Session 14 summary
Learning from Sacred Service Design
The first half of creation of designs are created with a producer perspective. But at a point the customer intervenes, which opens the path to value in use. Products are tangible which summarizes the value in use. Service design is an out of traditional interaction design. It focuses on the customer’s needs and customer experience. Hence, it can be understood from the user perspective. Service design has existed from the last 15 years, but services have existed from as long as one can remember. Service design focuses on creating what service provides or what service do for you. When talking about an airport service- it basically transports people from point A to point B. But the experience is very different from each airport, which can either be good or bad. The service designers try to visualize the customer perspective and design offerings to provide experiences that happen over time and across different touch-points. When planning service design, emphasis should be given to the plan being; Experiential, whole, detailed, practical, is able to understand and communicate the now, Imagine and visualize the future and finally engage.
We are moving on a scale which is now customer-centric but there is a need to move on to experience centric and then to meaningful service.
We experience a devotion to one brand e.g. apple. Can we design for such experience?
The sense of belonging is expressed through symbols which are quite meaningful. But each communities have some myths and we perform our myths through rituals. These are very much connected with sacred experiences. The rituals give structure and meaning to time and celebration and create flashing memories. But rituals also leave anxiety and act as passageways through time. Rituals have common structure with three parts; Separation, Transition and Reincorporation. These rituals had been made into customer journeys.
Designing Sports and Fan experience from rituals
In some places football has become less religious than the others. But football is something cultural which matters for the community and people. It connects fans and players. For the service design project for football, we dug up stories and more. Finally we created 5 act experience/ customer journey.
When inviting a player to play a game they are usually sent an email. But emails are very boring. So an invitation box was designed which would have a jersey, notebook etc. gifting of shirt to invite people for playing has now become a ritual which is enjoyed by the players. They also insisted that the DJ who overlooks the music on the venue to only play Norwegian songs to uplift the spirit of the people and the players. These help in connecting the whole detail. Hence, every time we design a new part of experience catalogues are made to share it among the community. To redesign the bus we had to redesign its surroundings which would uplift the players while entering the game. We wanted to lift the occasion in the sense of games by doing so.
In the end connection to the community is more important- to break barriers and raise people up.
About the Speaker
Dr. Ted Mathews
Associate Professor
Institute of Design
The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Norway
Dr. Ted Matthews is a service designer and researcher at the centre for design research. He is the chair of service design at AHO. His professional and research areas of interest could be broadly framed by the design of experience centric services. His research has honed in on the study of the sacred as a possible area to glean fruitful practices and concepts for the development of new approaches for the design of experience-centric services. In doing so his research draws from approaches, concepts and practice from socio-cultural domains to weave this together with service design practice. Through a transdisciplinary, practice based, Research through Design approach, Ted has worked with professional projects from as diverse as professional football and tourism to financial services and telecommunications. His PhD entitled ‘Exploring Sacred Service Design’ was recently submitted for final consideration.
