Online software services have compelling similarities to tangible products such as cars and buildings. They can benefit from similar design approaches. The discipline of Service Design could be ideally suited to solving cloud-based IT problems.
What is a Car?
The answer to this question has multiple layers. The first is “function”: what does a car do? It transports people and things from place to place along roads. The second layer is “interface”: how do you interact with a car? This answer involves door handles, shift levers, steering wheels, dials, switches, and so on. The third layer is “technology”. A car consists of a frame, a body, an engine, a transmission, tires, and wheels, metal, glass, and plastic, etc.
The next layer is “meaning”: what does a car make you think or feel? A BMW makes you feel successful and sophisticated. A Honda gives you a sense of trust, reliability, simplicity. A Ford pickup truck makes you feel powerful and competent.
The final layer is “operation”. In order to be able to exercise a car’s function (i.e., to drive it), you have to put fuel in the gas tank and air in the tires. You have to get it routinely serviced, and replace tires, wiper blades, and air filters when they wear out. You need to be able to get it fixed if it breaks. The car lives within a service ecosystem that defines the ownership lifecycle. That lifecycle starts with the purchase experience, continues until you sell the car, and starts over again when you buy another one.
What is a Building?
This question has a similar multi-layered answer:
What is a Website?
A website may seem utterly different from either a car or a building. Unlike a tangible product, it has no physical existence. Yet it can be defined using the same set of layers.
Integrated Service Design for IT
Information technology has long suffered from silo-based competencies. Marketing doesn’t understand development, development doesn’t understand IT operations, and operations doesn’t understand marketing. Successful projects create solutions with unified value across product layers. That unification can’t happen if no one has a comprehensive view that incorporates function, interface, technology, meaning, and operation.
Cloud computing is turning all of IT into online services that users consume on demand. Cloud services blur distinctions between enterprise systems and public websites, between internal and external customers, and between technical staff and users. They also create expectations for nearly instant and infinite malleability. Unlike tangible products, whose features are largely fixed, websites can constantly evolve. The product lifecycle becomes a continuous feedback loop.
The discipline of Service Design applies product design techniques to “experiences that reach people through many different touch-points, and that happen over time” (servicedesign.org). Service Design can help improve the quality, efficiency, and customer value of cloud-based IT in multiple ways:
Service Design is ideally suited to the never-ending cycle of product marketing/requirements gathering, design and development, deployment and adoption, and support. Cloud computing is forcing IT to change its focus from technology to customer service. By placing the customer service experience at the center of attention, Service Design can help IT organizations deliver solutions that more completely meet their users’ tangible and intangible needs.
About the Author:
Name: Jeff Sussna
Bio:
T Software designer, IT architect, cloud computing specialist with a focus on
integrated approaches to IT service design.
Location: USA
Company: Founder and Principal @ http://www.ingineering.it