I know the value of good processes to reduce the chaos and avoid repeated mistakes. Many smaller business could benefit from some level of processification. Large corporations could, on the other hand, benefit from a reduction or loosening up of their processes.

Good processes by their nature seek to retard thinking – especially holistic thinking that accounts for matters outside those processes.

Good processes make organisations stupid!

Together with a …

This is a follow-on post from China the Ikea of businesses.

Differentiation by service: make a same-same product but pair it with specialised and targeted services that becomes the core differentiator.

To follow on from the previous examples – we could be looking at same-same laptops paired with a 1-hour global replacement service and automated remote backup.

I just got pissed off with Facebook trying to make me do something I don’t want to do.

I log on and get this message.

“We have improved the Profile … so it links to Pages instead.” Yeah yeah so what, let me get to what I am here to do.

“Remember, your Pages are Public” Ok fine thanks for the warning I don’t have …

Why is Ikea food so crazily successful in Singapore? There are two large Ikea stores in Singapore. They both have huge restaurants. By my estimation, the restaurants appear to occupy about 15% of the available retail floor area, an not-to-be-sniffed-at area.

Interestingly, the restaurants seem to always be packed to capacity. Clearly the restaurants are a great revenue source for Ikea. Who would have thought it?!

Ikea appears to …

Don’t you just love it when the little things work perfectly?

I opened this packet of sugar today and the perforated strip tore perfectly across as intended.

I wonder if this was a deliberated designed, tested and perfected user experience element of this product. It would be nice to think so. That someone cared enough about my experience to do this small detail well.

What small customer …

R&D in products is often clearly separated from production and sales of the products. R&D can happen in isolation from other aspects of the operations, and also in isolation from customers.

An engineer and industrial designer can design a new toy without meeting a single child (customer). After the toy goes to market, feedback will eventually trickle back from the market. This then triggers the …

“[In service design] the only one to see the big picture is the client.” said John Holager, Senior Service Designer, live|work at the Innovation and Service Design conference, 29 Jan 2010, Malmö, Sweden.

This is a wonderfully simple and revelatory observation that made so much immediate sense!

Most businesses are divided into specialised departments and divisions, each focused on their own little specialisation. Service design is an activity …

Services are seldom valued properly, especially when it is provided as part of a product which is bought on a cost vs benefit basis.

Consider the technical advice provided by reviewers and shop assistants. Customers don’t value this – they will buy from the cheapest online retailer. Similarly, few clients will willingly pay for the technical support and education provided by web developers. Or the business consulting ideas …

“If society values customers and employees, service will be valued.” says Eva-Karin Anderman, head of research, Almega.

She said this in response to a question from the floor on how government and other agencies can introduce policies or mandates to encourage society to value service. The understanding is that a lot of time, service is not valued, especially when the service is attendant (and thus seen as …

As I have spent several days thinking about and talking to people about service design, I thought it timely to highlight a post I wrote several years ago about attention and services.

A service business is not really about the quality of service, but rather the quality of the attention paid to customers. … the demand for quality attention giving services will increase – therapists, counsellors, escorts, personal assistants… …