Service Design Show

The answer was simple... "It gave me the opportunity to start doing things the way I really thought they should be done." That's what Todd Wilkens said when I asked him why he decided to take on a leadership role. I think that every service design professional out there wants to have more influence on the decisions that are being made. Because you are the one who is fighting to do the "right thing" for your users. Who can argue against that right? Well in reality it's not that easy. When you want more influence, moving into a leadership position is almost a must. But what does this even mean? And is it a career step that you should consider? In this episode Todd takes us along his transformational journey from being a design practitioner to becoming a design leader. You'll learn about the mistakes he made along the way and now is slowly recovering from. I have to admit that this is quite a unique perspective that hasn't been shared on the Show often. So if you're interested in having a greater influ

Let's talk about rituals (and design)... Rituals have the power to turn an ordinary experience into something meaningful. They can be large and community based like a family reunion dinner. They can be small and personal like writing in your gratitude journal every morning. But what are rituals exactly? And how are they different from habits and routines? Adam Cochrane has been looking into the field of ritual design for a while. In this episode we explore the power of rituals as well as the potential dark side. We also discuss how you can bring rituals into your own design practice. Curious how to make the mundane meaningful again? Make sure you don't miss this conversation! --- [ GUIDE ] -— 00:00 Welcome to the Show 02:40 Who is Adam 04:00 What is ritual design 07:30 The opportunity 08:30 The back story 13:45 Your responsibility 17:00 The why of rituals 19:30 Key principles 24:00 Where to start 28:15 Lessons learned 31:30 Next steps 37:30 Circle reflection 40:30 Closing thoughts --- [ CIRCLE ] -—

Isn't it funny... Even though we live in a world which is dominated by services still many organisations have a very strong product mindset. And I get it (sort of). Products are tangible, easy to measure, perfect to manage. Everything a CEO wants right? Well, you as a service design professional know that product centric thinking is harmful. It creates silos, destroys the customer experience and in the end is bad for business. The reality is that product thinking isn't going to go away anytime soon. So this begs the question: How can you connect service design with "product people" inside an organisation and use each others strengths? Valeria Adani who's the head of service design at Frog has been faced many times with this challenge in her career. In this week's episode she shares her most important learnings around finding a common language, focussing on implementation and the pitfalls of oversimplification. When you take these lessons to heart I can guarantee that you'll be more impactful and do mor

As a service designer you never stop learning. But as you may have noticed already textbooks will only get you so far. Pretty quickly you'll want to discuss details and nuances of our practice that aren't easily captured in traditional literature. So how do you continue developing your skills once you reach that point? In the old days you would join a guild. The bakers, blacksmiths or brewers. Today these guilds are more commonly known as professional learning communities. These communities offer you the opportunity to learn from others, find support and provide the space to reflect on your work. But a community doesn't magically appear right in front of you. So in this episode you're going to hear how and where you can find a community where you feel at home. --- [ GUIDE ] -— 00:00 Welcome to the Show 03:00 Who is Natalie 04:15 What is a community 09:45 The limits of online 14:15 Growing through engagement 16:00 Starting a community 23:45 The importance of ownership 25:45 Longevity of communities 3

There is a clash... A clash between existing business logic and service design. For instance the focus on value extraction versus value creation. The difference in an open versus hierarchical workstyle. And the emphasis on statistical versus empirical evidence. If not dealt with in the right way, this clash creates tensions which prevents you from making a positive contribution through your work. The first step to effectively dealing with these tensions is recognizing that you're in a clash. Our guest in this week's episode Chris Ferguson calls these tensions double binds. And Chris has been doing some foundational research into this topic. You're going to learn about the most common double binds that he found through his research. If you stick around till the end of the episode you'll also walk away with some concrete examples on how you can neutralize these tensions. And if anything, at least you'll see these tensions coming and can prepare in advance :) --- [ GUIDE ] -— 00:00 Welcome to episode 1

This week's episode of the Show is a pretty remarkable one. You're going to hear the story of how design has not only survived, but is actually thriving within one of the most challenging environments... a bank. Our guest in the episode is Alex Guazzelli. Alex is the head of design at the largest financial institution of Latin America and has been part of this journey from day one. Today he leads a team of over 250 designers but it all started with a two man operation. Of course the journey hasn't been without challenges. Not everything went according to plan. In this conversation Alex shares his lessons about making compromises, connecting design to business and working on the right projects. So if you're currently trying to get service design adopted in an organisation that doesn't have a strong design heritage, this episode will help you get there faster for sure! --- [ GUIDE ] -— 00:00 Welcome to episode 133 03:00 Who is Alex 04:00 60 second rapid fire 06:00 How it all started 12:00 Showing added

Imagine that your organisation would fully embrace design? There would be much less friction between how you work and how the organisation operates. When you'd see an opportunity to improve something and make a positive contribution with your skills you could just go for it. Unless you're one of the lucky few, most service designers still need to fight hard to get support for their way of working. And think about it, there's a lot at stake here... Because when you fail to get proper support no one will listen, you won't be able to influence important decisions and eventually you'll become irrelevant. But if we play our cards right I'm actually quite optimistic that will not happen. What inspires hope in me is that designers are starting to understand organisations better and better. For instance we recently talked about organisational dark matter on the Show and how to influence that. In this episode we continue on that theme and talk about a pragmatic approach to organisational design. You'll lear

Okay, I know it sounds almost impossible but it really happened… A fellow service designer named Delia told me that she has crafted an elevator pitch for service design that is really effective for her. How effective? Well she used this pitch and it landed her a speaking opportunity on the first encounter with someone at a random networking event. Pretty amazing. ============ Build your own perfect elevator pitch! Join the upcoming cohort of our Selling Service Design with Confidence program. https://servicedesignshow.com/selling/ ============ The challenge with service design is that you need to find ways to explain it without overcomplicating or dumbing it down. This is definitely a skill. A skill you can master as well! So in this podcast episode of the Show you’re going to get practical tips that will help you to “sell” service design and get buy-in from internal stakeholders and external clients. If you ask me we, focus too much on the craft of service design and too little on how to get non-des

If you're asking really good questions, you're going to get better results. This is a quote from the conversation with Warren Berger. Warren is the author of The Book of Beautiful Questions. Definitely one of my favorite books from 2021 that I'm sharing left and right. So I was really excited that Warren agreed to come on the Show and share his thoughts with us. Of course we address a lot of questions during this episode. Here are a few of my personal highlights: * How do we bring more and better questions into our own practice? * How can we build an appetite for questioning with our (business) leaders? * And how can we help people transition from only asking how questions to also ask the why questions? I think the challenge many service designers face is that companies see a conflict between asking better questions and getting things done. Well, if you find yourself in this kind of environment then this episode has tons of practical advice on how you can make progress. During the episode we announce

Did you know that people are looking up to you? *** LEARN MORE ABOUT THE CIRCLE https://servicedesignshow.com/circle/ *** Sure, part of the identity of a service designer is to stay in the background, act as the facilitator and let co-creation guide the way forward. Humbleness could be our middle name. These are great traits that we definitly shouldn't lose but they aren't enough… Because when you're the only service designer in the room (or one of the few), people do look up to you for answers. They want you to show them the way forward. These are the moments that you *must* speak up and show leadership. If you don't, others will take over and you won't be able to influence important decisions. When you do that long enough you'll eventually lose hope and give up on the practice. Service design leadership is all about being able to build trust and give people in your organisation the confidence to embark on a journey. And as you know this is a journey with a lot of unknowns and uncertainty. But how d

There is a dangerous trap in the ways you use to capture the needs of the people you're designing for. Of course, you have constraints and need to make design decisions. And the saying is true that if you're designing for everyone you're essentially designing for no-one. So there are a lot of tools and methods to describe who it is that you're designing for. Personas, empathy maps, customer avatars, user profiles, etc. But when not used mindfully and with care these tools can do more harm than good. The consequence might be that you end up designing services that unintentionally exclude people. Or even worse, cause real harm. As a community that takes pride in being human centered this is not what we signed up for and we need to avoid this at all cost. So in this week's episode Indi Young shares a better approach to defining and describing the people we're designing for. The best part is that it's an approach that you can easily embed in your current practice. If you're serious about human centered des

Okay, we all know that delivering tangible value in service design can be hard. You often have to deal with a lot of constraints that you have no control over and the distance to the end-users can be immense. So how do you, despite these obstacles, still make progress? And at the end of the day feel that you're actually contributing something valuable. This was exactly the question that was discussed during our recent Circle session. In this (podcast exclusive) episode you'll hear Jacquelyn Brioux share some of the "best practices" that were shared by the participants. I really enjoyed the chat with Jacquelyn because we tapped into her personal experience as a service designer. Hope you'll enjoy the stories as well! [EPISODE GUIDE] 00:00 Welcome to the Show 02:30 Who is Jacquelyn 04:00 How did we get here 05:45 Delivering value 10:15 The woodworking connection 21:30 Operationaling insights 30:30 Flair versus focus 37:15 Coaching 45:30 Your role in a team 51:00 Closing thoughts [LINKS] * https://www.ser

I'm sure you've experienced it... You put your heart and soul into your work, you try to create value through design, you have an optimistic mindset. But whatever you do, you always feel like there's a mysterious organisational force pushing against you. It's the "organisational dark matter" that makes your life as a service designer so much harder. But there's hope. As the design director at Livework tasked with bringing service design to many different organisations, Marzia Arico has experienced her fair share of this dark matter. Her conclusion is that if you want to create impact, you can't just focus on the design work. That's just 10% of your job. You have to learn how to effectively deal with the other 90% as well. And that's what this episode is all about. What I love about the conversation with Marzia is that all her stories are rooted in practical real-life experiences. Stories filled with insights that have the potential to make your life easier and your work more fun. --- [ GUIDE ] -— 00

Are you an in-house service design professional? Have you ever wondered... * How can I show evidence of progress in my work? * How do I set the right expectation about what I do? * Where can I have the most impact? Well, you're definitely not alone. In this video 5 in-house service designer who participated in the Campfire, openly share their thoughts on these questions (and more) with you. Even if you're currently not on "the inside" I'm confident that you'll get some new insights out of these stories! [ Join the Campfire ]

Polestar is the manufacturer of one of the most iconic electric cars at this moment. So you can imagine that I was really excited when the opportunity came along to have a conversation with Christian Appelt, their head of service design. Making service design work within a company that is organized around a strong product is a challenging task for sure. But when I heard that their ambition is become a role model for how service design is embedded within organisations I knew this was going to be a good episode! In our conversation Christian shares a lot of practical examples of what they are doing to let service design be a strategic business tool that helps to make smarter decisions. We discuss the role of leadership, the importance of metrics and the impact of using the right tools. After watching this episode you'll see that it's often the simple and small things that make a big difference. So if you're trying to embed and scale service design within your company this is definitely an episode worth c

Everything in service design starts with user research. But as you've probably experienced often it's challenging to get the time and resources to do proper research. And when research is already being done by an organisation it's often not the type of research that we'd like to see. It can be frustrating to see that user research isn't making the difference you know it can. So what does it take to push user research beyond it's current limitations? Author and industry icon, Steve Portigal has been thinking about this topic for some time now. I invited Steve (back) on the Show to share his thinking and together explore what it takes to take user research to the next level. And also ask the question: What is that next level in the first place? Without proper user research you can't do good service design. So it's our job to make it more relevant and impactful. This episode will show you how. --- [ GUIDE ] -— 00:00 Welcome to episode 127 04:10 Who is Steve 05:00 Rapid fire question round 10:15 The

Take a guess... How much time do you invest to learn something during your week? It's a lot. We learn all the time in order to grow as a professional, a team and an organisation. Heck by reading this email you're learning something (hopefully). Most learning happens organically and on the fly. Which is totally fine. But when you deliberately want to bridge a gap in knowledge, skill or experience it's smart to design that journey. That's where learning design comes in. According to Andre Plaut learning should be hard but not confusing, frustrating or painful. As you'll discover in this weeks episode there's a lot more to learning design than just coming up with training material. It's a (strategic) design discipline that very closely related to service design. After the conversation with Andre I got really excited about the potenial of learning design. Hope you will too. --- [ GUIDE ] -— 00:00 Welcome to episode 126 03:50 Who is Andre 05:00 60 second rapid fire 07:45 What is learning design 11:00 Th

Here's a question that makes every service designer cringe... Can you show (prove) the impact of your work? So what makes this such a tough question? Well the value created through design is emergent and appears in shapes and forms that you didn't expect upfront. It's often hard to capture the benefits and outcomes using traditional ways of measuring successes (excel sheets). Nevertheless it's not smart to ignore this question. When you can't show the impact of your work, you will eventually become irrelevant. It's as simple as that. Next to that I believe we should hold ourselves much more accountable for the results of our work as a community. But how!? In this week's episode of the Show you're going to learn about a framework for evaluating social impact. The great thing is that this framework is also very applicable to service design. If you've been struggling to communicate the value of your work in ways that non-designers understand then this is an episode you really don't want to miss. ---

Design is often described as a problem solving approach. But what if you didn't have to solve problems... What if you could let problems disappear by dissolving them? Let me give you an example. Now that we can't do regular school exams due to the pandemic we look for new ways to still do exams. That's solving problems. Dissolving problems is about figuring out how we can achieve the same goals without exams entirely. It might sound like a small nuance but the impact is huge. The way to dissolve problems is through systemic design. And in this weeks episode Arash Golnam introduces us to it. If you ever found yourself working on incremental improvements and solutions that don't address the root cause. And you want to break free from the boundaries and constraints that cause the problem in the first place? Than grab your pen and paper to start making notes as this episode will give you a lot of stuff to think about! I'll be honest, there's a lot in this episode and everything is interconnected. I'v

What's it like to be an in-house Service Designer the Swedish Tax office or the fashion giant Zalando? In this episode of the Service Design Show you're going to get a sneak peak behind the curtains. You'll hear about the challenges in-house service designers face. And of course get some practical tips on how to navigate around them! Even if you're currently not working in-house I think you'll find these stories very useful. [ Join the Campfire ] https://servicedesignshow.com/campfire/