Programma

Geke van Dijk van STBY zat de avond voor en stak van wal met de introductie. Ze introduceerde de 4 sprekers en een aantal voorzetten voor discussie achteraf.
Elke spreker kreeg 10 minuten gesprekstijd met daarna nogmaals 10 minuten voor discussie en Q&A.
De sfeer was erg open en experimenteel; het netwerk gaat in co-creatie richting geven aan haar activiteiten. Hier werd graag gehoor aan gegeven. Er werd besproken met welke reden mensen aanwezig waren, wat ze van het netwerk verwachten en zelf kunnen bieden. We kwamen aan het eind tijd te kort om met de hele zaal verder te discussiëren.

Deelnemers

De Waag society stelde een zaal ter beschikking voor ongeveer 50 mensen, maar het aantal aanmeldingen en geïnteresseerden kwam al gauw boven de 70 uit. Van leden van het netwerk tot studenten. Van een klein aantal dienstverleners tot vele ontwerpers en consultants die service design herkennen als onderdeel van hun bezigheden. Zelfs iemand uit België die erg te spreken was over het initiatief, de open mentaliteit en het ‘delen’!

De dillema’s in Service Design

Het is duidelijk wanneer je een loodgieter moet bellen, maar wanneer bel je een servicedesigner? Marcel kaartte hedendaagse dilemma’s en uitdagingen aan waarmee organisaties spelen en stelde de vraag ook aan het publiek.

Benieuwd naar de andere sprekers? Alle presentaties zijn opgenomen op video en te zien op de SDNNL-site.

Vervolg

Er is zeker vraag naar het soort bijeenkomsten, de Thinks, Drinks, Talks en Labs worden goed bezocht. Reacties, tips en bijdrages zijn van harte welkom op info@servicedesignnetwerk.nl
De frequentie van de Thinks is eens per 2 maanden. Houd de SDNNL-site in de gaten voor de thema’s en volgende bijeenkomsten!

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!

I finally translated my presentation in Enlish. Here it is:

Service Design Network Netherlands is organizing the very first Dutch Service Design Drinks! Our goals is to offer a informal platform where everyone involved or interested in service design can meetup and share ideas while enjoying a liquid refreshment. It’s a free entry and get your own drinks event. The drinks are monthly meetup, moving between Amsterdam and Utrecht.

We’ll meet in the Louis Hartlooper Complex (15-20 min walk from Utrecht Central station). If you come by car your best bet is to look for a paid parkingspot around the Oosterkade. When the weather is sunny we’ll hop over outside to the best terraces of the Netherlands, Ledig Erf (photos and history).

If you twitter about the this event or the Service Design Network Nederland use #sdnnl as your hashtag!

Program
Professor Pieter Jan Stappers did the introduction illustrated by the IKEA bag: Everyone is a designer. Pieter Jan states that this idea is not the reality. Not everyone is a designer althought everyone is a user. But what is User Centered? And what is the role of a designer in a User Centered Design Process?

Pieter Jan invited Liz Sanders on stage. She is one of the first who developed methods for a User Centered Design approach. Check out Liz works for the Architect Firm NBBJ where she does Generative Design Research to understand experience. An extensive project NBBJ is working on is the design of a Health Campus in New Orleans.

A video of her full presentation can be found here.

Besides the methods she developed she also talked about the position her team of User Centered designers has within the projects at NBBJ’s: ‘About one and a half chair in a team of about fifty.”

An insight that fascinated me was the divergence between architects and the User Centered approach. They where almost opposites. For example she mentioned that architects view things like bathrooms and sinks in a hospital as details of the project. While for the users (patients, nurses and staff) however, these are essentials not details.
On the question whether how Sanders selects her participants, the answer was “I don’t especially select them, but I prepare them carefully.”
She mentioned designing for and with users, and within this last also made the interesting distinction in co-designing, co-designing with shared learning and co-designing with teaching.

Slide from Liz Sanders’ presentation

I recommend everyone to check out the video including her presentation slides with very nice and clear schematics.

After the break it was Jacob Buur his turn. Jacob works at SPIRE Research Centre, part of the University of Southern Denmark. His presentation dealt with Ethnografic Provocation.
On the question how to make sure every decision doesn’t end up in a not satisfying compromise, Jacob answers “That’s what designers are for right? This is not a democratic design process. It’s a way to make sure that all the stakeholders are heard and have some influence. But the final word is with the designers ”
He came up with some nice oneliners like “Innovation is not about predictability.” and “Innovation hurts!” Jacob also introduced provotyping in stead of prototyping. He also introduced a commonly used Danish saying: ” Cut it Out in Cardboard!” I would love to now the original in Danish. Anyone?

Finally Froukje Sleeswijk Visser shortly told about her thesis.
She also introduced the prepared Pecha Kucha style by former TUD students who use Contextmapping techniques in their daily business. Christa (Zilver) mentioned the fact that a lot of tools are only focused on ‘looking back’. The best quote came from our friend Sanne (Muzus): “Before my Masters I really thought users where aliens”. I’m not surprised by her saying this because the study is still part of Industrial Design at a Technical University.

Reflection
It was very nice to be able to attend this symposium. Their where a lot of familiar faces from the industry. Both from the design side as well as from the client side.

The one thing that worries me when talking to the User Centered designers coming from TUD is the analytical and very strict approach(*). Almost all former students took courses in context mapping and came up with almost the same sensitizer booklets. An other peculiar thing is that the TUD approach on User Centered still views the user more as an subject rather than as a partner with projects. I sometimes get the feeling that the users are samples to be viewed through a microscope. Even when it’s the context that needs to be viewed.

In our daily business we find that users are very keen on participating. Long term relationships are both valuable and relevant within projects. And people are happy to help, knowing that it is their lives we are designing for.

The last issue I would like to address is the questions from the audience focussing on the costs of User Centered projects. They are time consuming. The lack of a clear view on they final result makes this even worse.
I think we as User Centered designers (wether we work in the service or product industry) need to tell the world that these projects are not costly at all. When one realizes that all projects end up with solutions that fit seamlessly in peoples lives, the created value is unparalleled!
It helps to show more results, solutions, products or services next to the methods used. Therefore the methods used and the solutions created should be evaluated thoroughly. Liz Sanders mentioned there is never budget for this evaluation step. Her hope is it will come with the next level; transition co-creation planning.
This way of working needs clients to be able to make this happen. In other words; projects need to be done to be able to measure results.

(*) Our Anouk is the exception on the rule.
(Anouk: Maybe it’s because I did not attend the Master design for interaction but chose my own electives and my own way of involving users in my processes…)

Marcel en ik bezochten dit Cafe, samen met Paulus Veltman en Wouter van der Hoog.

Hier mijn Moleskine samenvatting van de middag.

Kortom: heel veel interessante maar versnipperde ontwikkelingen, initiatieven, partijen, rechthebbenden, contentbeheerders, portals en doelgroepen. Veel mogelijkheden voor nieuwe diensten rondom audiovisueel erfgoed.

Beeld en Geluid


We hebben ook deelgenomen aan een rondleiding bij Beeld en Geluid, waar een enorm archief met audiovisueel erfgoed tot 16 meter diep onder de grond is opgeslagen.
Bij Beeld en Geluid in de zaal ‘Experience’ en bij de presentaties van het Cross Media Cafe werden al enkele goede voorbeelden gegeven van AV gebruik.
Een goed nieuw initiatief om mee af te sluiten: Uitzending gemist gaat in juli haar content en metadata ontsluiten, zodat het door Google indexeerbaar wordt!

“KaosPilots is more than an education, it is a philosophy.
We challenge young entrepreneurs to grow both personally and professionally. What is it to take an education? It means actively deciding what we learn. We work side-by-side with staff to generate and accomplish the goals we set for ourselves. It is about creating the tools to take out into the world to do anything we want. And what are the tools? Along with personal development, the curriculum centers around team learning, project design, process design, and business design. We learn by doing, which inevitably creates a network and confidence in being the people who can really change the world..” (source)

Team 2
After their successful picnic in autumn, the pilots just decided again to invite inspiring people and companies, and 31Volts happened to be one of the lucky newly invited.
When entering the bright, creative and crowded classroom/living room directly from the rainy street, all visitors were welcomed by a warm applause by the pilots.
Team 2, (age between 21 and 27, boys and girls from all over the world) could be recognized by wearing flip flops or sandals, which are said to be more sustainable.
Some of the pilots I already met during the ‘innovatieproeftuin‘, like Unnsteinn from Iceland. And Gert happened to originate from the same faculty I studied until 2007, Industrial Design Engineering.

Service Design in a box?
Several warming up rounds and ‘checking in’ ceremonies later visitors and pilots were engaged in discussions about different topics, varying from a ’social photo project’, to ‘getting drunk near the heater’, to ’spontaneous expression’.
I had an interesting short discussion with Nathaniel from Canada, about how to ’sell our profession in a package’. Comparable with explaining service design, the Kaospilots sometimes feel that only a short explanation is not sufficient to express their philosophy. Could we somehow ‘put service design into box’, or ‘fit KaosPilots into a product’ for direct sell & use?
The pilots I met that evening did understand the value of service design immediately, and were quite interested in this design field.

Kaospilots are looking for team 3, more design thinkers, yes!

The innovation potential from design is now widely recognised, and more and more companies are seeing the value that design can offer at all levels of the organisation. Until recently, design-driven innovations have mainly come from the area of product design or interaction design. However, design-driven innovation in services is now becoming a growth area and the area of Service Design is emerging as an exciting and vigerous new kid on the block.

The current program:

• Day 1: The business case for Service Design
• Day 2: A crossover day, encouraging dialogue and learning, through workshops and tutorials
• Day 3: Research papers highlighting Service Design research

I’m really curious if we’re going to see new projects compared to the International Service Design conference last year in Amsterdam.

You can also submit your papers here if you want to get on stage and present.

No details on pricing or speakers yet.

The symposium featured 3 keynote speakers that all had a strong link between their business and creativity. One of the speakers was Walter Amerika who is trying to setup a bank sofa aimed at the needs of the creative industry. The other speaker was Ruud Hendriks, a highly successful dutch media entrepreneur who is the living example that you need to take risks in order to succeed.
Besides the speakers there were workshops on “Crossmedia”, “Marketing 2.0″ and “Service Design”.

31Volts co-organized the Service Design workshop in which we explained our 3 day Service Design project we did a week earlier. During the workshop we used our audience to actually prototype an experience we designed. This was a welcome distraction from all the theory and frankly it was just also fun to do.

The day ended with the presentation by James -“I’m a Service Designer”- Samperi from our friends at Engine. I think James did a great job. Most of the people in the audience had probably never heard of Service Design before. James managed to really bring this to live by using vivid examples of actual Service Design projects at Engine. Presenting a practical definition of “services” and “design” definitely helped to explain the work of a Service Designer. Also the power of big brands was shown again. The examples James used were for some of Engine’s established clients. That big companies take Service Design seriously and see the business potential gives this field the credibility is needs to grow. I was even approached after the event by people saying that they were really impressed by the projects done in the UK and were curious what the current state in the Netherlands is.
It would have been great if the presentation would come online but I haven’t found it yet *hint.

It was a good day for the PR department of 31Volts as we were featured in the magazine “echt” (authentic) that was handed out during the event. And were stalked all day by a TV crew that was making a coverage the symposium and used us as their social object. The positive attention Service Design got (big thanks to James) doesn’t hurt us either.

I think all in all around +/-250 people attended the symposium, ranging from students to innovation-managers. It’s interesting to see what the next step will be by the Hogeschool Utrecht. Organizing such an event is hard work but it’s even harder to create a sustainable “creativity means business” culture.