CRM, whole view of the customer, joined up marketing, call it what you will, but it's ultimately the holy grail of most businesses.

It's simply about making life better and easier for customers. Now, I've been a customer of NatWest for close on 20 years. I don't particularly like them, they never help and every time I drop into a branch they always try to sell me something or get me to undertake an account review, "No thanks" I tell them everytime, in fact can you remember to stop asking me everytime, but it's seems they can't, or don't want to.

Like most people I use paper-free billing. It just makes life easier, so I opted in not to receive any more mail. Easy, life is all good.

Unlike the credit side of the NatWest business. Seems they just love DM and tons of it.

Now as a customer that likes paper-free, you'd think they'd have a global flag saying Email this customer, or get him when he's logged in. Not so. I've continued to receive lots of junk offering me 'amazing' deals and things that are of no us to me. How annoying.

On the bottom part of the latest letter was a statement that read if you want to stop receiving these mailings please call us. So I did. After navigating a really irritating IVR menu that wasn't really concerned with stopping mailing I spoke to an operator after 4:28m. Whilst NatWest believe my patience was appreciated, that wasn't the case with the operator who had to put me on hold whilst she found out how to opt me out of junk.

I don't intend for this to be a rant, or to tell the world that this should be done online only.. obviously that's not going to work for everyone. What I'm talking about is understand as a customer I don't like things in the post, I told you that and if you get it wrong, that's ok, just make it easy for me. I'll appreciate it.

Service Design. Just what exactly is it and how do you do it? After reading a couple of articles and attending a few talks I still wasn't completely sure. It seemed like 'making things better'. OK, sounds good, but where's the techniques and how are they different to User Centred Design methodologies?

Roll on Global Service Jam 11. After forming teams, with people from different background who we'd never worked with before the brief was revealed - superheros. Nice. Where can we go from here. For those of us who'd been around the block it is interesting, for the graduates it scared the hell out of them.

Friday night - quick brainstorm, getting thinking of ideas, sleep on it and come prepared for show and tell in the morning.

Forming gets underway

The team had some pretty different people in it. A graphic design graduate, an engineer, a mobile designer and a couple of UX focused folks. As this was a voluntary event there were no self-appointed leaders or directors. Could we move forward with anything? Could we like hell.

Storming gets stormy

A few ideas started to complete, but no consensus could be built in the team. The devils advocate kept popping up and pyramid polishing and no one would accept the 80/20 rule. The young were being idealistic. It was certainly one of the most frustrating 12 hours I've ever done.

Norming is nice

Two members of the team realised we had 5 hours to go and nothing to present, so they elected me to team director. Agreeing on the concept was now straightforward - we wanted a service that was usable, unique and ultimately one where awareness was already high. From our research other similar services existed but no one knew about them or remembered them. That was our killer insight - extend a already much used service.

Performing art

The team came together and we all agreed we had cracked it. Now just two hours to actually do the weekends work. Everyone had their own role and responsibility and it came together like clockwork. Perfect (well almost).

We didn't have time to think through how we would really present, so that was a little average, but fine. Overall everyone seemed to think it was a viable service and since the Jam I've had feedback from others that they think it should be developed. 

Did I learn about service design? I'm not sure. I still don't know exactly what it is, other than making things better. For now I'm leaving my own description as UCD in an agile methodology - and certainly not just digital. Jam out. 

View all London GSJ11 projects

A course tutor (Stephen P Reid) introduced me to a couple of Tony Buzan mindmapping exercises. I always thought brainstorming and mindmapping were the same thing, right? Well most people seem to think so.

Recently I've read Tony Buzans book. Pretty interesting stuff and gives the low down on how and why you should think this way. 

I think coming up with ideas can be fun and organised chaos at the same time. Solving problems can be really frustrating to point of making you want to stick your head in the gas oven. I've got my own technique of attempting to do, but no real technique or anything I thought formal. Turns out I was pretty doing it right. If you haven't read it, there's a quick read called A Technique for producing ideas (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Technique-Producing-McGraw-Hill-Advertising-Classic/dp/0071410945). Basically input everything, sleep on it, ping - there's the idea, then beat the hell out of it.

As I was once told, the best ideas are born drowning.

So I wasn't entirely happy reading the following article, How Aha!  Really happens: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10405?pg=1. It misses the whole point of using parabrain processing. And that's where the magic happens to deliver a Aha! moment, usually about 3AM... damn.

Basically the best thing is your bed. Get that brain working in your kip and the number crunching machine will do its thing.

Here's an object. We interact with it. All through the mouse (or your weapon of choice). I've been involved in hundreds of web sites and their interaction design.

The most common convention for feedback is the rollover. We've all made an on and off graphic and hacked abit of javascript to do the image replacement.

Crank up the tech and get flash involved. OK, more interesting animation and interaction happening but still control by single input.

Then the iPhone came along with its touch interface. How exciting for user experience gurus and creatives alike. Not really, the input method is largely the same except now our trusted rollover feedback mechanism is dead - a tap is a click.

I've been involved in concepting the experience for a number of iPad projects. Get the thinking right, do the design, whack it in a perspective graphic of an iPad and bingo, looks almost real to touch.

So what's the big deal then? Fingers, that's what.

Interesting challenge for the day. A business I'm looking at has poor SEO and paid search to the extent that it's hard to find them. 

First port of call then - get the search sorted. Job done, everyone's happy.

Not so. The business has a healthy customer base and repeat business/word of mouth is fantastic. So adding more customers is a good thing right? This is where the possible goes deeper. If we add customers without the inventory being available then the product won't be there for the loyal customers and they may switch to another supplier.

Maybe this is a case of creating the ideal customer experience for actual customers and not simply try to pile in loads more new ones.