Balancing evaluation with creativity
The systematic process of evaluation is important but it must be balanced by the need for design creativity. Creativityis a vital ingredient in effective design. The final quality of any design of product or service will be influenced by the creativity of its designers. Increasingly, creativity is seen as an essential ingredient not just in the design of products and services, but also in the design of operations processes. Partly because of the fast-changing nature of many industries, a lack of creativity (and consequently of innovation) is seen as a major risk. For example, ‘It has never been a better time to be an industry revolutionary. Conversely, it has never been a more dangerous time to be complacent . . . The dividing line between being a leader and being a laggard is today measured in months or a few days, and not in decades.’2 Of course, creativity can be expensive. By its nature it involves exploring sometimes unlikely possibilities. Many of these will die as they are proved to be inappropriate. Yet, to some extent, the process of creativity depends on these many seemingly wasted investigations. As Art Fry, the inventor of 3M’s Post-it note products, said: ‘You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince. But remember, one prince can pay for a lot of frogs.’
Not everyone agrees with the concept of the design funnel. For some it is just too neat and ordered an idea to reflect accurately the creativity, arguments and chaos that some- times characterize the design activity. First, they argue, managers do not start out with an infinite number of options. No one could process that amount of information – and anyway, designers often have some set solutions in their mind, looking for an opportunity to be used. Second, the number of options being considered often increasesas time goes by. This may actually be a good thing, especially if the activity was unimaginatively specified in the first place. Third, the real process of design often involves cycling back, often many times, as potential design solutions raise fresh questions or become dead ends. In summary, the idea of the design funnel does not describe what actually happens in the design activity.
Nor does it necessarily even describe what shouldhappen.
Critical commentary
Even at the chic and stylish end of the hairdressing business, close as it is to the world of changing fashion trends, true innovation and genuinely novel new services are a relative rarity. Yet real service innovation can reap significant rewards as Daniel and Luke Hersheson, the father and son team behind the Daniel Hersheson salons, fully understand. The Hersheson brand has successfully bridged the gaps between salon, photo session and fashion catwalk. The team first put themselves on the fashion map with a salon in London’s Mayfair followed by a salon and spa in Harvey Nichols’s flagship London store.
Their latest innovation is the ‘Blowdry Bar at Top Shop’. This is a unique concept that is aimed at customers who want fashionable and catwalk quality styling at an affordable price without the full ‘cut and
Short case
The Daniel Hersheson Blowdry
Preliminary design
Having generated an acceptable, feasible and viable product or service concept the next stage is to create a preliminary design. The objective of this stage is to have a first attempt at both specifying the component products and services in the package, and defining the processesto create the package.
Specify the components of the package
The first task in this stage of design is to define exactly what will go into the product or service: that is, specifying the components of the package. This will require the collection of information about such things as the constituent component parts which make up the product or service package and the component (or product) structure, the order in which the component parts of the package have to be put together. For example the components for a remote mouse for a computer may include, upper and lower casings, a control unit and packaging, which are themselves made up of other components. The product structure shows how these components fit together to make the mouse (seeFig. 5.6).
appointment system has been implemented to avoid disappointing customers. Once in the pod, customers can choose from a tailor-made picture menu of nine fashion styles with names like ‘The Super Straight’, ‘The Classic Big and Bouncy’ and ‘Wavy Gravy’. Typically, the wash and blow-dry takes around 30 minutes. ‘It’s just perfect for a client who wants to look that bit special for a big night out but who doesn’t want a full cut’, says Ryan Wilkes, one of the stylists at the Blowdry Bar. ‘Some clients will “graduate” to become regular customers at the main Daniel Hersheson salons. I have clients who started out using the Blowdry Bar but now also get their hair cut with me in the salon.’
Partnering with Top Shop is an important element in the design of the service, says Daniel Hersheson, ‘We are delighted to be opening the UK’s first blow-dry bar at Top Shop. Our philosophy of constantly relating hair back to fashion means we will be perfectly at home in the most
creative store on the British high street.’Top Shop also recognizes the fit. ‘The Daniel Hersheson Blowdry Bar is a really exciting service addition to our Oxford Circus flagship and offers the perfect finishing touch to a great shopping experience at Top Shop’, says Jane Shepherdson, Brand Director of Top Shop.
But the new service has not just been a success in the market; it also has advantages for the operation itself. ‘It’s a great opportunity for young stylists not only to develop their styling skills, but also to develop the confidence that it takes to interact with clients’, says George Northwood, Manager of Daniel Hersheson’s Mayfair salon. ‘You can see a real difference after a trainee stylist has worked in the Blowdry Bar. They learn how to talk to clients, to understand their needs, and to advise them. It’s the confidence that they gain that is so important in helping them to become fully qualified and successful stylists in their own right.’
Figure 5.6 The component structure of a remote mouse Component (or product)
structure
Reducing design complexity
Simplicity is usually seen as a virtue amongst designers of products and services. The most elegant design solutions are often the simplest. However, when an operation produces a variety of products or services (as most do) the range of products and services considered as a whole can become complex, which, in turn, increases costs. Designers adopt a number of approaches to reducing the inherent complexity in the design of their product or service range.
Here we describe three common approaches to complexity reduction – standardization, commonality and modularization.
Standardization
Operations sometimes attempt to overcome the cost penalties of high variety by standardizing their products, services or processes. This allows them to restrict variety to that which has real value for the end-customer. Often it is the operation’s outputs which are standardized.
Examples of this are fast-food restaurants, discount supermarkets and telephone-based insurance companies. Perhaps the most common example of standardization is the clothes which most of us buy. Although everybody’s body shape is different, garment manufacturers produce clothes in only a limited number of sizes. The range of sizes is chosen to give a reasonable fit for most body shapes. To suit all their potential customers and/or to ensure a perfect fit, garment manufacturers would have to provide an infeasibly large range of sizes.
Alternatively, they would need to provide a customized service. Both solutions would have a significant impact on cost. This control of variety is an important issue with most companies.
A danger facing established operations is that they allow variety to grow excessively. They are then faced with the task of variety reduction, often by assessing the real profit or con- tribution of each product or service. Many organizations have significantly improved their profitability by careful variety reduction. In order to overcome loss of business, customers may be offered alternative products or services which provide similar value.
Commonality
Using common elements within a product or service can also simplify design complexity.
Using the same components across a range of automobiles is a common practice. Likewise, standardizing the format of information inputs to a process can be achieved by using appro- priately designed forms or screen formats. The more different products and services can be based on common components, the less complex it is to produce them. For example, the European aircraft maker Airbus has designed its new generation of jetliners with a high degree of commonality. Airbus developed full design and operational commonality with the introduction of fly-by-wire technology on its civil aircraft in the late 1980s. This meant that ten aircraft models ranging from the 100-seat A318 through to the world’s largest aircraft, the 555-seat A380, feature virtually identical flight decks, common systems and similar handling characteristics. In some cases, such as the entire A320 family, the aircraft even share the same
‘pilot-type rating’, which enables pilots with a single licence to fly any of them. The advantages of commonality for the airline operators include a much shorter training time for pilots and engineers when they move from one aircraft to another. This offers pilots the possibility of flying a wide range of routes from short-haul to ultra-long-haul and leads to greater efficiencies because common maintenance procedures can be designed with maintenance teams capable of servicing any aircraft in the same family. Also, when up to 90 per cent of all parts are common within a range of aircraft, there is a reduced need to carry a wide range of spare parts.
Modularization
The use of modulardesign principles involves designing standardized ‘sub-components’ of a product or service which can be put together in different ways. It is possible to create wide choice through the fully interchangeable assembly of various combinations of a smaller number of standard sub-assemblies; computers are designed in this way, for example. These standardized modules, or sub-assemblies, can be produced in higher volume, thereby reducing their cost.
Standardization
Commonality
Modularization
Similarly, the package holiday industry can assemble holidays to meet a specific customer requirement, from pre-designed and purchased air travel, accommodation, insurance, and so on. In education also there is an increasing use of modular courses which allow ‘customers’
choice but permit each module to have economical volumes of students. The short case
‘Customizing for kids’ describes an example of modularization in TV programme production.
Define the process to create the package
The product/service structure and bill-of-materials specifies what goes into a product. It is around this stage in the design process where it is necessary to examine how a process could put together the various components to create the final product or service. At one time this activity would have been delayed until the very end of the design process. However, this can cause problems if the designed product or service cannot be produced to the required quality and cost constraints. For now, what is important to understand is that processes should at least be examined in outline well before any product or service design is finalized.
We outlined some of the basic ideas behind process design. The techniques of process mapping (see Chapter 4) can be used during this stage.
Design evaluation and improvement
The purpose of this stage in the design activity is to take the preliminary design and see if it can be improved before the product or service is tested in the market. There are a number of techniques that can be employed at this stage to evaluate and improve the preliminary design. Here we treat three which have proved particularly useful:
● Quality function deployment (QFD)
● Value engineering (VE)
● Taguchi methods.
Quality function deployment8
The key purpose of quality function deployment(QFD) is to try to ensure that the eventual design of a product or service actually meets the needs of its customers. Customers may not have been considered explicitly since the concept generation stage, and therefore it is
Reducing design complexity is a principle that applies just as much to service as to manufactured products.
For example, television programmes are made increasingly with a worldwide market in mind. However, most television audiences around the world have a distinct preference for programmes which respect their regional tastes, culture and of course language. The challenge facing global programme makers therefore is to try and achieve the economies which come as a result of high volume production while allowing programmes to be customized for different markets.
For example, take the programme Art Attack! made for the Disney Channel, a children’s TV channel shown around the world. In 2001 two hundred and sixteen
Short case
Customizing for kids
7episodes of the show were made in six different language versions. About 60 per cent of each show is common across all versions. Shots without speaking or where the presenter’s face is not visible are shot separately.
For example, if a simple cardboard model is being made all versions will share the scenes where the presenter’s hands only are visible. Commentary in the appropriate language is over-dubbed onto the scenes which are edited seamlessly with other shots of the appropriate presenter. The final product will have the head and shoulders of Brazilian, French, Italian, German, or Spanish presenters flawlessly mixed with the same pair of (British) hands constructing the model. The result is that local viewers in each market see the show as their own. Even though presenters are flown into the UK production studies, the cost of making each episode is only about one third of producing separate programmes for each market.
Quality function deployment
appropriate to check that what is being proposed for the design of the product or service will meet their needs. It is a technique that was developed in Japan at Mitsubishi’s Kobe shipyard and used extensively by Toyota, the motor vehicle manufacturer, and its suppliers.
It is also known as the ‘house of quality’ (because of its shape) and the ‘voice of the customer’
(because of its purpose). The technique tries to capture whatthe customer needs and howit might be achieved. Figure 5.7 shows an example of quality function deployment being used in the design of a new information system product. The QFD matrix is a formal articulation of how the company sees the relationship between the requirements of the customer (the whats) and the design characteristics of the new product (the hows). The matrix contains various sections, as explained below:
● The whats, or ‘customer requirements’, is the list of competitive factors which customers find significant. Their relative importance is scored, in this case on a 10-point scale, with accuratescoring the highest.
● The competitive scores indicate the relative performance of the product, in this case on a 1 to 5 scale. Also indicated are the performances of two competitor products.
● The hows, or ‘design characteristics’ of the product, are the various ‘dimensions’ of the design which will operationalize customer requirements within the product or service.
Figure 5.7 A QFD matrix for an information system product
● The central matrix (sometimes called the ‘relationship matrix’) represents a view of the interrelationship between the whatsand the hows. This is often based on value judgements made by the design team. The symbols indicate the strength of the relationship – for example, the relationship between the ability to link remotely to the system and the intranet compatibility of the product is strong. All the relationships are studied, but in many cases, where the cell of the matrix is blank, there is none.
● The bottom box of the matrix is a technical assessment of the product. This contains the absolute importance of each design characteristic. [For example, the design characteristic
‘interfaces’ has a relative importance of (9 ×5) +(1 ×9) =54.] This is also translated into a ranked relative importance. In addition, the degree of technical difficulty to achieve high levels of performance in each design characteristic is indicated on a 1 to 5 scale.
● The triangular ‘roof ’ of the ‘house’ captures any information the team has about the correlations (positive or negative) between the various design characteristics.
Although the details of QFD may vary between its different variants, the principle is generally common, namely to identify the customer requirements for a product or service (together with their relative importance) and to relate them to the design characteristics which translate those requirements into practice. In fact, this principle can be continued by making the howsfrom one stage become the whatsof the next (seeFig. 5.8). Some experienced users of QFD have up to four linked matrices in this way. If engineering or process trade-offs need to be made at a later stage, the interrelated houses enable the effect on customer requirements to be determined.
Value engineering
The purpose of value engineering is to try to reduce costs, and prevent any unnecessary costs, before producing the product or service. Simply put, it tries to eliminate any costs that do not contribute to the value and performance of the product or service. (‘Value analysis’
is the name given to the same process when it is concerned with cost reduction after the product or service has been introduced.) Value-engineering programmes are usually con- ducted by project teams consisting of designers, purchasing specialists, operations managers and financial analysts. The chosen elements of the package are subject to rigorous scrutiny, by analysing their function and cost, then trying to find any similar components that could do the same job at lower cost. The team may attempt to reduce the number of components,
Figure 5.8 QFD matrices can be linked with the ‘hows’ of one matrix forming the ‘whats’ of the next
Value engineering
or use cheaper materials, or simplify processes. For example, Motorola used value engineering to reduce the number of parts in its mobile phones from ‘thousands’ down to ‘hundreds’ and even less, with a drastic reduction in processing time and cost.
Value engineering requires innovative and critical thinking, but it is also carried out using a formal procedure. The procedure examines the purpose of the product or service, its basic functions and its secondary functions. Taking the example of the remote mouse used previously:
● The purposeof the remote mouse is to communicate with the computer.
● The basic functionis to control presentation slide shows.
● The secondary functionis to be plug-and-play-compatible with any system.
Team members would then propose ways to improve the secondary functions by combining, revising or eliminating them. All ideas would then be checked for feasibility, acceptability, vulnerability and their contribution to the value and purpose of the product or service.
Taguchi methods
The main purpose of Taguchi methods, as advocated by Genichi Taguchi,9 is to test the robustness of a design. The basis of the idea is that the product or service should still per- form in extreme conditions. A telephone, for example, should still work even when it has been knocked onto the floor. Although one does not expect customers to knock a telephone to the floor, this does happen, and so the need to build strength into the casing should be considered in its design. Likewise, a pizza parlour should be able to cope with a sudden rush of customers and a hotel should be able to cope with early arrivals. Product and service designers therefore need to brainstorm to try to identify all the possible situations that might arise and check that the product or service is capable of dealing with those that are deemed to be necessary and cost-effective. In the case of an adventure holiday, for example, service designers need to plan for such contingencies as:
● foul weather – the need for bad-weather alternatives;
● equipment failure – the provision of enough equipment to cover for maintenance;
● staff shortages – flexible working to allow cover from one area to another;
● accidents – the ability to deal with an accident without jeopardizing the other children in the group, with easily accessible first-aid equipment, and using facilities and equipment that are easy to clean and unlikely to cause damage to children;
● illness – the ability to deal with ill children who are unable to take part in an activity.
The task is then to achieve a design which can cope with all these uncertainties. The major problem designers face is that the number of design factors which they could vary to try to cope with the uncertainties, when taken together, is very large. For example, in designing the telephone casing there could be many thousands of combinations of casing size, casing shape, casing thickness, materials, jointing methods, etc. Performing all the investigations (or experiments, as they are called in the Taguchi technique) to try to find a combination of design factors which gives an optimum design can be a lengthy process. The Taguchi procedure is a statistical procedure for carrying out relatively few experiments while still being able to determine the best combination of design factors. Here ‘best’ means the lowest cost and the highest degree of uniformity.
Prototyping and final design
At around this stage in the design activity it is necessary to turn the improved design into a prototype so that it can be tested. It may be too risky to go into full production of the telephone, or the holiday, before testing it out, so it is usually more appropriate to create a prototype. Product prototypes include everything from clay models to computer simulations.
Service prototypes may also include computer simulations but also the actual implementation of the service on a pilot basis. Many retailing organizations pilot new products and services in a small number of stores in order to test customers’ reaction to them. Increasingly, it is
Purpose Basic functions Secondary functions
Taguchi methods