Operations Management Role in Service Design: Choreography

Chris Voss,  an operations management professor from the London Business School has published several articles indicating that the role of operations management in service design and delivery is one similar to a choreographer.  This video reminded me of that concept:

 

Noteworthy happenings

The famous Metropolitan Opera has announced that they are going to use a dynamic pricing model for tickets based on demand for better seats.

Airlines introducing cuddle class: innovation in the economy class seating.

Hotel's trying to spin off their restaurants, well at least separate them from the hotel restaurant stigma.

The future: using video game technology in you shopping cart.

WSJ: Waiting in Line

Here is a WSJ article on the science of waiting in line.  Its from back in December of last year, but I just saw it today and though I'd like to capture it.  I think the visual from the article does a great job describing several issues around the psychology of waiting:



and to go along with my recent foray into finding old Sesame Street Clips that might have something to do with a service concept, here is a video about a frog who is confused about where he stands in line:

Sequence Effects: Album listening edition

I was poking round on the Monterey Jazz Festival website the other day and found this video of an interview the artist in residence, Ambrose Akinmusire:



I think artists seem to understand the importance of sequencing and considering the entire package when designing something. In my research I hope to learn from the artists and show that this can be applied to service design. With any luck, I can meet Ambrose and talk with him more about these ideas...

Reading the table

Wall Street Journal reported recently on some strategies about how a waiter might "read" a table, i.e., learn from the mannerisms of the customers about how best to serve them.  I found the interactive picture pretty revealing:


 


I think this is a good example of how a service process can be very different from a manufacturing process.  In a traditional manufacturing process you have to train a person to do the same thing all day every day:  put the bolt into the hole over and over again on the assembly line.  In a service, the production worker must be able to react to the changes in the process, most notably the differences of customers. Treating all customers the same way may lead to the wrong experience for some customers.  Customers must be treated individually.  



Here's a good sesame street clip that shows what might happen if the wrong message is given to the wrong customer:

 

Backstage design: LDS general conference edition

The LDS Church (of which I am a member) is hosting its semi-annual world wide General Conference this weekend.  The conference is broadcast from Salt Lake City, UT to 13 million members of the church around the globe.  The conference mostly includes talks given by the leaders of the church given in the Conference Center, a building designed and built primarily for this one purpose:

With 21,200 seats, the Conference Center is considered to be the largest theater auditorium in the world; the next nearest holds only about half as many people. But the months of careful planning and preparation create an unmistakable atmosphere of a house of worship as more than 100,000 Saints gather in the Conference Center twice a year to hear the counsel of living prophets and sing the hymns of Zion.

Last week the Church released a news brief describing some of details that take place in preparation of the conference:

An extraordinary amount of work requiring the coordination of many Church departments and hundreds of people around the world goes into preparing for general conference. The five sessions of conference draw a total of about 100,000 people to the Conference Center every six months and are broadcast to millions more around the world. 

The article provides some details about the building of the rostrum, the floral arrangements, the camera, sound, lighting, satellite broadcasting, translation, teleprompting and others aspects that happen behind the scenes to make the conference successful.  But success from the perspective of the "behind-the-scene" design is defined in an interesting way:

“Our goal is to be totally transparent,” said Russ Crabb, a producer for general conference. “We want to come away from conference with a message that’s clean and clear to everyone who’s listening or watching, and we want to support the First Presidency and Church leaders at a level that does that.”

“I think the overall level of preparation lends itself to the importance of conference,” said Thomas Smith, safety manager for the Church Media Services Department. “There is planning so this experience is not one that detracts from the spirit of conference. . . . We’re trying to make it something that will touch people’s hearts and bring them to Christ.”

The idea of transparency of service design is not a new one, it's what makes the backstage preparation difficult;  if transparency in the preparation fails the delivery of the core service is compromised or at least sub-optimal.


Check out the videos on the link about the preparation that goes in to producing a weekend of spiritual enrichment. 

 

Sound as an element in experience design

Another quick post since I am spending most of my time writing my dissertation. I thought this was a good example of using sound as an element of service design.