Service Design Show

Imagine that you'd get the opportunity to join an intimate dinner party.  A dinner where you're accompanied by some of the brightest people in our field. And where you'd get the chance to explore a thought-provoking topic. Would you enjoy the evening? That question was going through my mind when I was thinking about how the Circle community should feel. Now, almost two years after the first "...

I have a family with two small kids who are quickly growing up. The challenge many parents, including me, encountered was... how do we keep our home somewhat clean and tidy. My initial and naive strategy was to pick up everything left behind. But this strategy breaks down pretty quickly, as you can imagine. So then I tried to distribute the responsibility to everyone in the family. If everyone doe...

This can transform your business strategy... That's what I thought during my recent conversation with Indi Young. Indi recently published a book titled Time to Listen. Here's my summary of the book. It teaches you how to design services that are less harmful, more accessible, and in the end, better for business through the "simple" act of listening. Basically, transforming open and honest conversa...

Let's build a *system* of journey maps! Hold on there... do you know what you're getting yourself into? Journey maps are great. They help you align people, processes, and resources around your customers' needs. This leads to a more efficient organization, happier employees, and less frustrated customers. But as you might have experienced, journey maps also tend to spiral out of control pretty quic...

You need to fail... Yes, I said it.  Because failure is the fastest way to success when you're innovating. But it's surprisingly hard to fail. And this is a major problem. Why, you ask? Well, in our service design practice, failure is part of prototyping. You have an idea, you create something, you try it in the real world, learn from what happened, and based on that, improve your solution to...

When you asked me to play the piano, I can assure you that nothing close to music would come out. Would we, at that point, say that the piano is broken? That would be silly, right? Somehow, this is the typical approach when organizations bring in design. When design doesn't fully deliver on the expected outcomes, it's the process that is declared faulty.  Mauro Porcini is the Chief Design Off...

I'm sure you've heard this before... "You can't design for everyone." That's a fundamental principle in a good design process. In the end, design is all about making choices. And one of these choices is defining who you are designing for. But here's an interesting question: Can you design with a specific user in mind without excluding others?  This sounds a lot like a paradox, right? So why b...

Think for a moment about a hard conversation you needed to have about a topic that really mattered to you. This could be a conversation at work or just in your private life. Now, what if... that conversation went down in your memory as exciting, productive, and fun? What if it almost felt like a game? Sounds too good to be true, right?  Well, according to Fred Dust, that's exactly what's poss...

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 approa...

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 app...

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 pers...

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 f...

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 wo...

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 t...

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 place...

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 o...

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 assump...

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...

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...

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 t...

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...

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 for...

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 con...

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 an...

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 s...