 In this episode, we'll be talking about how service design can drive business innovation. We'll talk about how we can use computer-based tools to assist in the design of better services and finally, how can we measure and evaluate the impact we actually have on the user experience. Here's the guests for this episode. Let the show begin. Hello, I'm Yongse Kim. This is a service design show. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to a new episode of the service design show. This show is all about helping you to design services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business. My guest in this episode is a former Stanford University graduate. He has a long history in regards to design and creativity. He is a service design professor at the Shenzhen One University in Korea. His name is Yongse Kim. In this episode, we'll be talking about how service design can drive business innovation. We'll talk about how we can use computer-based tools to assist in the design of better services and we'll talk about how we can measure and evaluate the impact we have on the actual user experience. We post new videos every week here on this channel. So if you haven't done it already, be sure to subscribe and click that bell icon so you'll be notified when new videos are out. And if you'd like to learn how to explain service design in plain English, check out the free course that I've got for you by heading to servicedesignshow.com. So that's all for the introduction and now let's quickly jump into the interview with Yongse. Welcome to the show, Yongse. OK, thank you for inviting me. It is my great pleasure to join your show. Cool. I'm really excited to have you on. You're the first one from Korea on the show. I hope a lot more guests will follow. You've been in the design, the creative, the innovation field for so long, way before design thinking and service design became the popular terms. We'll talk about that in a second. But do you remember your very first memory of service design? When did you get in touch with the term? OK, I think I mean, specifically what I recall is probably I heard about service design informally without recognizing much. But specifically when I attended a conference in Paris, 2007, that is a design society conference. And I watched the presentation by a team, a team. Professor McCallone is at TU Denmark. And they talked about their research project on product services systems. So that's where I first encountered. I think if I kind of trace down. So they were doing the nice product services system design project there. So, OK, so how the in comparison to product design, how the service design component, which is relatively new, should be developed kind of an interest to me. So that's how I started. I've noticed that product service systems is really a term that lives in academia. I see it here in TU Deloft and TU Eindhoven. That's the term they usually use for service design related stuff. Right. Product system, products, product services. Exactly. Yeah. OK, you sent me three really interesting topics. And of course, I've sent the question starters all the way to Korea. You'll have them. Are you ready to start with the first topic? Yes. OK, let's go. It's here and it's called business innovation and service design. And do you have a question starter that goes along with this one? And can you show it? And I think we need to revise this. OK, I think I would say the. I would pick how much, how much, yeah. OK, how much service design is actually done for business innovation. But that is that would be my question. And before we dive into this topic, this is also some of the title of a book that is just out, right? You've written a book with almost the same title. Yes. Yes. I mean, my book just came out last week is a business innovation service design. So I mean, the it could be just a service design. The title could be just a service design. But I wanted to make some point that the method my service design method is probably more suitable for business innovation rather than yeah, other kind of topics. Yeah, so that was yeah. How much how much is service design focused on business innovation? What's your perspective on that? This this is this probably represent the current Korean situation. I mean, the in Korea, the Tom service design became very, very popular around the 2009, 2010, the kind of a time frame. And every basically every design educators and every design consultancies, they wanted to jump on to the service design wagon. And but looking at the almost the 10 years from now these days in Korea, a lot of a service design project is about social innovation project and related with the government. There are some significant development, the health care service design. But we don't see enough business innovation cases yet. So which is what we regret. And we want to kind of make sure that not only social innovation, but we want to make sure that business innovation is going to be the one of the key target on service designing. So that is some of the intent, how I term my that gave a title for my book. And so that this is the kind of a question, how much and maybe the situation will be different in Europe, maybe different in other countries. But that is the current question that we have in Korea now. That's really interesting because my previous guest was from Colombia and he actually said all the service design work is done in the commercial sector. Almost nothing is happening in the public or the social sector. And you're describing that the situation in Korea is exactly the opposite. Any any ideas? Yeah, to make it clear, I mean, that many of the services and activities are done in commercial sectors as well. Those are newly new services cannot perform as a critical role in kind of a revenue making role. So it is rather used as a supportive activity. Maybe it is used to promote products. Right. Maybe it is used to promote the house sales. OK, but I think the most specific of the revenue creating services could be made. So that is something that I would like to see in the coming days. So that was my point. So so what is what is holding this adoption back? Or if I reformulate this question, what do you think needs to happen to accelerate this adoption of service design for business innovation? I think it requires those the buyers of a service design walk. And then their concept still is related with a kind of a more tangible outcome. They may want to be able to pay for tangible outcomes. So their business issues are still coming from the revenue obtained from the tangible things. So that is one of the key challenges that we have. And it's been there. I mean, it was like that almost 10 years ago, and then it is still not much improved. Even though the government actually tries to make us some help that manufacturing companies to move into servitization, right? But that is very slow compared to the government effort and some of the academia effort. So that is something there is still a really strong manufacturing mindset, a really strong yes, yes, outputs, product oriented mindset that that is driving. A lot of the UX issues, user interface issues for some of those digital services. But it is regarded as not as the key money money making asset. It is something you should do anyway to continue your business. So that is some of the issue that I think we should keep improving. Yeah. And I think a lot of service designers can relate to this challenge. So, you know, how do we help a company which has a strong heritage in manufacturing in a product mindset where the whole organization structures focused around pushing boxes out the door, right? How do you help them to see and adopt a service design to actually create new revenue streams? Well, what did you write about this in your book? Can you give us some insights? How do you have how do you approach conversations with these organizations? I think we may want to identify the user kind of a behavior and experience more tightly so that through that we can develop some the new the service based revenue opportunities. And in my book and then the another book, which may come hopefully soon, we kind of identify service concepts along some kind of different stages. And then that kind of the method could help to see how more obvious service concepts like, for example, the commodity sales and then the maintenance, the services to which could enhance more the user behavior oriented the services which could lead into the new revenue making. So we are developing that kind of a method and then trying to apply that with some companies. I guess one of the hardest things that I see with manufacturing oriented companies is they if they start investing in a new venture, they want to have it replace existing streams of revenue. But it's really hard to replace a product revenue stream with a service revenue stream. It's yeah, it's a big challenge. If I know you've gotten this question a lot lately, but the book is written right now in Korean. And we talked about this before the show. Do you expect that an English based version will come out any day soon? I don't know. I mean, I mean, that yeah, it I think it may be useful, although I had kind of in the conferences, I've explained my methodologies, but not in its entirety as shown in the book. So but usually I'm very lazy in writing books. It may not be. I mean, it's very difficult to make a promise. But yeah, yeah, I'll I'll try to somehow deliver the content. Maybe not in its entirety. All right. All right. Cool. Let's hope that it comes out. Let's move on to topic number two, because this one is cryptic. And I'm sure you have a really interesting story around this one. And this one topic number two is called representation. And once again, the question to you, do you have a question starter that goes along with this one? I'm really curious representations. Thank you. All right. What if is my choice? And what if you could use representation of customer activities or representation of the product services systems used to develop the new service or to design new product services systems? So how that kind of a representations could be used in supporting service design activities? So that is going to be something that I'm interested in. I I'm struggling to understand representations. What what are you thinking about when you hear the word representations? What? So, for example, I mean, that I would put it in a more like a formal representation or computer based representation. And if you look at the computer aided design, the kind of a history in 1970s, early 1970s, some of those representation of how we represent, for example, this kind of a solid object that research started like a 50 years ago. And then over like 20 or 30 years since then, the CAD systems has been kind of used in most companies, which is used in supporting design creativity, supporting design efficiencies. And I think at some point, the service design field needs that kind of a tool. So it requires how we should represent human activity, which is going to be different from the physical things should be represented in a computer system so that this could be used in designing better activities and better services. So we have developed some of those representations and some of those are the software based design support tools. As a research project, we have not moved that into the commercial product yet. But this is going to be some of the issue on the research community related to the service design may needs to think about. For example, a lot of people talk about digital transformation, but we should also think about the digital transformation of a service design and activity itself. So that is something that I think probably research done about this time is going to be used in maybe in 10 years, in 20 years. So I think some part of our community should be worrying about that. And I would put myself one of those people doing that. So just to see that I really, really understand what you're saying in the same way that we've developed, for instance, tools to model physical objects on a screen, all the cat software in the same way you're thinking about, how can we use computer aided tools to model user experience or model a journey or model? I don't know. Right. That's what you are thinking of. Yeah. And what are your what have you seen that really interests you? Are there any tools out there of which you think, well, this is an interesting starting point for the next 10 or 20 years? Because for me, it's really hard to think about how to model or shape a user or customer experience on a screen. Almost on a screen in a way, but in a computer way, in a digital manner in a way. So we developed what I call the context-based activity modeling, which kinds of the some of the representation language, modeling language for human activities in a more formal sense. And particularly, we emphasize the on the context part and how I mean, they even though it is the same activity by looking at different context, it have a different it's related with the different value things. And so we have that defined and then we have our own computer based tool for that. And actually, we are using that to designing new activities. For example, what if we change the suppose the current activity, the location is outside? But what if we change the current location context inside? And then that is going to be could really lead to improvement of the values. So, yeah, this is a kind of a design support tool is not to replace creativity, but it allows some something that designers can kind of use in generating the creative ideas. Yeah. And so that's something that we are working on. And it's probably it will allow us to test and prototype ideas and concepts much more much faster, right? That that's the whole. Yeah. Yes. And then probably this is something that I always I mean, as a educator at the university, probably this kind of a tool will not make really, really creative designers. But it can help some of the design students who whose creativity level is at this. Maybe through this kind of a tool, it could be kind of improved that way. Right. So, so we are thinking about that kind of issues. And this is about the six p.m. the sun. Yeah, I see the sun. Do you want to close the curtain or is it OK with you? I think that I can rearrange some of those. Or even even I change my position. Yeah. Yeah. That's better. That's better. OK. Yeah. So, a final thought about this. The first while you are describing this with my limited imagination, the first thing that comes to mind mind is, for instance, creating environments and situations in virtual reality or augmented reality and then going through that experience as a simulation of that that journey. Is that also the way you're thinking about these computer aided tools or do you have completely different ideas about that? Yeah, the my computer based the tools are not that fancy yet. OK, in other words, it's not virtual. It's not augmented, but it's about the reality itself. OK, OK. So it is it is a it is a bookkeeping tool. So, for example, it can kind of help the designers to to follow his own designing activities, the kind of a so that his design knowledge could be acquired so that it could be used in designing the new design project. So that is the kind of a tool which does not require the very fancy technology, but it is more about the the bookkeeping it kind of a in a very well structured database systems. So that way you can kind of reuse your knowledge on and on. And I think compared to the product design, the human activity design didn't have much of the the effort emphasizing those issues. And for example, I teach about the issue on affordance and the affordance is, for example, we have this kind of a nice grasping affordance features. But before this feature, what is more important is the human activity of a grasping. So we want to kind of a but in a computer based model, we have a very good way to represent this, but not the activity itself. Right, right. This is something missing in a way. So we want to provide the kind of a complete linkage between human activity and and even these kind of artifact, the physical the properties is super interesting topic that I hope we'll talk much more about on the show in the future. How do we use computer aided design tools to design better experiences? I think that's a really interesting field that we don't know a lot about right now. But yeah, it's good that we're already discussing this. The third and final topic is called experience evaluation. And I'm sure you'll also have a question starter that goes along with this topic. And that is OK. How can we how can we evaluate the user experiences in kind of a more useful way? So that is my question on on this third topic. And what is, of course, your perspective on this? How how do we evaluate user experience? So I mean, everybody talks about these days, user experiences, customer experiences are the most important. But how well can we actually evaluate those? The user experience is my question. I mean, the the still, I think many people are relying on surveys. But those people on related areas say, oh, no, no, no. Always the survey doesn't match the reality. So then what would be the better way to understand the customer experience? And before, I mean, the not based on the the the customer's memory, which could be done much more in a real time, but still take that experience evaluation in a digital form so that kind of an experience evaluation is not used as a prototyping the evaluation tool, but it could be used as ongoing stuff. I mean, that you want to kind of provide a new service and evaluate the customer's appearance, even in many cases, the experiences of the service providers are also very important. And it needs to be kept kind of a monitor and then it is going to be used to develop the new service. So it is a kind of an iteration. And my service design process is composed of a value modeling, human activity design, interaction design and experience management. It should kind of a moving. But I don't think if we rely on surveys, if we kind of want to evaluate the the customer experience, maybe two or three days after the experience happened and it is not going to be right. So we need a better tool for that. We need to use more extensively on the experience evaluation. I think that's some of the important issue. Yeah, but this, I would say this would be the golden nugget right now in the design community. If we are sort of able to quantify or show the impact of our work, because that's what we will be able to do if we can actually evaluate the sort of the impact of our activity. So if it's not surveys, if they are not adequate, what are you thinking about? How can we do this? I'm emphasizing the kind of a real time experience evaluation method. So the survey may not be enough. And some of those ways to quickly get the user evaluation input without much hindering their experience itself. This is going to be very challenging issue, though, in a way that the customer experience is going to be represented in a digital format. And so we have developed a little bit, some of the very simple tool for that. And we are using it in many different cases. And some of the new services that we develop for the actual, the real industry manufacturing services and project actually uses that capability as a key service concepts. So more and more effort along that kind of the effort should be done. And also we want to attach a lot of the physical context information with the user evaluation. For example, these days a lot of the IoT sensors are available. And those sensor information is attached with the user subject to evaluation so that we have a better understanding on the user behaviors. Maybe users experiences on very specific value themes. And then this is kind of related with this kind of passive data. And those active data and passive data can be attached to understand better about the users and to be exploited in designing new services. I think this is the kind of technology, not a big technology, but some useful tools which could be developed and which could be used in service designing in many different cases. So you sparked my interest by saying that you have a really easier and simple tool right now to evaluate the experience partially. Can you give what is that? How does it look? How does it work? For example, if you have a trouble with the sleeping, for example, because it is a very hot day, so it is too hot. And then you're kind of very difficult to get that nice sleep. But these days everybody kind of when they go to bed, they kind of, I don't know, when I go to sleep, this is within my reach. Okay. So somehow if you could self-report your sleeping experience, and this could be used to customizing some of the environment which where that you sleep. So we have that kind of a tool developed and it is based on self-report. Right. But in this way, you don't have to worry about the user privacy information. This is the information the user gave on a voluntary basis. And using that, you know, the different preferences of different users which could be used in customizing some of the services that support your sleeping. I really like this way of thinking because it sort of gets to the essence in your example with sleeping, triggered my thought by thinking I'm using a Nest thermostat to control the heating in my house. For instance, if I change the temperature, that's a signal of that the environment or that my experience with the current environment is not optimal, right? When I change the temperature up, then it's probably that I'm feeling cold. And that, of course, this is like a mega simple, over simplified example. But this way of self-reporting and changing, adapting your environment is a way to evaluate the existing experience, right? Yes, I mean, the experience evaluation is going to be not as strong as, oh, I want to lower the temperature, but you just say, oh, my God, it's too hot. So that's what you could get. And then you can get at this particular temperature, in this particular physical context, this particular user said, it's so hot. So that information is the evaluation. So and probably he will just go back to sleep, but without lowering the temperature. But that is the experience report given by the user. And then we want to utilize that information. And it will be, as you said, the challenging part will be how to enable this reporting without sort of interrupting or intruding the existing experience. Yes, yes. So so that way, I mean, without even touching the smartphone, if someone says like that, that means that he is hot. OK. And then it may be good, but it is not there yet. But yeah, this kind of a subjective evaluation given by the user is very valuable information. And if we can take that information at right time in real time, and probably it is going to support that developing a better tool to help the person's sleeping experience. We are we're going to move on to the final part of this episode. And that is I'm going to invite you to ask us a question. Is there something on your mind that you would like to share with us? Ask us a question about. So, for example, I'm in the fourth service designers and how much you'd like to use kind of the. In a kind of a represent your own design experience and design knowledge. Done when you are doing some certain project and accumulate that and how you are going to use it in your in your next project, new project. So, for example, the typically that a lot of the designers are busy dealing with their current activities and but how much reflection you can do so that that information can be compiled so that it is going to be used by the designer themselves or in by the other designers in the same agency or the designers in the community in general. So, so that kind of a design knowledge acquisition, particularly on service design. I would like to ask that to many of the service designers out there busy working on any new project. Yeah, it makes sense because we are doing so much good work, but we share so little about what we do. It's it's challenging to document and share it in a in a way that is maybe not standardized, but at least understood by a larger part of the practice. Yes, yes. That then it is going to be somehow helped to develop a better service design and that is going to help the more business innovation. Exactly. Yeah, we will be able to professionalize our our field much faster. A lot of things to think about a lot of inspiration. So thanks a lot, Jung, to say it was great talking to you. I hope we'll find more people, interesting guests from Korea and learn about what what's going on there. So once more, thanks again for sharing what's on your mind. In this episode, OK, thank you very much. It was my great pleasure to talk with you and then hopefully to talk with a lot of the listeners to your service design. Sure, I would appreciate their comments on my effort and thinking. Thank you very much. All right. If you enjoyed this episode and, you know, someone who might benefit from the things we've just discussed, make sure to grab the link and share that with them. I would really like if you haven't done it already, that you subscribe to the channel so we can keep bringing you more videos like this. Thanks so much for watching. And I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.