So, today is officially the final day of the COTEN project. I know the final day will continue to roll around the world with the sun, so it will stretch out longer than my own day. However, I'll be traveling later today, hence my post early this morning, which is, in any case, the afternoon for those of you in Australia and New Zealand. Ah! The joys of global projects!

First of all, my thanks to all of you as participants and to all the Special Guests who gave up their time - usually under pressure from panicked e-mails from me – to put together their essays and podcasts and to host their discussions threads. My thanks, also, are due to the Omnium team and to Carola Kutzner here at HSLU, who has been dealing with the admin behind the scenes. Lastly, thanks to Meena and Rick who stepped up while I was in Addis Ababa.

WHAT NEXT?

I said today is 'officially' the last day of COTEN, but we'll leave the interface open for quite a few weeks so you can continue to discuss or collaborate if you like and I know some of you want to finish off your contributions to the final activity. I'll be taking the next week off and unplugging before coming back the week after and tidying up, creating galleries, rounding up, etc.

I'd like to gather reflections, thoughts and feedback about the project too. I've set up a thread called REFLECTIONS & FEEDBACK for this where I have written my thoughts. I would really appreciate any feedback and thoughts from you. As I mentioned in the very beginning, this was somewhat of an experiment, so any inputs – fantastic, good, bad, awful – are appreciated, so don't hold back on your thoughts.

I hope COTEN becomes the start of something rather than the end, so remember, "Game Over, Press Start"!

THANKS BEN!
I'd also like to thank Ben Reason for being our final Special Guest this week. I'm hoping Ben will be able to drop by to post a final sign off or round up today. If you have any last thoughts and questions for him, please post them in his thread.

Cheers,

Andy

FINAL SPECIAL GUEST: BEN REASON!
I'm very pleased to welcome Ben Reason, one of the co-founders of live|work and a pioneer of service design as a discipline. Ben has provided strategic guidance and project delivery management on a range of high profile public sector projects for organisations such as the NHS Innovation Institute, The Design Council, the BBC, the Home Office, Vodafone, Experian & RSA. In 2009 he was voted one of the Top 20 most influential designers in IKON magazine. More about Ben in his profile.

Ben's Special Guest Lecture, Experience, experience, experience: lets get specific, argues that while experiences are central to the context of service design, the word and the way it dominates the discussion of service design, is unsatisfactory. He then goes on to present different definitions of experiences before concluding with an explanation of his own dissatisfaction with the word.

There is an accompanying Discussion Thread that Ben will be responding to throughout the week. Please don't forget to subscribe to it!.

FINAL ACTIVITY THREADS IN MAIN STUDIO
As I mentioned in the last New item, I have created a set of discussion threads in the Main Studio, each with an overarching theme pulled out of the Insights & Opportunities thread. As these are outside of the team discussions, anyone can join in or collaborate on any areas they would like to. So, please use these to brainstorm, collaborate, discuss for the final activity, INSPIRATION, INNOVATIONS & IDEAS.

I've coloured the thread titles in black to differentiate them from the other Special Guest discussion threads. Don't forget to subscribe to those threads if you want to receive regular updates of the discussions.

This week and next week are the last two weeks of the COTEN Project and we want to have a final push and see what we can create. The Final Activity - INSPIRATION, INNOVATIONS & IDEAS is designed to see if we can deliver something concrete out of the project, be it innovations, ideas, specific touchpoint prototypes or simply a framework or manifesto for future work and projects.

As we mention in the activity brief (see the Activities area, Higher Education is an enormous theme and we always knew it would be hard to grapple with, nonetheless through the discussions you have taken part in and the insights that you have gathered, we have the beginnings of a foundation.

We also know that we're jumping ahead in the classic service design process somewhat. Ideally we would focus down onto mapping out individual journeys and experiences and the service ecology of higher education. We would need to break down different areas and disciplines into smaller chunks, focus on them and build them up again.

Nevertheless, take a look at the Final Activity and let's see what we can come up with!

TEAMS OR THREADS?

As you'll read in the final activity brief, I'm wondering whether people would prefer to continue to collaborate in their teams (which makes it easy to upload stuff) or whether to set up three or four threads in the Main Studio based around the themes we select. If we need to upload things, they can be uploaded to individual Portfolios and I can transfer it to the Gallery.

Another option is to make one giant team that you are all part of, along with your own smaller teams (you can belong to more than one), but this seems likely to cofuse more than help.

If you have an opinion on this, post a not in the INSIGHTS & OPPORTUNITIES - Discussion Thread or drop me an e-mail at admin[at]creativewaves-coten.com.

Our Special Guests this week are Uscreates founders Mary Rose Cook and Zoë Stanton. Uscreates is a behaviour change agency that uses creative and collaborative approaches to change public behaviours for a better society.

In their Guest Essay they explore what tools can be used and adapted from service design practise to encourage behaviour change and give a range of case studies. In terms of COTEN's goals these match in well with Nabeel Hamdi's small change ideas as well as many of the discussions we have had so far.

I have set up a discussion thread in the Main Studio cunningly titled, SPECIAL GUESTS: USCREATES - Discussion Thread. Mary Rose and/or Zoë will be dropping by throughout the week to respond to your thoughts and questions, so please take a moment away from the World Cup to have a read of their essay and post your thoughts.

THANKS LIZ

My thanks to Liz Danzico for writing last week's Special Guest Essay. Unfortunately the essay was only posted midweek last week and Liz's work schedule has taken her to New Zealand this week (she's on a plane as I write). There wasn't a great deal of feedback to her from COTENistas (as you now seem to be called) as yet, so we'll keep the thread open and it would be great if a few of you could leave her some thoughts and questions for when she next manages to be online.

It's my very great pleasure to welcome Liz Danzico as our Special Guest this week writing about time, co-creation and improvisation. Her essay is in the Guest Lectures area and there is a discussion thread in the Main Studio where she will be open for your thoughts, questions and comments. Don't forget to subscribe to the thread to stay updated via e-mail or RSS.

About Liz
Liz is equal parts designer, educator, and editor. She is chair and co-founder of the MFA in Interaction Design Program at the School of Visual Arts. She is an independent consultant in New York and user experience consultant for Happy Cog, on the editorial board for Rosenfeld Media, columnist for Interactions Magazine, and on the board of Design Ignites Change. Liz has been adjunct faculty at the New School University and the Fashion Institute of Technology, and lectures widely.

More on Liz can be found in her COTEN profile as well as her website, Bobulate. She can be found on Twitter as @bobulate

ROLLING TEAMS TOGETHER
We know some teams have had more activity than others and that a couple of the teams have only one or two lonely active participants. So, for the next round of activities, we'll roll the teams into fewer, but larger ones to make sure every gets a chance for some interaction and activity.

I'll have a look around the team discussion areas, but if you feel like your are all alone in your team, please mail me to let me know on the admin (at) creativewaves-coten.com address so let me know.