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Columns

Introducing Design @ Your Service

By Tenny Pinheiro - April 2, 2013

It has been said over and over again that we now live in a service economy. For most developed countries, that means more than 70% of their GDP is driven by the service sector. For the not so developed ones, the number can range from 60–70%—still pretty high. In fact, the lowest sector-based GDP income countries are Saudi Arabia (31.1%) , Indonesia (38.8%), United Arab Emirates (39.8%), China (44.6%) and Iran (48.2%). Meanwhile, the rest of the globe is running more than half of its economic machine solely on service oil.

Before you act surprised about China being on the lower-end of this list, I should add that they expect a 4.5 points increase on their service sector GDP by the end of 2015. That, in numbers, is huge. This is not a coincidence—rather, it is a pattern that runs on top of every economy that is serious about putting itself on the development runaway. There's a clear product-to-services economic shift taking place and it is silently, or not so, affecting the way we live and work.

In some ways, we do know what that means. Metaphorically speaking, it means that we are becoming a software-based economy while industry steadily moves away from its manufacture smoky days and grabs a slice of the digital-era pie in nearly every sector. It also means that we, as consumers, are more willing to trade possession for access and that we expect to engage in relationships instead of short-term transactions when we buy.

What about design?

Economical shifts are not new to design. In fact, industrial design was born out of a shockwave caused by the mother of all economical shifts: the Industrial Revolution. The early Bauhaus movement was about creating a new breed of professionals called industrial designers. These were people who could both look back at the artisan mindset and look forward to the new industry, not aside or against it. In order to do that, this new breed had to integrate arts and business thinking, yes, business thinking, as production was the imperative business model those days. Ok, let's call it "production thinking."

Despite the recent explosion of fancy design suffixes, real design was never alienated from business. No, I'm not talking about art or the shallow exploration of design in advertising. Instead, real design, since its early days, has always been about bringing a human perspective to any system in order to find opportunities to create positive impact, and, at the same time, keep a steady and sharp eye on business profitability and/or execution viability.

Returning to the present, we are now living the next shockwave. I'm talking about an economy that has moved from the commercialization of hard-goods to a more dematerialized state where people exchange electrons and borrow thing from one another instead of owning it—an economic system where it is possible to thrive whether or not you sit at an industrial plant. A system where David-like startups are seriously threatening gigantic marble dinosaurs by rethinking the way they serve their customers.

Alright. It is what it is, and gosh, thanks for the most of it. But that being said, what are the new skills and knowledge we are going to need in order to keep designing for this new world?In contemplating the answer to that question, it is not difficult to realize that if some products are dematerializing and vanishing into the air while others are becoming coadjutant players in more complex business scenarios, design must also transcend the object and its classic form-and-function mindset and be employed in a much broader context.

Thus, Service Design is not a discovery but a natural gravitation, an evidence of the good and old design, naturally following the economic transformations of the last decades. Everyone who wants to design—I completely believe that everyone is, or can be, a designer—needs to start seeing services not as product plug-ins anymore but as a totally new economic structure. The service is the economy.

But this can be tricky as this new market orientation entails changes in all colors and flavors in the old and cozy product-oriented mindset that ruled the world economics as we knew it. In order to properly follow this shift, we need to step out of the old mentality that services are intangible products, as this view does not solve the puzzle. In fact, it makes it worse, as it invites you to still think about services using the old brick and mortar value chain model.

My idea with Design @ Your Service is to experiment here at Core 77 some new lines of thinking that challenge the normal intuitive and deceiving natural path of thinking about products versus thinking about services.

This is the essence of what we, at live|work, call Service Thinking and there is much to be discussed and recovered from our past on this matter. No designer should venture on the design of services without a deep understanding of the transition from ownership to access, its meaning and consequences to companies, society and the world itself. This is not an ordinary subject as it impacts every sector of the global economy and some, as we already know, in devastating ways.

Design @ Your Service is about Service Thinking. It will be a channel to discuss these forces as they shake our world in various forms. We will talk about Service Design, but when you see the word 'design' in this context, please, infer Gestalt, not specific tools. If you are looking for a service design tooling and quick fixes channel, you are definitely in the wrong place.

More to come.

Tenny Pinheiro

Dreaming as an entrepreneur, seeing as a designer and making as an engineer. Deeply wired to human intentions. Always in search of the perfect interaction. Extremely hungry. Insanely foolish.
Tenny is a serial entrepreneur, designer and the author of six books on Design Thinking and Service Design. He was the founder and, during 5 years, the CEO at the Latam studio of live|work, the British pioneer Service Design agency. His book The Service Startup: Design Thinking Gets Lean, pioneered the use of Service Design Sprints.

8 Comments

c3

6 years ago

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obsolete isnt the issue... self value is. workers in china making ipads for pennies a day arent obsolete..they're a ROI. As Digital Domains discredited final ceo said... whats better than low paid interns? how about FREE students working on our EFX movies?.. they will keep on trying..;)
But yes, service industries do have to operate in different ways with a closer attitude to servitude to the other. i think thats the whole "idea";)

as for removing tools.... i said controlling and owning ones tools was the issue.. and how many "art directors" do you know who can make software to compete with Adobe or Autodesks "monopoly" like control over being the tools of "paid design service" projects?..

tools are no longer tools when they become someones media....
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Tennyson Pinheiro

6 years ago

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Hi Larry,
I know the movie. My point is not on designers becoming obsolete, and it is not about designers (as professionals) at all. But to state that services are a different and much more gestaltic animal than products. So one who designs services (and that can be anyone in profession) needs to incorporate new lens. That goes to marketeers as well, as marketing is a solely product based theory. Also, tools were not removed from designers, a real designer (not a surfacing one) has always been able to create new paths and tools to suit the challenge.
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c3

6 years ago

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tennyson,
hello. good. im glad to hear your ideas about the balance of ownership and the virtual.:)

btw- my name is Larry, not Aaron..;).

aaron sorkin was the screenwriter of "THE SOCIAL NETWORK" a film of a few years ago that dramatized the creation of Facebook and its poster boy of service design, Mark Zuckerberg ;)

My comment was a "remix" of the line spoken by the Zuckerberg character in defending his "dubious creation" of the "facebook idea" in the service of the Twins who "hired him" to "code their product" as they saw it.

with the end of plastic buttons needing to be engineered its not a surprise that "service design" has emerged from the ID patheons lowest rungs..( POP.Display design) to fight for its throne.

but one cannot escape the fact that the "designers health" has not been improved with the removal of his owned-product -tools,, by the licensed, never really his tools, that now have Terms of Service /control that leave all the designers futures up to a few software corporations wims, as oposed to any idea of a profession.

In a FLASH. the designer can find themselves obsolete... and being Beta is never a winning plan in Huxleys world of Services.:)

thoughts from the 20th century... same as every other one.
larryr

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Tennyson

6 years ago

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Thanks Jeremy, glad you liked it! =)

Aaron,
Access is definitely not ownership. And property rights is definitely an issue in the access age, you are right. And on that products vs services is indeed a major issue, and It is an issue of vision as well as modus operandi, that takes life and purpose out of businesses.
Will discuss that further on this space, thanks for reading it, thanks for commenting as well, no need to apologise!

Tennyson

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c3

6 years ago

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ask the wrong questions and you already get crappy answers..

the issue of import were not about product vs service objects/tasks of the "industrial revolution" of the last 2 centuries but of "ownership and property rights tied to human rights"

those who own the tools own the products created... and certainly the fact that designers gave up owning their tools so easily during the last 20 years for the "delusion" of service as any sort of "professional control" should give one pause before promoting "service design" as any desired "profession" of those who keep deluding themselves that they have so much to give, in the culture.

Let the Winkloss twins "error" show you the light... Work For Hire and service in the age of the postmaterial and the new ethics, dont seem to be mixing.

web2.0 ,and the Gov 2.0 being vomited from it are nothing but redux of the worst parts of the 20th century... and "viewser generated content" a world of 99 designs... and 1 million people calling them selves designers and pretending to be paid as one.

access is not ownership... ownership is ownership.

Cause if you drew the picture of Facebook, then well.. youd have drawn that picture of "facebook"....;)

apologies Aaron Sorkin...

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Jeremy

6 years ago

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Really nice post! Keep up the good work, Tennyson. Looking forward for the next ones.
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Tennyson

6 years ago

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Hey Ben,
We are working on that... publishers got some strange way to understand globalization thou.... let's see.
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Ben

6 years ago

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Where can I find an English version of Design Thinking Brasil?
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