Alicante might have a stunning new airport but some customer experiences remain the same.

This was the disheartening view that greeted us at the end of our holiday.

We joined the back of this queue to check-in our one bag, which actually took so long to do we were required to board the plane as soon as we went through airport security (with its own queuing, undressing & organised chaos). So no food or duty free was purchased and we were on our feet until we were sat in our seats on the plane.

In total, checking in this one bag both ways took us roughly 2 hours - 2 hours not spent with family or spending money at the airport (or sleeping at home).

As you queue past these machines, which look great (and very useful) but I have never once seen being used, you understand they are probably for printing boarding passes (or for DIY lost luggage recovery?) but that they are obviously not baggage tag printers and you laugh to yourself at the irony of needing to queue for 1hr to put your bag on a conveyor belt whilst being asked seemingly unnecessary questions. A frustrating disconnect in self-service.

So until designers (hopefully us) are able to help all passengers board planes quickly & conveniently with all the luggage they wish to take (however much they paid for their ticket) in ways that benefit the airline, the passenger and the airport, our advice would be to always travel as light as possible (carry on only!). 

I wanted to highlight a nice - simple & very cheap - solution that has been implemented since the last time I flew with this particular airline. It is to do with their particular priority/speedy boarding scheme, which previously left customers unconvinced. 

Although priority boarding passengers were front of the queue out of the airport terminal (before as now) they were often then led to a bus to the plane which seated another 1/3 of the remaining passengers (and first on the bus didn’t mean first off). So when the bus doors opened the scramble & race to the plane began.

In this new system an area of the bus is reserved for priority boarding passengers and the doors at this end open first. This works very well and has genuine benefits, which are clearly visible to the passengers who didn’t purchase speedy boarding as well as to those who can enjoy them. 

These are just snippets of this one journey and only an overview – but through living these experiences designers can understand how to improve them for your customers.

*Keep your eyes peeled for the new Ideas Monster Service Design site coming soon. 

In order for a community to take direct management roles or volunteer in their local services, they have to know that that particular service wouldn’t exist in the first place unless they run it.

If a service seems new or partly theirs then being a part of it becomes far more valuable and seemingly necessary than traditional ‘volunteering’.

To do this services have to be built from the ground up, involving the people who will use them.

This is co-creation...

Thank you very much to all those that attended The St Pauls Conversation on March the 19^th and for all your hard work! The day would not have worked without you.

We are still in the process of collating all of the group’s efforts and talking about the best routes forward.

The teams produced some really fantastic, useful, workable ideas and I am looking forward to telling you about them soon.

As the next step, we will be putting the results from the day up on the wall in the Learning & Family Centre cafe and getting feedback from the community.

Designing our Local Libraries

After discussing with some service design colleagues & agencies what I believed to be an exciting opportunity in our city it appeared on the news that evening.

There is the chance to collaboratively & creatively rethink how Bristol’s local library services are delivered.

And it is a unique, innovation sparking event we are attempting to create.

Where to begin... 

To say you are going to redesign how all public libraries deliver their service, as if one size fits all, would not only be an impracticable challenge put perhaps somewhat naive.

It was after some fantastic meetings with some key members of Bristol City Council we were told of the very interesting shift that would soon see libraries become the responsibility of the neighbourhoods department, not the leisure and culture department.

This really hit home the idea that libraries and the role they play as community hubs is becoming the responsibility of the neighbourhoods they inhabit, so their ability to support learning and entertainment deserves designers who constantly provoke action, thinking and creativity. Libraries must also meet the individual needs of each community and go further to understand what those are.

Libraries can connect to their neighbourhood by opening up and getting more people involved. We don’t know about a big society but this isn’t a service that needs be run only by the council. 

St Pauls Learning & Family Centre

So on Saturday, March 19^th 2011 at St Pauls Learning & Family Centre in Bristol we will hold a fun, free, constructive, hands-on day where people from the area, members of the council, staff and all of the relevant stakeholders can talk to each other and designers. Libraries are a service for everyone and team activity like this facilitates community collaboration.

During a structured Ideas Workshop actual Service Design methodologies will be taught by university lecturers and professionals who will act as guides, putting people on one, of many possible paths to a solution. Reaching out to the people who will use the service to help you design it has become the only way to make sure it is sustainable and desirable.

For more information please visit the project website at www.ourlocallibrary.com where you can get involved & where there is plenty still to come...

Research

The research phase is of equal importance to the success of the project as the workshop and over the next two months we will be gaining a richer insight into what it’s like to live in St Pauls, be an existing user (or customer) of the Learning & Family Centre and to be a local who has never stepped foot inside the building.

Peoples’ stories & journeys through the current service and through their community need to be uncovered.

This is something we specialise in and involves lots of time spent with people, including videos, audio, diaries, photographs interviews and observations, in order to create a holistic picture of exactly what people do, need and want (and not just what they say they want). We will study how people interact with the current services on offer through the centre and their experiences to understand all of the issues and future demands of service users.

All of our findings will then be considered, wrapped up and communicated clearly back to those present on the day. The research will also be used to inspire ideas outside of the workshop and published through the site.

St Paul’s needs are unique to the area and its people making the library services very relevant to their locations. The success of the day and ultimately the benefit of the ideas generated lie in our ability to explore the very varied groups of people that use the library. Social inclusion is vital, and as the service is for everyone all current and potential user groups need to be considered and involved. We don’t want to be stuck designing only for those present on the day, or put another way, just a snippet of society.

The public sector is very complex and vastly interconnected, with certain services being referred to as ‘slow moving monsters’.  Innovation and smart thinking now is more crucial than ever and more people need to be involved through activity like this.

We hope the process of working out what people need and who can make it happen for them, e.g. designers, members of the councils, people from the community etc. and inviting them to collaborate for a day in a fun, creative event will give members of the community the help & support to actively manage the services they need and want in the future.

This is not about intellectual property; it is about open collaboration, good ideas and getting all of the people who can make them a reality together in one room. We really hope you can join us either on the 19^th or before!

For more information please visit the project website at www.ourlocallibrary.com where there is plenty still to come...