Future of services

Last Thursday Club of Amsterdam organized the Future of Services evening seminar. Info.nl did partner in the event. Robert Hewin, Pieter Jan Stappers and Lorna Goulden gave great talks sharing their view on the future of services from different angles. I shared our vision on the future of online services, or as the full title was: A future of impulse driven and hyper personalized services. Below you find my slides and a kind of executive summary of the talk.

[slideshare id=6972966&doc=futureofservicesiskander-110218073305-phpapp01]

In the first part I told how we we move to impulse driven services that fits the trend of the new ‘your web’ phase we are entering, a term I borrowed from Gravity, where all profiling based on big data is used to create experiences that fit our wishes. We are in the beginning of an era of curiosity where we need to learn to be curious in stead of learn all the knowledge, as Jesse Schell showed us.

The profiles are made out of the big data and will be ruled by algorithms, like Kevin Slavin made us very clear. These profiles are the key for the impulse services that will be able to fit the needs of now and the coming future.

In the second part I added some second thoughts. If we will live in a world where we don’t have to think anymore because the system ‘knows’ our next moves, the profile will faint out because of lack of choices. It is almost a paradox: the more we have these impulse services the less accurate they will become.

We will see therefor that we need play to tickle the experiences and create choices. We need the user to make choices to fuel the profiles. To design for the future services will therefor all about designing for choices. We will create systems with ‘play money’ that provide game rules that can be bent and we will have assignments for our customers that stimulate them to be experimental travellers when they use the services. Design for behavior that let the system flow.