Workshops, Long and Short Talks

Here’s a complete list of speakers from last year’s conferences in Berlin and Cambridge MA.

Zack’s work focuses on creating transformative governance solutions. In 2010, he co-founded Reboot, a service design agency that helps improve human outcomes in some of the hardest contexts in the world. Prior to Reboot, Zack managed human rights advocacy at the Center for American Progress, a leading Washington, DC based think tank. Zack began his career at the National Geographic Society where he lead the creation of the organization’s first internal innovation group.

How can a poor farmer in Pakistan help his family survive a devastating flood? How does a new Tunisian government improve social services to build trust in a post-revolutionary society? How can marginalized Chinese communities access the country’s booming economy?

This presentation explores how design principles are helping policy-makers and international development workers answer questions like these with innovative new solutions to old problems. It also examines how a new breed of design-minded organizations are changing the nature of the public sector and the international development industry.

Susan loves defining structure and meaning to solve amorphous, complex problems.  As a Senior Associate at Cooler Solutions, she designs services and helps organizations develop internal innovation capabilities, working across a variety of industries. Susan holds four university degrees, including a degree in Software Design from Queen’s University and a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

The Rise Program provides microfinance to entrepreneurs struggling with addictions or mental illness. With emphatic support from well-placed leaders in business, health care, and philanthropy, Rise should have been well-positioned for success. And yet, the organization struggled to grow and achieve wide-reaching impact. In this talk, we show how we tackled this wicked problem with service design and business techniques, and discuss some of the lessons we learned along the way.

Together with Rob Grossi

Silvia recently obtained a MSc.in Strategic Product Design from the Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. She also Holds a title in Industrial Design from Los Andes University, Colombia, university where she was also a researcher focusing on sustainability.

The talk will focus on exploring the relationships in practice between business and design disciplines for service development. The topic will be explored with a particular emphasis on the contributions and limitations of design methods on defining customer value.

The study will present not only the analysis of a design process for service concept development, but also different perspectives of the benefits and limitations of service design methods. Furthermore, it will provide theoretical links between marketing and design concepts related to service development.

Together with Prof. dr. Petra Badke-Schaub, Fernando Secomandi and Linda Lichel

Stuart G Bailey is a lecturer at Glasgow School of Art, developing teaching and research with an emphasis on design for experience and service design. Stuart began professional life back in 1974 as a physicist working for communications and aerospace companies in the UK and abroad. Passionate about how people used and interacted with products rather than the technology within them, he returned to Scotland in 1989 to study product design at Glasgow School of Art. Following a 13-year period in consultancy designing user-centred products and developing strategies for design, Stuart is now teaching full-time at Glasgow School of Art.

Can we really embed design in the public sector?

This presentation focuses on Skills Development Scotland’s journey to embed service design inside their organisation to produce new services around career guidance and skill development in Scotland.  Skills Development Scotland is a non-departmental public body which implements policy set by the Scottish Government. The journey began in 2008 when the nascent organisation used a design approach to establish its delivery model.  This presentation will outline the journey SDS has taken and discuss the challenges encountered so far. Sarah Drummond was invited during her Masters in Design Innovation to work alongside the organisation and will use the perspective gained from her work to reflect on the importance of design to Skills Development Scotland and the ways in which it can be embedded inside the organisation. The conclusion is an open question to the audience to stimulate conversation: how best can designers work and flourish within the public sector?

Together with Sarah Drummond Mdes

Sarah is the director of Snook, a social innovation and service design outfit. Heading up the design department, Sarah leads the team through projects to ensure co-creation lies at the heart of what Snook does.
Her main focus is on making social change happen by re-thinking public services from a human perspective. During 2010, Sarah was sponsored by Skills Development Scotland to work alongside their Service Design and Innovation Directorate to look at how design could be embedded in the organisation.

Her work challenges the role of design within the public sector, as the winner of the first Scottish Social Innovation Camp Sarah is ambitiously challenging the way governments operate and make policies through initiatives such as MyPolice.

“Can we really embed design in the public sector?

This presentation focuses on Skills Development Scotland’s journey to embed service design inside their organisation to produce new services around career guidance and skill development in Scotland.  Skills Development Scotland is a non-departmental public body which implements policy set by the Scottish Government. The journey began in 2008 when the nascent organisation used a design approach to establish its delivery model.  This presentation will outline the journey SDS has taken and discuss the challenges encountered so far. Sarah Drummond was invited during her Masters in Design Innovation to work alongside the organisation and will use the perspective gained from her work to reflect on the importance of design to Skills Development Scotland and the ways in which it can be embedded inside the organisation. The conclusion is an open question to the audience to stimulate conversation: how best can designers work and flourish within the public sector?

Together with Stuart G. Bailey

Tommy Stinson leads the North American qualitative practice for Cheskin Added Value and has over 14 years of experience in ethnography and market research. He brings expertise in leveraging innovative research techniques to translate consumers’ mindsets, needs, values, and behaviors into business strategy.

As customer experience becomes the only sustainable differentiator, companies are becoming serious about examining the current state and intentionally designing a better experience moving forward.  This case study reveals how ethnographic research provided not only insight about customer’s multichannel banking experience, but also catalyzed orgranizational change by uncovering internal business assumptions that needed realigning to meet customer’s expectations.

Together with Jan Yeager and Robin Beers

Robin Beers is passionate about making business more human by bringing the faces, stories, needs and desires of consumers to the table. She holds a doctorate in Organizational Psychology and is an expert inethnographic research. For the past 7+ years she built and oversaw Wells Fargo’s Integrated Customer Insights practice within the Internet and Mobile Banking Group. She is currently starting her own consulting practice, Business is Human.

As customer experience becomes the only sustainable differentiator, companies are becoming serious about examining the current state and intentionally designing a better experience moving forward.  This case study reveals how ethnographic research provided not only insight about customer’s multichannel banking experience, but also catalyzed orgranizational change by uncovering internal business assumptions that needed realigning to meet customer’s expectations.

Together with Jan Yeager and Tommy Stinson

Rob is a Principal at Cooler Solutions where he oversees implementation of innovation and service design projects for clients in the healthcare, consumer and retail sectors. With a background in strategy consulting at BCG, and in the private equity and financial services fields, Rob helps translate and align design solutions to specific client business needs.  Rob holds a BA from Princeton University, and a MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

The Rise Program provides microfinance to entrepreneurs struggling with addictions or mental illness. With emphatic support from well-placed leaders in business, health care, and philanthropy, Rise should have been well-positioned for success. And yet, the organization struggled to grow and achieve wide-reaching impact. In this talk, we show how we tackled this wicked problem with service design and business techniques, and discuss some of the lessons we learned along the way.

Together with Susan Bartlett