Before getting started with prototyping questions, a little bit of Design Thinking “thinking” to understand the importance of prototyping in design… and in service design! Then we’ll try to identify some service prototyping tools and finally get to understand what they bring in a service innovation project.
STEP ONE: What’s unique in design?
According to Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO) Design thinking is an approach for “creative problem solving”. If you haven’t seen his TED conference already you might have a look at this video.
Summarizing Tim Brown’s explanation, Design thinking means:
- start asking the right question
- transform needs (but real ones) into demand
- prototype early and quickly
- get the process “out of the hand of the designers” (a way to say that companies, providers, customers, users should be involved of the projects, the designer plays the role of a facilitator to get the most of people’s knowledge about what they do, sell, or need and how they can improve their lives)
- getting active participation of the communities (use networks)
- focus on the whole system (not just a single artefact but the whole system in which it is included, the “ecology” of what you are designing).
About this description of Design Thinking, I read a great post (for Spanish speakers) in a blog I am fan of (Diseño y Gestión de Xènia Viladàs).
For non Spanish readers, a little translation of the idea that interests me for this post:
“Tim Brown and Brigitte Borja (design management specialist) agree on this description of design methodologies:
- the ability to frame a problem in terms of project (giving limits of time and concept)
- putting the user at the centre of the project
- holistic vision, taking care of all viewpoints
- the integration of all kind of influences, to get-off the beaten track and believe in the intuition
- the capacity to mock-up a solution thanks to scenarios and prototypes
- trying the solutions with tests
- the ability to explain and spread the solutions using efficient visual narratives.”
Xènia explains that as creativity and lateral thinking have also been included in management, almost all those (above quoted) tools are used in management too except (and here comes the interesting part) the three last ones. The visualisation, prototyping and testing tools are the one proper to design. From these abilities comes the designer’s strength.
As Xènia says, “this ability (…) allowed the entrance of design in the conception of services, to go beyond its traditional link to the “object world” and adapt itself to the wider current concept of product”.
The shift from product (physical object) design to service design is not always obvious (in my daily life when I explain to new people what is this strange activity, I always have to tell a story… it is not as simple as saying “it’s like product design - which people are not always familiar to - but applied to services, and services are everywhere… etc. - by the way, a funny parenthesis: in Spanish the translation of “service” is “servicio” which is the same Spanish word to say “toilet”, surely some people I met think that my passion is designing toilets! Never mind). But starting from Xènia’s analysis we understand that there is something very important in the prototyping/visualization ability of design when creating new services (or improving existing ones).
That is something unique of design practice. Designers are here to do “try-and-error”, to iterate. In complex situations when reflexion and analysis have done their jobs and can’t give the final solution, you need someone to create something concrete with the ideas developed, that everyone can touch and that can allow further reflexion, identification of new problems in order to get the best final solution. In a way a designer does a sort of 3D-print of the ideas to allow thinking, sharing, testing and creating.
STEP II: But what exactly visualization and prototyping mean for service design?
We may be familiar with physical product prototyping: we might have seen in advertisements or in museums some 3D models, sketches or mock-ups. As a service is intangible, happens in time and is produced when consumed… how do we sketch or model a service?
The answer stands almost in the question.
What do you do when you have to explain something that happens in time and that is intangible?
Quite simply you talk about it, you tell a story.
And what supports do we have to tell stories? Quite a lot, we just need to look around: novels, storytellers, movies, strip cartoons, theatre plays, photo novel, storyboard, scenario…
Here are some examples of their application to tell new stories, innovative scenarios or services:
- Story telling
Saint-Etienne’s Cité du Design, “New systems of life”, some fictive persons tell the story of the new way of life offered by the Cité du Design solution (after the introduction, at the bottom of the page)
- Strip cartoon
This strip cartoon made first by thinkpublic (like a photo-novel) and transformed by Jeff Howard (have a look at this analysis, Jeff Howard’s blog is a must!)
Google Chrome used cartoon too to explain what it is.
- Movies
I really like Sustainable Everyday Project (SEP) videos of solutions for a sustainable living in the cities.
(they are clear and might not be too expensive to realize, and they have a poetic aspect because of the “multiple paste” of elements).
Another movie to explain a future scenario from IDEO
- Acting
Role play can be use to act asif the service was already existing. Some examples here.
Actually as the imagination of creative people is vast, there are plenty of tools and examples. A great work has been done to identify them and collect them in the same place: the Service Design Tools, an investigation project, deeply recommendable.
The tools describe above can be used in two ways:
- to sketch: in order to make a quick and low cost draft of the solution, to get quickly the ideas on “the paper” or the screen, to share them, discuss about them and develop them. It might be the case of the SEP video even if it is quite an achieved video to be just a sketch.
- to communicate the solution for implementation: the innovative service can be described in text documents and specifications but visual communication tool are very efficient and useful to share a common vision of the solution to build and implement. Usually there is a lot of information in this kind of material: the look and feel of the whole experience a user will benefit with this new service. This can be the case of the IDEO film above mentioned.
Therefore, the limit between visualizing and prototyping tool for service design is not that obvious and maybe does not need do be defined as tools are chosen and adapted by designers in function for each project and its needs.
Produced when consumed…
A service is not only about what is “experiencing” a user. The service can only happen if there is a provider and a system that works to provide it (quite obvious I'm sorry). If the process of production and delivery is not efficient and functional, the experience provided will not be fine and the user unsatisfied.
A lot of precaution must be put in this part because services are produced in the same moment they are consumed. We can refer to all the things that happen outside of the view of the user as the backstage of the service.
To tell this aspect of the service story, a tool used is the “service blueprint”. It is a map of the process following a chronological sequence and showing all the different stages of the service including backstage actions. You can find some examples in the Service Design Tools website.
(We’ll surely later find the opportunity to make a unique post about service blueprint, so I might not go into details right now.)
STEP III: How service prototyping facilitate radical innovation?
There might be a lot of good literature about the importance of service design prototyping… Here are the things I have recently found.
(Sorry, both from IDEO people, I must admit that I am quite a fan).
Service prototyping helps in three important aspects:
- create a strong narrative to share vision with key people
- have a research tool
- reduce risk.
To make service innovation possible, Fran Samalionis explains in the book “Designing Services with Innovative Methods” that:
“There needs to be commitment to that change from all influential stakeholders (from marketing and service development to finance and human resources). Having everyone on board is essential, as challenging existing paradigms requires endurance and imagination. The solution is a strong narrative that describes the changes in service design in a consistent and compelling way, which will win over key people and give them a story they understand and can easily share.”
Service design visualizing and prototyping tools allow convincing key people of the benefits of the new service but it is also a key tool to develop the new service idea as it is full of information: success and failures can be identified and solutions proposed.
“Quick, low-cost mock-ups allow emerging ideas to be expressed, explored, modified, and shared with customers, experts, and stakeholders in very tangible and emotive way. They encourage informed decision-making, more than a paper description could ever do, and they encourage the idea to continually evolve.” (From Small Ideas to Radical Service Innovation, Mark Jones, Fran Samalionis)
As Samalionis says service design allows to “conquer the fear of failure”. Working with prototypes helps improve the solution and make it viable and desirable and therefore reduce risk.
“A good prototype will prompt questions around consumer desirability, business viability, and technical feasibility.” (Mark Jones, Fran Samalionis)
But an important aspect of design prototyping is that is does not work as a test-and-validate or kill-ideas. As Roberto M. Saco and Alexis P. Goncalves explain (Service Design: An Appraisal, Design Management Review) ideally “it should be transparent to all actors during the design process. In service design, the prototype is more a glass box than a black box. Practitioners should make prototype available to discussion and dialogue, both internally in relation to teamwork and externally in relation to clients.”
I like the idea of the glass box, it is really clear and should be reminded as “good practice”.
To conclude, service prototyping allows reducing risk, developing better services for customers and providers, in a constructive way facilitating communication, co-creation and development process. That is not the only aspect that permit to create radical innovation but that is a quite important one.
If you want to read the whole document: From Small Ideas to Radical Service Innovation, Mark Jones, Fran Samalionis
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