Service Design Show

On episode 7 of the Service Design Show Adam Lawrence once said this.. "If you can only do one thing in the entire design process, do research." I don't have to convince you of the importance of proper user research. It's the lifeline of our work. Unfortunately in a lot of organisations research is still seen as something that just slows everything down. It can be hard to get buy-in and support to...

What would you say is one of the most daunting design challenges of our time? I hope our climate crisis at least crossed your mind. As Cat Drew argues, we as a service design community play a key role in helping to solve this crisis. Cat is the Chief Design Officer at the UK Design Council and currently championing the Design for Planet initiative. In this week's episode of the Show we talk about...

Embedding design into an existing organization often feels like... trying to cram a square peg through a round hole. Right? In our attempts we often need to bend and shape design in ways that make it lose some of its most important qualities. Just think about how the holistic nature disappears when design becomes siloed across different departments. Which almost always happens. … and then people w...

How do you keep growing as a mid / senior level service design professional? It's mostly likely less and less through formal theory and education. Once you reach a certain level of maturity in your craft suddenly the small details and nuances start to make a big difference. But you won't find those things on Google. These learnings are hidden in the lived experiences from other professionals and c...

What is it that truly matters? Let's go back to the moment you first learned about service design. You know, when you entered the rabbit hole. There is so much to learn and to explore. It can easily become very complex and overwhelming. But if you want to become a service design practitioner you have to start somewhere. Right? You have to find a way to develop your skills without getting discourag...

"Design and business only work together if there is common ground." That's one of the quotes from the conversation I recently had with David Dunne. But finding this common ground is easier said than done. These days it's still the school of management that's driving most companies. And I think you'll agree that design and management don't necessarily share the same world view, beliefs and approach...

Regardless of where you are today in your career, at some point you'll want to work on new challenges, learn new things and be exposed to new experiences. When you start to get this itch it's important to recognize that it's a pivotal moment. At this point one might take the approach where they grab the best next opportunity that presents itself on the journey. This opportunistic approach will pro...

Looking for practical service design tips and tricks? Who doesn't right :) So in this episode you'll hear four commited service design professionals open up and share their best practices with you. ============ For more best practices join the upcoming cohort of our Selling Service Design with Confidence program. https://servicedesignshow.com/selling/ ============ These best practices focus on how...

A clear pattern is emerging... You know what I see when I look at who is hiring service design professionals these days? It's product driven tech companies! When you take a closer look it's not that surprising that these companies are looking into service design. They are realizing that they need to take responsibility for a larger part of the user experience. A part which includes many non-digita...

Ever wanted to have a good service design case study? What about 100? Coming up! Read on to learn more. I still struggle when someone asks me for a case study. Because services play out over time with many micro interactions across time it's hard to capture the entire thing in one case study. So why don't we take a different approach? What would happen if we tear a service apart and look at those...

Does it matter? Can you be a good service design professional without any formal training or background? Many people I know just started doing service design without having a diploma or certificate. That's how I started in this field as well. Mastering the craft on the job and figuring stuff out as they go along. They have, what I would call, practical wisdom. But this lack of formal education som...

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...

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 fi...

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 i...

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. Tod...

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....

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...

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....

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 perfec...

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 quest...

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...

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 avatar...

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 discus...

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 Live...

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 i...