Why is trust important?

Financial services are unique. It’s is mainly because of the time factor. If we put day-to-day banking operations aside for a moment, it becomes clear that the core financial services are usually long term e.g. investment, savings or loan/mortgage products. They’re more like relationships than services, and, like in a relationship, trust is the key element those services are built on. Trust is crucial because when customers feel they are being looked after by experts, if the service is provided in a professional, sensitive and confidential manner, there’s a higher chance that they will continue their relationship with the provider and won’t switch to another one.

Trust, however, is a subtle thing. Some people give others the credit of trust at the beginning of the relationship, some gradually build trust over the years; sometimes trust needs to be rebuilt. In the financial sector trust is interlinked with service.

How to create that sense of trust?

From an ethnographer’s perspective answering ‘the trust question’ would be a start of the customer journey. It is because customers’ expectations (in respect of whom and why they can trust) have started to form up long before he or she went through a financial services provider’s door. Definition of trust is built on individual’s lifelong experience. It’s a combination of elements coming from a number of sources e.g. family, culture in which we were brought up, values we respect. Through their research tools ethnographers can find out what those expectations are and how they can be fulfilled.

Some ideas of how to approach this issue in research practice would include:

-          Listening to customers’ stories in order to find out what they associate with trust – are the associations tangible or maybe behavioral; how could they be potentially modified?

-          Watching customers interacting with provider’s staff members, space and objects to see how they handle providing information, asking for advice and how they behave when talking about financial matters;

-          Asking customers to describe a professional institution which they consider trustworthy and then comparing it to the existing model of provider’s firm.

Acceptance tests or Customer tests are written by the client together with the developers for every requirement that is part of the specification. Whereas a requirement describes specific behaviour the client wants in the finished software, the Acceptance tests make sure that the requirement was implemented in its completeness and according to the client’s input.
As an example we can use the tried and tested password requirement:

Requirement “When a user is creating an account, he/she is required to choose an outlandishly secure password”
Acceptance Test1 Test that the password contains at least 8 characters with at least one upper case letter, a number and a symbol”
Acceptance Test2 Test that the password does not contain a word from the english dictionary”
Acceptance Test3 Test that the user receives different error messages when the password is too short, contains no upper case letter, no number or no symbol. “
In this case the Acceptance tests define now what an “outlandishly secure password” is and increase the shared understanding for this requirement. And after the tenth iteration I can make sure that these Acceptance tests still pass so I have regression testing built right in.

The many benefits of ATDD

• Acceptance Tests increase the shared understanding of a requirement because they are a product of direct interaction between the client and the developers.
• Clarifies requirements and keeps the developers focused on what the client really wants.
• Drives out ambiguity if certain behaviour is ultimately a bug (behaviour violates either requirement or tests or both) or a change request (behaviour is acceptable within the scope of requirement and acceptance tests but ultimately undesirable).
• Software delivery is now dependent on all Acceptance tests passing and with that defines when a project is done.
• Percentage of passed acceptance tests/all acceptance tests acts as a project progress indicator.
• Free regression tests for the future iterations (especially if automated).

Some ATDD drawbacks

• Client interaction is needed which can prove difficult due to time constraints
• More work for the developer if tests are automated.
• Project progress might be slower due to additional effort.

Automating ATDD
There are many tools and frameworks for acceptance test automation, even some that can be used for User Interface testing. Many of them are free and open source, so the framework can be adapted to suit the project. Automating acceptance tests is highly desirable because regression testing is a hugely important step for iterative agile development methods. The immediate drawback is that this also means the developer has even more work to do because test automation is a development task in itself.

Are Unit tests not needed anymore?
Acceptance tests are no replacement for Unit tests. Unit tests must still be written by the developers to make sure that the code they are writing is performing as it should. Unit tests are written to test individual units of source code, whereas Acceptance tests are written to test several units of source code connected by some type of workflow defined by the client.

ATDD and outsourcing
ATDD is very much suited for outsourcing because its previously listed advantages address many of the issues encountered in outsourced software development. But it is important to notice that it will only work if the project is using an agile development method and can’t be shoehorned into a waterfall based development scenario of design first, development second, testing third. ATDD needs commitment from both the project owner and also the agile supplier because the real emphasis is not necessarily on the testing itself but on the increased shared understanding that is a product of the increased contact between the two parties. Including ATDD will also most likely increase the cost of the project at the start as more time is needed by the developers to write the additional tests. The real gain comes over time as the functionality of the delivered software should with every iteration be closer to what the client envisaged in the first place and therefore should reduce the need to add or refine functionality. The Acceptance tests also act as a baseline that can be consulted if a dispute about the scope should arise.

Most of us are in operational networks. An operational network is the network of people we work with to get things done. We all work on projects with people within and without our companies.  The support and relationships outlast projects and we often maintain the connection after the project has been closed. It’s easier than ever to maintain connections through social technology such as Linkedin and Facebook, but sometimes we need to sit down in relaxed atmosphere and catch-up.

That’s why we’re hosting a networking event during design week. At Hygge, we’ve recognised that our network of collaborators is a really important part of what we do. We want to help you grow your operational network. The event will be held in the Long Hall, 51 South Great Georges Street. Dublin 2 on Wednesday 3^rd November at 4.30 pm.

The first forty minutes of the event will be structured: people will be encouraged to speak to a new person every five minutes. The second half of the event will be informal: members can chat over a glass (or pint) of Guinness.

Hope to see you there!

In order to plan a strategy for improvement, clients’ experience and perspective need to be thoroughly analysed, described and transformed into practical measures which can be implemented in the company’s environment.

After a few decades of strong faith in statistical models and quantitative research tools present in the media and corporate contexts, service designers are moving away from that approach. By observing firms’ relationships with their clients and by listening to what the clients have to say they realised that availing of a variety of ethnographic research techniques is a much more effective way of looking for information they need.

One of the main benefits of using ethnographic approach is its holistic nature. It does not focus on numbers and figures but on features and qualities of an observed subject. Ethnographic tools allow for a comprehensive detailed description of a researched problem. But what are these tools?

The main and most commonly used ones include:

- direct, participating observation – it allows the researcher to not only interact with people he’s observing but also put himself in their shoes, experience the context in which they live and think. All of this helps him understand their behaviour and way of thinking.

- interviews – they can be structured, based on a pre-prepared questionnaire or in-depth – this type of technique lets the researcher discuss a specific problem, gives a respondent to talk about themselves and to tell stories from their lives. Again this technique gives an interviewer an insight in their respondents, life, experiences and preferences.

Of course these tools can be customized and service designers often combine a few different techniques to achieve maximum effectiveness. E.g. a company employees could attend group sessions where they would discuss their relationships with their clients, then they could go through a role-playing exercise and end with a brainstorming session on visual elements of customer-company contact points.

It really helps to have somebody in mind when you are creating communications or designing services. Demographic data, although important, doesn’t provide the colour you need to create resonant communications and services. Communication archetypes are caricatures of real people. An Archetype usually includes:

• a name and picture;
• demographics (age, education, ethnicity, family status);
• A description of their values;
• Actions they would likely take when interacting with your organisation;
• A quote that sums up what matters most to the persona with relevance for your service.

Getting an insight into your audiences’ values is really important. It’s very important when communicating to connect on at an emotional with your audience.  It’s very hard to empathise with a demographic, but we naturally empathise with individuals when we understand their needs, wants, and predicaments. This empathy reduces the risk of new product development as it increases the probability that your service design effort will produce an offering that will resonate with your audience.

A defined understanding of the audience will also help you communicate internally about policy and strategy.

We’ve found in our practice that there is a gap between how individuals in an organisation view customers. No surprise as organisational structures are becoming more networked. It is important that people collaborating on a project have  a clear understanding of the audience. Archetypes help build understanding.

We all have ideas as to who our organisations stakeholders are – we found that getting everybody into room to identify and describe customers and stakeholders to develop a shared understanding and agreement as to who the audience is an invaluable exercise.  The benefits of co-creating Archetypes are:

• Users’ goals and needs become a common point of focus for the team.
• The team can concentrate on designing for a manageable set of people knowing that they represent the needs of many users.
• By always asking, “Would Sam use this?” the team can avoid the trap of building unnecessary product features and communications.
• Efforts can be prioritized based on the relative importance of Archetypes.
• Disagreements over design decisions can be sorted out by referring back to the Archetypes.
• Materials can be evaluated against Archetype needs.

Communications Archetypes developed from User Personas: the product of a technique used in software development to help identify user requirements.

ALESSI make kettles, salt shakers, cutlery, etc. Their target market are design conscious consumers. A universal claim made by every kitchenware manufacturer. But ALESSI’s customers really are design conscious: the identity of the designer matters; the appearance of ALESSI products matters. The list of designers that have worked for ALESSI reads like a whos who of 20^th century design – Botta , Frank Gehry , Michael Graves, Zaha Hadid, Hans Hollein, Toyo Ito, Charles Jencks, Tom Kovac, Greg Lynn, Richard Meier, Alessandro Mendini, Jasper Morrison,  Jean Nouvel, Hani Rashid, Aldo Rossi, Richard Sapper, Ettore Sottsass, Philippe Starck, Denton Corker Marshall , Marc Newson.

Alberto Alessi scouts talent. He looks for artists and designers with strongly developed aesthetics, which he believes reflect the best that’s being done today.  A key ALESSI’s competency is that they understand:  (1) architectural forms, and (2) fine art forms. They pluck high-aesthetic threads from our culture and weave them into their product development process.  They have the know-how to integrate high aesthetic values form fine art and architecture into their products.

Why use architectural shapes and fine are forms to style products?  A buildings shape derives from a number of factors:   its function; the materials and the technology used in its construction.  But it’s not that simple. Architecture is an expression of power: money and political will are needed to make major building projects happen. Therefore the shapes and forms that our major buildings take are physical expression of the values and aspirations of our society. Architectural shapes and forms start to trickle into everyday objects: the forms become a decorative style used in everyday objects. During the industrial revolution, manufacturers of mass produced goods started decorating products with motifs ‘borrowed’ from the architectural style of the day: classical revivalism, or neo-classicism.  The emerging middle classes wanted to demonstrate that they were up to date with the current fashions; purchasing products that exhibited forms and decorations used in the great buildings of the day demonstrated that they had taste.  Mass produced products needed to have mass appeal: manufacturers realised that making products with neo-classical forms helped sell products to a wider audience.  Doric columns stated appearing on tea caddies; acanthus leaves stated appearing on…everything.  The upper classes expressed their power and taste through their buildings: if you couldn’t afford to build a country house in the style of a roman temple, you could at least afford to take your tea in a Wedgewood set decorated with a Palladian pattern.

The art audience is sensitised to these forms. Architecture is regarded by art historians as the mother of the arts. When an art historian examines a period they examine building styles and the arts in equal measure to identify recurring and representative aesthetic and philosophical themes. They do this retrospectively: they examine the full body of work after the fact. Alberto Alessi does this on the fly: he mines contemporary arts to find forms that will resonate with the ALESSI’s customers.

There has always been a tension in the fine arts between innovation and discovery: modernism was clearly a period of innovation; post-modernism was period of historical examination, re-discovery, and re-invention.  ALESSI are in the business of reinvention rather than innovation. They uncover styling trends which resonate with their audience. ALESSI products are a communications medium: the designer communicates their aesthetic to their audience through the product, and in some cases, sacrifice function in order to stay true to the original concept.  This appreciation of the designers’ vision and aesthetic is a core ALESSI perspective.

ALESSI’s ‘unwritten’ contract with the customer is that ALESSI will get great designers with strongly defined aesthetic which reflect the best of fine arts and architecture to design their products. The product will be beautifully made by ALESSI. The products functionality may be poor, but it will work – kettles will boil water, salt shakers will shake. The customer agrees to pay above-the-odds for the product and to display the object in their home as a functional art object.

ALESSI fail when they go off-message. In the 90’s ALESSI produced a range of pots and pans. They employed user centred design methods and worked with the best chefs in France and Italy to deliver the very best cooking utensils. The result was a functional, well made product. It bombed because ALESSI’s audience wanted their products to be designed by Designers (please note the capital D).  ALESSI customers didn’t want expert user designed ‘functional’ products from ALESSI. In the 80’s ALESSI produced a range of art multiples – beautiful objects mass produced in the ALESSI factory in co-operation with artists. They bombed too because, not only to ALESSI products have to be beautiful, they must also be functional.

Sometimes even seemingly winning formulas fail. According to Alberto Alessi, ALESSI work at the boundary of what’s acceptable to their audience, sometimes they produce products that fail to resonate even though it’s seemingly on message, in much the same way that a formulaic pop tune fails to hit with its intended audience.

ALESSI products have an integrity that isn’t easily emulated. The process by which an ALESSI products comes about means as much to its audience as the product itself. ALESSI customers make an emotional connection with ALESSI products. They identify with ALESSI’s values – the strong aesthetic, modern materials & manufacture, high quality – they perceive the products as functional art objects.  ALESSI have segmented the market based on a product offering which captures and communicates their values.

Modern branding is about what you do, rather then what you say. ALESSI’s methods underpin their brand which makes the ALESSI brand really strong.  ALESSI products aren’t innovative; they are innovatively styled. They communicate through the medium of product design:  their product is their principle communications medium. This makes ALESSI one of the most innovative communications company, and a brand development leader.

Is this imitable? Yes and no. ALESSI are another link in decorative arts chain that stretches back to William Morris & Co in 19^th Century Britain, who collaborated with artists and designers just as ALESSI does today. But ALESSI’s capabilities are partly derived from a cluster effect. ALESSI is part of the Italian Design factory movement which came about because a cluster of manufacturers and designers were located in the same location in northern Italy. The oversupply of talent and the poor demand factors meant that in order to survive they used innovative product styling to achieve competitive advantage. Other manufacturers have jumped on the designer bandwagon with some success. Waterford Wedgwood worked with the fashion designer John Rocha.  ALESSI use designers because that’s what they do: it’s an integral part of their tactical arsenal. They may use designers in a shallow way: merely using them to style products – but it isn’t shallow when ALESSI does it – it’s shallow when Waterford Wedgwood do it.

In a nut shell, ALESSI is successful because people think their products are cool, and buy into the designer story. ALESSI products support their customers egos.

Key Learning’s

1. Market segmentation based on your product offering works.
2. Styling maters, but it needs to be done by experts. Copying without understanding dilutes your products integrity.
3. Stick to your message, but test it now and again.
4. Test your audience limits: you will be surprised.
5. Learn from history
6. Use design managers to manage the process: managing creative people is difficult.

We’ve found that in the public service there is real drive to do more with less. We had a very positive experience working with the public servants at the Investor compensation Company, a small impendent unit within the central Bank. The ICCL undertook a complex IT upgrade in 2009 in order to improve their service, free up staff time, and –  literally – do more with less.

The project was delivered on time, on budget, and the system did everything that was expected of it (and a bit more).

How did the ICCL get it right when so many public projects end in failure after squandering the opportunity and our tax euro? We identified seven key heuristics that will help you deliver successful projects:

1. Manage your project’s size. Every project has a tipping point. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
2. Focus on stakeholders, not just staff. It’s not about just about cost saving and operational improvements: it’s about delivering better services.
3. Don’t make assumptions about other people’s expertise and knowledge. Make sure that everybody working on the project has a shared understanding of what’s required. Just because you know it, doesn’t mean everybody else does.
4. Write user stories. Use them to create your acceptance tests at the beginning of the project. Developers should confirm that their Statement of Work will satisfy your acceptance cases.
5. You need to evaluate the system. Make sure that everybody understands your evaluation criteria. Write the test script during the development process, as soon as you understand the system.  Test early and often.
6. Co-location, co-location, co-location. The development team should be located at your offices for the duration of the project to build trust and understanding between team participants.
7. Take internal ownership of the project from the start.  Make a member of your staff responsible for the successful delivery of the project – make sure that they have the support and resources they require to deliver the project.
8. Frame your problem and explore solutions before selecting a vendor. Canvas the market to see which company has the best team and the most appropriate technology. Choose personalities that you can could work with.

Happiness

We strive to create experiences that delight.

Service designers are keenly interested in how users feel when consuming a service. Actively addressing consumer happiness in service development programmes is proving to be a key differentiator that’s enabling companies to commercialise new opportunities not being exploited by competitors. We, as service designers, take a user-centric view of service development, employing techniques that put the user at the centre of the design process. The value your customers place on your service is the key factor that determines your service’s viability. We find out what your customers value by involving them in the design process.

Customer Touch-points

We strive to create beautiful, functional, and satisfying company-customer interfaces.

You can’t design an experience, but, you can design and choreograph the factors that define the experience. We, as service designers, identify and create the collateral that ensures that customers have a gratifying and satisfying experience when using a service. We design each touch-point to ensure that customers’ expectations are recognised and addressed. We ensure that service interfaces, the customer-organisation touch points, are useful, usable, and desirable.  The quality of company-customer interface and the resonance of the experience define your customer’s perception of your service.

Customer Journey

We strive to create valuable customer journeys.

Touch points are essential components of the customer journey. The customers experience at each touch-point contributes to their impression of your service, and their willingness to repeat the experience.  Touch-points make services comprehensible: they need to be fully formed and properly positioned.  Service designers model the customer journey to ensure that the touch-points positively contribute to the customer experience.  Service designers work across the design mix – communications, products, and spaces – to develop collateral and choreograph experiences. Customer journey mapping is a core technique that enables us to document your customer journey and design alternatives and new improved customer journeys.  Simply put, it’s about: supporting your customers; creating experiences that people want; and making a service easy to understand and usable.

Organisational Processes

We understand that effective services are efficient services.

Service designers consider the organisations internal capabilities and ensure that your organisation has the resources and capabilities to deliver service improvements. We look at how organisational processes support the customer journey.  Service Designers increases efficiency because we identify exactly which resources and capabilities you’ll need to allocate to roll out and support the service innovation. Service designers identify were savings can be made so that improved services can be delivered for less.  We understand that staff commitment and customer satisfaction are tied. Service designers consider staff capabilities and motivation when devising service improvements.

Support Processes

We help you get the most out of your service value chain.

We understand that companies operate within a service chain: you rely on companies to contribute to the overall service. We help you recognise opportunities for improvement in your value chain and how you could work more effectively with collaborators.

Technology

We help you get the most out of technology.

We, as service designers, have the technical expertise to help you identify and implement the most appropriate technology for a company’s needs.  We call-out the options and provide you with the information you need to commercialise emerging technologies, and build on your existing IT infrastructure. Services can often be improved by using technology to increase efficiency.  Effective service improvement requires good management information systems. We have experience and know-how of financial, enterprise planning, CRM, and communications technologies.  We understand technology and we know how to use technology to improve your service offering. We identify emerging trends and their impact on your industry.  We survey and shortlist appropriate technologies and explain their importance for your organisation. We understand the opportunities they present and the risks associated. We know how to plan and run complicated technology change programmes to ensure that they are delivered on-time and on-budget with the required functionality.

Tying it all altogether

We choreograph experiences where functionality and emotionality are equally accounted for.  Service design is primarily about the simultaneous definition of virtual and material aspects of your service, the co-ordination of human-human and human-machine interfaces.

We reconcile the often conflicting requirements of your organisation and your customer to ensure that you are launching the right idea, at the right time; and that it is executed in the right way for your customer and organisation. In the end, success comes down to whether people easily understand the service and its value.

According to Dr. Mark Lee Hunter there are three types of Network:  (1) Social Networks, (2) Strategic Networks, and (3) Operational Networks.

Most of us are in already in operational networks. We all work on projects with people within and without our company structures. The support and relationships often outlast the project and we maintain the connection after the project has been closed. It’s easier than ever to maintain our connections through social technology such as Linkedin and Facebook.

Service design is an emergent inter-disciplinary approach to service development which employs techniques from design, computer science, social science and business.  Service design requires people who traditionally wouldn’t be in the same operational network to work together.  The Service Design Drinks are an opportunity for us to grow our operational networks and find people who can help us collaborate on projects. So if you’re marketer, designer, business consultant, sociologist, computer guy, entrepreneur, or just want to know more about service design…..come along!

We are competing in the knowledge economy: in order to win we need to me more creative and innovative. Design thinking helps harness the internal resources of a company to deliver sustainable competitive advantage through innovation, new product and service developments and creative communications.

A customer understanding of the company is experienced at the company interface. Design outputs – products, environments, and communications – appear at this interface: at the boundary of the enterprise. They appear at the touch points of the organisation with the customer. The customers’ interactions at the company’s touch points define the customers understanding of the company. To the customer: the company is its interface.

Design artefacts such as prototypes, models, and promotional campaigns are a storehouse of knowledge. Design artefacts facilitate communication and enable collaboration within the organisation.

Design links resources and capabilities within companies. According to Grantt it’s the often the linkages that create competitive sustainable advantage. The output of the design activity is explicit: a tangible artefact. The resultant design artefacts commercialise the resources without revealing the linkages thus ensuring that they can’t be imitated. The linkages between resources remain tacit.
Design Management is (1) an organizational capability (2) with an external end-user, or customer focus (3) that can be used to align a company’s resources with the organisational strategy to create value, and (4) create knowledge in the enterprise.

Below is Matrix. Purpose of the Matrix is to help us benchmark your company’s use of the design against your competitors; and to help you ascertain if design is an important is a success factor. Which elements of the design mix are important to your company; and opportunities for development. Companies who use design well have great products, great communications, and great spaces. All or none of these are important to your organisation.