Service Design Show

Empathy, understanding and compassion. These words are not commonly used in many large organisations. But why? That's what we're going to find out. Our guest in this episode, Maike Klip, has embarked on an inspiring research project to learn what it means to be a compassionate civil servant. As an employeed of the Dutch Government herself Maike recognized the stories about organisations not having...

What do CEOs need to know about design? This was the question Audrey Crane tried to answer in her latest book which carries exactly that title. Make sure you stick around till the end of the episode because there's a little surprise... Sometimes it might seem that design is already a well established practice and field for most organisations out there. But the reality is that it's far from. There...

Why is it that so many service design projects still get stranded before they have been able to make an impact on customers? In this episode Linn Vizard shares her experience with what it takes to make service design real. Linn has an interesting perspective on how we might start looking at the outcomes of service design. Because the outcome of our work almost never is an actual service... So what...

Could you become a better service designer by just sharing more? According to the guest in this episode that's definitely the case! Daniele Catalanotto has been writing and sharing a lot about what he knows (and doesn't) related to service design. It might sound counter intuitive but Daniele argues that you first and foremost should share for your own benefit. If other people find the things you s...

What if clients buying service design projects? Which is already happening if you look closely. It's not that the appetite for service design work is getting smaller. On the contrary. More and more clients see the need to do service design. Rather it's the fact that clients are building in-house service design teams and taking on the work themselves. This requires agencies to rethink how they are...

When is a challenge really out of scope for a service designer? What's the point where it becomes obviously too far fetched? As designers we are overly optimistic. In general we don't shy away from new challenges. It doesn't really matter if we haven't worked on a similar challenge in the past as we'll just figure it out as we go along. This confidence in being able to solve any challenge often fe...

There's a good bit of tension in most service design projects. Often caused by factors that aren't obvious when you start. Factors like the fact that designers bring a quite different approach, attitude and mindset to the table. Your typical "they just don't get it" (coming from both sides) is a pretty strong indicator that there's some tension in the room. In this episode Sarah Schulman shares ho...

Co-creation is still an ad-hoc activity in most organisations rather than something which is deeply embedded into the operating system. How can we change that and take co-creation to the next level? In this episode you're going to get some inspiration from Swiss direct democracy. I bet you didn't see that one coming. Peter Horvath has studied how the Swiss have embedded co-creation into their demo...

Customers don't care about your internal departments. They only care about the experience they have with your service. So in order to deliver great services you need to organise around your customer. Not the other way around. But breaking down internal silos is easier said than done. Many have tried and failed. Big time. In this episode you'll learn from Emma Laurentz how customer insights can hel...

What is the best place for an internal service design team so that it can bring the most value to the organisation? A question which is becoming more and more important. Even if you're with an agency or freelancing. Because knowing where service design fits into the organisational structure allows you to help your clients more effectively. Judy Mellett leads an internal team at Telus. In this epis...

In this episode you'll learn about some time and cost effective ways to do proper user research inspired by the world of copywriting. Successful conversion copywriter Joel Klettke takes you along his process to craft copy which deeply resonates with readers. As you'll hear that process evolves for a large part on conducting user research in order to understand the people you're going to write for....

Are you saying that I have to stop practicing Human Centered Design? Well yeah that's basically the answer. According to Nik Parekh human centered design has brought a lot of positive change to the world but it's not sustainable. And to be honest Nik isn't the first one to make this argument. Former guests like Mauricio Manhaes and Anab Jain have also made a similar plea. We have to adopt a differ...

Is all service design ** good ** service design? If we assume it isn't how do you recognise what's good and what's not? In this you'll learn about the importance of ethics in design. Because it's your moral compass that guides you forward when you have to make decisions which require certain trade offs. The guest in this episode James Samperi talks about how they are developing a manifesto to help...

What happens when you start using spaces as a distinct design material rather than a just designing a space? That's exactly the question Scott Witthoft is has been exploring for the last decade. Scott wrote the book Make Space along with Scott Doorley back in 2012 to provide a starting guide on how we can take control of the spaces around us and shape them in a way they support our needs. We talk...

Wouldn't it be great if we could get the design approach into the hands of many more people and empower them to improve their life? Keneilwe Munyai is on an inspiring mission to get design out of the corporate lab environment and make it accessible to people in rural areas of Africa. In this episode we talk about the barriers that we've put in place that make design less inclusive at this moment....

Once you start working as a service designer you'll quickly realise that climbing up the corporate ladder isn't the typical career path. Usually there is no "up the ladder" for service designers... So how do you make sure you don't get stuck in your career after a few years. The guest in this episode, Angela Yeh, has 20 years of experience helping designers to navigate their career. She works in t...

How come we as customers rarely feel truly served even when we're surrounded by services? What has caused the disconnect between services and actually serving people. And more importantly how can we reverse this? That's what you'll in this episode with Joel Bailey. Joel is a true service design pioneer who can be credited for starting the notorious service design drinks and thinks events in the ea...

In this episode Patrick Bach shares his learnings about what it takes to successfully build and lead a service design that is able to create sustainable value within a large corporate. We talk about the need to expand our existing service design toolkit with new tools and methods. This might mean that we need to tap into areas like behavioural economics and lean six sigma. Collaborating much more...

What can service designers learn from how different industries, different markets and even different countries respond to the value of our field? Because as you know not everyone perceives the need for service design in the same way we do. In this episode Slavo Tuleya shares his experience from setting up an innovation lab focussed on mobility services in China. Slavo has a nice comparison as he p...

Service Design can be a great driver of value. Not just for businesses but for a whole nation. Knowing this one might wonder how you can accelerate the pace at which service design spreads and is adopted by a community. As the CEO of the Danish Design Centre Christian Bason thinks about this every day. Spreading service design requires growing both the demand side and the supply side. More organis...

Human Centered Design is getting a lot of attention these days. But what are we giving up if we put the human at the center? What are the limits of our current practice? In this episode Anab Jain shares her perspective on why we need to look beyond human centered design. Or at least augment it with more holistic view. Next we challenge the notion of the designer as problem solver. Are we really so...

Is Service Design a true distinctive design discipline? According to Lara Penin it certainly is. It's certainly a topic that evokes a lot of debate in our community. The transdisciplinary nature of service design often makes it hard to point out the craft in our work. Also the fact that we don't have a tangible design material doesn't make things any easier. But in this episode we explore what mak...

What does it mean to work as a Service Designer in a team that heavily relies on #RemoteCollaboration to get their job done? Can you still successfully operate as a Service Design when you don't have the ability to physically interact with your team mates, stakeholders and customers? Jacquelyn Brioux is exactly in this spot in her role at Shopify. She shares her learnings and gives some tips on pr...

How do you turn a customer centric vision into reality? This is exactly what Priscila Willams is tasked to do within large banks and in this episode she shares her most valuable learnings. How important is support from top level management? Do you need to make a business case upfront? Who are the people you should have conversations with in order to operationalize your ideas? These are just some o...

If you're a human being you are a storyteller. Stories are the human operating system. In this episode you'll learn that stories are not just useful for transferring knowledge or communicating results. They can also be used as a tool to explore, understand and co-create. Mary Alice Arthur proudly calls herself a story activist. She's on a mission to help people and organisations find the stories t...