CMU Design for Service 2018: Part I, Weeks 1–6
Syllabus, January 16–February 24
Week 1, January 16: What is — and isn’t — service design?
- Tuesday: Intro to service design and getting to know each other.
- Assignment, to complete before Thursday’s class: You must complete this assignment in time for Thursday’s class because we’re going to be using your observations for Thursday’s service jam.
- Over the next couple of days, pay attention to music. Make a quick note every time you actively listen to music or notice it in the background? What is the setting? What were you doing? Where was it coming from? How were you listening to the music — headphones? speakers? through some other kind of medium? What kind of choices did you make about the music? Where do people interact with the service and through which touchpoints, physical, digital, informational, and otherwise? What little details do you notice — the service gestures? What infrastructures might be supporting these services (including ones you might not see)?
- Thursday: 80-minute service design jam. In one class period, we’ll move very quickly through the components of a service design project. (The Global Service Jam is usually a 48-hour sprint for designing new services and there will likely be one in Pittsburgh during the semester, if you’d like to take part.) We’re going to do an extremely condensed version. You will be using your observations from the assignment in this class.
That’s my jam! Or rather, that’s your jam. Here are some photos from the 80-minute service design jam we did in class on Thursday.
Week 2, January 23: Service design concepts, music service concepts
To read for class on Tuesday: There are several links but they are very quick readings. We will call on students at random to provide a brief summary of each piece, so please be ready.
- Polaine et al., chapter 2 (this chapter on Box but please buy or secure your own copy).
- Meld Studio, “What service design IS, and what it IS NOT”
- Mark Stickdorn, UIE, “Service Design Thinking”
- Meghan Lazier, “What is Service Design?”
- Interaction Design Foundations, “The Principles of Service Design Thinking”
In class:
- Tuesday, 1/23: Service design practices: an overview
- Thursday, 1/25: Introducing the music industry: an overview of business models and approaches (including B2B, B2C, curation, licensing, niche markets). You will receive your team assignment for the music industry exercise. Here are the lecture slides — we’ll return to them on Tuesday to finish the lecture.
- Plus: please read these bonus additions:
- The Secret Lives of Playlists: This is an easy to read and useful article about some of the business behind digital music business.
- Going from UX to service design; the stark honest truth no one will tell you. Some hard advice, some great resources (many of which we draw from here) and some insight on careers in service design.
And some things to consider:
What are the economic reasons for a move toward service design? The economy supports it, for one: as Polaine et al. point out, 75% of jobs are in the service sector (as opposed to farming/mining/fishing and manufacturing). We see increased job growth and decreasing unemployment — and that growth will continue to be in the service sector. If we’re not designing for products — often designed in silos and “bits,” as Polaine and his coauthors call them — we need to be cognizant about how to design for the networks, flows, and multiple touchpoints of services.
Here’s something else to consider: 1 in 5 jobs is held by a freelancer or contract worker, according a NPR/Marist poll released this week. That means flexibility for workers and employers — but it can mean precarity for workers who may find themselves without benefits such as health insurance or retirement plans. Says a Madison, Wisconsin web developer, “We really don’t have much of a social safety net, and that’s terrifying.”
What might this mean for the services we explore and design in this class? “This is the work arrangement for the future… Twenty years from now, I don’t think a typical college graduate is going to expect that full-time employment is their path to building a career,” Arun Sundararajan, NYU management professor and author of The Sharing Economy told NPR.
Thinking again about music: we talked in class about meager royalties for artists. This article by Damon Krukowski, a musician (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi) and writer, outlines just how bad it is: making about a dollar in royalties for one song that had about 6,000 listens on Spotify. Give Krukowski’s podcast Ways of Hearing is great if you care about music. The New Yorker wrote about it last summer, as well as his book The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World.
Ulu’s favorite band is Vulfpeck. She says:
“I cannot emphasize enough what an amazing industry anomaly this band is. They are unsigned and sell out nearly every concert, and every aspect of what they do is self-produced (by choice, as the bandleader explains in an AMA, so that they can actually make a living and retain complete creative control) — they even commissioned a signature typeface and sell it to fans. And they are all-around phenomenal musicians. Some of my favorites ever.”
Vulfpeck did something ingenious: they released a silent album on Spotify to be played as listeners sleep.
- Rolling Stone: ‘Silent Spotify Album’ Creator Talks Strategy Behind Unique Plan
- Billboard: Spotify Silences Vulfpeck’s Silent ‘Sleepify’ Album
- Forbes: How a Band Made $20,000 on Spotify from 5 Minutes of Silence
Vulfpeck (the band behind Sleepify)’s Reddit AMAs: 2015, 2016, also 2016 & 2017
Week 3, January 30: From scenarios to service blueprinting
We will continue to introduce tools and processes of service design and give you some time in class to work with your case study teams (Thursday).
Tuesday, 1/30: Scenarios, stakeholder and journey mapping. To use: The Practical Service Blueprinting Guide in the Box readings folder (from Megan Erin Miller & Eric Flowers of Practical Service Design. You may also want to look at Adaptive Path’s Guide to Service Blueprinting (also in the Box folder).
Thursday, 2/2: Carrying on with service blueprinting exercise in class. In advance of this class, please watch this video: it does a good job of outlining the service blueprinting process.
Music service case study assignment
Your team will take the music service you’ve been given and will create a seven-minute presentation that describes the following:
- A description of service, who owns it, who funds it, its business model, and where it gets the music (its licensing model). We recommend you talk to a CMU librarian about sources that will help you build a business case study for contemporary digital services.
- A map of its stakeholders and audiences and the value flow
- A high-level blueprint (showing backstage and frontstage, lines of visibility)
- The challenges it faces, how it addresses the value gap, future plans (where apparent)
- … and get us excited about the possibilities and problems here of the service! Why should we care?
Presentation will be strictly timed, so please practice. Every member of your team must present. The deliverable you turn in is a PDF of the slides you use in the presentation, and separate PDF showing the high-level blueprint (since it may be hard to see in detail on screen)
You will be evaluated on the following criteria:
- Your team does research that involves research tools such as Lexis Nexis, Harvard Business Review, Google Scholar, and similar (note all sources), beyond just simple Google searches.
- You offer a good description of the company and its mission
- You provide a legible, thorough and well-designed stakeholder map and value flow diagram
- You include a high-level service blueprint to show the interaction through the service
- Your presentation is well-rehearsed and everybody speaks, and you come in on time
Music case studies
Great job on the music case studies. They’re all in a folder here and will be a good resource for you as you design your services for this semester.
Week 4, February 6: Business models & music services
- Tuesday, 2/6: To read for today: “Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers & Employees” by Mary Jo Bitner. We’ll be talking about the physical environments of services and how they impact behavior. This article is a classic: it was published in 1992. You’ll notice it’s more academic than other papers and articles we’re reading, but the ideas are straightforward. Keep this article in mind throughout the semester when you consider what impacts social interactions, both digitally and in physical space. Might you design touchpoints that are not only digital?
- Thursday, 2/9: Group work on music services
Week 5, February 13: Case studies and brainstorming
- Tuesday: Case study presentations in groups. Please arrive ready to go: this will be a fast-paced set of presentations
- Thursday: Brainstorming of ideas & group explorations for design project
Week 6, February 20 (Confluence week): Service design careers Q&A
- February 20: A discussion about (service) design careers & unconferencing around your interests (you determine what you’d like to discuss)
- Read: “Hey service design jobseekers, we need to talk” by Megan Erin Miller (Practical Service Design).
- No class February 22. Good luck at Confluence! Daphne & Molly will be putting together your teams.
