Setting the stage for service experience:design strategies for functional services

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify service design strategies to improve outcome-oriented services by enhancing consumers’ emotional experience, while overcoming customer variability. Design/methodology/approach: An abductive, multiple-case study involves 12 service firms from diverse online and offline service sectors. Findings: Overall, six service design strategies represent two overarching themes: customer empowerment can involve design for typical customers, visibility, and community building, while customer accommodation can involve design for personas, invisibility, and relationship building. Using these strategies helps set the stage for a service to offer an emotional experience. Research limitations/implications: The study offers a first step toward combining investigations of service experience and user experience. Further research can strengthen these links. Practical implications: The six design strategies described using examples from case research offer managerial recommendations. In particular, these strategies can help service managers address the customer-induced variability inherent in services. Originality/value: Extant studies of experience staging have focused on particular sectors such as hospitality and leisure; this study contributes by investigating outcome-focused services and identifying strategies to create unique experiences that offset variability. It also represents a rare effort to combine research from service management and interaction design, shedding light on the link between service experience and user experience

Hippie Acid Freak Drag Queens: Situating the Cockettes within an Art Historical Context

This thesis situates the Cockettes – a performance group rarely referenced in art historical discourse - within Bay Area performance art, second-wave feminist art, and the Gay Liberation Movement. Contextualizing the Cockettes within their contemporary art movements provides a new understanding of the group and emphasizes their significance to art history

Doug und Mike Starn

Doug and Mike Starn: Evolution from Photography to Public Art investigates the pioneering installations and public art by Doug and Mike Starn, establishes their position within the complete oeuvre and examines the confluence of media they have worked in, while situating the artists and their work within the contemporary art historic context. Intrinsic characteristics of the Starn brothers’ work are the principles of interconnectedness, continuity, duality and change, a continuous evolution combined with a stunning ability to reinvent their work, redefining entire art genres in the process. Identical twins Doug and Mike Starn, born in 1961 and included in the 1987 Whitney Biennial at the age of 26, work collaboratively. The primary medium of photography characterizes their early work, evolving in the 1990s to include artist books, large-scale video projections, and installations. Incidentally, their first permanent public art commission is tied to the reconstruction of New York’s infrastructure following the tragedy of September 11, 2001. The goal is to delineate context, process, and significance of the artists’ foray into public art. An analysis and interpretation of artistic production, context, partnerships, process, scale and reception will reveal the transition from stellar gallery production to installation art and exceptional public art. Highlights of the pair’s stellar career include the completion of two important public art projects in New York City in 2008 and 2010, one permanent and one temporary: the permanent public art environment See it split, see it change on the concourse of South Ferry Subway Station at the tip of Manhattan and the temporary, monumental Big Bambú installation on the Metropolitan Museum’s roof garden. These outstanding works were preceded by years of artistic inquiry and development in the genre of photography, whose path the study explores.Das Œuvre von Doug und Mike Starn spannt den Bogen von der Fotografie zur Kunst am Bau und zur Kunst im öffentlichen Raum. Zwischen diesen Polen bewegt sich die Entwicklung der Künstlerzwillinge, die sich in ihrer Zusammenarbeit mit den Themen Licht, Kontinuität und Vergänglichkeit beschäftigen. Als junge Künstler entwickelten sie groß-formatige, mit Klebeband zusammengesetzte Foto-Collagen, die bereits 1987 zur Beteiligung am Whitney Biennial führten. Zu den Höhepunkten ihres künstlerischen Schaffens gehören zwei wichtige Projekte im öffentlichen Raum mit Standort New York. See it split, see it change (2008) wurde für die South Ferry Transitstation geschaffen und die monumentale, temporäre Installation Big Bambú (2010) war auf dem Dach des Metropolitan Museum of Art installiert. Ersteres Werk ist die umfangreichste Glasinstallation der New Yorker öffentlichen Verkehrsbetriebe, letzteres die größte Außenausstellung in der Geschichte des Metropolitan Museum. Den bahnbrechenden Arbeiten der Starns gingen zwei Jahrzehnte künstlerischer Entwicklung voraus, deren Zusammenhang mit dem späteren Werk in dieser Studie aufgezeigt wird. Sie steht im Brennpunkt technischer und politischer Umwälzungen, die durch fortschreitende Digitalisierung und den 11. September geprägt sind

Packaging radio technology during the interwar period (1925-1939) How did the rise in popularity of the wireless receiver introduce the Modernist Aesthetic to the British domestic environment?

This thesis aims to identify and explain how, through the consumption of the wireless as a modern consumer durable, modernism was brought to society. To understand this process, the study will map how social change during the period responded to wider intellectual and aesthetic currents and trends but was driven by emergent commercial, cultural and political economies of a newly mediated society. Furthermore, it seeks to establish that this happened not as a result of social engineering through model housing schemes but as a result of consumer-led demand. This investigation considers how, as part of that newly mediated social environment, the wireless developed following its arrival on the domestic market without having adopted a single stylistic form. It addresses how that form, both stylistically and technically, evolved over a relatively short period to address the economic and cultural requirements and expectations of a new electrically powered domestic entertainment technology. In so doing, a discourse will be established considering these expectations and requirements related to how the wireless in Britain adopted and adapted the Modernist design idiom. It will further consider how the language of Modernism was propagated as the accepted version of what a radio could or should look like, so developing the modernist paradigm in a broader sense. To gain an appreciation of this it is necessary to understand the contemporary public conception of what the modern was in a more general sense. To decipher this public perception of modernity the project aims to extrapolate that public conception through examining other popular forms and products. Although this suggests that Radio was not alone in adopting the language of the moderne, as a product it is notable for its widespread commercial success and as such can be identified as a significant carrier of the coded message of what was modern. Design historians such as Yagou and Forty have attempted to incorporate radio into various strands of historical perception but the typologies they have devised to describe and understand wireless fall short in addressing the relationship between modernity and the wireless and instead see the wireless in terms of being an independent consumer product, a quasi-scientific instrument or else a furnishing form, rather than creating categories which accommodate the wireless and its position as a design type in its own right. To overcome this shortcoming a strand of this thesis seeks to argue that the wireless was itself a proto-modernist device during the early years of market expansion. That device then developed along a natural stylistic course embracing contemporary decorative ideas. By assessing the response of radio manufacturers to the socio-economic conditions of their market, this study has highlighted how through producing a product which addressed contemporary ideas of glamour, ease of use and functionality, the wireless entered a wide range of homes during the 1920s and 1930s. For the public, the immediate appeal of the wireless was that it provided access to the international experience of listening in while simultaneously it provided a template for the consumer to base their understanding of the modern World, both in its mediated form and stylistic appearance. This thesis seeks to demonstrate that during the period 1925 to 1939, the wireless established itself as an unashamedly modern device which appealed to a broad socio economic cross section of the public. By consuming the wireless, the British public accepted a significant technological and stylistic aspect of modernity into their homes. This was achieved despite the privations of the era because of the perceived desirability of wireless broadcasts and the perception of listening in as a popular leisure activity. As a result of that consumer demand, the British public was given access to a range of stylistic versions of modernity through the design of radio cabinetry. These modern styles were readily consumed throughout the social spectrum in preference to historicist alternatives. This demonstrates that the wireless was instrumental in introducing the modernist aesthetic to the British domestic environment

Re: Ornament

Re:Ornament calls for a rethinking of ornament within the history and practice of design, urging a broad reconsideration of ornament’s value and a complete reimagining of ornament’s future potential. Charting the arc of ornament in the Western tradition, this thesis reexamines the impact of modernism’s rejection of ornament—and, with it, its embedded culture, history, knowledge and craft. Studying ornament’s structure as a language, I make the case for ornament’s inherent beauty and excess and speculate on how ornament could apply to thinking and making beyond design. Through graphic form, material exploration and pattern thinking, I negotiate these complexities with work that is intrinsically structural, deeply ornamental and often a hybrid of the material and the digital, the hand and the machine. As such, my work is not only a response to—or rebuttal of—modernism, but also a call to action and an invitation to remember, recalibrate and remake our perception and use of ornament today

Transforming shape: hybrid practice as group activity

Printed textile and garment design are generally taught and practised as separate disciplines. Integrated CAD software enables textile and clothing designers to envisage printed garments by assimilating graphic imagery with 2D garment shapes and 3D visualizations. Digital fabric printing can be employed to transpose print-filled garment shapes directly onto cloth. During a recently completed practice-led PhD (1998-2003), I researched the aesthetic design potential of combining new CAD technology with garment modelling methods to create new innovative printed textiles/garments. The merging of physical and screen-based making resulted in a hybrid 3D approach to the body, cloth and print referred to as the 'simultaneous design method'. In 2001 this hybrid practice provided the catalyst for a collaborative textile research project at the Nottingham Trent University, UK. The group included surface, shape and multimedia designers. The key group aim was to explore the transforming effects of computer-aided textile design through dialogues between two and three dimensions. In parallel with my own practice, print and embroidery were considered from a 3D starting-point through the relating of geometric cloth shapes to the form. Each designer took an idiosyncratic approach to the selection and integration of imagery with the shapes. The novel consideration of the final modelled textile at the start of the designing process influenced each designer in different ways, leading to a collection of contrasting, original outcomes that were displayed in the exhibition Transforming Shape (UK 2001, Denmark 2003). The exhibition demonstrated the design opportunities (and limitations) of new and existing technologies, specifically the relationship between innovative textile imagery and three-dimensional form. The designs illustrated the premise that surface designs can be engineered through different pattern shapes and that engineer-printed shapes transform the body

Spatial Graphic Design: Archetypical Design Practices And Theory Studies On Constructing A Narrative Of Place

This thesis focuses on identifying, classifying and naming of unnamed Spatial Graphic Design archetypes in contemporary interiors that are derived from reiterative historical designs. The study is a component of the Intypes (Interior Archetypes) Research and Teaching Project established in 1997 at Cornell University. An Intype is an ideal example of a historically determined design strategy from which similar models are derived, emulated or reiterated. This thesis outlines the study of five new Spatial Graphic Design Intypes, based on a comprehensive content survey of design trade journals, secondary sources, and scholarly articles, as well as site visits to relevant existing interiors. The newly identified Intypes are Repeat Repeat, Colorbrand, Understate, Activate and Saturate. This group of new Intypes is best understood in two distinct categories-brand strategies (Repeat Repeat, Colorbrand) and brand concepts (Understate, Activate, Saturate). These strategies represent specific design choices coupled with one another or various other design elements in an effort to achieve the larger umbrella concept for the space. The interiors analyzed in this study span a wide range of practice areas, including everything from workplace to nightclub, dating back upwards of five decades in addition to continued use in contemporary practice. In addition to this research thesis, the Spatial Graphic Design Intypes developed in this study will be disseminated through the free and open website - www.Intypes.Cornell.edu - a web-based research and teaching site that makes design history and contemporary practice accessible to academics, professionals, and students

Transforming shape: a simultaneous approach to the body, cloth and print for garment and textile design (synthesising CAD with manual methods)

Printed textile and garment design are generally taught and practised as separate disciplines. Integrated CAD software enables textile and clothing designers to envisage printed garments by assimilating graphic imagery with 2D garment shapes, and 3D visualisations. Digital printing can be enlisted to transpose print-filled garment shapes directly onto cloth. This research challenges existing 2D practice by synthesising manual and CAD technologies, to explore the integration of print design and garment shape from a simultaneous, 3D perspective. This research has identified three fundamental archetypes of printed garment styles from Twentieth Century fashion: 'sculptural', 'architectural' and 'crossover'. The contrasting spatial characteristics and surface patterning inherent in these models provided tlýe theoretical and practical framework for the research. Design approaches such as'textile-led', 'garment-led'and 'the garment as canvas' highlighted the originality of the simultaneous design method, which embraces all of these concepts. This research recognises the body form as a positive influence within the printed textile and printed garment designing process, whereby modelled fabric shapes can be enlisted to determine mark making. The aim of the practice, to create printed garment designs from a 3D perspective, was facilitated by an original method of image capture, resulting in blueprinted toiles, or cyanoforms, that formed the basis of engineer-printed garments and textiles. Integrated CAD software provided the interface between manual modelling, design development and realisation, where draping software was employed to digitally craft 3D textiles. The practical and aesthetic characteristics of digital printing were tested through the printing of photographic-style, integrated garment prototypes. The design outcomes demonstrate that a simultaneous approach to the body, cloth and print can result in innovative textile vocabulary, that'plays a proactive role within the design equation, through its aesthetic integration with garment and form. The integration of print directly with the garment contour can result in a 3D orientated approach to printed garment design that is empathetic with the natural body shape