design for service - affordances

In thinking about the importance of how space was set up, both for staff and customers, in design for service - spaces I  wrote that one of the components of service is the affordances created in the spaces in which people work, provide service and are served.

I’m not in UX, so I’m not entirely certain how “affordance” is used technically, but I’ll just assume it’s a reasonable derivation of the original term from cog pysch. If you’re at all curious, I’d recommend going to the source and reading J. J. Gibson’s The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. It’s a good book. 

//Side note: if you’re curious at all about anything, get as close to first sources [like reading declassified excerpts of Boyd’s work instead of the hundreds of faulty third- and fourth-hand derivative applications of OODA] as possible—either reading inwards from derivations or outwards from original sources. It’s better for our brains and better for the world when we know what the **** we’re talking about before words come out of our faces.

As a way to explain affordances, I’m going to use the near-perfect design of my 11 year old, no longer made Spire messenger bag.

Start with the front of the bag. There’s a zippered outside compartment where we can store whatever. It’s good for things we might want without opening the bag, that’re ephemeral in possession, that aren’t valuable—like a newspaper.   

Now look up to the handle. There’s a handle. Because sometimes we’ll just pick the damn thing up without slinging it over a shoulder.

To the left, where the strap attaches, a hook. If we happen to favor one shoulder, we’ll flip the strap easily. [By the way, that original hardware has stood up to severe abuse over a decade through many travels across a dozen countries.]

On the strap, a pad that floats. The strap, the whole bag, can move while the shoulder pad stays put on a shoulder. This means that the bag can be pulled to the front of the body or pushed to the back without repositioning the strap. Good for when we’re rushing through airports and crowded town squares. The strap itself is thick, sturdy, wide enough to not dig into skin when the bag is heavy [the way seatbelt straps do]. With an unfancy [no seatbelt buckle, ratchet, or plastic latch here] adjustment mechanism that simply works and is simply easy to use standing or on the go.

Back down to the bag. Two buckles. We’ll loosen them when we’re holding more and tighten them to keep things tucked in when there’s less. Unbuckle one and notice there’s no velcro holding the flap down. For an actual bike messenger, I can see why velcro would be useful to prevent the flap from, well, flappingand being a literal drag. For the rest of us, having velcro here is baffling—two fastening systems to keep the same part down, but the velcro preventing us from reaching in to the bag when it’s buckled to get something out while on the move. But that’s very much the convention with today’s popular bags.

Under the flap, a zippered mesh pocket to see in to. Quick access, good for keeping smaller objects that we might need to see. And above that a pull to change the size of the opening of the main compartment. Hold more, hold less, always secure.

Inside the main compartment, four front pockets. Bigger ones closer to the front outside. Smaller ones below with mesh. Obvious places for writing implements, notepad, phone, water bottle etc. [I bought this bag many years before owning a mobile, so don’t be surprised that there aren’t mobile or tablet specific pockets.]

Another compartment inside the main compartment. For laptops, or whatever. The bag came with a sleeve that was kept in via that velcro strip. But note that it wasn’t built in. So we could take it out. Replace it with a different one when tech changes. Or not use it and just have a larger main compartment. An option that provides function but doesn’t saddle us with something that has an inherently short useful life. Which might not look intentional, but notice the pull that can change the size of the opening and secure it. That wouldn’t be necessary if it was designed for a fixed single use of a particular laptop sleeve size and configuration.

Each of these design elements give us function, not take it away. They afford us ways of using the object which don’t collide with each other. The net experience is one of leverage, value from the very act of using the thing, and never having the design prevent us from getting value.

--

These ideas can’t be new. The thinking is rough, but it serves.

Aneel's razor for design-- Do not create affordances beyond necessity.

• First corollary: Do not create affordances that countervail natural patterns of use.
• Second corollary: Do not create affordances that countervail conventional patterns of use.
• Third corollary: Any affordance that does countervail natural or conventional patterns of use will create a cognitive barrier that must be overcome through
  • Education
  • Some bridging, stepwise path to transitioning to the new pattern from the old
  • Psychological support during the process of achieving competence at, and habituating of, the new pattern

design for service - spaces

And now for something completely different. If you interact with me (or my twitter feed) to any degree, you might’ve noticed…

coffee

— Aneel (@aneel) February 23, 2014

Drinking a Fantôme Saison D'Erezée - Hiver by Brasserie Fantme - http://t.co/bxo2Gmhoud

— Aneel (@aneel) February 24, 2014

I spend a fair bit of time in bars and coffee shops. Service in these places is interesting because although the formula seems straightforward--produce what’s ordered efficiently with sufficient pleasantness (or unpleasantness if very hip)--it’s multivariate and at least one of the variables is utterly uncontrollable. Skilled labor, number and type of staff on, complexity of menu factoring to time and consistency of production, complexity of menu factoring to time to educate and serve customers, work space, work space set up, service space, service space set up, customer space, customer space set up, steps to produce items, distance traveled to produce items, flow of customers in time and numbers (demand), flow of orders in time and numbers (demand), flow of orders vs complexity of orders (demand vs fulfillment), inventory location, inventory availability, staff incentives, margins, desired and prompted customer behavior, desired and prompted staff behavior, work space affordances, service space affordances, customer space affordances, etc. 

We can design around everything except for demand. Coffee shops and bars can’t scale to meet demand infinitely. Service does not scale. Not in space, not in product, not in staff. There is no utility provision of beverage services [coffeops! beerops!] that underlies the actual production of product and servicing of customers for these businesses. So we have to find a service sweet spot in a normal operating range that can degrade gracefully during demand peaks and demand valleys.

But maybe we can create spaces and codes and empowerment that generally get one to the stateof good service experience. I think. 

My favorite coffee shop in SF is Sightglass. My favorite beer bar here is MikkellerBar. Both are startups. Service at both is good-to-excellent most of the time. Under severe load or severe lack of load, interestingly enough, service at both degrades the same way: down decent-to-good.

Notice something similar?

Check out how much room there is behind the bar. More than a full complement of staff can move around and do everything necessary for service in their workspace without running into each other. You might also note that some key stations are mirrored on either side of both bars—sinks, points of sale, espresso machines. Neither place could operate effectively at high customer load without that sort of slack in physical space. Both places tend to have four people behind the bar when busy, plus a fifth and occasional sixth (usually a manager plus an extra pair of hands that were doing some other business). Sightglass will have a standard fifth to run the pour over station, while Mikkeller’s fifth is the shift manager helping out or waitstaff doing their own bar service. At both places, all staff seem to be trained to do all things and take up service backlog as needed, transitioning smoothly from function to function without stepping on each others’ toes.

In front of the bar, out in customerspace, there’s also a lot of slack. In the case of Mikkeller, since all parts of the bar that are not the bar itself are servicespace, that makes it relatively easy to navigate and get beer and food out promptly. In the case of Sightglass, most of the space is not servicespace but provides enough room for customers to get out of the way once they’ve ordered and not present navigation problems for each other. The upstairs at Sightglass is a servicespace for certain parts of the day and the same bit about slack holds there. 

One final thing, look at how many different kinds of customerspace exist to afford different kinds of use: standing, sitting, alone or in groups or communal, in high or low traffic areas, face to face or face to service or face to space. For every kind of customer, a space.

P.S. Much of this thinking comes from time spent with industry people discussing the mechanics of service in the context of the needs of a business. They’ve been kind enough to tolerate my incessant curiosity. Thanks Dave, Paul, Tim and Jesse!

malleable tools

The idea of user-driven innovation should be built into tools and applications. When something is modified by a user, that should make everyone involved in the development, sales, marketing, etc., of that thing to pay attention.