All posts tagged service-design

bankSimple

My Loveletter to Bank Simple

Not long ago I read about an engineer from twitter that left to start a bank. So i visited Bank Simple’s website and signed up to be a beta-user. I immediately received an automated response from their Creative Director to field suggestions and understand more about me (their prospective user). Here’s what I wrote:

Hi Bill,

I’m an interactive designer and spend a lot of time consulting brand and service design. I’ve worked for large financial institutions and am continually astonished at two main things:

1) how siloed their business units are which leads to dysfunction and lack of synergy across their entire service offering (to be fair, sometimes they need to be due to govt. regulation).

2) how diametrically opposed to their “friendly” branding the people who actually run things are. If banks were run like Netflix, Zappos or twitter the world would be a better place.

This is where you all (hopefully) come in :)

I’m totally psyched to see how you’ll (hopefully) use digital tools, LBS and a no-bullshit approach to make “banking” [and by banking I mean access to cash, checking services, PFM, small-time investments, lines of credit, etc.] an integrated, painless, cheap(er) and seamless part of my life.

I’d also like to see how peer-to-peer money-lending services can be brought to bear to make the lender frequent and small investments and offer the borrower a choice-filled marketplace to decide what rates/payment structures work best for them. I think connecting people and their personal stories to each other will help humanize the borrowing experience and provide behavioral feedback for people to make better spending decisions.

I’m probably coming across really passionate about banking, but the truth is I’m not. I just see this as an industry so ready to take a giant leap forward that I want it to happen already! I also live in the NYC-area and find high-flying i-bankers obnoxious.

Good luck with this venture and I hope I can be a part of it.

Best,
vb

It’s about time for this, isn’t it?

January 1, 2011 · 2 Comments Continue Reading →
dcouncil

Required Reading for Interactive Designers

We all know how good industrial design distinguishes products and drives success. Well if you’re an interactive designer, it doesn’t matter if you’re in marketing or product design, understanding the system you’re designing for and how it interacts with the other systems and channels surrounding it is critical. In order to improve experiences, the entire delivery system must be looked at holistically. That means everything from how the data is served all the way to where in in what context end-users interact with the finished product.

The following should be required reading for anyone in the interactive design world: The Design Council, “A User’s Guide to Service Design”

Here’s and excerpt:

Three quarters of the UK economy is due to services and 80% of employment is service related. While half of the UK’s manufacturers think design is crucial to competitiveness, our service industry, whether that’s financial services, retailers or public services, are less convinced. Only one in 10 services businesses thinks design can set them apart and make them more competitive.

That means the UK’s £1trillion service economy and its service business and public services are missing many opportunities to distinguish themselves from competitors by improving their offering, better communicating what they do or providing innovative new services.

June 14, 2010 · No Comments Continue Reading →
Screen shot 2010-01-28 at 5.20.06 PM

Live | Work: Service Thinking

I stumbled across live|work recently and have enjoyed reading their articles and perspectives on Service Design. Particularly this passage:

when production takes place in one place far from where the product is consumed the relationship between producer and consumer becomes impersonal, disconnected and ultimately unsustainable.

There’s an awful lot being written about our nation’s food consumption habits and the dangers of factory farming, truck-ripened food and the like. The above statement is a reoccurring theme in modern life. One that I think we will see pop up in lots of different contexts as we emerge from the haze of the post-9/11 bush years and begin to strive for sustainability in all aspects of life.

Check out the entire article, it’s a great window into live|work’s viewpoint on their craft.

July 7, 2009 · No Comments Continue Reading →