Archive for February, 2008
Paco Underhill, the author of Why We Buy, contends that seating is perhaps the major issue in the design and furnishing of public spaces. He’s pretty passionate about it:
I love seating. I could talk about it all day. If you’re discussing anything having to do with the needs of human beings, you have to address [...]
Demos, the “think tank for everyday democracy” responsible for last year’s excellent Journey to the Interface, has published a new report called Making it Personal [PDF 504K] about self-directed services in the UK:
This report advocates a simple yet transformational approach to public services — self-directed services — which allocate people budgets so they can [...]
Interesting little two-by-two framework over at Zeus Jones comparing frequency of use versus customization as a way of re-envisioning products as potential services.
I didn’t realize examples of service evidencing were quite so rare until I was faced with illustrating the concept for a project I’m working on. I posted about service evidencing last week but the only really clear, public example I’ve found is from a Live|Work presentation at Doors of Perception East in 2003.
Chris Downs [...]
I popped into a Subway sandwich shop on my way home and noticed this sign as I waited in line for my order. I don’t think they’ve ever actually suggested soup to me, but I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be backstage communication (yummy pictures of soup are on the other side). The design [...]
In 1957 a doctor named Humphrey Osmond began observing the effects of environmental change on the interactions of patients in a mental hospital in Saskatchewan. From that research he eventually identified two major systems for patterning space. Sociofugal space (gridlike) tends to keep people apart and suppress communication while sociopetal space (radial) does just [...]
Kevin Kelly on finding value in a world where digital copies are ubiquitous. He uncovers eight categories of intangible value: Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage and Findability.
There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy. I think the [...]
As a complement to the recent New York Times article on refocusing the customer experience at Starbucks, I came across a paper examining their efforts to adapt the service experience in China [PDF 180K] from the Journal of Business Studies.
In this paper we explore how young, urban Chinese consumers transform the iconic global brand [...]
John Thackara on the role of designers, the problems of sustainability and the failings of Design education:
It’s rather obvious to me that design is one of a whole range of things that we have to be good at in order to meet the challenges of the age, which has probably always been true… The contribution [...]
Simon Clatworthy from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design writes an introduction to service evidencing, a prototyping strategy for creating a sense of tangibility around service concepts early in a project. There’s a nice example from Live|Work, who appear to be working with the school on the project.
