Expectations of design. Everyone has them. What it is. How it works. The value it can create. Often these expectations are implicit. This is especially challenging when you’re working with business people who don’t necessarily think like a designer. Of course you believe in the power of design and want to live up it’s promise. So it can get really frustrating when you feel you’re not able to live up to these expectations. You might even start to think that something is wrong with you. The good n...
Feb 04, 2021•57 min
A big part of your job as a service designer is to make services easier. Easier to find. Easier to navigate. Easier to use. Why? Because this not only makes the life of your customer easier but also yours. As you know creating services that offer a coherent experience across the board comes with some implications. In order to accomplish this organisations have to work across silos and have adopt a long term perspective. Now imagine that you're just a small service design team in a large traditio...
Jan 21, 2021•50 min
How can you explain service design in a way that it actually clicks for other people? I know some people have give up on this but I don't think that's a smart strategy. Here's why. The multidisciplinary nature of service design requires you to collaborate with other people. You're not going to design a service on your own... So being able to get the message across about what you do and the value you bring is crucial. You might be wondering what is it that makes explaining service design so chall...
Jan 07, 2021•54 min
Have you heard about design systems? It's a catchy concept that's been getting quite some attention lately from our friends at the digital UX community. And I think we as a service design community can get a lot of value out of it as well! Here's my simple understanding of a design system... The main idea is that a design system provides you with a standardised set of components and patterns. This standardised set allows you to deliver results more efficiently and with more consistency. In an on...
Dec 24, 2020•52 min
How much does a service designer earn? That's what you can find out in the first global service design salary report. The report contains salary data from over 1000 participants across 53 countries. In this podcast exclusive episode you'll hear Linn Vizard and Marc Fonteijn talk about how and why the report came to be. You'll learn about some of the most interesting findings and patterns that emerged from the data. And of course how you can use the report to find the answers to the questions tha...
Dec 17, 2020•36 min
Is it possible? Can you win a game of checkers while playing chess at the same time? What on earth do you mean Marc? Okay, let me rephrase the question. Can you deliver short term results through service design projects while at the same time helping your client to build the capabilities that will benefit them in the long term? I do strongly belief that you have to bring service design in-house. Otherwise you will get stuck at running superficial projects that don't really change the system. An ...
Dec 10, 2020•1 hr 4 min
Here's a challenge I think you'll recognize... How do you move design up the maturity ladder in an organisation? Back in the day when I would get called in for a project I knew the client wouldn't get a lot of value out of the design approach when we would just apply it on the superficial layers of a service. No surprise here. To have any meaningful impact on business and customers we needed to use design from strategy to implementation. The truth is that I often got quite frustrated about this ...
Nov 26, 2020•1 hr 6 min
As an in-house service designer you see so much potential to do good but often it feels like organisation is working against you. Preventing you to do the job you were hired for in the first place. You want to ask for objective advice, get someone's opinion or just share your frustration for a moment. But in many cases all the weight falls on your shoulders. You're the expert that everyone is looking up to. So what do you do? You join a campfire group of course. A what?! A campfire brings in-hou...
Nov 19, 2020•27 min
Most service designers will say that their goal is to design solutions that have a natural fit in people's lives. Because those are the solutions that will be embraced by the users and thus make the impact we're seeking to create. One challenge you probably already have faced is that as a service designer you always come in as an outsider. Usually at the start of a project you know very little about the local context, culture or environment. Even if you're designing something which is close by l...
Nov 12, 2020•48 min
Okay, here’s a thought experiment. Let’s move away for a moment from thinking about designing the next service that’s delivered through a fancy mobile app… What if you had to design service that literally help to save children's lives? And you have to do it in a low tech environment with very limited resources. While at the same time managing traditional stakeholders with their own perspective on the desired solution. Sounds impossible? Well that’s what Gonzalo Rodion and Phearak Mak are up agai...
Oct 29, 2020•51 min
Embedding design in an organisation isn't easy. Especially if that organisation is quite traditional, heavily regulated and not very open to change. But the guest in this episode still found a way to do that. The secret to success? Take people by the hand and gently guide them through the process in small steps. This might sound obvious but we tend to forget that the things that come natural to us feel very distant to others. But giving too much guidance means that people won't take ownership of...
Oct 15, 2020•50 min
I'm deeply fascinated with the topic of organisational design. Why? I've often said that the organisation is the design material of service designers. Our job really is about shaping the environment from which great services can be delivered. The guest in this weeks episode (Peter Merholz) even wrote an entire book about it titled: Org Design for Design Orgs. Now I know what you're thinking... "The people around me haven't even grasped the concept of service design. And now you want me to start ...
Oct 01, 2020•53 min
The challenges in-house service designers face are quite unique. In this episode you'll hear the stories from Karri, Jacquelyn and Rachel. All of them work in-house and are championing this field within their organisations. What also connects Karri, Jacquelyn and Rachel is that the participated in the campfire sessions that took place in the summer of 2020. The campfire is a safe place where in-house service designers can listen, share and connect with fellow practitioners. Next to talking about...
Sep 24, 2020•37 min
What is ultimate goal of service design? One could say that it's about making a positive impact on people, business and the planet. If this is the case then you'll need to make sure that the solutions you design actually get into the world. Design isn't just a research practice. It's a practice where creation and delivery is equally important. But often the challenges you face as a service designer are too big to be solved through design alone. You need a team! So what kind of team exactly is th...
Sep 17, 2020•47 min
Your work as a service designer is not just about successfully finishing a single project. The goal is to contribute to long lasting change and influence the way of thinking within organisations. Ben Reason makes the argument in this episode that "service design makes things more humane". If this is the case it's far too important to be driven you all the time. So there is a lot at stake to change organisations through your work. Otherwise an organisation will quickly revert to their old ways of...
Sep 03, 2020•47 min
When it comes to putting a price tag on service design many people struggle. It can be hard to articulate the value that you create through your work. Therefor many service designers just avoid the topic in general. What if you would treat the pricing of service design as a design challenge in itself where the goal is to come up with a solution where all parties benefit? The conversation about value, price and money becomes much less uncomfortable! In this episode. Dan Mall explains how you can ...
Aug 20, 2020•45 min
As a customer you've probably already experienced that most services don't fail because of bad intentions. Often services fail because they run on top of systems that don't support a different outcome. The classics "The computer says..." statement is just one of the many example. This isn't just a major frustration for us as ordinary customers but also for us as professionals trying to make things better. Let me ask you a question: How often have you been in a project where you had the mandate a...
Aug 06, 2020•55 min
Taking risks is an inherit part of design. Trying things you haven't done before. Doing experiments. Exploring uncharted territory. It's exactly these things that give us fulfilment and that we're frankly just very good at. But doing this type of work has its price. And that price can be high. When you're in the business of putting new things into the world you never know what the response will be. The response might be praise but it also might be total rejection. We just don't know until it's o...
Jul 23, 2020•40 min
In order to make real impact on customers and business you need to have influence on the strategy of an organisation. The truth is that strategy isn't necessarily associated with the practice of design. So once you do start working on strategy it's very easy to get sucked into the traditional corporate culture and mindset. You'll tend drift away from the core values of design. An important part of your job already is figuring out what the right thing is to do. So not getting involved with strate...
Jun 25, 2020•43 min
There's no doubt that your service design skills are needed more than ever these days. Many pressing (social) challenges have emerged over the last months. Challenges that just scream for a design approach. The big question though is what's the most effective application of design in this context? Rushing in with our tools and methods isn't the best way to contribute to sustainable solutions. In this episode Linda Pulik shares here experience with designing solutions for the social sector. One o...
Jun 11, 2020•33 min
Imagine for a moment that you're playing a board game. A game that requires some strategic thinking. Let's go for one of my favorites: the settlers of Catan. After having played that game a few times you pretty quickly understand how to play in order to win. So it's time to make things a bit more interesting. Let's add some expansion sets to the game (Catan has 4). Whoah, now with these expansions you suddenly have a ton more options to find a winning strategy. Yes, the game becomes more complex...
May 28, 2020•40 min
What do you learn from talking to 99 service design leaders over a course of 4 years? Find out in this 100th episode of the Show! I invited you, the Service Design Show community to send in your questions. And you did. From all over the world! So in this episode I’ll be answering your questions about service design, about the Show and even some questions about me. You’ll also learn about the change that’s going to happen on the Show in the coming weeks. Because after 4 years it’s also time for t...
May 14, 2020•29 min
How can you successfully drive, facilitate and guide change as a service designer? It helps when you're aware of the type of change process you're involved in. Your classic top down change process requires a significantly different approach than a bottom up crowd driven movement. In this episode Robert Bau talks about the 4 main change processes in an organisation and how service designers relate to them. Over the years Robert has identified 7 key roles a service designer can play. When you map ...
Apr 30, 2020•51 min
The dominant form of design privileges certain, often western oriented norms and values. This has big ethical implications and a direct impact on the people we are designing for. In this episode Yoko Akama shares her thoughts about how we can embrace diversity and make service design a more inclusive practice. It's a healthy and important conversation we need to have as a community. The topic of ethics within (service) design falls into a larger discussion about the future of our field. Yoko pos...
Apr 16, 2020•42 min
What is a service? No really, what is it? As you might imagine it's quite an instrumental question a service designer. But as it turns out, surprising little knowledge about services is embedded in our practice. So in this episode Majid Iqbal talks about service design from the service rather than from the design perspective. We often feel that service design is a strategic practice. Majid has a different take on that. So we talk about how strategy translates into services. And how designers can...
Apr 02, 2020•41 min
Have you been following the classic design process in most your projects? Moving from research to insights and from opportunities to prototypes. Well you're not alone because most service designers do. It's the process that has been described in many books over the years and become the de facto approach. But what if this isn't the most efficient way to design good services? What if you could tweak the design process so that you get better results in less time? Would you be interested in that? Pe...
Mar 19, 2020•36 min
If the service you've designed goes against the existing socials structures it's bound to fail. That's why it's essential that from the very first moment you're aware of these social structures and use them in your design process. But how you might wonder... Josina Vink has done a lot of research on this topic and in this episode she shares her most important learnings. One of the reasons social structures are so important in service design is that they dictate interactions between people. Organ...
Mar 05, 2020•33 min
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 enough empathy for the people they serve. So she got curious and wanted to understand how much empa...
Feb 20, 2020•34 min
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 are still (many) business leaders out there who don't have a clue what design is and more importantl...
Feb 06, 2020•40 min
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 are the outcomes we create as a community? And how can we do a better job at communicating those ou...
Jan 23, 2020•41 min
