Full Circle Associates

The Bakers Dozen: the Presence of the Gift in Service Encounters
Brinda Dalal Pat Swenton-Wall
Note: I found this presentation very useful to describe things I do in my practice. Lovely!

Our roles in businesses have changed as companies have gone from selling products to selling solutions. Take a step back and read our changing practices. Introduction to the spirit of the gift in business, case studies and representations, and conclusion.

We’ve been experimenting with how to infuse ethnographic worldviews into design in a global organization. Paradox in business. Our interactions with customers are fleeting. Just a week or month. Hardly conducive to building real trust for deals that involve thousands of dollars. IN that short time, get to know who they are, families, struggles, dreams and how their work gets done despite odds and little fanfare. What is it that evokes the sense of durability in these transitory interactions. The Gift: Form and Reason for Exchange in Primitive Societies. How people can fulfill their self-interest without destroying each other. Looked at ceremonial exchanges. How people exchanged durable goods such as blankets and shells, non-durable goods, how status was perceptually proscribed in the goods and how they were exchanges. Mouse made the historical argument for morality. Things aren’t wholly categorized in sales. People connect to each other by learning how to create mutual interest by the giving of gift. How to give mutual satisfaction: reciprocity, giving back. What power resides in the object given that asks the recipient to pay it back. How this happens without going to war.

Latent sociality provided a backdrop to the exchange of goods – total services. 55 years later and the word services is still around Wikipedia definition of services sector – serve the customer rather than transforming material goods. Explore how the concept of the gift emerges in our business setting and reframe our methods. For sales, the building of customer relationships are primary. As researchers we are trusted because we aren’t selling anything. Looking at customer’s real problems.

Experimenting with textual and visual representations of customer’s problems. It is not the in detail, but the creation and use of those representations enable conversation which take incremental steps of building trust between use. It takes a long time for emerging technologies to be built and integrated. Graphical representations are a series of interim gifts to our customers. Objects of mutual consumption. Not actually paid for by client, but given with expectation, reciprocity, in that they will be dissected and discussed by clients in their orgs. We acknowledge the enormous value of time spent with us in the wider significance of their work. Customer does not have to wait for the solution to be built to see the pay off.

Our role in service encounters –0 transforms the scope and definition of our work. Unlike product dev cycles, service engagements are shorter. This requires accelerated/abbreviated time frames, closer to sales cycle (rather than design), integration of existing tech and services. Have to negotiate role with consultants and their processes.

Representations – we have over the years developed tools and methods to visually display findings as the resonate in ways that textual reports do not. Illustrations, sketches, videos, stills, notes, to characterize some aspect of site, design. Includes a graphics tool kit with a variety of icons to show everyday items. The graphics toolkit emphasizes people and their work (Blue guys). Made available company wide and used by a variety of teams. Used in new and interesting ways (even though we would not use them.) Place people more prominently in discussions of technology. Stimulate conversations that help correct our misunderstanding.

Digital Library Research Project – focus on co-developing a web based image search and retrieval. Multidisciplinary team composed of researchers, had time, a year. The tech design was based upon ongoing interaction with library staff and faculty. First representation of interaction between three departments, all charged with taking non-digital images and digitizing, cataloging and linking into system. Several transitions and handoffs identified through interviews. Using enlarged version of this representation, used this as a conversation starter. First time overall process had been described. The discussion helped identify areas of breakdown and problems, captured in a second version. Initial representation added depth to the conversation. Helped make next step decision.

Discussions around representations allows different conversation, visualize intersections.

Second example focusing on work of an individual – sorting/selecting/presenting slides. The new system would have to support this. Looks pretty straightforward. Took representation to person and he made corrections. Different projects suggested variations not seen in the first representation. We had confused them. Needed more interactions to fully understand. Power of representation to enable a rich two-way exchange with reciprocity.

Third case, but my hands are getting sore. So just listening. And looking at their image. Multiple perspectives and successive views. Really interesting stuff.

Conclusion
Representations help put people back into the forefront in a techno centric world. We toggle between our partial connections, where issues and view shift from foreground, background depending on our assignee role.

Two parts of being human: self reliant and dependent. Modern markets deny this. GET QUOTE OUT OF PDF.

Categories: EPIC2005, gifteconomy