20. December 2009 by Aidan.

My daughter (14) has a mobile phone on the Meteor network in Ireland. It is a pay-as-you-go phone and once she tops up the credit (or in fact once I top up her credit) by €20 every 30 days she gets free calls and texts to everyone else on the Meteor network.

All of her friends are also on the Meteor network and topping up by €20 every 30 days to get the same deal.

I asked her about usage of the phone. We checked, and she sends about 85 SMS messages per day, so about 2,500 per month. Her calls total about 5 hours per month. (She assures me that this is conservative usage for a 14 year old). Most of these are included in the free text and calls package, unless she calls or texts myself or my wife, because we are on another network.

So the deal is that the phone company gets about €240 per year from her (actually from me) and my daughter gets 30,000 SMS messages and 60 hours of calls a year.

There are other deals out there from other phone companies that include calls and messages to all networks or charges less than €20 per month but my daughter won’t switch. The reason she won’t switch is because if she did then her network of friends would no longer be able to SMS and call her for free. So the power of the offer from Meteor is not only the bundled offer for a fixed price, it is the fact that everyone within my daughters network of friends are on the same deal and so no-one will leave the network.

I did ask her whether everyone would switch to another network if they could get the same deal from another network for less money. Her reply: “Only if you could get it for significantly less, say €10 per month!” So this market would need a significant incentive to switch to another carrier but if that incentive was there there would be a risk of large scale switching.

An eye opener for me was a few months ago when my daughter came downstairs after being on her phone for some time. I asked who she was talking to and she said she was on a conference call! Apparently each evening over the holidays 8 or 10 of her friends held a nightly conference call to catch up on what was going on and the latest gossip. This is a very switched on market!

Posted in Service Design in Ireland, Customer Service, General | No Comments »

5. November 2009 by Aidan.

I attended the “Designed in Ireland” event in Waterford last night, as part of 2009 Design Week. The event was very well organised by Marcus Notley and his team and was held in the City Library. In addition to poster presentations of the work of many designers in the South East, there were two talks from Sean McNulty of Innovator and Siobhan O’Dwyer of Threesixty.

Sean, MD of Innovator, spoke about the different business landscape in Ireland at the moment and the need for everyone to take their destiny into their own hands and re-evaluate their business model in order to survive and prosper. He argued for the application of Design Thinking to all of our businesses and introduced many of the tools that can be used to implement this. This would be very much in line with what I have been saying for some time also (see Service Design & Innovation Ireland Linkedin Group) and I would be in complete agreement with Sean.

Siobhan, Brand Director of Threesixty, spoke about the future of design and consumer patterns. We have been forced out of our rampant consumption culture by the need to cut back on spending, but even if the money does start to return to our pockets, will we return to the consumption patterns of before. Siobhan believes that we will be much more discerning about our purchases and that we will tend towards purchasing fewer, better designed products. I tend to agree that our buying patterns will be altered significantly. She also spoke about the future of eco and green products and services. Siobhan wrapped up by introducing us to the term “nonsumers” as the future consumers, her term for people who have turned their back on mass disposable consumption. It was a great talk with a lot to think about.

During the evening I also had a long chat with the wonderful Denise Ryan of Fineline Interiors. Denise has worked on some major commercial design projects and in a lesson to all service providers has now expanded her offerings by teaming up with Tony Clayton-Lea to provide bespoke music designed to complement the design and ambiance of your premises. Great example of extending your service offerings.

Overall it was a very enjoyable evening and a great success.  

Posted in Service Design in Ireland, innovation, consultants, General | No Comments »

4. October 2009 by Aidan.

Here is a collection of some of the Service design related conferences that are scheduled to take place. The problem is deciding which ones to go to. Please add a comment with any others you are aware of, thanks, Aidan.    

• SDN - Service Design Network Conference 2009 
  • Madiera, Portugal.  
  • October 26th, 27th 2009
  • Details    

• First Nordic Service Design & Innovation Conference
  • Oslo, Norway.  
  • November 24th to 26th 2009
  • Details  

•  Service Experience Engineering Forum 2009
  • Taipei, Taiwan
  • October 14th, 15th 2009 
  • Details    

• 2010 International Conference on Service Science
  • Hangzhou, China
  • May 13th, 14th 2010 
  • Details   

• 18th Annual Frontiers in Service Conference
  • Honolulu, Hawaii
  • October 29th to November 1st 2009
  • Details  

• International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR)
  • Seoul, Korea
  • October 18th to 22nd
  • Details  

• 11th International Design Conference
  • Dubrovnik, Croatia
  • May 17th to 20th 2010
  • Details

• Design Research Society Conference 2010
  • Montreal, Canada
  • July 7th to 9th 2010
  • Details

• SOLI10 - IEEE International Conference on Service Operations 2010
  • Qingdao, China
  • July 15th to 17th 2010
  • Details

Posted in Service Design in Ireland, Service Desig, international, General | No Comments »

24. September 2009 by Aidan.

I have set up a “Service Design & Innovation - Ireland” group on Linkedin.

Here is the overview from the Linkedin page:

There is a growing international reliance on design in the race to develop radically new, innovative, service offerings.
The demands for Service Innovation are highlighting the need for the practical application of Service Design and Product Servitization techniques.
Ireland is well positioned to play a leading role in the world in these areas however there is no cohesive approach being taken in Ireland to ensure that the experts in these fields are working together towards a common goal.
This group offers practitioners and other interested parties the opportunity to connect and start the discussion about how to move this forward and tap into the opportunities that exist today.

I am looking forward to having interested people join this forum with a view to improving Ireland’s overall standing in the areas of service design and innovation, before it’s too late!

Here is a link to the group page. 

Aidan

Posted in Servitize, Service Desig, Service Design in Ireland, Selling "Services", innovation, consultants, international, General | No Comments »

21. August 2009 by Aidan.

Despite the fact that services are the main contributor to the Irish economy, the field of service design in Ireland is particularly under developed. There are a few companies practicing in this area but there is certainly room for major improvement in the profile of this sector.

If you are involved in Service Design in Ireland then let me know as I would like to build a network of companies working is this area with a view to raising the profile within Ireland and highlighting the capabilities and experience that exists here to a wider audience.  

Aidan

Posted in Service Design in Ireland, Service Desig, international, consultants, General | No Comments »