A greater part of our lives is spent accessing digital information, using digital products, communicating through digital media and playing digital games. Almost everything has a digital component these days, but companies still design as if they were making industrial products. It’s time to update product development for the digital age.

A major part of our digital life is made up of SERVICES. Over 70% of employed people work with service provision, but most companies still treat services as if they were the same as products. They’re not! We have a long-term relationship with services (for example our bank or insurance company) so, it’s not just a point of sale; trust and loyalty over time are just as important as first time use. Secondly, services often have a technological and a human component and understanding how they work together is important. Thirdly, services aren’t tangible like products.  It’s difficult to hold a bank transaction in your hand and admire it or show it to others. Services are experiences and are evaluated emotionally: - if you have a bad service experience, you certainly let people know about it.

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Fourthly, customers have many points of contact with services, points through which we experience the service, good or bad.  It is important that these points of contact are designed as a whole.

Can services be designed? Sure, and there is great value potential in service-design (including government services). Norway has a high degree of service provision and has the potential to become internationally successful if it embraces service-design thinking.

Design in the digital world is also about BEHAVIOUR.  Bill Moggridge from the design company IDEO says that in the digital world, “design dissolves into behaviour”. Let me explain. Most products are nicely designed physical objects, and these days, we expect them to look good. What we are finding is that the real “aha” experience from products comes when we begin to use them, when we interact with them.  The Ipod by Apple is a classic example. 

Courtesy of Apple

The Ipod scroll-wheel was a carefully designed feature and got the product noticed. Apple could have chosen buttons, sliders, or even voice to choose songs, but no, they chose the scroll-wheel.  Why? Music is an emotive medium, and Apple chose to design an emotive interaction behaviour to match that.  The scroll wheel uses our fingertip (the second most sensitive part of our human body) to stroke the product; an intimate interaction to navigate an intimate medium. This was a perfect fit, and an immediate success for Apple.

Designing for our digital lives is as much about designing intended behaviour, or interactions, as about the physical product form. A new kind of designer is doing this, the interaction designer.  A designer who understands peoples’ needs and who not only understands behaviour but can design it.

So, have we become digital?  More than we think.  Can we design for a digital me?  We definitely can, and if you don’t already employ service designers and interaction designers then its time to add to your New-Year resolution list.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Simon Clatworthy is professor of Interaction Design at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (AHO) and currently leading work to create IxD, a national centre for Service and Interaction Design.

The article is from the Designbook 2007. Text: Simon Clatworthy