Lab8-cct333

Design methods have been traditionally applied to product design, however, services often tend to be extensions of products. This means that in terms of services, it is the overall experience that is judged by its users. The field of service design merges concepts and ideas from product and interaction design to design the experience of services. One method of service design is ethnography, where the designer tries to understand the context and the people that the service is used. One way to do this is to create personas. For example, in designing a transportation service, the different personas could include occasional users, regular users, and frequent users. By understanding how these different groups would use the service, it can be designed to better suit their needs and therefore increase their experience of it.

Another method for service design is a service blueprint. A service blueprint attempts to map out all the critical points of a service such as time and the logical sequence of actions and processes. The service blueprint includes both front stage and back stage events and actions. Front stage are the things that happen at interaction points between the user and the service. Backstage are those actions that the user does not necessarily see, but are vital to the functioning of the service. So by doing a service blueprint, the designer can identify the critical points as well as the weak points in a service.

Service oriented design would be very appropriate for public transportation, particularily in North America. I have used public transportation in both North America and in Europe and from my experience, the transit system is much worst in North America. It seems that European jurisdictions have done a much better job at designing their service. It is difficult to explain, but in comparison, North American public transportation systems are significantly lagging behind those in Europe.

North American public transportation agencies could really benefit from applying service oriented design practices. In particular, a service blueprint would be very usefull in indentifying all the weak interaction points. Further, they should do an ethnographic study by using different personas and how they use public transit to help improve it for specific groups of people.