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From Voice ~ Topics: design thinking, experience design, interviews, user research/usability

Answering the Call to Service Design: An Interview with Phi-Hong Ha

by Steven HellerNovember 03, 2009

Isn’t all design a service to someone? Perhaps that can be debated. But currently the service design genre is receiving considerable attention and achieving currency. When Phi-Hong D. Ha, an interaction design and strategy consultant, was asked what is meant by “service” in today’s design world, she responded, “Service design is a collaborative process of researching, planning and realizing the experiences that happen over time and over multiple touch points with a customer’s experience.” And according to Liz Danzico, chair of the School of Visual Arts’ new MFA Interaction Design program, “Service design looks at customer needs and experiences in a holistic way.” Yet many service designers in the United States do not call themselves Service Designers. Much of the work done in this area is still referred to as “customer experience” or “user experience.” This is where Ha enters the arena. She was a senior user experience designer for Method, where she led the team in redesigning TED.com and TheApt.com. At Method she started championing the emerging field of service design, and she is currently on the faculty of SVA’s MFA in Interaction Design and a member of the Service Design Network. Recently we discussed the viability of this new field.

OPEN source software offers one cure for clinical system implementation woes, as authorities struggle to find solutions that meet all medical requirements, a leading health informatics researcher says.

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Rather than the all-in, big-bang approach of a full CIS (clinical information system) implementation, an open, standards-based approach would allow a more incremental, lower risk approach, with organic expansion based on lessons learnt.

I think the mixing of terminology around open source software and open standards is a little confusing in the piece. However, what is clear is that complex environments, like we find in health care, need new approaches to information technology to avoid the mistakes of the past. This includes open source software, open standards, etc but also new approaches to procurement, support, solution design and project management. Just focusing on open source software itself is missing the bigger picture of the challenge. And what about the hardware too?

This is just one from a set of great sketchnotes by Matt Balara from Web Directions South this year that covers Suze Ingram's presentation. Anyway, its great to see other people talking about Service Design here in Australia. This is something I mentioned back at NSW Public Sphere.

There are some great takeaways from this presentation that should be used by marketers designing customer-centric services.

1. Practice immediate engagement.
2. Make the sign up process easy and painless.
3. Describe the benefits and features of your service in increasing depth.
4. Let the undecideds be influenced by the actions of your current customers.

These are my slides from NSW Public Sphere yesterday. Shortly after my presentation, the NSW Premier announced the apps4nsw competition and data.nsw.gov.au, which is exactly the kind of initiative I was advocating in my presentation.

Also, if you're interested in exploring this concept of public service co-design (or simply service design) that I mentioned, there are some links referenced at the end of this recent Headshift paper for the Centre for Policy Development.