Designing services for messy lives

We instantly recognise the design craft and appeal of an iPhone or a Porsche, but why are our experiences with telcos, insurance companies, airlines, banks and other services regularly so awful? The answer is usually that they have ‘just happened’ and not been designed. Using a range of examples, many of which are from our book, Service Design: From Insight to Implementation, this presentation explores the theme with two main sections.

I start by talking about the differences and similarities between service design and UX and UX’s predominant focus on screen-based experiences. Few people want to use Amazon.com’s website better, for example, they just want to buy a book or show their Dad they they love him by sending him a present. Is important to remember we are designing for people’s lives rather than their lives lived out on screens and this means understanding how our particular designed experience fits into the larger ecosystem of a service.

The second part of the talk expands this point of view in the context of service design. I explain how to design coherent multichannel experiences in which people’s messy, complicated lives meet service ecosystems, giving concrete examples. Finally, I summarise with one of the key mantras of service design – people are the heart of services and this means shifting from designing for people to designing with them – and I explain how.

(I also prove that the Ark of the Covenant is hidden in an Amazon.com warehouse. Well, almost.)

Presentation audio