Found this core77 post on the Design Council’s new campaign Dott07 and its new program director John Thackara. I got to see the behind-the-scenes of this campaign a little ago while at the Design Council during an informal presentation and I think that it is quite clever for them to pick such a respected and media-friendly designer as thy tends to be very anonymous in their campaigns.
The role of the Design Council is also quite interesting as they do not come up with design solutions per se (apart from the RED team for which i worked but which represents a small percentage of the organisation) but rather promote design as a meaningful process that can benefit a number of industries. Promoting the design of public services has always been one of their poster definitions and i often think of how much does service design have to do with our understanding of what services are. It feels like talking about “stuff” and “things” for me sometimes, it sounds pregnant with possibilities and i like the sound of “less-stuff-more-things world” but what could this look like? How much are people willing to give up the “stuff”? Maybe it would be a good idea to start listing the good, and the bad of services we all know so we can discuss and identify areas which might have potential for all the service designers out there…
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“Promoting the design of public services.”
Wow. I had actually never really thought much about that, yet its such a natural for designers. Since public services aren’t about turning a profit, designers would be freer to focus more energy on creating positive user experiences rather than on negotiating compromises with the business folks.
Why don’t we have a Design Counsel equivalent on this side of the Atlantic? Has it been tried?
On the topic of sharing positive service experiences here’s a little story. A friend of mine purchased an expensive trash can. Recently it got a few rust spots. She sent the manufacturer an email never really expecting to hear back. She did hear back the next day, and the day after a small container of spot remover and polish showed up in the mail. She was extatic.
Getting the rust spots taken care of quickly isn’t really the issue here. The real issue is that company made her feel listened to and important–and after all, isn’t this what we all really want?
Here’s another story…
I recently learned that Costco (a warehouse style retailer here in north america) has an almost unimaginably liberal return policy. They will take almost anything back at almost any time after the purchase.
As a service this is incredibly compelling. It means that I can buy from Costco with absolute confidence that I will be happy with my purchase. It means that I don’t have to worry about being gouged for an additional 25% just to get the retailer to stand behind the products they sell (as is the case with most consumer electronics retailers). And most importantly, it makes me feel that Costco respects me enough that they refuse to gouge me the way every other retailer will.
For Costco this mean that I will absolutely not buy from any other retailer any item Costco carries. And even though I’ve never used their return policy I would happily pay a premium to buy from Costco because of the confidence and good will this service policy instills.
What does this mean for the design of public services? It could mean that making people feel respected might, in some cases, be more important than the actual service itself.
Since the word “respect” came up in niblettes’ post, and since I keep pulling The Ecology of Commerce off the shelf this evening, I thought I might as well mention this quote from Paul Hawken:
“…it seems that the most profound, basic, and enduring quality uniting businesses and customers is gratitude. First, gratitude from the business to the customer; then, reciprocally, from the customer to the business because of the service, quality, and value received. Of course, the product or service is also a direct connection, but gratitude is the enduring quality of the relationship.” (pp158)
And tangentially (but relatedly), the book About Time, recently published this summer, talks about Time Banks, which can be seen as a vehicle for public services to inject more respect into the system. That is, by valuing people’s time and de-emphasizing exactly what they can contribute, people gain self-confidence and self-respect. So it doesn’t matter if you help someone change a light-bulb or carry their groceries from the supermarket or rewire a light switch; in all cases you are using your valuable skills in the specific situations where they are needed. This not only gives you a sense of self-worth (you’re needed and you are helpful) but it can actually reduce the load on established social systems.