Designing public services

I have earlier blogged about service design and last week at the 1st Nordic conference on Service Design and Service Innovation conference I met a number of very skilled people from different domains. It just reinforced my thinking about the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to address the challenges of designing services.

My own contribution on Day 2 was during the workshop on "Designing public services" was enlightening. My role was not as an expert in service design, but as a consumer-citizen; a c-c trying to make a case for participatory design. I am even more convinced that consumer-centered design is critical in the design of services and even more so in the design of public services. This blog was taglined "citizen-driven design. Shaping the agenda for Society 2.0" some years ago and my search for methods and practices for citizen involvement continues. It's not a question of "getting there" -- but more on evolving democratic processes to capture the "requirements" from citizens.

My presentation - that focused on scenarios for health care and wellness - was actually making a point around "capture of requirements". I used scenarios as a means to convey "requirements -- while making the point that we need to be more intention-oriented in understanding services. I view intentions as an abstraction above needs and requirements and suspect intention-orientation will open for citizen participation while also providing a means to "manage" the design process using conventional practices like "requirements management". Besides citizen participation, intention-orientation will also help unify practices from the different disciplines involved in service design.
So it is with some expectations I will be attending Dugnadssamfunnet 2.0 (Norwegian) arranged by the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform.

Looks like Chrome may be taking the role of the operating system. What with all those nifty net-based applications building up on Google's home page. Google Docs is all set to take on MS Office, the features keeping increasing and the usability is improving (still a long way to go).

Once Chrome can deeply integrate with Google Apps --- not unlike the way MS Office (and other products) deeply integrated with MS Windows --- then we will be seeing the first steps towards creating a universal computer. One that just knows how to run a browser -- and drive a network card. That's all thats needed; the rest is on the cloud -- applications and data! 

Low power consumption will make it a preferred device not unlike the mobile phone. Talking of which, with the power that mobile phones are packing, phones will become computers (they already are) running a browser and using the mobile network. 

Google (and others) still have a lot of work to do to create the rich user experience in a world of all-net based applications. Which is why Microsoft is pushing Silverlight so hard and Adobe with Flash. Google still has the Android-card up its sleeve, with iPhone stealing a lot of the mobile-innovation thunder, I guess they will wait a bit.

We are probably reaching the stage where consumer-centered design of services is a very distinct possibility.

Web 2.0 is rolling on. I just came across these two pieces of software Flock (link) and Viewzi (link).

Flock is a social-web browser based on Mozilla, that gives a hint of the potential to develop specialist browsers. I'm not sure I'd want dedicated browsers, too much of a hassle. Rather, I'd like to change to a new "skin". A skin here is more than a layout theme or colours and fonts, it captures the user context. So, when I am browsing for people I activate a skin that offers a deeper browser experience. Similarly for shopping, listening to music etc.

Viewzi is a visual search tool. As one who prefers the visual/graphic over text, I find this user experience interesting. It actually interprets the results and content to present different views for the user to browse the content.

Now, I wonder what a Viewzi + Flock experience may actually look like?

Anyway, we still have a way to go before we can harness the power of Web 2.0. I am hoping for more contextualizing and visualizing. We need to focus on "a horizontal context" i.e. to exploit Web 2.0 in the context of work being performed for a given business activity. It makes things much more concrete.

Software platforms for NGOs - Open Source is more than software

Open Source is definitely reaching the 2.0 state and becoming a real alternative to commercial software. However, most of all it proposes value to take "Social Networking" to the NGOs and non-profits who work tirelessly to make changes in their respective societies.

Latest is Kaltura a video platform and DimDim a web-meeting platform. These are just two of probably hundreds such software platforms making the news. As a specialist in collaboration technology my personal favourite has been Drupal and civiCRM.

My thoughts immediately go to the small non-profits driven by energetic, passionate and skilled idealists -- always short on funds and striving to make the kroner or rupee go as far as possible. Looking back at the 80s, I see how user-centered design became possible when Microsoft, Lotus and Borland let-loose the power of the PC with development tools and software architectures. This ultimately led to mass adoption of computing in the workplace. I sense a wave of citizen-centered design approaching and I wonder how governments and bureacracy will react. More on this later...

I suspect Kaltura will be challenging the likes of YouTube and Google Video - not directly - but in allowing for the development of solutions without the hassle of those "pesky ads". And DimDim is taking the battle to Microsoft, Google and Cisco (Webex). On the other hand, these could also be partners... it is difficult to say in this new era of Darwinism; those who adapt will survive. The trick is in "How to adapt".

A couple of days ago, I signed in to the Norwegian Government's citizens' portal Minside (myPage) for the first time. myPage gives me access to information about me, that is registered in some of the Government registers. I can also use simple governmental services relating to healthcare and student loans. This is a great start, I hope the scope of the services widens and made more relevant for me.

Santa was particularly kind this Christmas, he sent an XBox 360 down the chimney! Joining my kids in playing FIFA 2007, I was struck by the advanced user interface AND the deftness these children displayed in manipulating the software controls to configure the games, teams or players etc. (Besides being able to configure strengths and stamina of the players, one can even configure the way a player celebrates after scoring a goal!!). Anyway, I attempted to contrast the two user interfaces - FIFA 07 and the citizens' portal (minside). Even though they serve different purposes, I sensed this HUGE gap in expectations that citizens of the (not so distant) future will have to citizen (or consumer) portals.

That gamers hardly ever read manuals, nearly always skip through instructions (almost telepathically) and demonstrate an astonishing multi-tasking capability makes for some really interesting design challenges -- not just the user-interface but also the content and quality of the service.

The citizens' portal is a great start, but has a long way to go... for that matter consumer portals from service providers like my insurance company, or my bank or energy supplier have an equally long way to go. Or could this be a cue for the "new intermediary" -- a service broker that aggregates these services? And then when I have customised these services using tools provided by this "new intermediary", could my preferences serve as personalisation criteria for other services?.. and Amazon-like user experiences. Utopia? I hope not! Maybe businesses and government should take a closer look at the trends of online gaming, sharing of preferences and social bookmarking. We are probably just scratching the surface of something that can be very, very disruptive.... and exciting!

The Digital Society is a term I came up with some time ago, with the idea of extending the "hype" of the Digital Home to other areas like school, eGovernment etc. I hope the term Digital Society does not suffer the same "hyped" fate of terms like the Digital Home or eCommerce before that. The use of the 2.0 suffix appears to go the same way, so I deliberaty will not use Society 2.0

So, what exactly is the Digital Society? The Digital Society aims to capture the essence of placing the citizen at the center of digital services --regardless of where these services come from -- entertainment companies, Government, my employer, my bank etc.

To make this concept more understandable. I propose 5 different settings or scenarios:
A) Entertainment - Music, photos, videos, films etc. Produced by me or professionally
B) Security and comfort - Managing the appliances at home, surveillance, healthcare services
C) Shopping and commerce - Banking, shopping
D) Work - Sharing documents and tools to do office work and school/college work
E) Citizenry - Utilising government services for tax, welfare etc

As mentioned earlier, the key to the concept is "user-centricity" -- where the user, based on her/his lifestyle preferences, will have different uses for the digital services. The rationale for this "user-focus" lies in the lessons learned from the PC-era.

Consider the mid 1980s, the mainstream office PC was invented, Ethernet was commercially available, client-server software architecture was gaining attention. By early 1990s we had a massive proliferation of software and the de-centralisation of IT-management. From the chaos of this proliferation, we emerged with user-centered design as a key element of software design. Today, we have muliple devices (not just the PC), Internet (not just Ethernet) and we have Service Oriented Architecture (evolved from client server). It is then, tempting to extrapolate the experiences from the PC-era and expect the emergence of "Consumer Centered Design" as a key element for creating digital services.

PS! I wonder why service providers like Telcos do not realise that, their way to segment the customer (i.e. private or corporate) blatantly ignores the fact that I am BOTH a private and a corporate customer (I am me!!).