Design an awesome experience! Part two.

Focusing on the user

Our design focus when designing a service is the user, and how the service journey will affect the user. Not only must we be able to tell how the service will work and how the user will interact with it. We also need to think about what happens before and after the user has interacted with it, what knowledge is required even to use it, etc.

To answer these questions we need to understand the user needs, and how the user will experience the service. The methods used to acquire these answers might vary from interviewing the users, observing the user, or experience the service yourself. The chosen method will differ from time to time. It depends on how complex the service will be.

The main point is that you as a designer create a way to communicate with the user and map their wishes, desires, requirements etc. Remember that as little as one extra click or unnecessary text box might make your design quite cumbersome and difficult to use. I would claim that it is all about respecting your users. After all, they have better things to do than to spend all their time working on your bad design. ;)

So, keep it simple and easy to use. 

Co-creating

Already arguing that service design is not a one-man job, the designer must involve all relevant stakeholders on the design. Using different methods for the users to contribute to how the service should be designed not only gives you valuable data on what the user expect. It also makes change management easier when the service is deployed.

My favorite methods are using touch point cards, permanent markers and a large sheet of brown paper. Letting the users look at a large amount of pictures and writing down their immediate associations and thoughts related to the service kicks off the creative process easily. Drawing up the context on paper and composing journeys by combining pictures quickly open their eyes to possibilities that they had not thought of yet, etc. Documenting this process, I usually let people use their mobile cameras and collect the pictures after the session. 

So, let us hang on to the hour registry for a few more minutes. The stakeholders for this service is the employee, management and accounting. Designing this service, I would bring all three into the design process and bring the stack of touch point cards. Using the cards, we would collectively design the service journey by picking out cards representing ideas and documenting the ideas. I have experienced that one of the most effective ways to create these journeys is to spread the cards on the paper, drawing and writing keywords and connecting the dots. Finally documenting simply using the camera on your phone. This helps you documenting the agreed design before implementing a prototype, and the users get the feeling that they actually take part in the process, creating their own tools.

Therefore, in one small exercise you have a tool for design and documentation giving you relevant ideas for the final design, but also a side order of clever change management.