Thing-centered design and the design of services

Thing-centered design and
the design of services
Majid Iqbal
Special Advisor, RVO.NL
Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate
22/11/17 guest lecture at the TU/Delft
Industrial Design Engineering
Department

People & things
Motivations & expectations
Demand & supply
Arrangements & agreements
Performance & affordance
Engagement & fulfillment
Outcome & experience
With these words, you can define or describe any service
there is, ever was, or ever will be. These words describe
their essence.
© 2017 Designcoders.org

To understand something is not to be able to define it or describe it.
Instead, taking something that we think we already know and making
it unknown thrills us afresh with its reality and deepens our
understanding of it.
~ Kenya Hara
3

“Time slots”
March 30, 2017
Dutch airspace
4

5
Services are agreements between
people, about arrangements between
things.
People can be humans or machines, and
things can be tangible or intangible.
The arrangements are for
performances and affordances towards
the fulfillment of needs.
The agreements are about outcomes
and experiences that each side will get,
and both sides will go through.

6
performance
affordance
outcome
experience
Arrangements
between things
Agreements
between people

7
shortcomings
superpower
shortfall
surplus
Things have a shortcoming when they’re
not in the right condition or state to be
useful and valuable.
They suffer shortfalls when they need
additional resources at a particular place
and time.
Things act upon other things to render
them to a preferred condition or state.
Fixing the shortcomings of other things is
a superpower.
Things project surpluses that fill shortfalls
of other things, at a particular time and
place.

RX8
RX7
RX6
RX5 CA4
CA3
CA2
CA1
cr AX
AC1
AC2
AC3
AC4 XR5
XR6
XR7
XR8
ax
Spectrum of shortcomings
and shortfalls
Spectrum of superpowers
and surpluses

11
Real estate
The airport runway is a
remarkable piece of prime real
estate that gets repeatedly
placed and taken off the market
every two minutes

RunwayAircraft

“Time slots”
13

Clothes
Washing
machine

© 2016 Amazon, Inc.
Package
Drone

Thing 1 Thing 2
PRACTICE EXERCISE 1
Think of a service. Any service. What things are at the heart of it? What thing is in need? What thing is
in deed? Think of the simple horizontal social arrangement between Thing 1 and Thing 2. (Dr Seuss
fans know to watch out for the cat in the hat). It may be for performance or for affordance. Use the
styrofoam balls and skewers to construct the simplest of models. If you’re done with one, practice
with one or two more examples.

17
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes ~ Marcel Proust

Paris metro
Three days
10 tickets, 10 journeys
EUR 14,90

PRACTICE EXERCISE 2
Think of your own experience through public transportation.
What are all the things you noticed? What sort of arrangements
were they in? Model this arrangements to form pairs. They join all
these pairs to visualize the larger configuration.

©2017Designcoders.org
BIG THINGS AND SMALL
What things do you see? Big
things and small. Tangible
and intangible. Big things and
tall. A thing is a thing, no
matter how small.

THING 1 AND THING 2
Do you notice pairs of things?
What sort of horizontal social
arrangements do they form?
Each pair is the basis for a
service.

INVISIBLE THINGS
Some things are obviously
there, while others are not.
Invisible things include
spaces, boundaries, and
pathways

The OV Chipkaart Model
Money, photo, face, identity,
card, card reader, tickets,
and tokens come together to
form the chipkaart
configuration.

That was quick!
Notice how with just a few
rules you were able to quickly
model a complex system?
How easy was it to build on
each others’ configurations?

What can we learn about systems and services from
the Cuboro marble track system?
© 1986 Matthias Etter
25
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not
be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the
foundations under them. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Ce n’est pas un avion
26

Services are
a means to an end
Experiences are the means;
outcomes are the end. The
costs and benefits add up over
the job or journey represented
by the marble track.
The intent of design is to
maximize the benefits and
minimize the costs.
However, the whole is other than
the sum of its parts (Kurt Koffka)
so, every now and then, we find
ourselves surprised by lower
benefits and higher costs.
Why?
BEGIN
END
experiences
outcomes
27

Services are systems
The simplest of services is
a system, hence structure
drives behaviour.
A system is an
interconnected set of
elements that is coherently
organized in a way that
achieves something.
The least obvious part of a
system is often the most
crucial determinant of its
behavior.
~ Donnella Meadows
We need to see what the
aggregation of many small
actions looks like when
added together ~ John
Thackara
I am ready to fly
I am flying
I’m walking on
sunshine
I’m boarding
28

A complex system that works is invariably
found to have evolved from a simple
system that worked.
A complex system designed from scratch
never works and cannot be patched up to
make it work. You have to start over with a
working simple system.
~ John Gall
Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail, John Gall, 1975
29

2010 2015 2020
Castles in the air
As customer needs change in every imaginable way, and with new ways of fulfilling them, the design of a service must and
evolve to produce the desired effect. When the beauty of the effect is inseparable from the complexity of it, the design of
the service should allow the marble to run every which way. Services then provide the infrastructure and organization, for
castles in the air.
30

maps messages identity address payments
Components of can be services
themselves. Components do
one job and do it well.
Services as components can
make design modular and more
adaptive to change and
innovation.
How?
Their use across a diversity of
applications or environments
exposes them sooner to all
kinds of risks.
Learning collectively from their
failures, they trigger changes
and innovation through fixes
and upgrades.
31

© 2016 Tipping Point, Universiteit Gent
“Never before have
the possibilities for
action been so
abundant.
Never before has
the potential to
interconnect all
these actions been
so great.”
The OpenStructures (OS)
project initiates a
construction system
where everyone designs
for everyone.
What happens if people
design objects according
to a shared modular grid,
a common open standard
that stimulates the
exchange of parts,
components,
experiences and ideas
and aspires to build
things together?
32

2/WHY
capability
1/WHO
user
1/WHO
agent
1/WHO
customer
1/WHO
provider
2/WHY
artifact
2/WHY
resource
2/WHY
event
34
1
WHO
People
Who promises to pay for and make use of
the service; and who promises to provide
and deliver it
2
WHY
Things
Why the need for a service exists, and why
it is possible to fulfill those needs; the
promises of supply and demand
3
HOW
Arrangements between things
How demand and supply engage each
other to set up performances and
affordances
4
WHAT
Agreements between people
What experiences does each side go
through and what outcomes do they get;
the payoff and payments

pilot
airline aircraft
tracking
time slot
clearance
ATC
controller
surgeon
surgery patient
imaging
monitor
images
radiology
radiologist
voter
vote
counting
voting
ballot
county
volunteer
user
customer artifact
capability
event
resource
provider
agent
general model air traffic control medical imaging elections
district
35

who
who
what
what
why
why
why
why
how
how
how
how
who
who
what
what
who
who
what
what
who
who
what
what
why
why
why
why
how
how
how
how
=+
36
agreements between people
(outcome & experience)
arrangements between things
(performance & affordance)
16 definitive statements on
the concept of a service
The 16x Frame

© 2017 Designcoders.org © 2017 Designcoders.org
models concepts configurations
37
3ACTASK
2RRESOURCE
4UG EXPERIENCE
1G AGENT
4KL OUTCOME
1L PROVIDER
3CA ACTIVITY
2CCAPABILITY
2A ARTIFACT
3RX AVAILABILITY
1UUSER
4GUEXPERIENCE
1KCUSTOMER
4LKOUTCOME
2X EVENT
3XRACCESS
3ACTASK
2RRESOURCE
4UG EXPERIENCE
1G AGENT
4KL OUTCOME
1L PROVIDER
3CA ACTIVITY
2CCAPABILITY
2A ARTIFACT
3RX AVAILABILITY
1UUSER
4GUEXPERIENCE
1KCUSTOMER
4LKOUTCOME
2X EVENT
3XRACCESS
3ACTASK
2RRESOURCE
4UG EXPERIENCE
1G AGENT
4KL OUTCOME
1L PROVIDER
3CA ACTIVITY
2CCAPABILITY
2A ARTIFACT
3RX AVAILABILITY
1UUSER
4GUEXPERIENCE
1KCUSTOMER
4LKOUTCOME
2X EVENT
3XRACCESS
3ACTASK
2RRESOURCE
4UG EXPERIENCE
1G AGENT
4KL OUTCOME
1L PROVIDER
3CA ACTIVITY
2CCAPABILITY
2A ARTIFACT
3RX AVAILABILITY
1UUSER
4GUEXPERIENCE
1KCUSTOMER
4LKOUTCOME
2X EVENT
3XRACCESS

Questions?
Majid Iqbal
@mxiqbal

Thing-centered design and the design of services

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