Report on the conference "The Future of Web Design". Hannah Donovan, “From product to service”

    Immediately view or download (pdf) slides.

    Time: Foggy dank morning on April 18, 8:50. Smog.

    After yesterday's conference , walks through the evening of London, a morning run and a light breakfast, the mood is the most fighting.

    Location: Kensington Close Hotel, St. m. Kensington .

    The nice girls from Carsonified patiently explain to everyone where to go. It’s a pity that you can only be in one place at a time, because there was something to choose from (or whom, if you like):


    Morning session, 9.00 - 12.30


    • "Creating Sexy Stylesheets" by Jina Bolton
    • Professional Photoshop Effects, Elliot Jay Stocks
    • “From product to service”, Hannah Donovan
    • “Elastic Thinking: adaptable design in a world of uncertainty”, Miguel Ripoll

    Afternoon Session, 13.30 - 17.00


    • “Web Design-isms - Trends of the future”, Larissa Meek
    • “Charm clients and win pitches”, Paul Boag
    • Guerrilla Usability Testing, Andy Budd
    • “Microformats - Building blocks“ for a beautiful web ””, Andy Clarke


    Everything is so tasty, but in order to avoid the fate of the famous donkey, it was necessary to decide. I chose seminars related to business rather than design or development, and at five to nine I was already sitting in front of Hannah wrapped in a scarf.

    The main thing to know about it: from 2006 to the present day, Hannah worked as creative director at Last.fm . Only then she is a Canadian, a bachelor of design and just a pretty girl.

    Start



    At first we all met. Everyone told where he works and what exactly he does. Among the listeners were designers, developers, managers, mainly from Europe. Most of them are from Eastern Europe, including from Poland, Austria, and Slovakia.

    International joke. The Pole sitting next to me pours himself water and asks me: “Water? “Yes, please.” - I say. He fills my glass, I told him: "Dziekuje." (supposedly in Polish), - he (almost without accent): "Please!"

    Despite the popularity of Last.fm, especially in geeky circles, there was still a listener in the audience who did not know what it was. So we all had to listen to a lecture on what kind of bird it is and what it is eaten with. Along with all the known facts, however, it was interesting to learn about the main categories of users of the service:

    • Scrobblers. Almost never visit the site, and if they go, then on their page, see the statistics. Among them there is a subgroup of scrobbler-dependent users, to which Hannah refers herself. If you feel that “the music that you listen to when the Last.fm plug- in is turned off , as if“ disappears for free, goes nowhere, ”then you are one of them. It's time to come up with a name for the phobia.
    • Listeners. Those that just listen to music on the site. Speaking about the service, Hannah, of course, means developed countries, where from January 28 you can listen to almost any song on Last.fm for free , today it is the USA, Great Britain and Germany, in other countries the track length is limited to 30 seconds. Yes, all this is called “Free On-Demand service”.
    • Networkers. Last.fm is also a social network.


    But finally, back to the main topic of the seminar. What is a product and what is a service? What is the difference between them, why do one of the other, and - most importantly - how?

    Redefining the economics of the music industry



    I'll start from afar. The average Last.fm user is unlikely to know how this huge machine actually works. It was a shock to learn that the service is based on a great idea, which is the main driving force behind Last.fm . Its essence is that the old model of monetization in music is outdated. Indeed, when you buy a disc in a store or even a song in the iTunes store, the artist receives for a certain amount, regardless of how many times you listen to this song or album: 1, 10 or 100. And the revolutionary Last.fm model is that every time you listen to a song, its author receives money. Not once when buying a disc, but every time when listening. See slide 4.

    Service is something that has value to the user.



    How does this relate to the workshop topic? The fact is that the main difference between service and product, according to Hannah, is the real usefulness of the first.

    Two quotes from the slides (10 and 11), “Service is ...”

    “... any services or benefits that one side can provide to the other.” - Philip Kotler

    "... a sequence of actions or events of value to the end user." - Dan Saffer

    Last.fm really solves a few important issues regarding all participants in the music market (slide 6):
    • user can listen to music for free
    • artist or label gets paid just for the fact that the user listens to their music for free
    • each song is an advertising platform


    And therefore, if you are developing any service, it is very important to be able to answer the question, are you really creating something that the user needs? (Slides 12, 13.)

    Hannah asked the question: “without which service (real or virtual) would you be able to live a day?” By a wide margin, the messaging systems (Gmail, ICQ, SMS ...) and transport (air transport, metro ...) won: Outcome: everyone wants to travel and communicate, no one remembered the good old mail.

    How to create a service?



    Slide 7: “So why should we pay attention to the design of the service ?” (The translation is not very clear. This refers to the design that results in the service.)
    Slide 8: “(But after all) you are probably doing it!”
    Slide 9: “We are the service.”

    That's right, UGC, web-to-point-oh. People themselves create values ​​for each other, and service creators are only intermediaries who provide the necessary environment.

    Tools (slides 22-32)



    1. Identification of common points

      Specifically for Last.fm, these are:
      - issuing Google (heading and description tag design)
      - email
      - print and online advertising
      - Last.fm widget on another site
      - other people's opinions (forming an opinion about the site)

      These are the main points with which the user or potential user of the service often interacts.
    2. Process maps (I’d better not translate the terms), slide 26.
    3. Blueprints, slide 26.
    4. Experience prototypes, for example [Youtube video]
    5. Persons, slide 31
    6. Scenarios


    Conclusion



    Time was running out, so we quickly looked at the rest of the slides (laughs 38), stopping in more detail only on the 39th and 40th slides, which speak for themselves. 3 hours passed, without exaggeration, in one breath. Thanks, Hannah.

    Also popular now: