Nordic Service Design (Week 2)

Discussion questions from week 2 regarding the documentary ‘Nordic Service Design‘.

1.What do you understand as ‘design research’ from this film?

Nordic Service Design adopts hollistic thinking techniques, and examines the design process as a constant reciprocal exchange between customers and the service product. Research under this paradigm starts and ends with the customer, observing and reflecting in order to learn from the customers during the design phase.

The documentary uses airport design as an example of how Nordic Service Design considers all aspects of an experience, beginning when a passenger purchases their airfare and following their whole journey – how do customers behave? What are their expectations? How can we manage life events such as these? Nordic Service Design aims to produce a feeling, not just a service.

“Recognising the need is the primary condition for design.”

Charles Eames

2. How do designers get insight from customers/users?

‘Observe and reflect’. Techniques include interviews, naturalistic observation, etc. The aim of Nordic Service Design research is to immerse yourself in the scenario and become the customer in order to truly assess how to meet their needs.

3. What is a ‘blind spot’?

As a designer, one can never go back to being “just” a user. This creates a potential for a designer to incorrectly assume aspects of the customers perspective or the context. Never make assumptions, never assume you know best.

4. What are the relationships between objects and experiences?

We gain experiences from objects, and we also project our own experiences onto them. For example, we may view a particular item as sentimental due to it’s association with an experience in the past.

An experience is globalised and is more than the sum of all parts due to our interpretations and perspectives i.e. our experience of something is more than just the conglomeration of the objects within it.