Service Design Finland

Last Friday we attended the launch of the Service DEsign initiative here in Helsinki in the design week. Satama hosted the event. There were presentations from Live works, Satama/Nokia, and Forum Virium. There was a very nice moment when the founder of Live Works showed a screen of what they did in 2001 when they searched in google for service design and got zero results. It just happens that me and Xavier Blanc did exactly the same about the same time. We were in those days exploring the same ideas on how to export the design principles to the design of intangible services. We ended talking about architecture, since service design had different implications on those days. In the end it was the same. I think the guys at Live works have done an excellent work in generating awareness and building the tools, frameworks that gives flesh to what more and more clients should demand. We have come across them and Ideo iin the last months. It was interesting to see so many people around this topic. I guess there is at least interest. There is an academic side of the service design as Live works also mentioned. I studied with one ogf the gurus in the area, Professor Christian Gronroos from Hanken, the Swedish School of Economics in Helsinki. They have done this type of consulting work for a couple of decades. However what we do and what live works do is to sytematized and frame the problem solving process that takes place when designing a service for your client.

Aula 2006

I have been so busy all this time that I missed the chance to post on the Aula event (www.aula.cc). This year Aula asked us at Fjord to help organizing the event here in Helsinki. Andreea did an amazing work doing the project management of the event. The event itself was awesome. I got the chance to talk to Martin Varsavski from FON, among other. All the presentation on the second day were great, but I specially liked Saul Griffith's presentation on people making things and Adam Greenfield's presentation on the ethics of future UI design (with whom I had a very good chat on AR).

The Finnish House fair

In Finland there is an interesting concept of trade show. The house fair. Every year a city gives away a whole piece of land to be built as a new neighbourhood. The construction companies go and build their showcases in this area, and then they sell the houses after the fair. The houses can be visited during the summer. they are fully furnished, and become a living ad for those companies that do the best possible product placement.

Fjord's weekend in Devon

Also in June both offices went for a strategy an company weekend to Mike's farm in Devon. We had excellent hosts in Mike's family, weather, food and productive time. For the new people at Fjord I am sure it was almost shocking to see the range and quality of the projects we do across offices. We came out of Devon with a new strategy and plan for the next months, specially our website, which will be launched soon.

Picnic at Tervasaari

Last June we organized a small picninc at island of Tervasaari, wich is a few hundred meter in front of our office in Helsinki. Tanje took care of the catering.

New Article from Mark

Mark Curtis, member of Fjord's board has written an article in Vodafone's online magazine Register. He explains how we are becoming distributed beings thanks to mobile technology.

Mobile user interfaces – its time for a new paradigm

Olof and Mike from our UK office just published an article in the 3G portal on the need for a new paradigm on the design of mobile user interfaces

A list of interesting Mobile services

Springwise and Trendwatcher published some time go this list.

-AskMeNow | Cell phone users who can't get online, can have still their questions answered by leaving a voice message with AskMeNow. Questions like "Why is the sky blue?" or "What is Zork?" are answered by text message within minutes, for a fee of USD 0.49 per question. The long-distance info search is taken care of by English-speaking operators in the Philippines.

• Shazam and Gracenote's MusicID | Consumers who hear a song they don't know the name of, call a number and hold their cell phone to the music. Moments later, they receive a message with the name of the song and artist, as well as the option of buying the song or ringtone.

• WeatherBug Mobile Weather | Live streaming local weather data, severe weather alerts, detailed forecasts, local radar, live weather cameras, photos and more.

• ScanZoom | Using ScanZoom software downloaded to their cameraphones, shoppers can snap a picture of a product's bar code and get direct access to PriceGrabber's or Amazon's information for that product, from product descriptions and customer ratings to e-tailer prices. If the e-tailer's price is right, the produt can immediately be bought online. Next could be a service that would tell users which other real-world stores within one or two miles offer the same product at a lower price.

• PriceNoia Mobile | Using Pricenoia's downloadable price comparison tool for cell phones, a consumer can enter a book's ISBN and instantly view reviews and price comparison for international Amazon.com stores.

• Mobile SeatGuru | Mobile version of SeatGuru popluar website, that gives users information on the best (and worst) seats on a plane. Which allows consumers to have all the info needed to ask for a better seat at check-in, or to know which in-flight services will be available on their flight while there's still time to stack up on mags and DVDs.

• SMS Een Huis, Real Estate Depot, Text Wow | These services provide potential home buyers with instant text information on their cell phones, based on unique SMS codes displayed on physical 'for rent' and 'for sale' signs. Asking price, floor plan, square footage and more, all delivered to the cell phone of a prospective client then and there.

The Fifth Dimension

Wired Magazine in the April 2006 issue has an article from Steven Johnson about when virtual worlds collide. He envisions a virtual parallel virtual universe where you can seamlessly move from universe to universe. He also rises the problems and needed steps for this to happen. At the moment this virtual worlds are many times property, built in different platforms. My idea of the parallel universes overcomes the problem of having to converge all the worlds. In practice why Hommer Simpson would need to be compatible with the Sims. I am not saying that I would limit that, I am just saying that you could have them separated if you want as the owners or creators initially intended, and then if they allow so, they could merge.

Today quantum theory supports the logic framework for a setting of parallel realities simultaneously happening. I can be here witting this while my virtual me number 1 is living a good time in Everquest fighting Orcs. So once you acknowledge this the only thing that you need is to shape it and organize this worlds, give them coordinates so people can know where they are. Imagine how many people play the same scenario or level in a multiplayer game. All of them happening at some specific time in the same place. Those are virtual parallel universes, restricted to only those playing that game.

Google Universes

But now think for a moment in something else. What would happen if someone, like Google, would offer a very simple-to-use tool like SketUp, that enables users to generate their own virtual universes, populate them etc. Yes, there are already quite many virtual universes like Everquest. However in my view any content could be transformed into a virtual universe, specially fictional content. There are lots of people that consume and dream on escaping into those fictional universes. After all what we call entertainment tries in many ways to offer that fictional alternative to the common reality to people, Hollywood, literature, the travel industry, games... For instance the Disney corporation has been pretty good at trying to generate a fictional world populated with characters. Most of these universes of content are protected and can be manipulated or accessed only under licensed agreements or controlled access. However fans and the general public can be a huge engine for creating content, just think in fanzines, dicussion forums around new hollywood releases, or in more advanced examples the skins created by developers around games or applications.

So how do I envision this. Well in practice you need first to get organized. You need something like a Google search engine that let's you search for these universes. These universes of course are at least four dimensional. It means that you could move in the typical 3D space but also scroll in time. Then you need a 5th dimension to jump from universe to universe. If you have planet earth coordinates xyz (Though here we should apply more universal and extraterrestial coordinates) at 1st of May 2006 11.30am (GMT+2) There is only one reality taking place at that specific place and time.

SketchUp - something else that the new Google tool

Google's new toy is a toold to create 3D objects that you can then upload to Google Earth. It is a smart strategy from Google to offer this type of tool to get the users to generate content and populate the Google's universe of content. They already do the same in the other extensions of their business. They offer blogger for free to get bloggers to blog and generate content. Can you see Google's strategy? Imagine, soon you will be able to search in Google earth for something near your location, then you will be able to see something more than just a label, you will see an image that will realistically represent the physical location where you can find what you are looking ofr, lets say a car wash or a restaurant. Then that same information you will be able to get it into your car's GPS or into your mobile. Then one day with Augmented reality hardware you will be able to integrate both the Google's digital virtual universe with the real environment. Will it be Google the main promotor of AR? Is Google the company to bet for? As it seems now they could be.

Read more at sketchup.google.com/

XXXL touch screen from Fjord

At Fjord Helsinki we just finished this installation for the Nokia VIP visitors centre. It is a huge touch screen that invites the audience to interact and find relevant information. The design of the interaction and the concept requires the consideration of the specific characteristics of the installation. We are currently working on a new version of interaction concepts that take further the potential of this type of screens.

The evolution game is here

Some time ago I wrote about a rumor that a very cool game was under development. Now it seems that a similar one is ready and about to be launched. Apparently the idea is that you can desing the key parameters and features that will charazterize your organism. The organism will then interact with the environment and succeed, fail, and eventually adapt or eveolve. A pretty complex game that tries to model the natural process. I am looking forward to see it.

The story behind Flash Mobs

A very interesting set of articles from the creator of the flash mobs that explains their origin. Funny enough it all tarted as a joke.

Cutomer analytics next generation

Today I attended the b2c marketing summit in Helsinki. I was participating in a round table with one of our clients, Xtract. They have understood the power of social networks for data mining and they have some of the most advanced products in the market. Their idea is that if they can identify in the databases of operators and other who are the early adapters, they can also find who of those are the first ones to share with their network their findings. They call this users Alpha users. And the user "contaminated" by the apha users are the Beta users. With Xtract technologies you can target directly Beta users and shave time and money.

Today however they shw me something that it would be the dream of any marketer or sales director. They mapped user behavior data on google maps. You could see in their demo in the map from your users which ones were more likely to churn based on location. Imagine for instance how practical it could be for a bank, supermarket chains etc, in order to identify low service performace branches.

Spanish Expats

Spaniards is a very nice idea of a site for Spanish expats living abroad where we can share experiences. There is also a very nice feature with Google maps to locate every member of the community. I am already in...

Sling Media Player

Demián has recommended me to look into the Sling media player. I think that the idea is not new but the implementation sounds realy good. You place the box at your home next to your digi-box or DVR and Sling streams you wherever you are the channels from your home over the internet. Great, now I only need to buy one for my parents so I can watch Spanish Tv channels up here in Finland :-)