Our second lecture this semester was by David Townson, who now runs his own consultancy. He spoke to us about his career, how he got to where he is today and some of the projects he has done along the way. For example he talked about work he carried out for Orange and also about a community project based around encouraging car sharing. His work seemed to be based a lot on research, investigation, thinking, new ideas, trial and error and designing with others in mind.
After this lecture we were asked to consider the different types of service we use from refuse collection, to restaurants, the university Cantina, health care, energy providers, emergency services, public transport etc. A service I use quite regularly is the train. Mainly for traveling relatively long distances. I think the majority of the service is ok for example the trains in Scotland are normally on time, the seat reservations are accurate and the staff are polite (in most cases) and very helpful. However I do have two problems with using the trains, which I think, need to be addressed. The first is luggage. Last summer my sister was traveling to Newquay and had her suitcase stolen, from the luggage rack on the train. The insurance company refused to pay out, as she was not constantly watching/checking on her case. She was unable to do this as the train was very busy and her seat reservation was for a window seat with her back to her luggage. Having spoken to numerous people since this occurred I have come to realize this is a significant problem. Often there is not ample storage for luggage and people seem to be able to steal luggage quite easy.
The other problem I have is with the tickets. As a student searching for the cheapest way to travel I have come to learn that sometimes booking tickets past your destination and getting off at your destination is cheaper than booking tickets to your destination (this only works if there is no ticket barrier). Sometimes breaking down the trip in to say 3 parts and buying 3 tickets is cheaper than buying 1 ticket. Also the tickets don’t always work at the electronic gates so you have to wait for a member of staff to check your ticket before allowing you to leave the station. And when I book one journey online I am sent lots of tickets. For example I have just booked one return journey and have been sent 11 tickets! 4 of which I can throw straight in the bin as they are useless- 2 tickets clarify it cost me £1 to book my tickets online, one ticket displays the address the tickets were sent to and the other clarifies I paid using a debit/credit card. Of the other 7 tickets 2 are the actual travel tickets and 5 are seat reservations. I also have to show my railcard whilst getting my tickets checked on the train. Surely the purchasing of tickets could be improved and the number of tickets needed for one journey reduced?
So what ‘keeps’ me using the train? It’s much faster and cheaper (when you know how to get cheap tickets) than driving and fortunately my town has a railway station. The bus is also not an option as there is no service available from university to my hometown for example.
A service designer needs to find out who the target audience is and assess what they need or want, in order to improve a service. They may need to take in to consideration lots of people’s opinions and decide what will be most suitable. This in a way is quite similar to textile designers. Textile designers may often need to design for someone who may have different ideas or tastes to themselves, they have to be able to communicate effectively with a client and please a client in order to gain a good reputation.
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