As economically controlled beings, companies would be expected to invest in something that gives a higher rate of return than other investment alternatives, such as banks, bonds or shares. Design consistently delivers value that drives this home, and still, the use of design as a central part of innovation processes is lacking. I’m not moaning here, although it might sound like it  - I would just like to understand why we are in this slightly absurd situation, and crack the code to get design into innovation earlier and stronger.

Anyway, two new reports show the benefits and potential benefits from using design. The first one is from a piece of research from the Netherlands, The Design Effectiveness Industry Report (available for download here). This is quite an interesting study, that again shows:

Emphasizing design, and including designers in new product development teams, contributes to new product success. Likewise, involving designers in developing web sites and corporate visual identity helps to improve firm image. Together, this translates to better firm performance.

An interesting aspect of the work is that they looked specifically at design with an experiential quality. Again they found that design increased success, but there is one very interesting piece of information there. It looks like when it comes to the design of experiences, it is a good idea to let designers take control and  to give customers a back seat. The study found:

The combination of high experiential design emphasis and high customer involvement does not work out well for experiential quality of products. Customers can be expected to focus on features and functionality based on what they already know. Designers, on the other hand, can be expected to take a more innovative approach. When these two influences come together, the result is poorer experiential quality.

This is another piece of data in the long disputed discussion regarding customer involvement. It is however interesting, because it is one of the few studies that has linked experiential design, customer input and performance. Translated into the services innovation area, this means that it might be wise to take customer input with a pinch of salt. This is one of the reasons why in AT-ONE, the letter N for need, comes towards the end of the process rather than at the beginning. Its not that needs are  unimportant, they are of course vital. Its just a matter of balancing customer expressed need with opportunities that customers might not see.

The second set of data that supports the use of design as part of customer experience innovation is data from American Express. They highlight the increased focus customers have upon good customer experiences (thanks to our friends at LRA for this). American Express have an annual global customer service barometer and the findings are interesting from the most recent one:

A majority of Americans report that quality customer service is more important to them in today’s economic environment (61%) and will spend an average of 9% more when they believe a company provides excellent service.

A negative service experience is an important factor for most Americans: 81% have decided never to do business with a company again because of poor customer service in the past

Importantly, customers are spreading the word willingly and widely when they experience good service. In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, customers are more inclined to talk about a positive experience than complain about a negative one. Three-quarters (75%) are very likely to speak positively about a company after a good service experience in contrast with 59% who are very likely to speak negatively about a company after poor service.

Consumers are far more likely to give a company repeat business after a good service experience (81%) than they are to never do business with a company again after a poor experience (52%).

If you put these two things together,it paints a pretty clear picture that design as part of service innovation creates long term value, develops services that people are willing to pay more for, and will tell friends and family about. Maybe now, this will tempt some companies to try out design as part of their innovation processes.

A fantastic ad campaign, with several nice touches. Well, not surprisingly, it has been a success, and sales of Old Spice have doubled (link). Not only that, an old-fashioned brand has been modernised and revitalised.

This advert has got me thinking about what it triggers in viewers, and its applicability outside of aftershave. Firstly, it links to our emotions through several hooks - immediate reactions to his good looks, emotional reaction to humour, and also its appeal to the intellectual side (thats cleverly done). In addition to this, it differentiates itself through its weirdness (Not many adverts end  with “Silver Fish Hand Catch”).  The appeal to visceral, learned and intellectual experiences covers three out of four (only missing idealistic) of the base pillars of customer experiences.

Thinking some more, I realised that this advert could have sold almost anything - old spice did of course fit the bill. But I think he could even have sold insurance. The advert could have created a coolness, even for insurance - get insurance from X and be like me. Don’t believe me? Well, I was unsure at first, but then thought about Compare the Meerkat in the UK. A memorable series of adverts for an insurance price-comparison site, with spoof websites (link) and videos (link), linking a cheeky Meerkat to compare the market for car insurance.

This post is to salute those people who made the right choices when creating campaigns that give experiential effects like this. I can imagine the response when somebody suggested using a meerkat to sell insurance during a project meeting!

If you have something that appeals and differentiates, together with a certain degree of wackiness, then you have the ingredients of innovation. How many times do innovative ideas get shot down, precisely because of this?

Well, today, Pål can celebrate and say told you so. Gizmodo, announced that the two lines have now crossed. New connections from things are now far outnumbering connections used by people, and Pål, it did happen quite quickly.

I am not just writing this for nostalgic reasons. I think that with all that data zinging around, there must be incredible opportunities to mash up some very interesting services. Linking data from objects together with data from organisations and data from people offers an incredible potential for new services. Will this be the next big thing, and who will make the breakthrough app? I’m looking forward to it!

Not only is this a shocking number, but more than this, its a strange comment on society that we accept this terrible service. If we translated this to the product world, to say, unreliable products, then there is no way that we would accept such poor results. We would move on to a competitor. Its strange, but we have an acceptance for poor services, in the same way that we had an acceptance of unreliable products twenty five years ago. Since then, thanks mostly to the Japanese quality circles, we just expect products to be reliable. It is no longer a problem for us, and we just expect products to work nowadays.

I strongly believe that in 25 years time, we will look back on things like this as being the period in which services came good. We are in a period now where customer focus and customer experience is coming to services, and in the same way that competition raised the bar in products, the same will happen in services. Service leaders will gradually lift the level of service, so that in the end, poor service will stand out as an outlier and not the norm. Lets hope the consumer reports study in 2030 reverses the numbers, and that the most annoying thing for consumers is the weather forecast.

What I like about it is its simplicity compared to the power of the message. It caters to our innate needs to position ourselves in relation to others and does so in a good way. I wish my bank statements reminded me of this each month, or even my tax statement. In a period of nudge (link), this is a perfect example of how to design a simple, yet effective, nudge experience.

The first document I found is  a pdf titled: “Now I feel tall - What a patient-led NHS feels like”. (link). This gives a useful overview of the field, argues why improving the emotional experience of patients matters, and the main drivers for improving patients’ emotional experience. The documents makes a nice distinction between feelings during the service journey, and the feelings that result from the experience. This nicely takes into account the research showing what we recall when describing experiences,

The second document I found is called Creating a patient-led NHS (link). This document focuses upon the challenges of implementing a patient-led NHS in terms of strategy and tactics. I found a nice description of a future service vision that was both pragmatic and descriptive at the same time.

Finally, a quite detailed document from the Kings Trust in the UK: Seeing the person in the patient by J. Goodrich (link). This argues for the benefits of patient-centric approach, describes the dimensions of patient-centred care and a framework for the analysis of factors underlying patients’ care. It also includes the following quote from Gilbert 2006 ( Stumbling on Happiness. New York: Knopf.) regarding who can tell you about the patient experience:

If we want to know how a person feels, we must begin by acknowledging the fact that there is one and only one observer stationed at the critical point of view …she is the only person who has even the slightest chance of describing ‘the view from in here’, which is why her claims serve as the gold standard against which all other measures are measured.

Finally, a practical and pragmatic approach to how to go about designing for the patient experience is the Experience Based Design (EBD) approach, which gives a nice step by step guide to how to design for experiences (link).

I think that the NHS is on a fantastic trajectory, and I really hope that the recent election and power change does not disrupt it.

We chose to focus upon using touch-point cards (link) for innovation in primary healthcare. The touch-point cards were used to identify relevant touch-points for different stages in the service journey using the methods that are described on the cards.

The results were very positive and confirmed many of the expectations and earlier experiences  we have had regarding the cards.

1. The visual and tangible aspect of the cards was highlighted as very useful, not only allowing visual orientation, grouping etc, but also as a common reference for all.

2. Participants were enthusiastic, and the idea generation process couldn’t go fast enough. People had queues of ideas to discuss and note down.

3. The role of designers in each group was important. We had placed a designer in each of the three groups, to facilitate the process and to draw out ideas, and this  was seen as a really useful way to continually integrate ideas into experiential solutions and visualise them.

Here are some of the quotes from the evaluation afterwards:

Everyone can use these cards, and they open up the process

The difference between innovating the whole service and its parts became apparent, particularly the interplay between these. The service became more interesting when we moved from the whole to the parts

Makes you both concrete and experimental at the same time. I have found a new way to trigger associational processes

A good way to draw out the overall system, to then dive down later into individual touchpoints

I’m really happy that the cards are receiving such positive reviews. We also identified a couple of new touch-points to add to the list, so will be updating these soon.

Firstly, that the Economist has organised something big around design thinking (for a detailed view on Design Thinking, look here).  Secondly, Kevin has some very good discussion points about the hype around the term. I particularly like this quote:

In fact, design thinking always meant different things to different players. For some it was about teaching managers how to think like designers; for others, it was about designers tackling problems that used to be the preserve of managers and civil servants; and for others still, it was anything said on the subject of design that sounded smart. To most, it is was merely a new spin on design. All its proponents were, however, united by their ambition for design to play a more strategic role in the world than ‘making pretty.’ Who could argue with that?

But what caught my eye, was this image that was included in the post, of someone visualising a mind map.

This is a great example of one of the skills that designers bring to workshops - the visualisation of process and/or solution. The thing I like about this image, is that it reminds me of a few designers I know who just can’t write words on flip-overs - they have to draw them. Not because they want to look cool, but because the content and form of the image says a lot more than the word alone. Anders from LiveWork is one of these, and it is interesting to see how his visual representations draw people into discussions.

During our interviews validating the AT-ONE method, visualisations are often highlighted by our industrial partners as a major element that designers bring to innovation. This is not a discussion of making things look pretty, its about making shared meaning in a group, something that has incredible value. To visualise an idea, the designer does not just draw a word. Instead, the designer integrates multiple aspects of a solution and finds a visual form that communicates this strongly - often translated into a customer perspective. This allows a team to create a common understanding and is why designers are a central part of the AT-ONE workshop process. When it comes to design thinking, I think this is what it looks like.

Its amazing that in only five years it has become such a central part of our viewing habits on the net and perhaps is the best example of a user generated content based service that we know of. Its also amazing that many companies still don’t consider user generated content when designing new services.