very interesting when Persuasive Technology, Experience Design and Evidence Based Marketing all come together…
And together with experienced and new participants, 20 team captains, good food and music, it will be a great day!

Interested?
Because the organizers want to preserve the interactive nature of this event, there are only 150 seats (!). For a happy fast few registration is still possible, for 229 euros you’re in. English is the leading language, and the next session will be in New York…

I’m sure it’s going to be an interesting, creative and inspiring an energetic day, and I’m looking forward to it!

A crowd flocked in the trendy Jamie Oliver restaurant Fifteen for two presentations given by Larry Hirst (CEO IBM EMEA) and Ian Miles (Manchester Business school).

I didn’t realize how normal the term “service science” is in the academic world. Even Larry Hirst kept on reminding the crowd that IBM has opened service science centers. While the presentation by Larry Hirst was interesting from the point of view that he had hard facts how important service are for IBM. For the first time in history more then 50% of IBM’s annual revenue came out of services. Also an interesting remark by Larry was that the biggest challenge for service innovation isn’t the lack of tools or processes, it’s getting middle-management to play along.
Ian Miles had a typical academic presentation! He definitely scored points on content but lost some on style (a slideument with animated bulletpoints…). He was able to clearly explain service innovation by first dissecting both and them merging them back together. What he ended up with was this definition “doing things better and doing better things“.

Although IDEO was mentioned briefly (for 5 sec.) none of the speakers talked about the role of design in service innovation. So I couldn’t resist the temptation to fire that question away at the speakers. Mark de Jong, one of the AMSI professors replied that design will be an important area of attention in their course but lacked to tell how. Larry Hirst replied that designers are key in service innovation and that they should stop hiding and step forward more often.

The opening attracted a crowd that you would expect just by reading the description. The ratio suits vs. jeans was about 25:1. I think service designers need to be present in these kind of surroundings. Like Larry said, they need to step forward to the playing-field. Being at these events also keeps you connected with the rest of the world (the non-designers). We truly need those guys who eat the business side of services for breakfast!

I really think the opening of AMSI is a great step. It will help to drive the awareness for service innovation in the Netherlands. And at some point they will cross paths with service design as a very effective approach to realize this. I’ll be ready for the phonecall ;)

The day kicked off at 9.30 o’clock in a cozy Rode Hoed with +/- 200 people. At the start of the day I took the opportunity to thank everyone who made this conference possible and give a warm welcome to all the people who took the effort to show up. The audience was an interesting mix of academia and business folks. There was a lot of interest from Scandinavia for this conference. I would say that around 1/3 of the audience was Dutch and the rest was an international gathering. I’ll save you all the details and just go with my highlights of the day.

The real-life projects
As a Service Designer myself I was encouraged by the work already done by the other agencies. Maybe one of the best examples was the work done at mobilkom Austria. It wasn’t the most visually appealing presentation of the day but it showed how practical Service Design can be. People are looking for deliverables and end results of the design process. The mobilkom Austria case was the perfect example of how a company can use Service Design to achieve its strategic targets (eg. being the best Service provider in Austria).
Next to mobilkom Austria, Rory and Sean from Live|work presented just what I was looking for; more real-life projects with actual clients. Oliver King who had the honor to give the final presentation of the day not only added to that with the iconic Virgin Atlantic project but he did it with his remarkable style and energy on stage.

It was also good to see that there were a lot of companies in the audience. Currently it’s about people in those companies who see the value of Design and that it can be applied on more then just fancy products. But it’s still a long way to get at the crucial CxO level in companies. Service Design requires an holistic approach and you need management support for this.

Metascripts
The IDEO presentation about metascripts made an impact. Mostly because the managed to get a message across. Where most presenters have a bunch of information they want to tell, IDEO managed to just focus on 1 thing and get that across. But in the end metascripts go into the list of creating service frameworks and platform. Like Adam Greenfield said; create beautiful seams instead of seamless solutions.

Some final words
The field of Service Design is quickly evolving. I have a deep respect for the true pioneers (eg. Live|Work, Sedes, Engine, ThinkPublic, etc) who actually already managed to get organizations into applying Design Thinking in order to improve their service.

Although there is a lot of buzz around Design (Thinking) lately in the renowned business papers like the Harvard Business Review, Businessweek and Wall Street Journal. I’m very curious how quick this will be picked up by the people who have the authority to put it into practice. Especially with the current financial situation in the world it’s most likely management will revert to the things they know and won’t be eager to take risks with disruptive approaches they’re not familiar with.

The whole Service Design industry has still a big job at its hands. Although I think we’re getting into a crucial phase. Service Design needs to prove itself as an strategic approach in many more projects. We, and the industry, needs more evidence and proof.
I’m confident that it will happen but if we’ll need to see some new appealing examples next year at SDNC09!