Thoughts on Interaction Design

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?

The Service Design evangelists often cite success stories like Apple’s iPod and iTunes combination. This example is very appealing and it is really a good example of how to address user needs it a good way, leveraging both the power of products and the strengths of services. I really digg that. However, it surprised me that the number of success stories like this is fairly small. Even more interesting I find the failures such as Nokia’s N-Gage, which even had IDEO involved. It would be nice to have a list of successes and a list of failures to discover what really makes it work. So if you know of good examples of successes or failures, leave a comment on this article!

Successes in terms of user experience may be plenty, but do they also make sense from a business view? For example, how much profit (not revenue!) does the iTunes store actually make? It doesn’t even have to make a profit as long as the increased iPod sales make up for the loss. Judging by Apple’s annual report it seems to work out for them. But then consider Nike Plus. My guess is that they don’t make any money on it despite the large amount of users. I’d love to be wrong but I can’t find any numbers to proof me wrong….

For me the best thing about Service Design is that it brings attention to bringing value to the end-user. Ultimately that is what it is all about isn’t it? The funny thing is that it implies that Product Design does not bring enough value which of course isn’t entirely true either. In my view designers face the challenge of bringing the best possible value to the end-users, whether that is using a product or a service or both together. Perhaps we should call it ‘Value Design’?

Anyway, if you know of successes and failures in online service design, share the here!

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