Volume 19, Number 1, Winter 2008

Service is the essence of business in the twenty-first century, and contributors this quarter probe how best to manage this reality. Success requires a thorough understanding of customer needs and the choreography of customer interactions. It taps into multidisciplinary expertise and exploits a panorama of media and touch-points. Articles identify service design priorities, web strategies, research techniques, and the return on service design investments. Engaging case studies concern a car dealership, a mobile phone company, a sales pitch for annuities, and the New Zealand department of Inland Revenue.

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Bottom-line Experiences: Measuring the Value of Design in Service
Lavrans Løvlie, Founding Partner, live|work; Chris Downs, Managing Partner, live|work; Ben Reason, Founding Partner, live|work
Hard numbers on quality and return-on-investment are important feedback for strategic decision-making and the allocation of resources. In the arena of service design, Lavrans Løvlie, Chris Downs and Ben Reason detail "Gross Value Added," "The...

Designed by KTF: A Telecoms Case Study
Won-Sik Lee, Senior Consultant, IFP (Interfashion Planning) Co., Ltd.; Bo-Young Kim, Business Consulting Director, IDS & Associates
Like many of today's industries, the mobile telecommunications industry has reached a point at which advanced technology is taken for granted. Customers are looking for a unique experience or style, and that kind of desire often involves services...

Designing Human-Centered Services
Michael D. Eckersley, HumanCentered
Considering that services account for a huge portion of all commercial activity in advanced economies today, as HumanCentered's Michael Eckersley points out, there is bound to be growing market demand for sophisticated and systematically designed...

From Small Ideas to Radical Service Innovation
Mark Jones, Lead for Service Design and Innovation, IDEO; Fran Samalionis, Head of Service Design and Innovation, IDEO
From iTunes to Google, the design of services can benefit just as much from innovation as can the design of any physical product. Funny thing, though: As IDEO's Mark Jones and Fran Samalionis explain in this article, ideas are a dime a dozen...

Inland Revenue New Zealand: Service Design in a Regulatory Context
Karyn McLean, Specialist Portfolios Manager, Inland Revenue; Jim Scully, Design and Project Management Group manager, Inland Revenue; Leslie Tergas, Design Development and Innovation Manager, Inland Revenue
The business world is realizing that well-designed, user-centered services can increase customer satisfaction and create brand differentiation, as well as generate new income streams and greater profits. But in a regulatory context, where people...

It’s All About Service
Thomas Walton, PhD, Editor, Design Management Review
Editor’s Notes for Volume 19, Number 1

Service Design via the Global Web: Global Companies Serving Local Markets
Brian Gillespie, Director of Strategic Design, Molecular
Ever consider how difficult it must be for a global business to maintain a consistently on-brand web presence? Perhaps it's something your company struggles with. Well, this too is a service issue. Brian Gillespie, director of strategic design at...

Service Design: An Appraisal
Roberto M. Saco, Owner and Principal, Aporia Advisors; Alexis P. Goncalves, Independent Consultant, Business Innovation
Consultants Saco and Goncalves offer an overview of the field and practice of service design, including a definition (not as odd as it sounds, considering the wealth and breadth of issues that contribute to the design of services) and a look at how...

The Retirement Boomerang: A New Vocabulary of Financial Services
Andrew Mackenzie, CEO, Yamamoto Moss Mackenzie
As 78 million baby boomers limp toward retirement, Yamamoto Moss Mackenzie CEO Andrew Mackenzie is looking at the big problem everyone else (everyone but the baby boomers, it seems) has noticed: Your average baby boomer hasn't put away nearly...

Would You Like Service with That?
Chris Bedford, President, Karo Group, Calgary, Alberta; Anson Lee, Director, Customer Experience Strategy, Karo Group, Vancouver
How is service design different from experience design? The truth is that one is an extension of the other, write Chris Bedford and Anson Lee, of the Karo Group design firm: "Unlike many products and most packaged goods, services are often...