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International Journal of Design Vol.5 No.2 2011

Service Innovation Through Touch-points

viewed individually and also in combination. This ability was

also useful when identifying critical touch-points or possibilities

or limitations of individual touch-points. The same can also be

said when it comes to identifying who is responsible for each

touch-point. Some workshop participants compared the content of

the cards to a checklist, others commented on the cards modular

ability, saying “the cards’ physical form and visual presentation

make it easier to scale the process,” and that “the process is built

up like Lego blocks, meaning that you can unfold ideas on a large

scale.” Further, they reported that it was “easy to see touch-points

in relation to each other and spot overlaps or things missing.”

Idea Generation

The cards were given positive evaluations in terms of their

potential for generating new ideas. Firstly, the cards encouraged

both systemic innovation (changing the whole service system)

and innovation in individual touch-points. For individual touch-

points, innovation related to removal (or addition) of touch-points,

and also to changes to the interaction design of an individual

touch-point. Further, the cards aided alignment of touch-points

to brand strategy. Workshop participants commented upon the

cards ability to “make you both concrete and experimental at the

same time” and their ability to “open up the process.” In addition,

several participants commented that the cards opened up a breadth

of ideas. One workshop participant commented: “When I ﬁrst

looked at the cards, I thought the majority were not relevant for our

project. However, when we started using them, I realised that this

was not true, and seemingly irrelevant cards suddenly contributed

to the improvement of the service (workshop participant, October

2010).

We asked participants in the workshops to evaluate the use

of the toolkit to evaluate the ideas that were generated in terms of

their contribution to new ways of thinking, the number of ideas

generated during the time available, the relevance of the ideas for

their project, and the perceived uniqueness of the ideas. These

can be considered pointers to innovation potential. The results

were consistently positive, scoring high ratings on all dimensions.

Considering that the participants in the workshops were from

innovation projects – many with innovation leadership roles – this

shows that the cards fulﬁlled their function in terms of generating

novel yet relevant ideas.

One issue commented on by a few participants was that

the cards might inhibit the radical thinking in which invention

of new touch-points could arise. Similarly, it was commented

that a missing touch-point could potentially have negative

consequences, since using the cards constrained thinking within

the alternatives given. This is something we have considered,

but have not experienced when running workshops. The cards

deliberately suggest a very broad range of touch-points, many of

which are outside the scope of traditional touch-point thinking.

Indeed a common comment is that participants initially considered

many touch-point cards unnecessary or irrelevant. Once used, this

changes to an expression of how useful the broad approach turned

out to be. However, it is difﬁcult to know if a potential solution is

inhibited without using controlled testing procedures, which have

many practical disadvantages in the project context. In practice,

we have not been able to observe situations in which the cards

have constrained idea generation.

Over time, we have identiﬁed a need to continually update

the touch-points. As an example of this, we have had to add a new

category of touch-point - the iPad/tablet, since this new touch-

point was launched during the ﬁrst 6 months after the touch-point

cards were produced. We see that the touch-point cards need

continual updates to remain contemporary and relevant.

Needs Elicitation

Recent developments in the AT-ONE project have included using

the cards during the customer insight phase of a project. The cards

have been used as an aid for needs elicitation when interviewing

potential users of a service. For example, we have recently used

them to elicit preferences regarding touch-points when contacting

customer service in a telecommunications company. They were

found to be useful and allowed potential customers to compare

different touch-points, prioritise touch-points and think aloud

about touch-point preferences. It was clear that the tangible

form of the cards assisted the cognitive process when users were

answering questions, grouping together, or prioritizing. The use of

the cards for needs elicitation is a new and promising area of use

for the cards, and one which we will be exploring in more detail

in the future.

Figure 4. The way that people held the cards and moved

the cards assisted cognitive and social processes through

movement and placement.