Illusion

Good services are like a magic trick, the complexity and hard work is hidden from the viewer to give the illusion that something else, something simpler, is happening.

Bad services break that illusion, the Mighty Oz is revealed to be clunky unconnected processes and systems barely held together.

Increasingly I find myself looking for the moments the illusion breaks and the service experience is revealed to be smoke and mirrors.

Booking an aeroplane ticket online and having to call the service desk instead because the online service could not provide the illusion of a seamless service between seat reservation, loyalty club, and payment.

Reporting a fault on my mother’s phone service that required constant escalation because the phone company’s online fault management system has never been tested with users so no one has spotted that it simply does not work in modern browsers so the two letter phone company in question continues to throw money and good will away as a consequence.

A multimillion pound corporate HR and finance system where the major software company who produced it have managed to make no two parts work the same and where it is impossible to get the answer to the question “How much does the company owe employee X in pay, expenses and unused holiday time?” without using a pen and a piece of paper.

Services are hard. Often we have to wrestle with clunky legacy systems where no one is left who can explain the design choices made. We have to cope with business processes that have accreted complexity over time. We have to deal with edge cases that grow exponentially more complex. We have to balance user empowerment, including that of our service teams, with rigour and audit. We have to make the simple simple and the difficult hard but not so much that people sleepwalk into signing over their credit card details to the Home for Indigent Bears (please give generously).

Good service design is like being a good illusionist, the audience are delighted and keep coming back, they know that what they see is not what is actually under the hood but the illusion holds and the service feels complete and delightful.

Bad service design is where we break the illusion, where we make the user feel the pain, where we are no longer in control of the service we purport to provide.

Be a good illusionist.