Services Round-up Online

Here are some recent links I have found on the web related to designing and developing services.

On the meaning of the design of services
Author of the blog Orange Cone, Mike Kuniavsky, has posted some notes on service design from a chapter in his a book he is currently penning. He tackles the hotly contested meaning of service design in his post, Detangling the meanings the design of services, and gives us insight into the different perspectives from the software services point of view and design point of view, which focuses on the end user. There is also a nice summary of service design-type concepts eg. Product-Service-System, Service Blueprinting etc. And finally, a list of references he has been using, including a like to Jeff Howard's comprehensive and informative Service Design Research site.

Designing services in the public sector
Here's a link to a blog posting on the Creativity and Business International Network on Designing people-centred policy: how can user centred design help public services. It was written by Nick Marsh of Engine. He mentions in his article design research, protoyping and co-designing for developing more people-centred policies. There are links to some of Engine's work in the pubic sector and some good links at the end of the article for further reading.

Service design is about three things
Idris Mootee, a business and innovation strategist, blogs that Service design is simple. It's about three things: creating compelling user benefits, optimising based on the separability of the service and makingeducated trade-offs between human and technology. Hrm, doesn't sound simple, but read on to the case studies to understand more what Mootee is getting at.

Live|work on Design for Darzi
Ben Reason of Live|work writes, Design for Darzi, for the Design Council website on applying service thinking to healthcare. Here's an excerpt:

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. At live|work we call it service thinking. A service thinking approach focuses on creating personalised services where we think about how to support the individual health needs of each and every NHS patient and help people to maintain their health and overall wellbeing.

Later in his article Ben writes about 4 key element of service thinking that they applied to their work with the NHS:

1. Personalise services for individuals
2. Design engaging experiences
3. Make the right connections with service users
4. Think about long-term sustainability

Great public service experiences
Here are some neat illustrated stories of great public services as experienced by some participants of the Public Service by Design workshops hosted by the Design Council in 2008.