The note of Stefan Müller’s input presentation held during the Global Service Jam in Berlin on March 12th, 2011.

1. Intro Jams
Dear Jammers!
It‘s a great pleasure to be here. It‘s a great pleasure having been
invited to this fantastic event by the ubiquitous Martin Jordan.
So my sincere thank goes to him as well as to his fellow
organizers Olga and Manuel…
…and of course to our generous host Fjord, for being so kind to
allow us occupy this extraordinary space for next 48 hrs…
_____
This is meant - I suppose - as an introductory talk. So I have
collected a bunch of snippets from here and here across the
web, presented in no particular order.

2. On perspective
The point, I suppose, that I would start with, is one that is
borrowed from Charles Leadbeater.
And what it is really, is just that: “Where you stand will
determine what you see.”
Quite simple on the face of it…
… But really, often when we are involved in any kind of
innovation we choose to stand in places without thinking about
where we stand.
And so obviously, if where you stand determines what you see,
then we often tend to stand just in the place that we happen
to be in, AND we don’t think about where we should stand in
order to see things in a different way, or a more interesting way.

3. On Questions
And then, also Leadbeater: The question you ask will determine
the answer that you get, really.
So if you want to ask: “How do we improve our performance in
math at the age of 15?”
Then the answer you will get is probably : “Better way to teach
mathematics in schools to 13 and 14 year olds.”
If you want to ask: “How do we get better outcomes form our
education system?”
Then that’s a completely different question.
And if you want to ask: “What is a good outcome for young
people?”
That’s an even bigger question….

4. On Questions
So we tend to ask questions in ways that are predestined to
make us comfortable.
We ask the question in a way that means that we are likely to
know the answer.
And professions have a sort of vested interest, really, in making
sure that they perpetuate (or maintain) the problem to which
they are the answer.
• Doctors persuade us that they are the key to future health
• Teachers persuade us that they are the key to better learning
• The police persuade us that they are the key for better safety.
And in each and every of those cases, they persuade us that
the vantage point form which they see the world is the vantage
point that we should adopt to understand how the word should
be.
And they identify their profession with the outcome that we
seek...

5. On Questions
...And in many ways this is, of course, also true for designers.
(Who, sometimes, have tendency to see their profession, in a
very odd way, as the answer to virtually everything - really.)
And so vantage point matters: And many of the most
important design decisions are often those where you choose
the perspective from which you are going to look at a problem
and how you frame it, eventually.
And so, much of the user-centred design stuff and the methods
that you’ve just learned about (or that you are going to learn
about in a minute) are, at their core, just about that, really:
Helping us to tilt our perspective/vantage points into directions
that might be unlikely at first but, at the same time, yield better
outcomes in the long run.
So, I am very confident that you are well covered on that side.
___________________
The second thing is, totally unrelated:
But he next two days might be best described by picturing
ourselves as a collective - as brothers in arms - who engage in
a kind of massive, global brainstorming session.
However: Every proper brainstorm has, of course, a set of rules
attached to it. So, I thought this might be a good place to re-
iterate the most important (brainstorming) rule of them all:

6. Do not judge!
Why is this important?: Because for trying to create a kind
of creative momentum during a brainstorm – a flow that
encourages wild ideas and allows people to build on the ideas of
others – it’s absolutely imperative to segregate time and place
of idea generation from the time and place of ideas evaluation.
Evaluating Ideas at the site of their creation will take out
the steam of any brainstorming attempt. That is because it
discourages people from thinking wild and out of the box.
So, jumping to early into the evaluation process of should be
avoided wherever possible. This is really important because
archiving it is a lot easier said than done – Especially within a
very condensed setting, such as ours.
Beyond core, there are, of course, some other basic rules to
brainstorming, which I am sure you are all familiar with:
Encourage wild ideas, Build on the ideas of other, Stay focused
on the topic, One conversation at a time, Be visual, Go for
quantity...

7. ...The third thing, is on a slightly more hands-on and
practical note:
Quite some time ago I attended a very interesting workshop led
by Richard Eisermann and Anja Klüver, in which they laid out
a framework that I found really, really useful in the context of
service design.
Their framework basically provides a way of organizing all the
constituting elements of a service experience, in a sequential
kind of way.
And the best thing about it is that it applies to virtually any
service that comes to mind:
For example, taking a train or going to the dentist.

8. Service components (“Dentist)
So, I had to go to the dentist the other week and I was soo glad;
and slightly amazed that I could simply phone up a dentist and
go. And a guy would spend 45 minutes working on my teeth.
And I would leave > repaired. I mean that’s a fairly extraordinary
thing, that you can just assume that that will happen.
So, for the sake of the argument, lets stick with the example
and think about: What are the constituting elements of going to
the dentist – in terms of a service experience I mean?
[pose the question to the crowd, wait for answers to drop in,
which gonna be like, find the dentist, make appointment, have
you teeth worked, go home, brush harder…]

9. Service components
So this is the way Anja and Richard organized the elements that
constitute a service experience:
The User experience is a continuum here.
It begins with enticement.

10. Service components
Entice – How can you get your butter to look better? What are
you going to do to set it apart from the competition?
Decide – How does someone decide what college is right for
him or her? What process do they go through? What value does
can you provide to be chosen over the competition?
Use – How do people actually use a service? Try to consider
which touchpoints have the greatest impact.
Support – How can you support people once they’ve opened
the box and loaded the software onto their computer? How
can a dentist support it’s costumers in maintaining better oral
health?
End & extend - How can you keep your customers flying to
your airport? How can a dentist make sure that people are
coming back to him with joy...

11. ... I kind of like to think about it like a date.
• You want to make a good first impression.
• Each subsequent impression will reinforce that first one.
• Do things right, and …then hopefully - if the service was any
good - start the circle all over again.
“The basic rule that , along the journey, to look at the service
through the customers’ eyes. Put yourself in the customers’
shoes. Wear your customers’ hat. Get as close as you can to
them.”

12. Service components
But there is also another dimension to it:
The notion of it all happening in a kind of orchestrated and
intentional way - almost like a play at the theatre.
So if you were asked to put on a play - right here, right now.
What are the things to make it happen? What are the elements
you need to source in order set up a proper theatre?
[posing this question to the crowd, answers might include:
actors, props, stage, script etc.]

13. Service infrastructure/Resources
So, the main and most important, elements here are of course:
A stage - The physical evidence of your service, your “stuff”
Audience - Your customers and their actions
Actors - Your employees and their actions
Script - Your plan for what should happen, where and when
Backstage -What you need to make everything “work”

14. Service Blueprint 1
As we’ve seen, the basic customer journey has five steps.
If we take the user experience circle and straighten it out, we
end up with the x axis of a diagram.
Service Blueprint 2
When combining this with all the infrastructure elements of
a service: we end up with some kind of matrix or a so-called
service blueprint matrix.

15. Service Blueprint for train journey
What you see here, is a fancy, executive, version of a service
blueprint for a train journey.
Think of a service experience that has been particularly good:
and consider the service journey that you went on to. And try to
imagine the individual aspects of that experience and how they
might fit on that matrix.

16. Detailed Blueprint
And this is the technical version of the blueprint for the same
journey. More geared towards technical implementation.
This is the description and plan of how all the individual element
fit together on a service blueprint… (think it was Amtrak)
However, I am not suggesting that his is the only way, or the
best way of how to think about a service experiences.
But I have grown to like this way of organizing the individual
components of a service and often refer to every now and then,
when actually having to put something like this together
So in case you think this might be of help for you at some stage
within the next 48 hours, I am sure the is a way print out a copy
for you.

17. John Thackara
I am sure that by the end of today you will have immersed
yourselves with all kinds of user-centred design methods and
theory.
And most of this stuff will, without a doubt, involve excessive
use of post it notes. Or, “Post-it-porn”, as I like to call it.
So, in conclusion, I would like to end this by asking you to:
Please don’t fool yourselves into believing that, you will have
to create something that is robust and going to last forever,
during the next 48 hours.
Thackara is right: These things are like butterflies, and they
often do have only a short life-span, sadly…
So, instead, please focus on the things that really matter in
live:
• getting to know, new and interesting people;
• having a jolly good fun together;
• and (maybe) learn one or two new things along the way...

18. Thanks
Okay, not much left to say, except maybe: “May the Force be
with you, my dear Jammers!”
Thank you for listening.