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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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•Transcript available on Metacast 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 share helpful, that's great. If not then that definitely shouldn't make you share less. Now you might...
Jan 09, 2020•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 going to add value in the future. In this episode Emma Aiken-Klar, who is the SVP Human Insights at ...
Dec 30, 2019•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 feels like a superpower. But it's also a major pitfall. Are we as service designers overly optimistic ...
Dec 19, 2019•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 how she and her team at InWithForward have found a way to embrace this tension. And actually use it to...
Dec 05, 2019•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 democratic system. A system which has been operating for about 150 years now. Involvement of customers w...
Nov 28, 2019•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 help to build those much needed internal bridges. Because when used in a smart way customer insights ar...
Nov 21, 2019•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 episode we talk about the benefits and the downsides of being close to the day to day operation. And whe...
Nov 14, 2019•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. The similarities between how Joel does research and the way we do it as service designers is someti...
Oct 31, 2019•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 different design approach which is even more inclusive... Nik shares some inspiring examples how we can do...
Oct 17, 2019•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 them in this process. We also talk about craft within service design. A topic that we've addressed ...
Sep 26, 2019•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 about what has happend since the book was published and what Scott has learned years that have gone ...
Sep 05, 2019•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. And of course what we can do to break down these barriers. Because we can't afford to restricted des...
Aug 22, 2019•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 the super interesting chasm between employers and design talent. In this episode Angela shares why a ...
Jul 25, 2019•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 early days. We explore how the quest for efficiency has create a big gap in most organisations between...
Jul 11, 2019•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
