servicesketch
For my masters thesis, I am developing a tool for service designers. Combining themes of co-creation and tangibility, I've started prototyping an interactive tabletop that will help designers to collaboratively model services. I've named the tool ServiceSketch.
This project is being completed as a requirement for my masters degree in interaction design at Carnegie Mellon University. It was completed in May 2011 when I graduated.
My prototype interactive tabletop. It's rough around the edges, but functional.
Service design is emerging as a powerful concept for the field. In addition to giving form to the tangible components of a service, designers are taking a more active role in the coordination and organization of the entire service system. What is the customer's journey through the service? What employees actions are necessary, both on-stage and off-stage? How can we develop a unified service concept?
Existing service design tools, like service blueprinting, are largely static representations of processes. Using a computational medium, I hope to develop a more dynamic tool for service designers.
I conducted activities with designers to understand how they approach service design.
Taking cues from participatory design techniques and tangible user interfaces, I settled on the form of an interactive tabletop. I felt that a table was a good communal artifact that designers could collaborate over, facilitating shared understanding.
I conducted design activities with groups of designers to help understand their approach to service design and to generate ideas for how a tangible interface sould be used for service design. I also constructed my own functional prototype multi-touch table.
A sample interface for ServiceSketch.
Development for ServiceSketch has proceeded in an iterative fashion. I've alternated between programming the application and evaluating it with other designers. This method has helped to shape the tool and decide what features should be incorporated.
Functionally, ServiceSketch is primarily a diagramming tool with which designers can model the actors, objects, and relationships that make up a service system. However, much of the value of the tool comes from the conversations and reflections that occur through its collaborative use.
In addition to my functional prototype, the final deliverables of the project include a thesis document and a short video explanation.