Guest post from Tiffany Chu, Continuum.

Amidst springtime temperatures, views of the Charles River, and a rogue fire drill, the first-ever US conference on service design kicked off last weekend in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We were excited to attend the Service Design Network Conference 2010 at Microsoft's New England Research Development Center (aptly nicknamed the 'NERD' Center) and to bring you a report of what's happening at the boundaries of this emerging realm of design.

Trained as an industrial designer and now one of the cofounders and director of Engine in the UK, Oliver King was the first to take the stage and presented an encompassing overview of 'What is Service Design?' Laying a robust foundation for the rest of the day's conversations to build upon, King articulated what this new kind of design is: "Service is the act of helping someone to do something. The important word here is 'act.' It's all about an activity, which is dynamic. Services are designed by the people who provide and receive them."

Flipping through slides of complexly diagrammed journeymapping, King broke down the entire service design process into two parts: discovering and defining the problem, then developing and delivering a big idea. "The experience of design research [which includes a team really 'going out there and understanding everything connected that is going on, from what people say to what people do']—is as valuable as the final report itself."

King concluded his presentation with a salient case study and introduced ANA, the vast body that manages the majority of Portugal's airports. With far more logistics, security, competition, and obstacles in the airline industry today, ANA recently realized that they needed to change from being a company about infrastructure to one about the well-being of their passengers. After substantial research and journeymapping, Engine came up with two big deliverables: a Passenger Services Strategy proposition, and then a set of module-like management services—including training in engaging family-oriented passengers, a personalized "MyAirport" technology platform, and a new organizational structure deployed especially for service. From a former motto of "Enlivening Airports," the face of ANA transformed into "Preparing You for Travel."

Keep checking back for more on the conference!