This case illustrates a common problem in service design:  Security vs. Service Quality.  There is little question that in order to deter theft and other kinds of abuse, most (if not all) organizations must put into place some kind of security measure.  Metal detectors and invasive scanners at the airport are intended to prevent acts of terrorism and violence (more on this later).  Electronic tags, video cameras, and security guards in retail stores are meant to deter shoplifters.  And an elaborate network of PIN codes, tokens, and ID verification measures are intended to prevent people from claiming to be someone else at their local bank.

Without some form of security, most businesses would have no chance of survival — either directly, as they are bled dry by losses from theft and fraud, or indirectly, as customers lose trust in the easily-victimized organization and take their business elsewhere. But when there is too much security — or security which is poorly designed — service suffers.

As an example, take my last visit to a large clothing store in Brooklyn. When I approach the store, the first thing I see are security guards at the entrance.  They tell me that I have to surrender my backpack, which is kept in a large holding area.  There are security cameras visible in every area of the store.  When I want to try on some of the clothes, I’m given a tab displaying the number of items I’m bringing into the changing room and told that I must leave the shopping basket with the changing room attendant. As I’m trying on a shirt, I’m bashed in the neck by a large, clunky anti-theft device attached to the collar.  When I go to pay for the shirt, the cashier fumbles with the special gadget that removes the anti-theft device, and I’m on my way (after picking up my bag at the bag-holder-guy desk).

Everything fixed forever, right?  Sure, except for three things:

1) Paying customers don’t appreciate being treated like potential thieves.   It’s true, we’ve grown accustomed to surrendering to intrusive searches, bag checks, and other forms of security theatre; but as opposed to the airport, where we don’t have a choice of competition, we can march straight into another store that doesn’t treat us as though we’re there to rob the place. Excessive security interrupts the customer experience and ruins the trust relationship essential to services.

2) These security measures cost a lot of money.  Think about how much money the setup I described above must cost a business on top of what it takes just to run a clothing store. The security guards.  The “bag hutch” to hold my backpack and 50 more like it.  The electronic theft-prevention system.  And the additional staff to manage the rest of it.  How much is the store saving on prevented theft, really? How much is this added security affecting the price of goods and services?

3) More security layers don’t result in more actual security.  There is a growing amount of evidence to this effect.  To use the airport example from above:  We are now expected to arrive at the airport 1-2 hours ahead of time in order to account for security procedures.  We are expected to surrender harmless household items, take off our belts and shoes, and endure humiliating physical searches, because hey — any single one of us could be a terrorist, right? But as this infographic illustrates, we don’t actually gain that much more security in return.  Proscribed items still make it onto planes.  Terrorist attacks are still attempted, and even laughably clumsy attempts get pretty far.  So what was all that service interruption for?  Is a notional increase in security always worth the cost in service quality?

Service requires trust, and unfortunately there are always people who will exploit the trust relationship that normally exists between provider and customer in order to perpetrate a fraud*.  But there is a balance that needs to be found.  How are service designers approaching that balance? When designing a new service or altering an existing one, how do service designers deal with questions of security?

What resulted certainly didn’t win any Webbys, and was hilariously quaint (written in PHP, simple admin interface, simple “old posts” query); but it worked.  And when I was doing a bit of memory-laning this week while working on my portfolio I popped by the old URL to see what it looked like these days, and nearly fell off my chair:  They’re still using the original site!

Even the worst of the freely-available CMS tools out there are better than what I built (even when it was new), full of useful features and compliant with the latest web standards.  But changing is painful.  Upgrading can be painful and costly.  So there is always a Lagrange Point between the pain of upgrading and the pain of continuing with the current (if flawed) system.

So is this a form of humblebrag?  Totally.  I’ve got a perverse pride in having designed a site which, despite how laughably bad it looks and how outdated it is, is still in use.  But it does say something about that math we should be using to calculate when to upgrade, and why.

I’ve decided to start a Pinterest board dedicated to collecting service “beats” — small moments of service interactions that can be captured in a photograph — in order to illustrate, discuss, and study broader service phenomena.  Above is my shabby first contribution to the Service Beats board:  A crappily-taken photograph of the “self-service” check-in kiosk at the 2012 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York’s Lincoln Center.

What the photo is attempting to document is just the latest example of something I’ve yet to see work properly, the self-service check-in (or check-out) station.  We’ve seen examples of this before — CVS, Ikea, EasyJet, and many others — and the result is usually the same as in the above photograph:  After making an honest attempt to use the station, many people still need the help of a live human being, which results in inefficiency, redundancy, and frustration for provider and consumer alike.

Let’s take a look at the two separate touchpoints for checking in at Fashion Week:

• Self-Service Kiosk
  Visitors are greeted by the Self-Service kiosk immediately upon entering the building.  The kiosk features four terminals, each one with a small screen, barcode scanner, and ticket printer.  Visitors are instructed to scan the code from either their smartphone or printed invitation, which produces a printed ticket.  Staff members hover watchfully near the kiosks to provide additional assistance, roughly two staff members per kiosk.
  
• Standard guest check-in desk
   A standard event check-in setup can be found beyond the kiosks and coat-check area, divided into separate lines for each particular show.  Each line is serviced by as many as six staff members, each of whom is equipped with a full terminal set up.

Some observations:

•  If you had your invitation at the ready (via mobile device or in print), had no questions or special requests, and all of the kiosk equipment was functioning properly at the moment, the self-check kiosk worked pretty smoothly. In the time I was observing the kiosks (5-7 minutes while my wife was using the coat check), about 30% of the people who used them were checked in and on their way without incident.
  
• This is a fairly narrow use case, however.  For example, my wife and I had an additional invitation that was left for us at the venue but wasn’t emailed to us, a situation which required us to use the standard line each time we checked in.  How many people had “special” cases, and couldn’t use the kiosk?  How many only discovered this after attempting to use the kiosks?
  
• All the kiosks were able to complete were narrow, specific service transactions.  You scan your invite and receive a printed admission ticket.  You are not able to get any additional information, make changes, or resolve issues without getting the attention of one of the roving staffers, who might be otherwise engaged.  And even those roving staff are not equipped to deal fully with special cases, and end up redirecting visitors to the standard lines anyway.

How much service value do self-service kiosks really offer?  Kiosks attempt to use technology to industrialize part of the service environment; when they work well, people can move along quickly through the service pathway without requiring a trained human staff member. Ideally this addresses efficiency questions of time and cost, but what about other service-related concerns? What about situations that require expertise or implicit knowledge?

The Fashion Week kiosks represent a minimal case of the use of kiosks for check-in and check-out.  The event is invitation-only, the kiosks do not handle financial transactions, and attendees are screened by security for admission before they ever reach the kiosks.  But what about other situations where kiosks are deployed, where kiosks are entrusted to performing financial transactions (CVS, Ikea), or are placed in charge of asking security questions (EasyJet)?  In each of these situations, kiosks often fail badly at their assigned tasks.  Four out of five times when using a self-service checkout at CVS or Ikea, I’ve needed to show my credit card or item receipt to a cashier to complete the transaction; and I don’t think anyone would ever believe that a terrorist plot was foiled by the automatic questioning of an EasyJet baggage check-in kiosk.  Maybe the technology isn’t there yet — or maybe it is misguided to try to industrialize the most important touchpoints in a service environment, replacing relationships and expertise with QR codes and touchscreens.

I have recently returned from Geneva, Switzerland, where my wife and I (and our two cats) have been living and working for the past three years. While in Geneva, I began a PhD in Service Science — the interdisciplinary study of the design and implementation of services — under the leadership of Professor Emmanuel Fragniere (HEG-SO Geneve, University of Bath), one of the founders of the Swiss Institute of Service Science and the HEG Service Lab.  We are developing a method for designing and improving services using ethnomethodology and theatrical re-creation; an early draft that I presented to the Journal of Organizational Ethnography at Cardiff University this summer can be found here.

As much as 60% of the GDP of developed nations comes from services.  Virtually all transactions nowadays include a service component in which value is co-created between the provider (a travel agent, for example) and a client (a would-be vacationer). And this includes consumer products:  When you buy an Apple product, you're getting access to an entire world of Apple services, from pre-sales information to the App Store ecosystem to post-sales technical support. Even a cup of coffee from Starbucks comes wrapped in a layer of services that contribute to the "customer experience" that people have come to associate with the Starbucks brand.  

I've come to realize that the work we do for our clients — internal communications, social media strategy, constituent outreach, etc. — has always been a form of service design.  We tell each and every one of our clients the same thing when it comes to communications strategy:  Learn who your audiences are and what they care about, form relationships with them, show them that you are listening to them (and care about what they care about), and continually reiterate the process. Communication is at the very foundation of any service, especially the service of communications itself.  We've always spoke the language and shared the values of service design, even if we didn't know what it was called until relatively recently.

We'll be using this blog to explore the rapidly-growing field of service design, and to work out the details of Flashing12's own emerging service design practice. One part research, one part personal obsession, one part it just sounds like fun work to do.  On y va!