Service Design Show

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 and wedding planners. These people do all the heavy lifting so that the couple can own the moment.

Okay, so what does this have to do with design? A lot. Many organizations that hire service design professionals forget (or aren't aware of) that they need support.

And this leads to all kinds of problems. Most notably, designers get frustrated by not being able to live up to their full potential, eventually leaving the organization before they can create any meaningful impact. Fortunately, there's a new field emerging that has acknowledged this problem and is developing strategies to cope with it. This field is known as DesignOps.

In this episode of the Show you'll hear Michelle Walter, the head of DesignOps at ANZ Bank, share how they actively support their internal designers to thrive inside the organization.

You'll learn which business incentive drove ANZ to set up and invest in this new practice. And what it took to get buy-in to grow it beyond its initial stages. Finally, Michelle talks about the two major initiatives that have emerged over the years as the key drivers for success that they are experiencing now.

I'd say that every organization which hires service design professionals needs to hear this conversation. But maybe you should listen to it first and then forward it to the right person ;)

If I got one thing from this chat with Michelle, DesignOps is a deliberate act that requires a lot of careful thought and planning. It's a true expertise and needs to be treated like one.

Enjoy this look under the hood of DesignOps and as always, keep making a positive impact!

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00:00 Welcome to episode 151

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--- [ HOW TO EXPLAIN SERVICE DESIGN ] ---

Learn what it takes to get your clients, colleagues, managers, CEOs, and even grandmas as excited about service design as you are.

https://servicedesignshow.com/free-course

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:

Despite the terrible situation, it's encouraging to hear that at the same time, many good things happing in Ukraine. 

I would invite you to listen to this conversation and see how you can potentially contribute, no matter how big or small.

Sometimes service design is thought of as a nice to have addon. For me, this chat with Max once again shows that it can (and should) be at the heart of how any service is delivered.

Thanks for being part of this community, and keep making a positive impact!

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00:00 Welcome to episode 150

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There's an intriguing mystery to the backstage... Think about it for a moment. People love to see what happens inside the kitchen of a Gordon Ramsey restaurant. Or to follow a sports team into the locker room before and after a game. 

We want to look over the shoulder and get an inside glimpse. See things that are usually hidden from the general public. We want to see beyond the frontstage. Well, I've got exciting news, because today we're going to do just that. Not for a restaurant or your favorite sports team but for a leading service design consultancy.

To celebrate their 4th anniversary with the community, the team from Harmonic Design agreed to sit down with me for an uncensored ask-me-anything episode.

In this episode, you'll hear the team react to questions like:

The team promised me the truth and nothing but the truth. I would say listen to the episode and find out if the team managed to live up to their promise.

As you'll see and hear, this is a format we haven't done on the Show before. So let me know if this is something that you enjoy and we should do it more often!

My first encounter with Harmonic Design founder Patrick Quattlebaum was for an interview on the Service Design Show back in episode #115. Ever since our first interaction, Harmonic Design has been a great partner of the Show. I want to use this opportunity to send out my appreciation and gratitude for how they are contributing to the service design community and helping it mature.

[ 1. EPISODE GUIDE ]

00:00 Welcome to Show

[ 2. LINKS ]

[ 3. BOOKS ]

I used to say that 50% of service design is about communication. Today I think the percentage might be even higher...

Just think about all those moments where you need to collaborate with someone to get something done. Yes, that's like always.

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Sometimes what you need is the attention from your co-worker other times, it will be time or money from your CEO.

Whatever the case is, when you fail to show the benefits your work has for the other person, you won't get very far as a service design professional.

But as you know, communicating benefits is easier said than done. Let's take the common journey map, just as an example.

Should you show the entire map with all its richness and potentially risk losing people in the complexity? Or should you just show a small part of it but risk that people will oversimplify things?

This balancing act between what you tell, how you tell it, and when you tell it happens all the time. And it's one of those things that can make or break your day, project, and sometimes even career.

As this is such an important topic, we decided to explore it in more depth in our recent Circle community session. We discussed ways that help you find that perfect balance in your story. And also things definitely you want to avoid when communicating the benefits of your work.

In this episode, Heydn Ericson, who hosted the session, shares the most important guidelines that emerged in our session with you.

You'll hear, that there are many small and practical things you can do to increase the chance that you'll land your message. It's empowering once you have the awareness.

Enjoy the conversation and keep making a positive impact!

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00:00 Welcome to the Show

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Join our community of in-house service design professionals at the Circle.

www.servicedesignshow.com/circle/

Every service design project starts with an initial conversation. From there, you build trust, confidence, and the relationship to do great work. But getting that first conversation started can often be one of the hardest things.

Especially when you consider that many organizations still aren't aware that service design exists, let alone how they can benefit from it. Of course, you could sit back and wait for the moment when the organization is ready.

But this approach will mean that while waiting, you'll miss out on many great opportunities to put your skills to good use. So is there an effective way you could proactively get your foot in the door and pitch service design to an organization that doesn't know it needs it?

Yes, there is! And it's more than one...

In this week's episode, Matthew Marino, founder of the Paris-based studio User.io, shares the different approaches they have been experimenting with over the years. You'll learn about the use of concept projects, the trojan horse approach, and how to compound outcomes.

All are great additions to your toolbox and will surely help you open more doors.

The examples Matthew shared encourage me. In the end, you can turn everything into a design challenge, even pitching service design.  That makes it way more fun, and you already have the skills to solve this challenge successfully.

Enjoy the conversation, and thanks for being part of this community.

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00:00 Welcome to episode 149

--- [ LINKS ] ---

--- [ HOW TO EXPLAIN SERVICE DESIGN ] ---

Learn what it takes to get your clients, colleagues, managers, CEOs and even grandmas as excited about service design as you are.

https://servicedesignshow.com/free-course

Patience has been described as a secret (and a must-have) skill of any service design professional. It's not hard to understand why.

When you're doing service design, you are delivering change. This means that you will meet resistance and push back a lot of the time. You have to be very careful that you don't let this get to you.

Because before you know it, you could start doubting if you're doing the right thing or get frustrated with the situation. Or even worse, it could take a severe toll on your health. When that happens, you couldn't be further away from the goal you were trying to achieve in the first place.

So an important question here is: How can you see progress when things seemingly aren't moving forward or, even worse, look to move in the opposite direction of what you have in mind?

In this episode, Burcu Arsoy takes us along her journey where she was able, through trial and error, to find an answer to this question.

You'll hear strategies for keeping your spirit up and not quitting quit too soon. But also how to recognize the warning signs when the time has come to move on and find a different challenge. If you want to better prepare yourself for the rocky ride called service design, this is an episode you don't want to miss.

This conversation contributes to a deeper understanding of the mental aspects required to deliver change successfully. A much-needed addition to all the books we have focused on practical tools and methods if you ask me.

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00:00 Welcome to episode 148

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--- [ 3. THE PROGRAM ] ---

Take your career to the next level and get to work on more fulfilling challenges. Learn how to communicate the benefits of service design to your clients, colleagues, and CEO.

Apply for the Selling Service Design with Confidence program.

https://servicedesignshow.com/confidence

How do you get the most value out of your service prototypes? That was the key question we explored in our recent Circle community session.

As it quickly turned out, there's an entire field with its own set of tools and frameworks that focus on prototyping. During the session, the participants shared their success stories and common roadblocks that prevented them from doing the right experiments.

What emerged were five best practices for doing better, more effective service prototypes that everyone in the session could agree on. In this episode, you'll discover what these best practices are and how you can use them in your day-to-day work.

What I found interesting is that many participants didn't only use prototyping as a way to reduce the risk of expensive failures. They also used it as a very effective strategy to generate buy-in for the eventual solution.

Enjoy the conversation!

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00:00 Welcome to the Show

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--- [ CIRCLE ] ---

The Circle is a community for in-house service design leaders who want to grow as a professional. We host a community session on topics that go beyond the basics every month. If you'd like to be part of these conversations then I encourage you to join us.

servicedesignshow.com/circle/

What does it actually mean to be winning in service design? A question I think we don't ask ourselves often enough.

Because when you put your entire heart and soul into delivering a great project but the results aren't adopted by the organization, can you say that it was a success?

Most service design professionals I know genuinely want to make a tangible impact on the people and organizations they work with.

This means that your work can't stop at the research or idea stage. If the recommendations aren't operationalized, that amazing journey map you've created isn't worth a lot.

So how do you increase the likelihood that your work makes it into the real world? Well, in this episode, Markus Hohl, the global head of service design at JP Morgan, shares his approach.

The conversation with Markus shows again that we often tend to overcomplicate things. The encouraging thing is that you should actually do less, not more, to be more impactful.

Markus has found that by doubling down on just 3 simple things, he can get way more done inside the organization.  Once you see what they are, it all makes sense as it goes with these things. But it can take years before you gain this clarity.

What I found really valuable is that Markus brings the agency and in-house perspective. As you'll hear, both have their advantages and drawbacks.

As always, enjoy and keep making a positive impact :)

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00:00 Welcome to episode 147

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--- [ 3. SELLING SERVICE DESIGN WITH CONFIDENCE ] ---

For more information and instructions on how to apply head over to:

Do you recognize this feeling... As a service design professional you're the last one who's invited to the party (often when it's almost over).

=== Selling Service Design with Confidence ===

This isn't just bad for your morale but it also limits the value you can create. The holistic nature of service design requires you to be part of the "upstream" conversations. But that's easier said than done.

Because how do you make sure that you get invited to the right conversations, with the right people at the right time? Unfortunately the service design textbooks don't teach you any of this stuff. You have to look in different places to find answers.

Where? For instance in this episode of the Show. In this episode you'll hear 6 service design professionals share their best tips with you that have helped them to get a seat at the table.

And also learn about the pitfalls you really should try to avoid. Unless you don't mind being the last one invited to the party of course. This is one of those conversations that you wish you had heard earlier :)

Knowing how to get a seat at the table is skill that **every** service design professional should master. That's why in this episode you'll hear tips from someone who runs an agency, someone who's in-house, someone who's at a product focussed startup and others!

[ 1. Episode Guide ]

00:00 Welcome

[ 2. Selling Service Design with Confidence ]

For more information and instructions on how to apply head over to:

What's one of the key ingredients of service design?

It's the fact that we take a holistic view. A view which spans different channels and many touchpoints. Designing with this holistic perspective in mind is often challenging enough considering that most companies aren't organized in a way that supports it.

But what if I told you that you can (and probably should) go even further. What if you take a perspective on the solutions you put into the world that doesn't just span a single service but spans... generations. Generations?! Yes, I'm talking about generations of customers, employees, citizens, children, etc.

You can imagine that the first time Bisi Williams shared this idea with me I had many questions. How do you make such an audacious goal tangible? How do you get your clients to buy into this vision? Does it require a different design process?

Bisi is the co-founder of the Massive Change Network and they have made it their mission to work on solutions for the biggest challenges we face today. The conversation with Bisi was super inspiring with many encouraging examples of what's possible. Especially considering what's going on in our world right now.

I'm confident that through this episode you'll discover how thinking about the next 7 generations helps you to design better solutions today. This is one of those topics that you don't get exposed to often in your day to day. For me conversations like this are the most valuable ones as they expand my horizon of what's possible.

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0:00 Welcome to episode 146

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--- [ SELLING SERVICE DESIGN WITH CONFIDENCE ] ---

Learn what it takes to get your clients, colleagues, managers, CEOs and even grandmas as excited about service design as you are.

https://servicedesignshow.com/selling