This Trust Machine Calls for Service Design

Addressing Blockchain adoption, with a designer mindset at hand, sounds like the holy grail. The path is not going to be straight at all: understanding of trust, transparency, transferability, identity with users’ lenses and needs. These challenges are exciting as they inspire a collective vision rather than threatening, just because they are complex. Simplicity goes with complexity.

I am still here to carve out a pathway aimed for applying intersections of research, business, design. In late 2016 my action research kicked off with readings, observing, listening and began with some key questions one year later. In 2018, two workshops with a research focus — exploring Blockchain concepts and tokenization using Design Thinking — and a work experience in the FinTech industry gave me more insights and touchpoints to pursuing Blockchain Service Design.

Recognizing the potential. Let’s take Bitcoin as a lighthouse to shed light to many more other potential applications of Blockchain technologies. Reliably sharing information between parties who might not trust each other, it is the pivotal aspect of Blockchain. Lett’s picture what Thomas Jefferson invented with the Polygraph and used to make copies of his mails. The copy is created in real time with the original. No need for a middle-man to transcribe the author’s word. The blockchain and its technologies expand that model to many copies distributed physically and operationally.

As consequence, the financial world and supply chain industry, only to mention two examples of many, are going under disruption. Yes, IBM, Microsoft and Intel are investing in Blockchain. Individuals, retail investors, start slowly opening up to cryptocurrencies or application tokens issued by start-up. The perception and access to investment, entrepreneurship will need a new user experience. The paradigm is changing, the storytelling is evolving to connect humans differently. Blockchain could help to eliminate stock transactions, global supply chain to represent food safety, publishers to deliver advertisement to users , healthcare to provide access to medical records, refugees to have their own human rights through digital identity valid anywhere regardless emergencies.

Yet, the blockchain adoption is very small. The main challenges are clearer than before such as, legal regulations, reputation due to investment speculation with bitcoin, there are far more prototypes than production systems, sustainable business models remains unproven. Use cases for Blockchain-based system are not certain and likely to take longer than expected.

Embracing Service Design, a dynamic language for a dynamic approach. Technologies are evolving as we seek for different way to find and solve problems. If Blockchain aims to make changes happen with transformative services, the emergence of design practice exists. 25 years ago with internet, we had huge progress — flat hierarchies, everyone has a voice — and failures too — censorship and media monopolies. Even than, only after a decade e-commerce, social networks and emails began to take off. Now they are embedded in our everyday life.

If we want to leverage the impact of decentralization, tokenomics and its features we need to instil an innovation ecosystem that generates customer value-creating process. The actors involved — end users, multiple stakeholders — could unveil the nature of the value. An example could be to design for ownership:

How might we design better ways to securely store private keys that balance security (keys cannot be easily copied or stolen) and ease of use?

If innovative services create new platforms — see FinTech, Healthcare and Mobility industry — a combination of actors triggers dynamic interdependencies within service configuration. The implications for organizations to understand and better connect with the users is vital. Service innovation underpins what the organizations cannot directly observe, hardly ever have knowledge or insights into customers’ behaviours and experiences, routines and habits.

The challenge for any innovators launching, designing innovative services flows in finding ways to co-design innovation ecosystems that harness organizational and user capacities, and unlock value dynamically for all parties. To trigger a new spirit and emotional connection with the usability of Distributed Ledgers Technologies, we need to apply and experiment methods to understand context, strategies and value creation. A good start might be working on ‘visualizing drivers of change’, ‘mapping the innovation ecosystem’.

These methods will draw in technical and non-technical experts. The gap between ‘techies’ and general users must be reduced from now on. For example, a participatory design with views from outside the organization. This is where users generate workarounds in response to constraints or opportunities. Blockchain teams — as much as other digital services — need to truly engage users in co-designing the customer journey mapping.

We do need to learn how to come together and cooperate to enable the best implications of Blockchain. Blockchains and its smart contracts are systems designed, created and used by humans. Biases and subjective views are fully alive through the expression of objective code. If networks can be secure, blockchains and its business model will have to deal with behaviours and human vulnerabilities. The alignment of incentives, there are thorny issues to solve when diverse communities comes together to participate.

Let’s risk and assume that we all are aware of wanted and unwanted consequences from the digital revolution and how it has turned upside down the relationship with institutions, with the value of truth, the value of trust.

My actions, purpose and observations are to embrace Service Design tools & methods that focuses on:

facilitating value co-creation to trigger exchange of resources between actors to face the implications of new technologies such as Blockchain

researching and acknowledging uncertainty of environments where purposes lead to disagreements, conflicts

considering strategy not as a top-down abstracted view, instead experimental activity based on wayfinding on the ground

This is a potential opportunity to renovate the lessons learnt from the internet revolution. We all are responsible to facilitate this journey of experimentation. Once the tools change, the culture will change too. Therefore, to leverage Blockchain — without forgetting Artificial intelligence — we need to adopt (more than before!) an action-oriented creative thinking toolkit for society and service organizations.