CMT: 21st Jan ‘08

Paola hosted today’s session with the topic on Services

What is a service?

In Principles of Marketing, Philip Kotler defines a service as ‘any activity or benefit that one party can give to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product.’
http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/About-Design/Design-Disciplines/Service-design-by-Bill-Hollins/

“This unparalleled segment growth is changing the way companies organize themselves, creating a ripple effect in industries and universities that are closely tied to these organizations. For instance, historically, most scientific research has been geared to supporting and assisting manufacturing, which was once a dominant force in the world economy. Now that economies are shifting, industrial and academic research facilities need to apply more scientific rigor to the practices of services, such as finding better ways to use mathematical optimization to increase productivity and efficiency on demand.

Unfortunately, this shift to focusing on services has created a skills gap, especially in the area of high value services, which requires people who are knowledgeable about business and information technology, as well as the human factors that go into a successful services operation. Many leading universities have begun exploring and investing in this area, working in tandem with thought leaders in the business world.”
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/471/glushko.html

The quality of service is Intangible and down to individual person supplying it;

It can not be stored

It losses value once the service is over

A service is experienced rather than manipulated

We also talked about Design as being integration between two brotherly expertise skills knowledge acquisition and the society request for change.

Designs are solutions to problems!

So what is the problem?

Who formulates the problems?

Today’s tutorials was supervised by Bob and Andy; they suggested/ advised on ways to foster an efficient and up to date progression in our individual projects. All the group members present at the session listened to the advice given to each member in order to derive as much ideas as the individual the advice is being directed to.