As one of the new recruits to the many, I thought I would introduce myself with a wee snap shot of what I have been up to in my first 2 months in the city.

Hello,

I  thought I'd introduce myself: I'm the new Service Designer at Made by Many.
I thought that perhaps you'd like to know what makes me a little different from the rest of the many, what makes me tick, why I'm here in the first place.

I like designing for people, with people. I love spotting details, space for opportunities and the intricate ways in which individual people move through and use a service.

Instead of telling you what projects I've been involved in and what I've been working on I thought I would share how I do it. It's usually with pen and paper (shock, I know).  I like drawing as it gves you time to think, understand the structures you are working with and the individual stories to take into consideration.
So here's a sample of bits and pieces I have been working on and explorations around this giant city I now call home, enjoy!

For the last few months, we've been working with Skype to create a new service proposition for small businesses. Today, we're launching in private beta. If you’re an entrepreneur, or working in a small business that’s looking to grow, Skype in the workspace is a place to meet potential partners, suppliers, or customers anywhere in the world. You can promote your service, send messages, talk, or meet face-to-face over Skype. And it's free. 

As with Skype in the classroom, we've designed the service in collaboration with potential users, working to solve the problems you've told us about.

And now, we’re looking for a limited number of participants to try the service and help us test, push, and stretch Skype in the workplace to its limits. Are you game?

Once you’ve joined, we’ll look to you for feedback to help us better shape our community. And as we improve the experience, we’ll open it up to more users.

Since I joined Made by Many on March 5th as a Service Design intern, I have been involved in various interesting situations and conversations. They have propelled me into taking some time to reflect where I was before I started, to where I am now. For many reasons I feel I've been quite fortunate so far, and here I tell you why. 

Where it started

About a year and a half ago, I began reading "The Art of Innovation", by Tom Kelley, general manager of IDEO. As a student at Hyper Island, offering a strategic focus on digital advertising, my mind slowly began drifting towards fascination by IDEO's 'human' and user-led projects - it was my first encounter with an innovation company. My contributions to the OpenIDEO platform began as a way to start learning and develop my passion for designing better solutions to social problems. This book, as well as attending a lecture by the great Bruce Mau in Stockholm, was my embarkation into a journey knowing that this was the kind of field I wanted to work in. I immediately began craving for the human insights and experiences of projects, those being values I cherish. At the Bruce Mau talk I was first introduced to the concept of ‘Experience Design’, enlightening me to the fact that our whole life is a designed experience, this is true from the transport routes we use to everyday objects like the envelope, which has already been designed for us. And the best thing of it all is that we are living in a revolution of possibility:

“When we don’t apply design to ecologies that support us, we fail” Bruce Mau.

He basically was saying that we have to create the future we want to live in. His wise words remain engraved in my head today.

The importance of prototyping

Chapter 6 of The Art of Innovation is called: "Prototyping is the Shorthand of Innovation". It makes clear that there is no substitute for building things enough to try them out. The aim is to make mistakes & discoveries before you have the answers. One of the examples used is that of Amazon, started by Jeff Bezos: after quitting his Wall Street job to pursue his imagined company, his aim was to get it functional and get it out in the world. Function preceded style and editorial content. The first Amazon.com was low on graphics and animation. It loaded fast and excelled at the basics - easy to find and buy books. Very much what Made by Many practices and preaches, as Tim mentions in this blog post, about the first version of Picle app:

"We deliberately built less, because the leaner you are the easier it is to change."

Prototyping at Made by Many

Well, it seems my day dreaming about IDEO-and-Bruce-Mau-ways-of- doing-things kind of turned into reality! I’ve felt that at Made by Many we work surprisingly similarly to what I've read about IDEO, however with a dedicated approach to Agile & Lean Startup principles: "work quickly, waste little, respond to change and release working software as often as possible". One major difference I notice here at MxM is that very often they share their iterative processes (successes & failures) of working with products and services very openly. Something I haven’t really come across from other service design companies. It really seems that MxM ‘walk the talk’. I'm quite certain this is a big factor that will continue accelerating my learning process here as an intern. 

Connecting the dots

Nonetheless, at this stage I find myself putting into perspective many things I read in The Art of Innovation, very happily, in the Service Design team at Made by Many. Quite early on, during my interview phase I emphasized that I really wanted a mentor during my internship here, as I feel this would be a great way to support my learning. My wish was kindly granted and Paul Sims who leads the Service Design practice at MxM has been closely following my journey since day 1. One of the first things I noticed and learned with Paul is how he so clearly and easily dissects a Service problem through the users eyes, simultaneously clearing the way for articulations of what the solutions could be - always using diagrams. We’ve been evaluating my process here with a bi-monthly feedback session - the first one was a couple weeks ago.

The first reflection session questions and a look back at my internship objectives set out in week 1.

I am working on interesting projects and hoping my analysis has a small influence on them. That's why I feel lucky: to have found a company that allows me to put to practice a lot of service and product design issues for the first time. It's been very interesting to connect the dots in  my journey  since I became passionate about innovation up until now - where I'm prototyping in real-life, with real innovation projects. 

One thing I am really curious to witness here at MxM is how ideation for new client projects occurs. All projects I’ve been thrown into have already been ‘idealized’ and their creative direction is pretty much defined. Ideation is a really fun but also challenging process, something we really get a lot of training at Hyper Island about. Therefore I’m incredibly interested in experiencing the purely creative stamina of the great minds here, as MxM focuses a lot on sharing their processes, like their iterations within agile methodology.

Made by Many's beautiful office entrance. And of course special mention of  Strategy Dog, our office dog who provides us with so much entertainment.

Working on Picle

For the last few weeks I’ve been working on designing user journeys for the future updates of Picle app. We’ve been working through small iterations and releasing a few updates every two weeks, based on feedback gathered from users. Although I have not accompanied the evolution of Picle from pre-launch to launch as a Minimum Viable Product, until today, it is still at a stage needing prioritizing and testing. I am particularly interested in asking/observing how current users use Picle and what they dislike about it, something I have started to do this week. How could we make the experience of the 50,000 + users of Picle better? That is really exciting I think, as there is so much room for imagination when using Picle, and that seems to be part of this journey: learning through the lens of the user.

The 'Picle app wall' in the office, where we initially began to map out the future road map for Picle.

One of my most important learnings when working on future user flows, has been that I sometimes over complicate the steps involved, instead of breaking the problem down into parts, and working to simplify as much as possible. I also need to keep the user  in mind more often when designing these user journeys.  The people I’ve been working with at Made by Many and in particular within the Picle team - Alex, Adam and Will - have been really great at helping me grasp this concept.

Apologies for the radio silence on how Picle has been developing since the last release. The reason for this is that we have been wrestling internally over what Picle actually is. It sounds rather existential, but by watching how people use Picle and feedback to us, we have had to ask some deeper questions than 'How can we get more people using the app?'.

^{Here is a panaromic shot of some sketches, printouts and timeline up in the Picle den.} 

Firstly  to help inform our decisions we focused on the things we have received the most feedback about. 

Let's be really honest - we're a small product innovation and service design company with clients. Our model is to help clients make their own product and services and we're not set up to launch and operate our own.

Time for a new mural in the office, based on a famous Edward McKnight Kauffer poster design from 1919.

New office mural

The previous mural of a catherine wheel

First coat of white paint. Should have bought some undercoat

Three coats later and the catherine wheel is not giving up easily

(5 coats later) Transferring the new design on to the white wall

Design transferred. Masking out the areas where white meets yellow before painting the first colour

First coat of yellow

Three coats of yellow applied, masking added for the next colour: grey

Grey done. Masking applied for the final colour: black

Moments before the tape is removed to reveal crisp, sharp lines

Done.

So this isn't an actual Smiths lyric, but this bastardised version has been rattling around in my head while thinking about the whole Instagram + Facebook thing over the last week. In trying to figure out how I feel about it I keep returning to a couple of ideas. 

Primarily, the fragility of my relationship with services that I've grown to depend on. Somewhat crazily, I started to consider photo sharing as a kind of human right. Ok, I am not by any means saying it's on a par with access to clean water or safety from repression, but it's become an essential part of my daily life and something I derive a great deal of wellbeing from. Instagram has become the first social digital experience that I consider to be a connection between not just my friends and co-workers, but also a way of sharing with my family. This isn't the case with twitter where a. my family wouldn't have any idea what the hell I was talking about b. Would be bemused by relentless stream of techie links and in-jokes c. horror at the impotent fury with which I lead my daily existence. Whereas, Facebook is somewhere you actively avoid connecting with your mother. She might just see you as you really are.

Toot toot! Picle 1.0.3 is in the app store. It isn't the overhauled socially integrated version that I wrote about previously, but it does include something that we have had a lot of requests for, converting picles into movies. There are also new notification screens for uploading stories and the uploading of individual Picles has had some improvement tweeks made. 

To convert your Picles into MP4, create your Picle or story and then tap edit in the top right hand corner.

Then tap the share button in the bottom left.

This will bring up your options, then tap make into movie. 

Processing...

Then just tap to save it to your camera roll. 

Once tapped you will be notified that the movie is now in your camera roll. 

From the Camera Roll open up the movie and tap on the share options and you can Email, Message or Send to YouTube. 

And here is my first Picle as a YouTube video. 

We are working on a more seamless sharing experience for a later release, but for now we have managed to create a new feature that users really wanted. We really hope that you enjoy using this new feature and as ever please do let us know  if you have any feedback or feature requests. 

Instagram, I loved you.

You were my first real relationship after Twitter, and right now I feel angry and bitter about you turning your back on all the good stuff we had going. I feel shut out by you, and I can't bear the thought of you and Facebook, you know... 'together'... 

I don't know how I can keep all this hurting inside of me...

Obviously, I will get over this... I will, really. 

You're only an app after all - but that's the thing, and this is why I worry about you... you're more than an app: you are an extraordinary community, and that's what I fell in love with.

We all knew you weren't the best app ever - that was never the point with you. You connected me with my nearest and dearest, and we shared our lives, fears, loves, cats... pork...  in such a simple and wonderful way. I saw the world through their eyes. 

So, Facebook say they're going to respect you. That's good. I hope they do. But they've spent a lot of money, and they're going to want something more than just 'hanging out' with you if you know what I mean...

I wish you luck. I really do. It's great for the IG team - although surely you guys had a chance to really fuck with Facebook. It feels like we just got started. It's been really brilliant and I've enjoyed every second we've enjoyed together... but I'm out.

Goodbye my darling!

Tim took time out from SxSW to answer questions on Picle, its future developments, walking around in underwear and other things to look forward to.