• Providing a global view of services, allow employees to see the “What should I do,” associate, resulting in employees to enhance customer-oriented focus.
• Clarified the role of the customer and show where customers feel good or bad quality of service, thus promoting perceived service design.
• Providing a basis to identify and calculate the cost, revenue and investment in the various elements of the service.
•  Build a rational basis for external marketing and internal marketing.
•  Provide a way to improve the quality of the service from the outside to the inside so that managers can identify the efforts of the front lines or support groups working in grass-roots employee to improve the quality and to give guidance and support. Employees of the working group can design services, blueprints, and thus can apply more clearly and communicate their experiences and recommendations to improve services.

Map mashup, video and pic mashup, shopping and search mashup, news mashup

Related Technology

Architecture

Mashup program from the structure is composed of three different parts, and they are logically and physically separate from each other (which may be separated by the network and organizational boundaries): API / content providers, mashup sites and client Web browsers.

API / content provider. They are (sometimes unknown) the ongoing integration of the content provider.In order to facilitate data retrieval, providers will usually provide own content  to the outside through the Web protocols (such as REST, Web services and RSS / Atom, will be presented later). However, many interesting potential data sources may not be easily provided to the outside API. From, such as Wikipedia, TV Guide, and all government and public domain Web site, the content extracted through a mashup is called screen-scraping  technology achieved. In this case, screen capture would mean the use of a tool from the content provider, where the process of extracting information, the tool will attempt to provide those designed specifically for reading the page for analysis.

Mashup site. The place where the mashup service is. It is very interesting that this is only because there is a place where the mashup logic, rather than the implementation of these logical place. From the one hand, mashup direct access to server-side dynamic content generation technologies (such as Java servlets, CGI, PHP or ASP) to achieve as similar to conventional Web applications. In addition, the merger is generated, directly in the client’s browser through client-side scripting (ie JavaScript) or applet. This client-side logic is often directly in the mashup’s Web pages embedded in the code with these Web pages reference the script API library or applet (by the content providers) combination.

The client Web browser. This is a graphical way to present the application, and is where user interaction takes place. As the same as described above, mashup commonly used client-side logic to build integrated content.

Ajax

XHTML and CSS used to determine the rendering style

The browser for dynamic display and interaction provided by the Document Object Model (DOM) API

Asynchronous data exchange, usually XML data

The browser-side scripting, mainly JavaScript

Of these technologies when used together, their goal is with the content server to exchange a small amount of data for users to create smooth, a good Web experience, rather than the user to perform certain operations after the reload and re-render the entire page.

Web protocols: SOAP and REST

SOAP and REST are  platform-independent protocols to communicate with the remote services. Service-oriented architecture paradigm, as part of the client using SOAP and REST interact with remote services without having to understand their underlying platform: service functions entirely by its request and receive the message described in Developing achieved.

Screen scraping

Semantic Web and RDF

RSS and ATOM

Technological challenge

Data integration challenges: semantic and data quality

Quality survey shows that today’s enterprise IT primary concern is the virtual organization in an enterprise data integration. (In this case, we use the virtual organizations this term which means that many combinations of joint business units, each business unit are included in the management of their own domain.) Found himself busy with a number of integrated traditional data sources, Enterprise IT managers, like (for example, can reflect the current state of affairs to create the enterprise dashboard), mashup developers need to face a similar data set derived from shared between heterogeneous semantic challenges. Therefore, to understand how the mashup developers to prepare for this, just need to understand the business integration challenges faced by IT.

For example, we must design conversion system between the data model. In the data into a common format, the mapping is incomplete (for example, a data source may be a model, which includes an address type of a country field, while a model do not have this field), we must make some reasonable assumptions. Despite these challenges, but the mashup developers may not be experts in the field of the source data model, because these models may be a third-party products, which a reasonable assumption may not be clear and intuitive, which exacerbated the severity of the challenge.

In addition to the lack of data and mapping is incomplete outside, mashup designers may find that they want to integrate the data are not suitable for automated processing machines; it will bring a lot of refining. For example, the law enforcement arrest records may be inconsistent: the records may use the common abbreviation for the name of the form (for example, a record using the “mkt sqr”, also a record using the “Market Square”), which makes on the other same-sex automatic reasoning becomes very difficult, even with a good heuristic rules are also difficult to achieve. Semantic modeling technologies such as RDF, can help simplify the different data sets automatically between the problems faced by inference, these data sets are embedded in the data storage medium. For the traditional data sources, usually need to invest substantial human and material resources, analysis and data cleansing work, before it can be used in semantic modeling techniques.

Mashup developers may also have to face IT managers do not need to integrate some of the problems faced by, one problem is that data  pollution. As part of the application design, many users mashup require public input. wiki application research in the field shows that this is a double-edged sword: it can be very powerful because it can provide an open and innovative contributions and the best data, but this will lead to inconsistent, incorrect or misleading data items easily . The latter could jeopardize the credibility of the data, ultimately lower the value mashup.

Component Challenges

Although the Web Development Ajax model can refresh the entire page than conventional technology even richer and more seamless user experience, but it also brought some problems. As the basis for, Ajax request that the browser client-side script function used in conjunction with its own DOM, to achieve a content delivery method, it is solely for the browser designers envisaged. (Which may Ajax features similar to a hacker has increased its attractiveness.) However, making Ajax-based applications have the same browser compatibility problems that developed from the Microsoft Internet Explorer has been plagued Web developers. For example, Ajax engine uses a XMLHttpRequst object to exchange data asynchronously with remote servers. In Internet Explorer 6, this object is the use of ActiveX to achieve, rather than using a local JavaScript implementation, which requires must enable ActiveX.

The more fundamental requirement is an Ajax request to the user’s browser to enable JavaScript. This is for most people may be a reasonable assumption, but for certain users, their browser or automated tools may not support JavaScript, may not enable JavaScript support. This tool robot, spider, and for Internet and Intranet search engines to gather information on Web crawling table. If there is no function of the concessions, Ajax-based mashup applications may also find themselves lost some of its user base would reduce the attractiveness of the search engine.

Use JavaScript to asynchronously update the contents of the page will generate the user interface problems. Since the content no longer need to link into your browser address bar URL, the user may not be able to experience normal use your browser’s BACK button or bookmark function. In addition, although Ajax can be a request for incremental updates to reduce the delay, but the poor design may have a negative impact on user experience, for example, when the update size is hours, the updating of the volume and the load will occupy all of the available resources . In addition, to load interface or update content, we also need to care about how to provide support (for example, using the progress bar and the like, such as a visual feedback technology).

So Social Network and “decentralized” concept emerged. In this concept inside, everyone is a center, and between, but also the formation of irregular network relationships based on a “group” or “group” concept may not be exact, because there are no defined borders. For example, say my friends of Facebook,  some are belonged to classmate group, the group of colleagues, the group of pure strange but sharing the same interests. However, these so-called “group” in the “group” between the concrete, but also does not necessarily have to know each other, or that belong to a concept “group” where between friends does not necessarily have contact or interaction. This relationship is in real life and the relationship between a certain approximation. Social Network’s biggest advantage is that there is no “center”, naturally there is no limit, there is no “ceiling”, in theory, unlimited continues, so far as to put all the target audience completely cover. In the Social Network which can be diluted to some extent crowd out location and topics to guide the different groups within the natural isolation in the SNS, although according to six degrees of any two people can link up, but the link actually has no real meaning, the crowd aggregation is still used “substandard will gather together the scattered” in regularity.

For any web sites, the user’s level of activity is directly related to the potential value of the site. Every website wants to upgrade their degree of active users and browsing time. In the SNS Internally, the beginning is “interactive” form to increase the degree of user activity, these interactions, including gifts, voting, small games and so on. Facebook in order to enhance the level of user interaction, developed the open application development interfaces (Application Programming Interface, API), a third party can use the Open API to write their own interactive tool to further promote an interactive innovation. However, the ensuing challenge has never been short, is the meaning of SNS to give people play games Mody?

In fact, I would prefer SNS platform as a real world simulation, as the real world, like all human interaction is not the real world, it is not on-line interactive SNS. In previous applications all types of networks has never been one to the crowd as the SNS simulation of reality so well. Just like the real world, people can not always Play Game, SNS which is the same, too much human interaction will actually lead to fatigue, it is an interactive tool for the pursuit of passion will gradually reduce. So, what should be the next step?

Sharing or Citation of the post component in effect introduced the concept of the media into the SNS in the past, although this is just a P2P communication tool, but its significance lies in the introduction of external information, mode of transmission, so the rapid explosion. It is quite popular in Asian SNS but not Facebook.

However, with the interactive  information tools  increased, the real-time news on the home page of the friends became more and eclectic. The spread of P2P content and the user’s own UGC dynamic mixed together, is not a good thing.

Extending out of the next two questions:
1.SNS it should serve as a content distribution platform;
2. If, as a content distribution platform, it should be separated from the content of information and Friend Feed display;

I think that the firstone  is not a problem. Because the demand from the user’s eye, the user would like to see as much as possible in one place, he wanted to see things, of course also hope that fewer opportunities to develop some useless information. For the second answer, I think it is better to seperate.

Moreover, SNS does not stop the spread of values. Through the SNS, people can easily find the link between the aggregation efficiency of the information attached to interpersonal relationships to be much higher than through other channels customized information push. Is the so-called “people with type poly.” Clustering and other search-related technology, SNS  if used properly, can create a lot of value.

Access to information is a basic human needs, this need not weaker than the personal interaction. Otherwise, Sina would not make so much money. But now is really an explosion of information, how the selection of effective information, is always a question of people scratching our heads. If  through human relationships and a topic of attention, for each user, for information we can make a reasonable weight calculation and display, then I believe  SNS is going to  meet the needs of two major basic connectivity.

Simply put, the first step, would be grateful if my good friend, a recent concern (including the reprint, reply, etc.) of the topic, bringing together a reasonable sort; The second step, you can use more complex clustering technology, the SNS “same person” preference for clustering, and the right topic / content sort, I believe that we can better extract the effective content. In other words, my friend the most concerned about the reprint, article, or a similar one concern, and I reprint, the article, if we can show them in a separate area, it would be a very effective mode of transmission of information behind this is that a complex pattern matching and clustering algorithm.

I think the next step should be “people” and “information” and “interactive” and “spread” this pair of three-dimensional completely separated. So that different types of products to meet the different needs of the user function, clear in their respective regions revealed by an independence. This will not only be able to resolve information conflicts, but also better satisfy the users’ demand.

2 The Internet’s competitive battle from the entrance into the platform wars, will be transferred to the user dispute.  Get the people who were to gain power. The user’s experience, is no longer a separate part, to covering the whole process.

3  User experience design, would not be a separate department, but all the people involved. 

4 The basic user needs study should focus on “What kind of person, what kind of environment, what kind of experience, access to what kind of information and hope to resolve what kind of problem.”

5 The best user research method is to make the product out for the user to use. Study how they used to see, standing at their point of view to read it.

6 The user needs is not accidental discovery, nor created, but calculated. For the quantitative analysis of the data online, more useful amd more valuable than the offline analysis of qualitative data.

7 Product experience and demand for perfection is the progressive realization. There is  step, stage, rhythm, and occasional, but  more inevitable.

I am not going to detail what our service is and its business model as well as IT architecture stuff. I just want to see something how we worked as a practice of service design process. There were some changes made after the division of the tasks and responsibilities. Most of the changes were due to the lack of time of someone, so someone else who has finished his part took the task instead. While, this taking responsibility was not informed to the original responsible person beforehand, I can guess there might be some duplicated work has been done.

But we managed to communicate in Google group in time to eliminate some confusion and to fix something going wrong.

A lesson from this practice is that we really should to make sure everything explicit and be sure that everyone in the group are aware of it. Then carrying out the process. In fact we have very good service concept and idea and our people are diverse and creative. So the administration of the service design process is the key to organize people working in the comfortable and “healthy” way.

Operating mode: to help users discover new things

The initiantion and core value of Douban is to help people find new things.

 What users have not heard of might be a book, a movie, an album, a blog comment.  However, Yang Bo, the creator of Douban thought that these daily needs, while generally has not been met. Because the traditional sites often show the most popular thing, in fact everyone’s interest is not the same, with one thing clearly can not meet everyone’s needs.  So Douban uses the  ”person centered” ways to meet them.

There are two ways to accomplish this.  The first is the user is aware of what was found with similar people, and through the same to find new things. There are 10 people read the same book, they would be more interested in some parts similar to. In these 10 persons, a look at the other book B may also be interested in A’s list which may also be close to the B list of needs.

The second is that he need not to  take the initiative to visit the other users, you can directly see. Each person’s comments, click on the system will be recorded to form a personal list.  Douban uses of data mining techniques, and this list, to determine his interest, and recommend some of his kind of people like to watch and he was not seen. These are not necessarily the most popular, the most valuable things, but with his interest in fit.

Douban’s development to date, operating mode still adhere to the original design ideas. Now it has books, movies, music and other types of catalog also reached more than 100 million. Registered members is 60 million, but  the “Diving user” (non-registered readers) have up to 10 times the registered members.

Business Model of Douban

Though it is somehow succesful in attracting users but not gaining much money. Now it is gaining money from sharing with the online bookstore and very few from ads. It is not a website full of ads and users can hardly find the ads since they are just some romantic pic and words.

Nowdays they are considering to help some popular indie singer who has their public pages in Douban and are followed by a lot of people there to publish theri album and with the concert. Though the comments, views and even the singers who are popular in Douban is minority. But one thing to notice is that even it is minority intertest, it could be huge. Thinking about Apple, a typical de-massified product brand at first, it does success by really good business model of which the principal is fine-granular but high profitable. So if we can find a great marketing person and good ideas for douban’s business model, it would gain a lot of money.

PS:

I am really a loyal user of Douban (“豆瓣”) for the “group” where u can find quantities of  strange, surprisig and amazing group fit to your taste, such as “Fetishism girls”, “NO 223″, “Actor lines in movies”, “Indie magazine”, “I just like the boys as cute as baby bear” on and on.  U can really open discuss something people around u could not understand with people strange to u but hold the same  enthusiasm with ur loving topic. Good place to know people and ideas.

Another point is that it is the name of the alley just located beside my home. It is said that Yang, the creator wrote the source code of Douban in the starbuck of Douban alley.

6 components of BM:

Value proposition: A description of the customer, problem, the product, and the values from the customers’ viewpoint.

Market segment: the targeted customer group.

Value chain structure: the enterprise’s position and activities in the value chain as well as how the enterprise will gain the value that it creates in the value chain.

Revenue generation and margins: how revenue is generated (sales, leasing, subscription, support), the cost structure, the target profit margin.

Position in value network: identification of competitors, complementors, and any network effects that can be utilized to deliver more value to the customer.

Comprtitive strategy: how to develop sustainable competitive advanage.

How to apply BMs into digital service?

I got  just some basic ideas like following:

• Define Business Requirements (BR)
• Define Functional Requirements (FR) – - Mapping each FR to BR
• Define System Requirements (SR) –  Mapping SR to SR
• Define Testing Requirements (TR)

During this definition process, one should keep these questions in mind:

• Who’s the target customer?
• Why the customer will adopt this new technical product?
• How to compete with the other competitors?
• Marketing Service strategy?
• Added value for customer?

The former service is really hotly discussed these days. Only by inviting, one can get access to use the testing version of it like during the gmail testing period. Despite this psychological trick, it did combine the features of a lot of applications we are familar with, such as email, IM, SNS, twitter, youtube and wiki. Instead of sending messages back and forth, users create web-page-like documents called waves that others can modify or comment on, using a combination of features more usually seen separately in the service aplications mentioned above. I am guessing that this is another platform which enables the users create the “world” and manage the “world” in the most convenient as far as we can see now.

Google Building Maker will enable web users to transform 2D renderings of buildings in Google Earth in to 3D images. Google has called on the web community to help it transform Google Earth into an accurate, three-dimensional representation of major towns and cities. 

“One of the best ways to get a big project done — and done well — is to open it up to the world.”

So we can also say, one of the best methods to get a satisfactory service is to co-create the service with the end-users.

How can we involve them?

Google must have involved a lot of  ”psychologists”. who know the nature of humans very well. People like the feeling being few ones who really know and experience something novel and newfangled. This inviting strategy really did a greater advertisement for the new service than anything else.

People love novel and newfangled things and people love playing. People love to establish and show their familar views to the world. So Building Maker really make senses.

Just supply a platform to the users, and improve the platform on and on according to the user behavior. This is like collecting ideas across the world.

What is the diffenrence between service design and product design?

What are the Service Design Methodologies?

Actually at first I got serious headache by the methodologies, especially ITIL V3.  Well, after reading a lot about the relating materials and the debrief session of our SDE studio, I made a concept map on this topic to illustrate them.

Based on the undestanding, I developed my service design process:

Phase 1 : Plan

1. Identify customer requirements, characteristics, goals, services being operated, and their way to work.

2. Establish business case.

3. Identify technical requirements.

4. Identify the roles and responsibilities.

Along with phase 1, service designers are responsible to educate the customers implicitly during daily contact and  

Phase 2: Do and Optimize

5. Analyse resources and risks,etc.

6. Document requirements and forecast requirements.

7. Model->Prototypes->Optimization->Robustness.

Phase 3: Monitor and Feedback

8. Implementation/Carry out/ Deliver.

9. Design iteration.

Well, this is just my basic idea and haven’t been practised. Hopefully I will get a chance to practice my design process.

O(∩_∩)O

Now to remind myself of the valuable time and issues I am going on with I am starting this blog to share what I learnt and what I am thinking in digital service design field. Maybe other digital pinheads come across my mind as well will be documented here.

Here lists my interesting topics :

• Service design methods
• How a traditional protuct-oriented enterprise  transit to service-oriented
• ICT-enabled service
• Business models of ICT-enabled service
• The architecture of digital service
• The  enabling technologies in service creation
• Customer relationship management

Welcome to my digital service world to share and comment!