Thoughts on Interaction Design

I finally got to do a ‘real’service design project. Well, I guess it depends how you see it. Everything I did so far in my design career was a service anyway! For one of the divisions within Philips me and colleagues were asked to help them with their next generation service. Actually it is a service where a product also plays a role. We followed a simple process where we started with an overview of the needs of the customer and other stakeholders. From there on we did the following:

• Identifying opportunities based on the needs of all stakeholders.
• Cluster the opportunities
• Develop service propositions for each cluster
• Evaluate all propositions
• Build the most promising service proposition based on the evaluation

From there on we went directly into paper prototyping and the service/product came to life! Before starting the project we tried to find literature on methods on how to do it. But it was remarkable how little literature there is on methods like this. Or perhaps we didn’t search in the right places. Anybody have any tips?

Even with our method we felt there is still a big need for techniques to do each step efficiently and effective. For example, what it the best way to evaluate which proposition is the ‘best’? I can tell you it is not a trivial exercise. Obviously you then immediately run into issues like:

• ‘best’ is a relative term. So what do you compare it with? How do you avoid apples and peers?
• How do you deal with implications on technology? A proposition may sound good but if you aren’t sure that you can technically deliver on the proposition, all will fail ultimately…
• How do you include potential business models? In the end we are looking for a proposition that benefits the user and the company can make some profit. If the proposition is not clearly profitable we will obviously not continue with it. But how do you make a business model so early in the process?
• …and many more questions like these.

Again, remarkably little literature on this. Any tips?

Nonetheless, we had fun and I feel we delivered something truly valuable. Hopefully it will be launched 2011 and I can tell you what it is….

Three weeks ago a got my HTC Desire after I was impressed by a Google presentation of Android platform. I had a iPhone 3GS before that. Generally I am quite happy with the Desire, but it also has its flaws…

Here are some first conclusions after three weeks of usage:

• The Desire is MUCH faster than the iPhone, although the iPhone is not slow at all.
• The on-screen keyboard doesn’t seem to be as good as the iPhone’s one. I regularily hit the wrong key….rarely happened to me on the iPhone.
• Android applications are generally much less stable than iPhone apps. I guess this is because of the quality control of Apple. Of the 20 apps I downloaded for the Desire at least half regularily crashed. I assume this is the price consumers currently pay for ‘openness’….
• Multitasking isn’t everything. I basically end up having my entire phone memory being filled up by apps and the Desire starts becoming sluggish. I had to install a task manager in order to keep some control.
• When you use the Desire you notice that Google isn’t that focused on a consistent user experience. The applications are inconsistent in where functionality is placed and it just doesn’t feel that polished. The iPhone really shines in this area.
• Syncing with our Exchange server works fine on the Desire just as on the iPhone. On par there..
• The HTC Sense addition is quite nice and allows me to make much more effective use of the home screen. I can completely customize it using widgets. Nice one! Apple should take notice here….

The Android platform certainly has great potential but I feel it will take some time before all the wrinkles have been sorted out. But nonetheless, it is a great phone already and I’d recommend it to everyone who is looking for something else than an iPhone. Oh, and it comes unlocked for a very reasonable price! No hacking need

The first Service Design conference was a big success, at least in terms of attendance. It was sold out as I found out when I tried to register. Bugger….Anyway, I guess it is clear that I am interested in Service Design. After reading some really evangelistic articles of Service Design pioneers I expanded my search using Google. One of the things I quickly found out that it is perhaps not as new as we all may think. Sure, online services are relatively new and bring new challenges and opportunities. But wasn’t even the oldest profession in the world a ’service’? Perhaps it wasn’t designed by service designers but I guess it proofed its worth. Even more interesting is that I found a serious body of knowledge on service design and management with many books written such as for example ‘ITIL Service Design’. So what is going on here? Are we User Experience people again thinking that we have discovered a new area that we can claim only to find out ten years later that some other discipline has already covered it extensively? (more…)

Yes, another blog. This time it will be my own personal blog. But don’t worry, no stories about my dog, children or my super sport car. Not only because I don’t have any of them, but because this blog will only feature stories about matters relating to Interaction Design or simply the use of things.

Every month I’ll try to write an article about something that caught my attention and I will discuss the interaction issues and provide my view on them. Perhaps I may occasionally provide ways to improve the interaction! We’ll see how it goes, for now I simply wish you happy readings.