Iria, Bea, Marcela, Asier and I, as "service design doers-thinkers-enthusiasts", have been seduced by servicedesigning.org's initiative and we are now glad to organize the first Service Design Drinks Madrid that will take place at “La Tabacalera” next Thursday 7th of October at 8 p.m. Our aim is to create a place to meet people intrested in service design and to share knowledge, ideas, conversations...
So, that's it! Let’s have an “aperitivo” enjoying inspiring conversation and connecting with other service design enthusiasts!
If you are intrested and plan to come please sign up at http://madridservicedesign.eventbrite.com/ and come with 3 things: - an object that will help you explaining what inspires you most in service design - a post-it (of course!...) in which you will summarize this idea - and a pen or a marker.
Each one has his moments of weakness, so let's blog something about design thinking....
it might worth it.
_an interesting post about this question (and its as intresting comments) The four fases of design thinking, by Warren Berger
_and via Bob Sutton "Work matters" blog a piece of d.school design thinking teaching material (downoadable pdf, nice!!)
Innovation in Healthcare: People-focused innovation in healthcare, How Philips Design supports development of solutions for the ever-changing healthcare landscape
I am not a great fan of car industry. In general I am not found of cars and I hope I could live my life without owning one… Is it too idealistic?
Just using…
Maybe not! It seems that the shift from owning a car to just using one has already been done. Nowadays you have the possibility to use a car-sharing service. It is a flexible renting car system in which you pay just for the time you use the car, for city users (and not big travellers) it is more profitable than owning a car: no insurance costs, no maintenance costs and even in some cases no parking at all. The reference company ‘Zipcar’ has a terrible success in the United Stated.
“Zipcar is the smarter alternative to car rental or ownership. You get wheels when you want them and pay as you go (literally). With bigger savings and fewer headaches than car ownership. We even pay for gas and insurance. Try asking for that at the car rental counter.”
And even in Madrid you can find a car-sharing service; it is called ‘Respiro’, it started in december 2009.
And imagine that Repisro already has a client that has sold his car because the carsharing service offers him all he needs and is less expensive!
I used this service once and it is so good: it is like if it was your own car! It is a smooth, easy and flexible solution (I must confess that I have one car parked one minute walk from my house… very easy).
This service was made possible thanks to technology (just to remind that technology has quite an important weight within service innovation): internet booking, RF Smart Cards and some devices inside the car that works as a central database to count your consumption…
If you’re interested: a detailed guide explaining how to bring carsharing in your community (with business plan and all kind of advices).
A new concept of car…
Thinking about car design usually means more thinking about styling or industrial design. It is quite rare to find real breakthrough concepts of cars. But there are some exceptions. Here is one of my favourite concept car: the Osmose, by Citroën.
And it is not that new. In 2001, Citroën revealed at the Paris Motor Show a concept car that goes beyond just a car, it is a solution for pedestrian mobility associated to a practical city-car… The Osmose.
The idea is based on an innovative product: the Osmose car, a car able to change its trunk into an open 2 persons seat at the back of the car (a sort of outside seat like in old buses).
“Reconciling diverging interests, Osmose sets up a two-way exchange between pedestrians and motorists. In this way, mobility is shared by people who in theory have nothing in common apart from the fact that they happen to be going in the same direction. A natural and fair exchange that respects individual privacy.” (Find here more details about Osmose)
Its storyboard (simplified) could be the following
Even if this idea might be quite idealistic and it needs to be more developed to answer communication, security, usability, legal and more aspects, still it is nice to find the seed of an innovation that really deals with the "concept of car" and "mobility" and goes further than shape, style and fashion. I think it can be inspiring…
Inthis page, created by Jeff Howard, you can find a great sample of articles related to service design. You’ll find the reference of the documents, how to find it (almost all the documents are easy to download with google) and an introduction or quotation of the article. It is really useful and well made. Enjoy it!
For example you’ll find there Lynn Shostack’s article.
Designing health services is to me the most attractive part of service design. It is really close to people and relies deeply on them. And health is such a complex question: it depends not only on a medical treatment but also on the alimentation, the physical activity, the psychological (or emotional) state, the family, the community, the relationship and communication with medical staff, the ability of self-managing… and health care is not just the moment in which you cure a disease, it embraces the whole life…
In this article by Ben Reason, you can find a related analysis (analysis of an article by Lord Darzi in NHS’ InView journal.)
“As the Darzi Review makes clear, health services that care for people only when they become sick are not enough. We need to support people to lead healthy lives, stay out of hospital and feel good. This requires a shift from the traditional industrial thinking focused on quantity and productivity and a narrow definition of efficiency (how many cancer patients can we treat with these resources?) to a new way of thinking. “
(I really recommend reading the whole article about personalizing health services and key elements of Service Thinking +++)
Solutions to better health can (or should) consider all these aspects and empower them trough the use of intelligent/adapted networks and technologies.
And it makes sense that designing health services, as it is definitely linked to people behaviour’s, should be based on co-design practices.
Some inspiring (UK) examples
I must admit that I am a fan of thinkpublic, UK service design consultancy, specialized in the public sector. They have been working on different projects of this kind and they are really inspiriting.
Those two projects are very interesting and well documented:
• The Alzheimer 100 Project: a project that aims to come up with creative solutions to the challenges presented by dementia. (thinkpublic’s post)
In this project thinkpublic used intensive co-design methods and developed a full set of activities and supports to do so. In this article from the Australian Medical Journal you can find a detailed explanation of the process. It is really interesting to imagine people with dementia participating actively in the investigation, filming, bringing inputs in the research. It must have been quite a challenge but the insights collected must have been of real value and meaning to them.
• YouCanKingston: “An ambitious project is under way to tackle health inequalities on the Cambridge Road estate in Kingston, Surrey, through research-based design.” An investigation project to identify what kind of services and activities might be delivered to the Cambridge Road Estate to have a “healthy and happy” life. Here is the project blog.
“Our service re-design ensures that each patient is given access to a specific MS service that is tailored to their individual needs during the different stages of their life. Patients are also given direct access to relevant information and a clinical team who they can communicate with online, over the phone or face-to-face.” (Ben Reason) (more details in the previous article from live|work)
Improvement for patients, carers and families
What is really meaningful in this kind of approach in developing health services is that you create ownership and sense for both patients and carers. The NHS Institute has developed the Experienced based design (EBD), “an exciting new way of bringing patients and staff together to share the role of improving care and re-designing services.”
And here is a very interesting comment regarding the result of such practices:
“(…) delivering the sort of care pathways that leave patients feeling safer, happier and more valued, and making staff feel more positive, rewarded and empowered.”
“The aim of this project is to study both the emotional journey of parents with children at Pittsburgh Children's Hospital as well as the current methods for information delivery, and develop an enhanced system or service that will hopefully improve the current methods of family education.”
Here is her project’s video presenting a solution for communication and better medical experience for a child and his mother.
… to Spain
I recently discovered a Spanish Service Design Agency (in Bilbao and recently in Madrid) called Funky Project.
I am quite glad to see that they are spreading the ideas of service design and how it can be applied to health services. They are organizing events, workshops and developing communication to explain the challenges that service design can tackle.
• a post about service design with a tv report about service design.
I really find those little characters in paper and cardboard interesting to reuse to make video-sketching. It is cheap and might be quite efficient to suggest new scenarios… when ideas are really good, stealing them is not crime, is it?
