Service Design Show

Why does doing good service design often feel like an uphill battle... Okay, I'm on a mission this year to find the best recipe for BBQ Chicken Wings (recommendations are welcome, by the way). Over the weekend, I was experimenting with a new one (I'd give it an 8.5/10), and then it struck me. I can have the most delicious recipe, but if my guests turn out to be vegetarian, we spontaneously...

Are they lying to us... You often hear people say that driving change as an in-house service design professional often feels less like a sprint and more like a marathon, right? But let's be honest, that's not quite true. In reality, it's more like running an ultra-marathon (and some more). We all know that "tangible" progress in service design can sometimes feel slow and far removed. Often, the re...

Have we, as the design field, contributed to the erosion of our social fabric over the last years... I had a big week recently. My daughter received the news about which high school she'll be attending next year. In the Netherlands, we have a lottery system for high schools; you list multiple options and hope fortune smiles upon you for your first choice. The second option on my daughter’s lis...

Who pours their heart and soul into journey maps that end up gathering dust... Exactly no one of course! Sure, we all want our journey work to have more impact, faster. But the question is how? That's exactly what we're exploring in the Journey Management Playbook series in collaboration with TheyDo. What makes this series different is that it's built on the real-world lessons learned...

What is the secret to consistently delivering high-quality work, day in and day out... Recently, I was chatting with my neighbours who run a bespoke interior design and manufacturing business. They make truly stunning, customised pieces for the upper market. It's easy to think their success hinges on exceptional craftsmanship, which is surely part of it. But what really keeps their business runnin...

Who are they... I know there are many out there and you could very well be one of them. I'm talking about the unsung heroes who do the hard work of making the services around us a little bit better each and every day. It might sound a little bit silly, but I feel that we don't know enough what it's like to do service design on a day to day basis. Sure, we often hear about inspiring theories, usefu...

I'm sure you recognize this... A stakeholders comes up with a new idea they want to explore, which you are highly skeptical about. Or take the opposite scenario where you see value in pursuing an opportunity but have a hard time getting your business stakeholders on board. The underlaying question in both situation is really how do you know which opportunities to pursue and which one are just a wa...

Ever feel like you're pushing a boulder uphill with journey management... Yeah, we've all been there. But guess what? There's a smarter way! That's why we're launching a brand new deep dive series on the Service Design Show. In this series, we're pulling back the curtain on how you can get tangible business results faster through journey management. Helping to grow trust wi...

It's just not designed for me... That thought hits me every time I'm in the kitchen, wrestling, trying to prepare a healthy meal for the family. Reading recipes six times over, scrambling for ingredients, juggling the chaos of parallel cooking... yeah, it's a mess. And then, there's my wife, a natural chef, gliding through it all with effortless grace. Watching her is like watching...

I try to avoid conflict... most of the time. It creates tension that I usually find counter-productive. But what if this tension is actually the catalyst for growth? Have I been missing out? Our guest Tash Willcocks thinks so. She's a self-proclaimed former conflict avoider who now champions the idea of "running towards the conflict" to unlock its potential for positive change. Yes,...

When advice goes wrong... My daughter is an avid soccer player. On a recent cold and dark Saturday morning, I was standing on the sideline cheering her on at a match - the priceless perks of being a dad. At some point, the opposing team coach was shouting to their players, "You need to defend better!" And all I could think to myself at that moment was, "That's terrible advice.&q...

AI won't take over your job... An 8-year-old girl with AI will! Don't believe me? Check ou this video which was making the rounds on LinkedIn a while ago. In the video a young girl coding a Harry Potter quiz game with the help of AI. In a matter of minutes. It's a funny and striking example of where things are heading – or should I say, where they already are. It'd be naive to thin...

I crossed a line... Recently, while working on redesigning our online community platform, my excitement got the better of me. I dove headfirst into prototyping a few things in the backend system. "How hard could it be, right?" (Keep this line in mind throughout the rest of the email.) Sure, I know a thing or two about programming, and if everything else fails, there's always AI to he...

You've never heard this on the Show before... I'm referring to a design tool that most people disregard, even laugh about when they first hear about it. They say it's childish, something you can't take seriously in a professional context. But as you'll hear in today's conversation, this tool holds immense power. Not only that, it helps you better align with your true self a...

This one is a bit different... Not the usual interview that you're used to. In this episode, you'll actually hear me answering the questions. Why? Well, it's become a bit of a tradition to start the year by reflecting on the lessons learned while building the Circle community. The Circle started 3.5 years ago as an idea to see what would happen if we created a safe space for in-house service desig...

First of all, I want to wish you a very happy 2025. We're starting the new year with a bang. Journey Management has been a hot topic for the last two years, and for good reason. The shift from mapping to management might seem small, but it's a major change in how we and our clients approach things. If you've been following the Show for a while, you know we are keeping up with these developments as...

There's a problem with the current design process that often goes unnoticed... A problem that can lead to less-than-ideal outcomes or, even worse, harm certain communities. To understand this, we must acknowledge our huge responsibility as design professionals. We're often the only ones advocating for our users' needs, the voice of those who aren't in the room. It's a privilege we shouldn't take l...

There is no service design... Without high-quality research. Sure, we all know that. But doing good research is hard. Kate Towsey, often called the inventor of the ResearchOps field, can certainly attest to this. If you're a dedicated listener of the show, you might remember Kate from our conversation about a year ago where she shared that she was writing a book. Well, that book, titled "Research...

What is strategy... A plan for how you intend to achieve your goals? That's how a lot of people define strategy. But there's a problem with this rigid approach... As Mike Tyson wisely said once: " Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. " Most strategies are too prescriptive about how the goal needs to be achieved. But we live in a VUCA world where it's getting harder and harder to...

An exciting new conference is just around the corner, ​Advancing Service Design 2024​. We ​recently had a chat​ with Lou Rosenfeld, the conference organizer, about key ideas behind the conference. Now, we're doing a deep dive into the two-day conference program with ​Sylvie Abookire​, who's part of the curation team. In this episode, you'll hear about the main themes, the inspiring (and somewhat s...

I remember being subscribed to this email newsletter from a guy named Josh, all about email marketing (kind of meta)... Every single day, a new email from Josh would pop up in my inbox, and I'd open it right away. These emails were different, a bit weird even, but in the best way possible. Each one would start with something that felt totally random, a story about something Josh experienced. No me...

I'm excited... There's a brand new conference just around the corner – ​Advancing Service Design​ – and it's organized by none other than Rosenfeld Media, the publisher behind some of the most iconic books in our field. Now you might be thinking... another conference? But trust me, this one is different. That's why I invited ​Lou Rosenfeld​ himself onto the Show to give us the inside scoop. In thi...

Sure, everyone's talking about Journey Management, but few are actually doing it well... It's one thing to map out customer journeys, but quite another to truly manage them. The frameworks and models look great on paper, but reality is often far messier. Most organizations struggle to get a handle on even one journey, let alone a dozen! So I'm excited that Florian Vollmer, a true pioneer in this f...

This might be the most profound conversation I've recorded this year... What if I told you that the puzzle of how to measure and quantify the value of design has already been solved? I know, it sounds too good to be true, right? But hear me out. We all struggle to express the value of design in metrics that businesses understand. The result? We often cut ourselves short because we can't present th...

Let's start with an "easy" question today... Is design a force for good, or just another cog in the capitalist machine? I know many design professionals are grappling with this question. We see design's potential to have a positive impact but often find ourselves frustrated by its misuse as a tool for profit at any cost. The overflowing landfills, the disposable products... These...