Global Service Jam was here
The weekend before last, LBi played host to Global Service Jam London. It was a wonderful weekend of creativity, hard work and beer. Personally, it was also a very long one- as one of the organisers, I was at LBi pretty much the whole weekend. The wonderfully talented Mr. Ian Bach has made a wonderful video to show off the organising team and Qin Han has put together some thoughts on teh event in her blog. You can see the global Flickr pool here and the London pictures live here. All of the London projects are available on the Planet Jam website- do go and rate them! As you may well guess, I am a bit biased, so I shall hand over to the lovely people here at LBi who attended the event.
First up, is Sarah Morris:
At 6pm on Friday 11th of March nearly 100 people descended on LBi London for the kick-off of Global Service Jam; a 48 hour challenge that extended around the globe. The goal: to bring different people together, to work on a brief, with the aim of developing innovative and fun service design ideas.
From my perspective, I hoped to get some answers to some questions: What exactly is service design (SD)? How does it differ to what we do as user experience architects? Who calls themselves service designers? What do they produce, how and when?
At 7.30, the theme was revealed – (super) Heros – we got into 10 teams, and we were off. Some stayed and worked, some went to the pub, and others slept.
Then what followed was your normal design process: brainstorming, concepting, ideation. We were urged to go talk to ‘real’ people, test out our ideas. Our team took field trips to City Farm and The Ministry of Stories. We regrouped, had interim presentations, beer, snacks, developed a service blueprint, more beers, slept. Sunday was all about finessing, prototyping and the presentation.
At 7.30 it all wrapped up, and we were all exhausted, tipsy, invigorated and full of ideas. A big well done and thank you to all the organisers from LBi London and Seren, they did a terrific job keeping us all on track and making the event a big success, in London and worldwide.
But, going back to my questions, there are still some unanswered. I learnt SD isn’t a tightly defined discipline, and it’s not too far away from what we as user experience architects practise every day. I think there are far more people interested in giving SD a go than are actually working in the field, although I did work with one service designer directly which was good, and she shared some tools and processes. But what is produced, how and when, is still a bit of mystery. I wonder if there’s a bit of a mismatch between the average length of a typical service design project, and the rigor that accompanies it, and a 48 hour jam session?
Jonathan Lovatt- Young:
A Truman Truckman experience.
Service Design. Just what exactly is it and how do you do it? After reading a couple of articles and attending a few talks I still wasn’t completely sure. It seemed like ‘making things better’. OK, sounds good, but where’s the techniques and how are they different to User Centred Design methodologies?
Roll on Global Service Jam 11. After forming teams, with people from different background who we’d never worked with before the brief was revealed – superheros. Nice. Where can we go from here? For those of us who’d been around the block it is interesting, for the graduates it scared the hell out of them.
Friday night – quick brainstorm, getting thinking of ideas, sleep on it and come prepared for show and tell in the morning.
Forming gets underway
The team had some pretty different people in it. A graphic design graduate, an engineer, a mobile designer and a couple of UX focused folks. As this was a voluntary event there were no self-appointed leaders or directors. Could we move forward with anything? Could we hell.
Storming gets stormy
A few ideas started to complete, but no consensus could be built in the team. The devil’s advocate kept popping up and pyramid polishing and no one would accept the 80/20 rule. The young were being idealistic. It was certainly one of the most frustrating 12 hours I’ve ever done.
Norming is nice
Two members of the team realised we had 5 hours to go and nothing to present, so they elected me to team director. Agreeing on the concept was now straightforward – we wanted a service that was usable, unique and ultimately one where awareness was already high. From our research other similar services existed but no one knew about them or remembered them. That was our killer insight – extend a already much used service.
Performing art
The team came together and we all agreed we had cracked it. Now just two hours to actually do the weekend’s work. Everyone had their own role and responsibility and it came together like clockwork. Perfect (well almost). We didn’t have time to think through how we would really present, so that was a little average, but fine. Overall everyone seemed to think it was a viable service and since the Jam I’ve had feedback from others that they think it should be developed.
Did I learn about service design? I’m not sure. I still don’t know exactly what it is, other than making things better. For now I’m leaving my own description as UCD in an agile methodology – and certainly not just digital. Jam out.
Greig Robinson:
A great weekend of camaraderie and ideas.
People from all different backgrounds came together to work towards an incredibly open brief -Superheroes. For me the weekend confirmed the similarities between user experience design and service design. We began by forming teams and were then thrown into the think of it. My team was given instructions to meet at Seren Partners, nine o’clock prompt. This seemed more of a challenge than the brief itself.
After getting excited about White board tables and brainstorming numerous areas of superhero potential, we decided to look closer to home. This happened at 5.00pm on the Saturday. Better late than never.
Project
Share those inspirational stories with those close to you and identify the superheroes in your family through conversation and storytelling. Capture It encourages you to spend time with each other to create memorable experiences. We decided to give the project some context and focused the idea around the Imperial War museum. It looks to create a personal experience where memories of heroic acts are remembered and captured for generations to come.
By 3.00pm on the Sunday, fatigue had set in and the project was uploaded.
The weekend finished off with all the teams presenting back to each other commenting on each other’s work. I thought it was great weekend and confirms the reason why I love this industry. Sunday night’s sleep was bliss!
What’s next, I hear you ask.
Well, since you ask so nicely, there is talk of a Global Sustainability Jam. Yes, you heard me – we’re going to save the planet in 48 hours. But we’re not ambitious at all..
Tags: Events, Global Service Jam, GSJ11, service design
