Service Design Show

Sustainability is the innovation frontier of the 21st century -- and if you don't get on that train, you'll be lost. This quote emerged during the recent conversation with Bhavi Patel and Heydn Ericson on the Show, where we explored the intersection between circular and service design. As it turns out, you, as a service design professional, are in a great position to push a more sustainable approach forward. Yes, even if it's currently not a priority in your organization. In this episode, you'll hear practical examples of how to do this—helping you design services that aren't just good for your customers and business but also for our planet. The conversation also reveals how you can work towards making sustainability a fundamental design principle at the start of every project, not an afterthought. Small teaser, you need to make a compelling business argument... there are plenty. All in all, an inspiring episode if you want to be more conscious about taking care of our environment in your own design practice.

Having a seat at the table... That's what we often talk about in the service design field. And I would say rightfully so. Because when you do get involved early, you have the opportunity to influence the direction of a project. On the flip side, you could end up making the perfect solution for the wrong problem when you get involved late. But how do you get your business stakeholder to see and appreciate the strategic value you can bring early on? That was the question Karen Baker and I explored in our recent conversation. Karen has a marketing background, and she looks at the challenges in our field from a slightly different perspective. As you'll hear, our conversation started by discussing design inclusivity, but... We eventually landed upon one simple question that brings everything together. This simple question acts like your north star, compass, and light in the dark. This question is so good that it deserves its own t-shirt. So want to get a seat at the table? Want to influence projects early? Want to

What can you expect during the Service Design Global Conference 2022? Vinay Venkatraman is one of the speakers at the conference and in this video, you'll get a sneak preview of his talk. If you want to attend the conference check out the link and discount code down below. [ 1. EPISODE GUIDE ] 00:00 Welcome 01:45 Who is Vinay 03:00 Main topic 04:45 Why this topic 07:15 Key lesson 10:45 Future perspective 13:15 Remember one thing 14:00 Reaching out to Vinay 14:45 Looking forward to 16:30 Closing thoughts [ 2. LINKS ] * https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinay85/ [ 3. CONFERENCE ] Join the Service Design Global Conference on October 13 & 14, 2022. Use the code SDSHOW to get a **20% discount** on your ticket. https://hopin.com/events/service-design-global-conference-2022/registration

What can you expect during the Service Design Global Conference 2022? In this episode, you'll hear the closing keynote speaker, Christian Bason, share a preview.  If you want to attend the conference check out the link and discount code down below. [ 1. EPISODE GUIDE ] 00:00 Welcome 01:45 Who is Christian 03:00 The big idea 05:45 Designing with time 07:45 Who owns the agenda 10:00 Design is future-oriented 12:00 Life-centered design 13:45 The 6 expansions 16:30 The big question 17:15 Looking forward to 18:00 Closing thoughts [ 2. LINKS ] * https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianbason/ * https://expandthefuture.com [ 3. CONFERENCE ] Join the Service Design Global Conference on October 13 & 14, 2022. Use the code SDSHOW to get a **20% discount** on your ticket. https://hopin.com/events/service-design-global-conference-2022/registration

Here's something everyone knows but companies tend to ignore... It's tough to deliver a great customer experience when your employees are unhappy or unsatisfied. So designing the employee experience is probably just as, if even not more, important than designing the customer experience. Someone who is a strong advocate for this is Marine Bucher, who has made it her mission to design humanity at work. I sat down with Marine to talk about what it actually means to design the employee experience. In this episode, Marine shares some inspiring examples from her work. You'll also hear which companies are more open to investing in their employee experience and the common roadblocks that Marine has to overcome. If you believe that a great customer experience starts inside your organization, then I'm sure this episode will inspire you. --- [ 1. GUIDE ] --- 00:00 Welcome to episode 159 02:45 Who is Marine 04:45 Lightning round 07:00 Topic introduction 09:15 Relationship to employee experience 10:30 What does success lo

Let's talk about a service designer's favorite topic... measuring impact. Why is it so d*mn hard!? We'll get to that in a minute. Of course, the idea behind measuring the impact of your work is smart. When done right, it helps you to stay on track. Make sure your efforts actually make a positive contribution. And show you if you need to redirect your efforts to something else. But often, we find that many things inside organizations are measured because they are easy to express in numbers... not because they are the right indicators of success. And this is exactly the challenge we run into as a service design community. Showing the impact of our work across an entire service or customer journey is not easy. But this shouldn't stop us from trying, right? That's why in a recent Circle community session, we explored: How to overcome the limitations of existing ways of measuring How to measure things that span multiple channels and departments How to build a useful CX dashboard Tim Dekker hosted the convers

Here's a question you might not think about daily... How is service design practiced in China? I'm always eager to learn about the (subtle) differences in how our field is perceived within different cultures. Why? Because seeing that there are other ways to approach things enriches my perspective and keeps me grounded about my way of working. The goal isn't to copy what's being done in other places but rather to understand its reasoning and philosophy. That's why I was excited to have a conversation with Zichian Xiong recently on the Show. He currently lives and works in the USA, but Zichuan was also at the forefront when service design started to emerge in China. As he's seen both worlds, Zichuan is in a great position to articulate the relevant similarities and differences. To get a good understanding of these similarities and differences, you'll hear about: Who is driving the design movement? (it's not consultancies) Which kinds of services are being designed in China and which ones aren't? What is th

I could have seen this coming... That's the last thing you want to say when your project isn't going well. To minimize this risk, you'll need to identify red flags early on and work to create conditions for success. But it's challenging to talk about these topics with internal stakeholders before your project begins. People are eager to start; it makes sense. And you don't want to be seen as the one who is delaying things unnecessarily or putting roadblocks up. Before you climb a mountain, it's wise to take advice from someone who's done it before so that you don't get stuck halfway on your journey. In this case, you're the one who's climbed the mountain of a service design project, and your internal stakeholder is eager to embark on their first trip. So how do you make it evident that you're doing your internal stakeholder a service by addressing the conditions for success early on? You're helping them avoid common pitfalls and saving them the embarrassment of cleaning up the mess when things go sour. Well,

No, it's not the latest shoes... What does it take for a professional athlete to perform at their best? Sure, she needs to have talent and be in top physical shape. But that's not enough. The top performing athletes are, for example, rigorous regarding their sleep, diet, and mental well-being. These things are the foundation for them to deliver a world-class performance. Now, I have a weird assumption. A design professional and an athlete might have more in common than meets the eye. I bet you that the top-performing design professionals also have a set of rigorous habits, routines, and rituals that allow them to deliver their most impactful work. I want to test this assumption in what might become an entirely new series on the Show. And who would be a better candidate for the first conversation about this than Chris Do? Chris Do is an educator and content creator who daily impacts the lives of thousands, if not millions, of creative professionals. So I invited Chris to get down and personal. In this episode,

I wish it were different, but… The reality is that service design still isn’t business as usual. This means that you need to do a lot of evangelizing as part of your job. Getting business stakeholders, clients, and even your colleagues to buy into the value of a human-centered, design-driven way of working. I see that many service design professionals rely on their improvisation skills and hope to come up with the right message at the right time. If you’re lucky, this approach can work, but it’s not the most effective. So these professionals struggle, get stuck and eventually become frustrated because they can’t get the people around them to see the benefits of their work. But did you know there is a remarkably simple way to get over this? Instead of improvisation and hope, you need a structured process and the right frameworks. What is this process, and what are these frameworks? Well, I’ve invited 7 participants who recently graduated from the Selling Service Design with Confidence program to share their le

It's not a secret... Every day we are outsourcing more and more of our decisions to AI algorithms. Some of these decisions are frivolous, like determining if that's a cat in the photo. Other decisions are of much higher stake, like whether you will get that medical treatment. Especially with the last kind of decisions, we'd better ensure that these algorithms are designed and used responsibly. And according to Jillian Powers, service design professionals must play a vital role in this process. This means we need to get familiar and comfortable with this new technology. But how? Well, in this episode, Jillian gives a "data science 101" for designers. I assure you that there won't be any complex computer math that you need to understand. On the contrary, you'll hear that bringing the human perspective into the conversation is the thing that's currently missing. This is one of those episodes that shines a light on a blind spot that you didn't even realize you had. So grab your notebook and click the link below!

Wouldn't it be great if... Delivering a great customer experience wasn't just a "nice to have" when there's time left but an actual strategic priority that guides decision-making? I'm sure you know many examples of (expensive) service failures that could have been prevented if the voice of the customer had been part of the conversations inside the company. Of course, this is precisely one of the things we try to achieve with service design. The problem is that we often don't yet have the authority to drive critical decisions. So no matter which arguments we bring forward when push comes to shove, in the end, it's always going to be the "HiPPO" in the room that calls the shots. Wolfram Thurm and his team were also running into this challenge. It was hard for them to get the value of design across so that other business stakeholders would see the benefits for them. Consequently, many times decisions were made that weren't in favor of the customer and the business. To the frustration of everyone involved. Fueled

Who doesn't want this... To come up with smart solutions for relevant challenges that are immediately embraced by the end-users. Well, in this week's episode of the Show, Victor Udoewa shares a radical approach to the design process that increases the chance you'll actually accomplish this. But first, let's quickly look at why solutions don't get adopted. It's often not due to bad intentions. Many times it has to do with the fact that a wrong judgment call has been made about what's important. Because as a design professional, you're -implicitly- imposing your ideas, values, and norms onto the process. You are in a strong position of power, whether you like it or not. The problem is that this leads to solutions derived from a single -often mainstream- worldview.  Again, this isn't something that professionals set out to do. It happens because of the nature of the current design process. So is there something we can do about this? According to Victor, there is! We, starting with the design professional, h

There's no doubt about it... Over the last few years, design has gained a lot of momentum in the business space. It's encouraging to see that design is slowly but surely getting a seat at the table. But at which price has this raise come? And are we willing to pay this price? When you zoom out a bit, you'll quickly notice that it's often the "easy to digest" form of design that is praised, the form where the focus primarily lies on gaining short-term benefits and incremental improvements. While that's a space where design can add value, it's not the space where it shines, according to Tom Foster. In this episode with Tom, I talk about how you can regain the space and time again to work on bigger, dare I say, more meaningful challenges. Now, if you think that's going hard in your organization, mind that Tom has worked in many traditional sectors and is now back in finance. If it's possible there, it might also be for you :) Although I'm excited that design is making huge strides these days, it's sad to see tha

As a consumer, you use artificial intelligence daily.  Just open any app on your phone, and the chances are that AI is somehow embedded within it. The development of AI so far has been driven mainly by engineers and scientists. But have you ever wondered how service design help to shape this powerful new technology? Well, it's not a question that's on my mind daily... But after the recent conversation with Carly Burton, I'm definitely more aware of the opportunity in front of us. As the product lead for the AI platform at Meta, Carly is on a mission to bring more design(ers) into developing better AI. In this episode, you'll learn why this is important and what might happen when we fail to do so. There are still many unknowns and unanswered questions in this space. And that's precisely the space where design thrives. But we shouldn't wait for the moment that design gets invited into the conversation. So it's really up to us to proactively create these bridges. If you're curious how, then Carly has some i

How can you enable service designers to deliver their best work? That's coming up in a second but first, imagine this... A wedding where the bride and groom have to take care of all the logistics on the big day itself. Everything from arranging the tables to welcoming the band. There will be little time and space to focus on why they are truly there. Yeah, that's why we have masters of ceremony and wedding planners. These people do all the heavy lifting so that the couple can own the moment. Okay, so what does this have to do with design? A lot. Many organizations that hire service design professionals forget (or aren't aware of) that they need support. And this leads to all kinds of problems. Most notably, designers get frustrated by not being able to live up to their full potential, eventually leaving the organization before they can create any meaningful impact. Fortunately, there's a new field emerging that has acknowledged this problem and is developing strategies to cope with it. This field is known as

How can service design help in times of crisis? This is one of the questions Max Tkachuk and I explore in this episode.  Max lives in Kyiv and is an active member of the service design community in Ukraine. Being a first-hand witness of the war, Max sees how both the local and international service design communities respond to the situation. In this episode you'll learn about: The state of service design in Ukraine. If service design is relevant in times of crisis. What can we, as an international community, do to help. Which role could service design play after the war. What lessons you can take away from all this. Despite the terrible situation, it's encouraging to hear that at the same time, many good things happing in Ukraine.  I would invite you to listen to this conversation and see how you can potentially contribute, no matter how big or small. Sometimes service design is thought of as a nice to have addon. For me, this chat with Max once again shows that it can (and should) be at the

There's an intriguing mystery to the backstage... Think about it for a moment. People love to see what happens inside the kitchen of a Gordon Ramsey restaurant. Or to follow a sports team into the locker room before and after a game.  We want to look over the shoulder and get an inside glimpse. See things that are usually hidden from the general public. We want to see beyond the frontstage. Well, I've got exciting news, because today we're going to do just that. Not for a restaurant or your favorite sports team but for a leading service design consultancy. To celebrate their 4th anniversary with the community, the team from Harmonic Design agreed to sit down with me for an uncensored ask-me-anything episode. In this episode, you'll hear the team react to questions like: What is your strategy for finding new clients? What is the most challenging part of your work? What does it take to get hired at a service design consultancy? What is the biggest failure you made in a project? What is the most impor

I used to say that 50% of service design is about communication. Today I think the percentage might be even higher... Just think about all those moments where you need to collaborate with someone to get something done. Yes, that's like always. Sometimes what you need is the attention from your co-worker other times, it will be time or money from your CEO. Whatever the case is, when you fail to show the benefits your work has for the other person, you won't get very far as a service design professional. But as you know, communicating benefits is easier said than done. Let's take the common journey map, just as an example. Should you show the entire map with all its richness and potentially risk losing people in the complexity? Or should you just show a small part of it but risk that people will oversimplify things? This balancing act between what you tell, how you tell it, and when you tell it happens all the time. And it's one of those things that can make or break your day, project, and sometimes even career

Every service design project starts with an initial conversation. From there, you build trust, confidence, and the relationship to do great work. But getting that first conversation started can often be one of the hardest things. Especially when you consider that many organizations still aren't aware that service design exists, let alone how they can benefit from it. Of course, you could sit back and wait for the moment when the organization is ready. But this approach will mean that while waiting, you'll miss out on many great opportunities to put your skills to good use. So is there an effective way you could proactively get your foot in the door and pitch service design to an organization that doesn't know it needs it? Yes, there is! And it's more than one... In this week's episode, Matthew Marino, founder of the Paris-based studio User.io, shares the different approaches they have been experimenting with over the years. You'll learn about the use of concept projects, the trojan horse approach, and how to