When Hamilton does service design, the whole world follows

A few weekends ago I had the pleasure of attending the global service design jam, in which 1,263 people worldwide created 203 new services in 48 hours.

 

I was among eight service design heroes who attended NZ’s jam in Hamilton (aka ‘The Tron’), warmly hosted atWintec (thanks Marlene!) by Matt & Kelly of Divergent.

 

Being the first city in the day's first time zone, The Tron team was the first in the world to start. The global organisers announced the theme “(super) heroes” and we were off!

 

Following a fair bit of exploration and lateral, designer-type stuff, we developed two projects and respective teams. After hours of doing service design the results were Arise (a service to support patients) and Hangover Heroes (a service to help people with hangovers). Well done jammers of The Tron!

 

Memories... mostly the the living, energetic, intensely social animal that service design invariably is. Its vitality in part depends on us ‘experts’ open up design processes to non-practitioners. They might be unfamiliar with it, or more often, hold stereotypic and limiting views. You can be sure 'stuff will happen', so the onus is on us to start it off well for others.  

 

For me, in the midst of a service design process there’s always a real, immediate and familiar tension between ‘being experienced’ and ‘helping others with the experience’. This is all too easy to interpret as ‘being the expert’ (such as a designer) and ‘being the experiencer’ (such as a customer or someone new to service design).

 

But actually, what’s pivotal is the dynamic between different kinds of experience – such as that of a designer, manager, staff member, customer or jam participant. And the really, really pivotal bit is creating ways to have these spark off each other. So I believe the designer’s real role here is not to design, but to create an experience of design for others.

 

The beautiful reality is that it’s always so unpredictable. Factor in different personalities, values, communication styles, skills and life experience, and it’s a wild ride.

 

One minute I’m trying to nudge the process ‘as a design expert’, the next I’m trying to get out of the way, or worse, trying to catch up and clamber on board before the whole thing leaves without me. If I’m still trying to be ‘a design expert’, I’m a troubled, humbled and breathless one.

 

The term ‘co-design’ is gaining in popularity as service design engages with these experience dynamics. Co-design just means designers and service stakeholders (managers, staff, customers and perhaps others) work together throughout the whole design process. Together they plan the project, then understand and design improvements to a service, or perhaps invent a new and better one. 

 

By the end of the jam I was completely exhausted. You can only do so much ‘nudge & sprint to catch up’ in 48 hours.

My thanks again to organisers Matt & Kelly, to co-designers Fiona, Marlene, Andre, Dan and Andrew, and to the mysterious John Doe.

Let's start the world jammin' again next year, eh?!