What happens 'beyond basics'?
Submitted by Birgit Mager on Thu, 11/12/2009 - 11:57
„Beyond Basics“ was beyond expectations! This was possible because of the great speakers, workshop leaders, poster presenters, volunteers and of course: great participants. Thank you very much for making this happen!
What is the „harvest“ of this conference? Of course that Service Design people are just great, open minded, connective, sharing, smart, innovative .... so there was a lot of mutual inspiration, sharing and connecting.
And content-wise? „Beyond Basics“ was the title of the conference. What did we find beyond basics? Let me try to summerize some of the topics and challenges that I took home and that might give direction for the discussion about topics for next year.
Service Design has many touchpoints to and overlaps with other fields of expertise: Interaction Design, Experience Design, Marketing, Organisational and Human Resources Development, Change Management – just to name a few. It will be interesting to develop a clearer positioning of the core of Service Design expertise that the members of the network can agree on.
This would also influence the understanding of Service Design Qualification. Can everyone call himself a Service Designer? Even if he or she is not a Designer? What competencies are core competencies? And which are simply nice to have? How far does design take responsibilities for and influence strategies, structures, processes and qualification of service employees?
Service Design has established a solid framework, good processes and a great set of methods. It is a clearly qualitative approach that works with small research samples. It trusts in observation and embraces intuition. Yet we have to face the fact that there is a need to talk about quantitative data, hard facts measures. I think this is true for our explorations and discovery phases but most importantly we need to give more insight into the impact of our work and that also involves “measures” of some kind.
Many topics weren raised on the conference that we need to explore in more detail: the B2B topic is one that I really take with me and of course “How to sell Service Design”. But I think if we would go deeper into the two topics mentioned earlier, it would help to sell Service Design!
What do you think? What is your “harvest” from the contents of the conference?
Comments
#1 associate degree fire science
associate degree fire science | Multimedia Animation diploma
#2 It will be interesting to
It will be interesting to develop a clearer positioning of the core of Service Design expertise that the members of the network can agree on.
Bachelors degree Network Management | doctorate Special Education | associate degree private security
#3 topics about Marketing
I found very useful and informative topics about Marketing. It was amazing to find some interesting moments, cause till that moment I had a lot of knowledge already, and think that there is nothing new for me in marketing strategies.
#4 that must have been great.
that must have been great. unfortunately this time I somehow missed the conference, but I will try to catch up downloading all the posts I can find by rapidshare SE it's great even not being a part of it follow all the news from the sphere of service design, learn smth new and interesting.
#5 Am I ...
I've enjoyed sifting through these almost as much as I enjoyed Andy Polaine's Twitter updates from the conference and indeed, the fallout discussion recently on where the next conference should be. This community has so much vibrancy and creativity each day. Its fun to be behind my computer or on my phone keeping updated and connected with these like minded individuals, from whom I can learn so much. Thank you geo tv.
#6 More Ideas !
These are just a few ideas and I know that it is easy to grump (especially for me as a German..), but at the end of the day it is hard to get things done. Besides all the negative comments, the network is a great thing and even though it exists for a rather short time, a lot of things happened here. For me, the best thing is that I met great people! Like Arne said:
"..make better use of the incredible creative energy of the members. There are some amazing people with a tremendous amount of energy. Cherish them. They should be the heart of SDN... they already are the heart of the "real" network." free books.
#7 Beyond Basics Love lives
Beyond Basics
Love lives beyond
The tomb, the earth, which fades like dew-
I love the fond,
The faithful, and the true.
Love lies in sleep,
The happiness of healthy dreams,
Eve's dews may weep,
But love delightful seems.
'Tis seen in flowers,
And in the even's pearly dew
On earth's green hours,
And in the heaven's eternal blue.
'Tis heard in spring
When light and sunbeams, warm and kind,
On angels wing
Bring love and music to the wind.
And where is voice
So young, so beautiful, so sweet
As nature's choice,
Where spring and lovers meet?
Love lies beyond
The tomb, the earth, the flowers, and dew.
I love the fond,
The faithful, young, and true.
#############################
burj khalifa
#8 Student Activities
Hi Jeremy,
thank you ! We will certainly come back to you and talk. Do you have a mail address or other contact data??
Best, Birgit
#9 Students
IxDA would love to work with SDN on student and edu related activities - drop me a line and we could start talking about opportunities to collaborate or cooperate..
#10 just a few ideas..
Hi Birgit,
Dear colleagues,
I was also among those people, who didn't make it to the conference because of the location. But I don't want to repeat what is already said.. So, here are just a few ideas for future SDN conferences:
Integrate SDN-Ambassadors:
Give a certain number of students (3-5?) a free-ticket. In return they keep the community updated though blogs and tweets (We all enjoyed the updates from @apolaine). This would not only spread the word within the SDN, but also promote and open the conference to a wider community.
Regional SDN cells/networks/clusters (whatever you want to call this):
I like the idea and in fact in some regions these cells already exist (though maybe they are not SDN-branded). It would be nice to get an update of what is going on around the world within our network. Let a representative of each cell give a short update of what is going on within their network during the conference - a short pecha-kucha would be enough to get an idea.
live-streaming for members:
Give all the members who are not able to attend the conference the possibility to watch at least the keynotes in the internet via live-streaming. You could add a feedback system as well and get immediate response from the whole community and start discussion through this.
These are just a few ideas and I know that it is easy to grump (especially for me as a German..), but at the end of the day it is hard to get things done. Besides all the negative comments, the network is a great thing and even though it exists for a rather short time, a lot of things happened here. For me, the best thing is that I met great people! Like Arne said:
"..make better use of the incredible creative energy of the members. There are some amazing people with a tremendous amount of energy. Cherish them. They should be the heart of SDN... they already are the heart of the "real" network."
We are all curious how the SDN will develop and I am sure a lot of people would like to support you and your team whenever you need help! :)
Sunny regards from the snowy alps,
Marc
#11 Yes. Students!
Christina. You are right. We have not been good with offerings for students so far. When we relaunched the community Website we have also developed concept for the student community - but I have to admit, we did not succeed in implementing it. This year we have developed a sponsoring concept to have companies pay for students to come to Madeira, but there was no response. May be due to the crisis the topic of sponsoring is very difficult anyway.
We will definitly focus on this topic. We will open the network for students. We will try to support local activities. And if we have an international conference we will again try to make it accesible for student. So please stay in touch, any suggestions on how to make this a good network also for students will be heard!
#12 Yes! Cells!
Tenny,
thank you for your positive feedback and for your suggestion! Yes, we are discussing and preparing "cells" of SDN. We have had this discussion for about a year and on the members day Craig La Rosa from Continuum has led a workshop on this topic. We got very valuable input from the participants - it is obvious that the needs of the countries regarding these "cells" are quite different. We will be happy to include your comment on the benefit of "cells" into the discussion - and we will try to make the discussion public. We are in the process of evaluating all the comments and preparing a model for cells that can then be duscussed and build on. So please stay in touch - I hope in the first half of 2010 cells will be active!
#13 Diversity in the Community
Arne,
sorry for the late reply.... somehow my schedule is really tight!
Thank you for your comments, I had already followed the discussion on other platforms and I apprechiate the constructive criticism.
We are continuously working and learning to improve things and I think throughout the two really active years of powering SDN we have achieved quite a bit - regarding the limited resources and the fact that I (and many others) do this voluntarily in my spare time and so far with a lot of financial investment from my research budgets.
I think the website, the newsletter and touchpoint as well as the two conferences have helped to create awareness and acceptance for Service Design worldwide and also helped to build and share expertise.
Of course many things have to be developed and improved: Open up the network, give more people easy access. Share knowledge: the website will be improved this year, especially the part on knowledge sharing! Co create the next conference, make it easier accesible. Have more regional activities. Certainly continue to be relevant and to produce value! I do not know why you think I want to own SDN (and why this is so personally adressed to me)- anyone who wants to work for it and contribute is welcome. Any collaboration is welcome. Any suggestion on how to be more valuable is welcome.
I also really apprechiate the diversity of the SD Community: there are many platforms where peolpe meet and discuss around service design issues - really fast and active communities - and I think it is great that they exist. SDN is and will be part of this - but it will not make all these fast communications superflouos.
#14 New Community Platform coming soon!
Thank you for the posts - I will find time to answer all the entries as soon as possible.... but it might be on Sunday!
Just one little thing: The SDN Website will be relaunched as soon as possible. We had several workshops on SDN members day. One was focused on the SDN Website and community platform and there are lots of very constructive ideas. Among many things we will open the platform for discussions and user created content. This will certainly improve the networking and the community sense - it is fenced in now and that is not good! But it will be better!
We will also restructure the knowledge base in a completly different way to make it more usefull .... and we will do this as fast as possible with the ressources we have.
Jamin Hegeman has kindly agreed to consult this project, helping to bring as many of the suggestions of the community into life as possible. This little blog is just a very first signal for the change coming. And as you can tell, I am not the web 2.0 person yet - so I am really happy about the valuable input from the community and about Jamins support for this topic!
More later, Birgit
#15 Let's take a "cells" approach and make it viral :D
Birgit,
I think there is a lot of potential in what SDN is doing (i almost made it to Madeira).
But i totally agree with Arne. The thing is, here in Brazil we are crawling and get beaten everyday to preach the importance of Service Design to Business (aka buyers). There is not a lot of people here doing it, and we are joining forces (even though we are competitors), to make that happen and put SD on the map.
But if we could count on some help of SDN it would be amazing. UFRJ (DESIS) is already a Brazilian member of SDN, but the truth is, even thou i know the people from DESIS, and they are amazing people, we (from the business/market side of Service Design) hardly can have access to the materials they produce as they are a closed government funded research group.
So there is small players in Brazil carrying the piano alone and trying to survive. And we need to survive, because we need to keep preaching the discipline to high executives and business owners here, giving workshops and speeches. That is what will make it profitable and a rewarding career in the future for the upcoming Brazilian designers.
So how could SDN help us? …. IDEA: Why not build "Cells" ? We could build an SND "Cell" in every country and produce content in those cell meetings and upload it so other members from other places in the world could benefit from an 8 people drink SD meeting in São Paulo for example.
Why not? Cells could be branded by SDN giving more empowerment for us to partner for realizing those meetings inside Marketing and Business Schools, involving their students, for example. That would be A-M-A-Z-I-N-G as a spread campaign. Business schools are highly influential in the market and the SDN brand can provide this kind of "power to trade", that alone our studios sometimes don’t have with big Business schools. (even thou sometimes we are making it happen already by strong will...)
But the currently model of a standard membership and the benefits for us (in Brazil) still does not pays off. And that's why we didn't joined yet.
But anyway, congrats for the great job you are doing on SDN, in sharing videos and so on, and hope soon we have a shoot in helping it grow in our country.
All the Best!
Tenny
http://www.designloyalty.com
@tennydesign
#16 Do students have a role within this network?
I was lucky enough to help with the running of the SDN Conference in Amsterdam last year as I was an exchange student at KISD and I had a wonderful experience and was exposed to a variety of speakers I otherwise would never have been able to meet. However, as we were staff we were unable to take part in some of the workshops therefore this year I was keen to come along as a visitor but even the student rate was out of my price range and I couldn't find any funding and had to miss out. Therefore having the presentations online has been great but misses out the 'face to face chat' which embodies so much more and has much more power!
So I have to ask where do students fit into this SDN? Being a final year student I think I can safely say that at this stage we are about to venture into the creative industries ourselves and therefore being part of such a network is of great value but unfortunately it is too expensive. I also feel that we are of value to the existing network as we are the next generation of designers and that these network and workshop opportunities are of great value to both parties. My final thought is that although international networks are good local networks are just as, if not more, important therefore perhaps mini-conferences could be held to encourage local networking.
Like Fergus you can find me on Twitter :) twitter.com/doughtiness
#17 How is the conference special? and what next...
The greatest strength of the conference in my view is that it brings together three very different worlds namely; service design practitioners, academics and business. I think this is very rare in design and most likely because the subject is still young (as Bruce Tether noted) and so each group has 'grown up' together.
The presenters and workshop leaders were also very generous, sharing key methodologies with the community which is fantastic to see - I hope this will continue in future years to strengthen the network and cross-fertilize.
Going forwards I hope that the network can keep bringing new ideas and people into the mix. I loved 'co-creation sucks' as it challenged assumptions, which is good to see if the sector is to avoid too much 'group think' stiffling innovation.
Although I was a little sceptical about the conference in advance due to the high price tag, it exceeded my expectations in every way, so a huge thank you to all involved in making it a success.
#18 Am I A Service Designer? Am I Allowed to Comment?
I've really enjoyed looking through the presentations from all the speakers today, thank you so much to all the speakers for allowing their work to published on here and to the ladies in the office for all the organisation and tiresome uploading that must have gone into that process...these presentations are a truly great resource and a harvest that will sit in a silo here for a long time in the future I'm sure....
I've enjoyed sifting through these almost as much as I enjoyed Andy Polaine's Twitter updates from the conference and indeed, the fallout discussion recently on where the next conference should be. This community has so much vibrancy and creativity each day. Its fun to be behind my computer or on my phone keeping updated and connected with these like minded individuals, from whom I can learn so much. Steve Lee has recently reflected on these things here: http://steveleedesign.blogspot.com/2009/11/share-to-grow.html Service Designers are indeed an exceptionally well connected bunch!
As Lavrans Loevlie said in his presentation ”Our organisation is so complex that the only one who can see big picture is the customer”, but as someone who isn't a paid up member of the community - I can't justify 500 Euros....yet! And as someone who also couldn't afford to go to Madeira, I feel excluded from this particular conversation.
So I'll be back on Twitter in just a second, I'll be on Wenovski (http://www.wenovski.ning.com) and I'll be following the discussion on the feedback forum (https://servicedesigners.uservoice.com/pages/32825-servicedesigners).
See you there!
#19 Be Part Of The Movement. Don't Try To Own It
Birgit,
I think it is very good to have discussions about the topics you raised in your post.
Finding new way's and building common frameworks, to sell Service Design better is important.
I think we can all agree on this. It is something service design agencies deal with every day. And many of us are getting pretty good at it. I think in part it's a natural evolution. We talk, we work, we fail, we try again, we improve.
And speaking just for myself I think that no theory can replace experience. All the theory in the world can not prepare you for real live. And there is no such thing as a "best practice". No polished PowerPoint presentation can tell us what to do, when we are out in the field. Every situation is unique. That's the fun of it! That's what creative thinkers are good at. That is why we are emerging.
And this is exactly where the SDN can be of great added value: offering the members opportunities to do work together and get our hands dirty, all trough the year. Stimulate self-organization, new collaborations. Facilitate local workshops, un-conferences, bootcamps, make up some collaborative projects, be pro-active.
And make better use of the incredible creative energy of the members. There are some amazing people with a tremendous amount of energy. Cherish them. They should be the heart of SDN... they already are the heart of the "real" network.
Because there is a very strong community/ network. And only some of them are paying members of the SDN. They gather everyday, online and offline, using whatever platform suits them or is available.
The SDN should be part of this movement. Help it grow. Don't try to own it. Stop building fences.
And why organise an international conference? I know it's very nice and valuable to meet people IRL. And an international conference might have been extremely valuable before the era of social media, but is it the best we can do now? Isn't it time to review the way a conference fit's within how we meet, communicate, exchange information these days.
...And, just a thought, does a international conference belong in a world were we worry about pollution, energy resources, globalisation... and if it does, how exactly?
The SDN has to add real value, needs to be relevant. I expect a Service Design organisation to be challenging, experimental and inspiring. As a service designer this is what I expect. As a member, I expect no less.
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