Service design / Christophe Tallec

The following article is a contribution to signtific.org the research program of the Institute For the Future Palo Alto, featured in the 2009 Year one report project

Ambient intelligence is first related to responsive environments such as domotic discipline, but means a lot in a service strategy. Service consumers are more and more often multi-service consumers. So what could a service using an ambient intelligence strategy be? for which service providers could it mean a lot being in real time awareness of one’s environment and of the other multi-channeled services consumed?

different scales :

As a user,

Let’s set an example with an object vector of service, the iphone. How many services could be used in the same time via your iphone? As a vector of service, the iphone allows you in the same time to know what’s around you as a geolocation device, to recognize a sound playing nearby you,… both an “hyper-local” and “glocal” so called service experience

as a network of users,

new mesh to mesh networks and peer to peer trends developped this last decade, where you could interact with each others, exchanging datas and becoming service providers for each others (see peer to peer article).

as a company,

Looking at another scale, what kind of ambient intelligence strategy could for example a transport brand offers to it’s consumers? Should it be a contextual or predictive traffic information through these new kind of converging channel platform devices? Should this be an opportunity to actively interact with the company itself, creating temporary bridges between the user of the transport service and the company (for example a disabled people asking for some help in some non-“designed for all” environments, …). How do a company manage it’s territory created during the service relation it has with it’s consumers? Is this territory extended through time, after the service co-production time?

Between companies :

The end of silo industries and coopetion economy offers a new playground for companies that cooperates in a competition dynamic, where shared ambient intelligence strategies could extend the territories of each others. What is nike+, if not an ambient intelligent shared strategy, connecting the territories of Nike and apple, two brands in a multi-service consumed experience providing one enriched experience from the consumer point of view ?

as a city, as a country :

“numeric cities” experiences are coming in the next twenty years  and encompass many dimensions from the tourist or citizen experience they provide, to the democratic enhanced experience they offer. See for example the fing “ville 2.0” project http://www.villes2.fr/ or the “citizen science” project between carneggie Mellon University and Berkley http://www.living-environments.net/projects/citizenscience

In terms of information flow in our cities, we are already in real time cities, see for example the http://senseable.mit.edu/ project “SENSEable city”.

Is there a country 2.0 in relation to new globalized citizen behaviours?

toward post-glocal experiences would say Bruce Sterling…

Ambient intelligent strategies in services differs if services are geo-provided or not, and in relation to space and time with the fact that services are delivered to a community of consumers that may interact or already interacts with each others.