Johan Blomkvist

Benefits of External Representations in Service Design: A Distributed Cognition Perspective

ABSTRACT A defining characteristic of service design is the use of external representations, which support designers in making intangible aspects of services accessible and shareable. Both current and future states are externally represented, using different service design techniques, for the purposes of articulating insights, learning, communicating, collaborating, and maintaining empathy for customers. The purposes of, and techniques for, making external representations were compared with benefits of using external representations to think, suggested by the theory of distributed cognition. The analysis indicated that the service design techniques could be divided into two groups: definite and ongoing. The analysis also revealed that none of the included techniques explicitly supported designers in making multiple simultaneous representations of services. The research contributes knowledge about how the externalizations relate to benefits of making external representations, and about how to choose and use different service design techniques based on theories of distributed and situated cognition.

Communication through Boundary Objects in Distributed Agile Teams

Personal communication between User-Centered Design (UCD) specialists and developers is important for communicating user needs and design solutions in agile development. In distributed projects where opportunities for personal communication are limited, the design documentation is an important surrogate. This study has investigated the perceived effectiveness of boundary objects in a distributed agile team, and their role in communicating target user needs. Six in-depth interviews with UCD specialists showed that the boundary objects rarely communicate underlying needs of the users but rather focus on interaction with the system that is being developed. The used boundary objects also do not work as stand-alone deliverables; they need to be explained and elaborated. Making the boundary objects comprehensive enough to be stand-alone is seen as too time consuming and not worth the effort. For agile projects with distributed teams, this creates hand-over and follow-up problems.

Benefits of Service Level Prototyping

Abstract This paper discusses the impact of service design by zooming in on the case of service prototyping. It is suggested that prototyping services is different from prototyping in other disciplines and shows how by discussing prototyping on different levels. On the service level of prototyping, a technique called ‘service walkthrough’ can be a way to understand whole service experiences. The service walkthrough was used in three cases. On an abstract level, what the service walkthrough adds is a technique for service design that allows exploration of the relationship between touchpoints such as composition, continuity, and consistency. In the cases studied, the walkthroughs increased empathy for different roles in the services while generating insights about e.g. technical requirements, transitions between touchpoints, and expectations at various moments of the service. The paper ends with a discussion about the relationship between touchpoints and the potential scope of the service walkthrough technique.

Formative Evaluation of IT-based Services: A Case Study of a Meal Planning Service

To evaluate and develop a service supported by an IT (information technology) system the intentionto use the future service should be in focus. The technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theoryo ...

Lifelogging in User Experience Research: Supporting Recall and Improving Data Richness

Abstract The purpose of lifelogging is to help users collect data for self-monitoring and reflection. We have in this study explored how lifelogging technology (a camera and a heart rate monitor) can change user experience (UX) research, and we describe a novel approach. Data was collected for three days with four participants, and a 4–6-hours co-creation workshop with stimulated recall interview was held with each of them to create an experience timeline. The timeline includes self-reported key experiences, lifelog stimulated experiences, heart rate, decisions, and valence. The results show that the number of experiences in the timeline that come from data points stimulated by the lifelogging, are as many as the self-reported data points. Lessons learned include that the use of lifelogging produces highly detailed UX research, but it is very time consuming, due to the sheer amount of data.