Automated transcript

Introduction

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Daniele: In this event of the Swiss Service Design Network, we explore together community questions all about, you guessed it: 

Service Design.

During this Q&A session, we explore topics like: 

How do I use my Service Design skills in a university thesis?

What makes Service Design different from other fields?

Is co creation essential to Service Design?

What are core skills to learn when transitioning to Service Design?

How do I find a Service Design job in a country where there are not many or none?

What's the secret way to find answers to more than 300 common Service Design questions?

Our mission as the Swiss Service Design Network is to put service design on the map of Switzerland and Switzerland on the map of service design.

Our monthly webinars help us to do that by mixing together Service Design enthusiasts from Switzerland and the whole world.

A big thank you to all the Service Design enthusiasts who shared during this event their questions and insights.

Enough introduction, let's jump right into it with the first question.

Using Service Design in Academic Projects

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Daniele: How can I write a thesis, which feels like a service design project, because often I see students, going through a thesis thinking like. Oh shit.

This is, again, something very different. I just have to do this, it's like this boring academic thing, but how can I do it in a way that feels I am bringing my value and the skills that I've learned as a survey designer? I'm going to share, four elements. The first one is, many service design students forget that They are service designers when they are doing their thesis. It's really funny, they are Oh, I have to be in academic mode and they are really in academic mode.

And they forget to do one thing that service designers do so well, which is visual synthesis. Service designers are usually pretty good at taking a lot of data, taking a lot of stuff and say, this is the most important. This is what really matters. They do that with tables, they do that with maps, they do that with drawings, little stories that they show, just to create, to show the emotion and also show what is the important information.

And this is something that I often miss, this Clarity on, okay, yes, I'm speaking here of a, of different case studies, but what's the visual summary of these 13 case studies that you share, could you make a map? Could you make a drawing? Could you make a table? Could you make a graph out of it?

And I think this is something where service designers naturally are very good at. But that they forget to use when they are in thesis mode, because it feels that they are in this academic, box and they forget that they have skills to bring on. A second aspect that I'd like to share on that is that, prototyping.

A lot of the time, service designers who do a thesis, they think about it like a very linear thing, where I have to make a plan, I have to write and then it's, and then I'm going to write and then it's done. But if it was a service design project, you would prototype your own thesis, and you would use prototyping to also think about questions, think about what you've learned.

And I think this is something that often gets forgotten is, can you both prototype your thesis, with filler text some chat GPT text, and then saying to your supervisors, that's how I envision it. That's where I would put some graph. It's not the right graph yet, but that's how long, how deep I would like to go.

That's where I'd like to go. And then you could get much quicker feedback on already like your final thesis even before writing it, which is a weird thing, but we do that a lot as service designers. And the other thing that you can do with prototyping is Use prototyping as a way to make sure that you understood what you've read, and thinking okay, I've read about this.

What if I turned it into a prototype? How would it look like if I made something out of this? So you read something, I don't know, about the importance of social factors when it comes to economic change. Then you say, okay, how could I build a mini experiment That builds, that uses these social elements oh, how do I build trust?

What have I learned from this text that says something about trust? I have learned that. And then by building something, strangely enough, you're making a synthesis that will help you write much more easier. Because, you're not thinking with the same part of your body or brain, you're thinking with doing instead of thinking with, I have to put words somewhere.

It's much easier to say, to build something and then say, this is what I've learned out of it, instead of having to say, fuck, I've read these hundred pages. What do I do now with it? So that's the second aspect, which is, Prototype. So we had the first one, Visual Synthesis, second one, Prototyping. The third one is this question that we often are very good in Service Design to answer, which is, What does it mean for the service, for this research question, for this thesis?

Service designers often get a ton of information from stakeholders who say, this is important, and they give you tons of information. You receive data reports, you receive, you do interviews, you get a lot of information. And the question we always ask ourselves is, what can I do with that?

It's not just, I've learned something and it's great. Thanks. But what can I really do with that? How does that make my project better? And I think this is a question that people often forget to ask themselves within a thesis where, they write, Oh, I've read this case study and this is what is interesting about it.

But they forget to answer then at the end the question, how does that help my project? How does that answer at least a tiny bit the research question I have in my thesis? And finally, the fourth aspect I will share here feels that I'm very prepared, but it's quite interesting. But the fourth aspect that I will share here is the, as service designers, we understand, how to create a flow of information so that people feel comfortable knowing where they are.

We, in airports we have this thing where we say, you are here and you're going to go there. That's going to be nice. And if you go there, that's going to be fucked up. So now there is police. So be careful. We do that really well. So what if we did that in this, in the way we write, titles often I see titles written in a very academic way, which is like.

Case study, two points the Bonobos and Service Design. Good, that tells me what it is, but don't tell me anything about what I'm going to learn in it, and if you had a title which was something like Bonobos and Service Design, two points. Animal, animals are great at co creation. That's like already, ah, okay, now there is some content here.

And I feel that we often forget that there is a whole skill that service designers use, which is this UX writing thing, that we use when we do websites, which is how do you write information so that it gets To so that people understand it right away, how to write at that button.

People understand that when they click that, they're going to pay or that they still can cancel. And I think the titles and how we write them in a thesis is a bit of a time series design project. How do you write titles that give already something, instead of just saying, This is the project that I've read, but what's the essence, that you get out of it.

So if we summarize it, we have this aspect of kind of UX writing, how do you use text to create a flow of information that is clear. We have a second aspect, which is prototyping. How do you use prototyping to prototype your own thesis and, learn through action. We have the question, what does it mean, that service designers often ask themselves, and how could you ask this question again and again through your thesis.

Finally, Visual Synthesis. So these are a few elements based on this question that I think students have, which is, how do I use my service design skills to create a great Master Thesis, Bachelor Thesis. And yes, you can use those elements. Thank you very much, Daniele. I'm 

Audio Only - All Participants: sorry, for this insight I would like to continue this, but I don't want to take too much time with this topic, because there are other people as well, but thank you very much, because this is something I keep thinking a lot, and also who wants to waste their time?

A lot of time for a useless project. When I do something, I want to do it in a meaningful way, and that's my question. I like to do something very, that could be implemented later, instead of just wasting a year of my time, and then just instead, it stays on the shelf. But so this is very useful.

I took some notes and I will go through the recording of this session again too, in case I missed something. Thank you very much. And I will not take too much time 

Daniele: because 

Linda: there are other people 

Daniele: as well. Hello. But I feel there is a question that you're highlighting here, which is how do I make sure that the topic I choose or the way I work.

Benefits me outside of just, hitting a checkbox somewhere in a process that gets me then a grade, but where it's like something where that really helps. Maybe one suggestion that I often give to people who are doing either kind of personal projects, or education projects, which basically is the same, it's just that you do it within the school, is always to ask yourself the question, what do I want What to either learn, experiment, or is there something that I'm very passionate about, and you can make lists of that, things that I'm very passionate about, where I'd like to spend time on, and sometimes just knowing that you spend time with more of your family, for example, and you can use your service design project to spend more time by, for, I don't know, in my case, redesigning the babysitting sessions you have with your kids.

Yeah, and it's okay, now I'm using Service Design to spend more quality time with my kid. That's that's doing both things. You have the academic thing and you also have the personal thing, but you can also think about passion you can also think about what are skills that I want to develop, and then you can say, ah, I'd like to, be better at digital prototyping.

So that's already gives you a bit of a focus. And the one thing I would recommend is not just to go with the first one, but make a list, and then try to mix them together. What if I take a passion, a skill, And, mix them together, then say, okay, then I can build something quite nicely.

I understand. And the other question that I often ask is, what will be helpful for you to get your next job? Or where do you want to go for your next job? If you want to go in an agency, it's very different than if you want to go in the public sector, and so the type of case that you want to build.

So envisioning, also the. What should this help me to do? And so we have these three questions, like the passion question the skill and knowledge question. And then we have also like the next step question. And if you can match those together, if you have 10 elements in each category, you can mix them together and create mini prototypes of what could be your thesis.

And it will be a thesis where, I'm going to learn something, I'm going to be passionate about it, and it's going to be very much of use for the next steps of my career. But I'm curious, because you're on the screen, and then I promise I'm going to switch to another topic. But Linda. You are someone who has a lot of experience, so how did you manage in the past when you had to do other educational things to make it so that these projects feel fulfilling outside of just a grade?

I know, tough question. 

Linda: Okay yeah, I do have an experience. I had a bad experience with my bachelor's degree because my thesis were like, no one used it, the topic was great, but no one actually, there was no market for that to do anything with that. Then I did my master's in management of educational institutions.

And the master's degree I wrote was about how to market your educational institution, like how to market an educational institution. So that was like handbook for for principals of high schools, elementary schools. So basically there was a guidebook for public school leaders to, into management.

And that was a bit better because people used it. Thanks. Afterwards, because I got I stumbled onto a new topic in Latvia, in my country, so at least it was used for some people, and it was used for some managers of educational institutions, but I can't really say that I was super passionate about that.

But it was something that was, like, very useful, that was very new, and I was able to speak about that in a few conferences, I think, in two. So that was at least something, there was some outcome. But service design is super new, but I'm not really focusing on on, on Latvia, so it's we'll see where this will lead.

But thanks for all this, really. 

Daniele: And sometimes I think that's also the other aspect that you're bringing in here to me, which feels this sometimes it's okay that you just feel a box. Yeah especially in certain life situations where you have a lot of things to do, just meeting the criterias and going to the next step is already very good.

And if you can add some usefulness and passion to it, it's awesome. But based on where you are at, obviously sometimes you have the possibility to do it, sometimes not. And and and. And being, remaining smart to at least check the criterias that get you passed is like the basic move.

And if there is opportunity to add on that, obviously we can add on that. 

Finding Service Design Jobs in Switzerland

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Daniele: I'm going to switch questions. So martha is saying I have been in Switzerland for a year and have over seven years of experience in this field.

However, I noticed that job opportunities for service designers here seem quite limited. I would appreciate hearing your perspective on this. So this is a question that gets often asked is how do I get a job in service design in a country where there is no not much jobs in service design? And there is.

Tricks and good news. So let's start with the good news is because I'm an optimist. So if we compare the state of job positions in Switzerland from now to when I came out of university it's like already much better. Back when I started, you had basically no jobs. This doesn't exist.

When you looked in LinkedIn or a search job search platform, you had no result. It was like, did you make a mistake? That kind of this thing doesn't exist. And now when I type service design or service designer in LinkedIn in Switzerland, at least you get now one or two new jobs per month.

It's obviously, it's not huge, but it's already a big difference from zero to one or two Pemrons. The optimist in me says, we are in the right direction. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I can share with you a bit later. We have made a bit of a list of companies that have hired service designers in the past in Switzerland.

So this is another way to look at it. If you know that a company has hired service designers in the past, having a cold application there is something that will work better than if you apply as a service designer in a company where nobody knows what it is. We have made a bit of a notion template with a bit of historical elements about the history of Switzerland.

And in there we have all of the list of the companies and make sure to share that in the notes right after. And one, so that's like one approach, which is looking at who has already hired service designers and focusing on those companies. The other thing is to realize that it's often just a language problem.

Which means, what we think is service design, other people say it's customer experience, and others say it's UX with a twist, and others say it's innovation. And in my own work as a service designer in Switzerland, I have really not much worked under the title service designer.

I've worked only under the title service designer when I could choose my own job title, when my boss said what's the title that you want, and I said, oh, service designer will be nice. Okay, good. I don't care. You can be service designer. And, but at the end, question is always that is, can you, where can you use the skills and the mindset that you have as a service designer?

And in Switzerland, there are many places. Especially the agency world is a place where service designers really can thrive. And innovation consultants, UX designers, UX researchers, all these terms which are cousin terms to service design. If you look for that, you will find much more positions within Switzerland.

So that's a second aspect, which is look for service. There are no other terms than service design. And maybe the other thing is also just to be in these communities, be part of the places, because often the jobs the service design jobs get filled, even before that they get. Posted somewhere, which means that you have to be in the network of people who know that there is a job coming out which means, being part of these communities like SDN or your local city service design nerds that will help also to be sure that you will know of the opportunities.

So these are a few elements and it's a bit of a good transition because at the start, I told you I'm going to share a secret on how to find answers to questions that many service designers have and find answers to already 300 of these questions. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to share in the chat a little bit of a link.

And I'm going to show it to you also. And on that link, what you will see is that there is a website which serves a bit as my digital service design brain. And on that website since years, I've added all the questions that people have asked me. And I've Instead of just sending them an email and that's it, I've then put the email or the LinkedIn comment answers that I've given and then made a bit something out of it.

And there are some questions like this one, how to pitch service design, where with time, it got more and more content in it because the my answer also evolved with time. And for example, If we go about this question of career, and we can go a bit down, so you see there are big topics in there and what are the tiny details.

That the ones with this play emoji means that there is a video. So for those who don't like reading, you can also there sometimes watch videos. And so you see here, there is a whole thing about service design in Switzerland, the service design culture, the players, the big players, a career service design in Switzerland.

Stuff about in house and I think there is a whole thing about exactly career and service design, how to start a career in service design, 12 answers answered transitioning to service design, the different types of service design, how the daily work looks like, the state of the service design job market, how you can develop your career within service design.

So you see, there is a lot of questions already answered and you have a little bit of a search bar there that can help you more quickly. Find the answers to your question. So that was my little secret that I'm promised that I will share. And I think it's a bit unknown to many, but this is a thing that I've been done that I've done for many years.

And most of the questions that people ask me these days I can say I just send a link and say, This is where I have already answered that question. Let me know if there is a part that I haven't answered yet and then I'll add to it and we can update it. So let's continue. 

Understanding Service Design Roles

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Daniele: We have a question from Amanda who says what makes a service designer different from a process designer or operations manager?

So very good question. And so we have Amanda right on screen. So thank you so much for your question, Amanda. I will first answer the question a bit generically by saying what makes a service designer different from many other types of jobs within the design and operations world.

And then we can then go go a bit deeper right after if you'd like. To me, there is a few differences. The one big difference is that Service designers compared to many other types of designers are really good at thinking both the front stage, the part that the customers go through, and the backstage, where a lot of the time it's either you're focused on the backstage, I assume an operations manager might be very much focused on the backstage I don't have any operations manager friends, so I don't know, but I would assume that's like the focus of what they do.

They make sure that the way the service is built is made in a way that it is efficient, that it works well also for the employees, that it's really structured, that it's legally compliant, and so on. And So that might be the focus of an operations manager. If we compare it to a UX designer, often UX jobs are more focused on just the front stage, and service design, we tend to try to do both things at the same time, which is one of the big differences between service design and many other kind of designer roles.

So that's for me, one of the biggest difference that I would say, and outside of that, I think a lot is similar, then it's basically, there are different types of service designers. There are people coming from engineering who will be much more technically driven. There are people who come rather from arts and crafts, who will be on more on the creativity side and the innovation aspect.

There are people who come from management, who will be more on kind of the economical side and stuff. So it's not that easy to say, all service designers are the same because it's not, that's not true and not all operations managers are the same, but I feel that if I had to give one big difference to me, it would be this That service designers try at least to include both the front stage, what happens for customers, and the backstage, what needs to be done so that we can deliver this experience to customers.

But I'm sure, Amanda, you have follow up questions on that. 

Amanda: Just a comment. It's just really helpful to give you the context. It's I'm in the United States and nobody knows what service design is. And I'm always experimenting with different ways to explain it. And then I'm also confronted with the challenge that often jobs are being called service design when they're actually not.

They want a very, a broader thinking UX designer or they're looking for a unicorn IT person who can also empathize. That was just really helpful because there is a lot of overlap that I find when I talk with consultants who work in strategic planning or product development or Operations Management, where a lot of, they're ultimately coordinating people, processes, technology.

They're using a lot of different frameworks that or some that would be similar to what a service designer would use. So no that's that's helpful. I appreciate you answering my question. 

Daniele: Thank you so much. And I think what you bring up here is very important, which is there was a hidden thing behind the name.

There was a hidden reality, which is very much local, industry specific, and also just personal definition, and. I have made the choice personally to not have a fight about that, which I, if people want to call a job in a certain way, I'm like, very interesting. What does it entail?

And that's like the question that I prefer to ask is how does it look like? Because maybe it's called I don't know, product manager, but it might be a job that I'd like to do because I feel I have the skills to do it. And it might be that the service design role, I will look and say.

That's not at all what I'd like to do or that I'm good at, even if it has the term. And so I think it's quite a bit of a, how can we say that? I think it's a bit of a mature thing that maybe we, a bit older people have compared to more junior people who absolutely want the service designer role, where we say, I don't care about the name of the role.

I want to do the work that I'm good at, and that I think is useful. And if it's under the umbrella of operations, who cares? It's the work that I'm going to do that, that I'm interested about. But how did you manage that in your own life? How do you work with this kind of? challenge that you have within your own country where the term is used in different ways and not everybody has the same understanding?

Amanda: I'm ultimately trying to understand it. I usually try to start with something with a job title that they do understand. Whether that's product designer or operations manager, and then try to provide that contrast so that they can frame it in some way that isn't, me talking at them for 20 minutes, right?

You have to be succinct in your explanations to to make an impact. Sometimes I frame it, as really talking about the end to end experience and how service design is a powerful tool in breaking down silos and how particularly in large organizations, these various departments are managing different aspects of the customer journey and also, as you say, how much when you're providing a service, how the back end is.

Coordination is, cannot really be separated from the successful delivery, and so you have to balance both the front stage and the backstage, 

Daniele: lovely. I love how you meet people where they are at, and steal their language. To create this, oh, I already have kind of understanding of a few things with that type of language.

And then you build on that instead of saying, okay, let's start from fresh. This is a totally new term and it's oh, okay, this is complicated. And instead you build on what they already know and you just add on top. And I think this is an extremely smart way of doing it. Thanks. 

Amanda: Thank you. Yes, you have to empathize with your audience.

Daniele: Absolutely. Which is the thing that we often forget to do when we are in the kind of job market search. Very good. I see we have another question, but I see that Ashley popped up in video. Maybe Ashley has a question. If you have one, you can obviously unmute yourself, but you seem to not have a direct question.

So I'm gonna just move on with a question from Igor. 

The Importance of Co-Creation

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Daniele: Do you consider design thinking a must in order to find the best solution during a service design project? And if not, how do you recommend to find solutions for tensions or needs of insights? It's a very philosophical question here. The way I would Answer it on my side Igor, and I see you laughing, which is a good thing.

It's, which is a good start of of the answer. I don't see design thinking as a completely separate thing. I see that at least in my practice as a service designer, I often steal stuff from many different practices, and which means that I can steal Because I think even service design builds on design thinking.

It's not a, for me, a totally different thing. So design thinking, yes, absolutely. I think it's a very good way to to find good solutions within a project. And then there are different. Formulas, recipes, ways of doing design thinking, and then the question is, which one of those that you will you use?

Just to maybe give a few examples. In, in some corporate settings, it's sometimes good to use something that has been proven to be used by other big guys. For example, we have this design sprint thing that exists that has both a lot of critique and a lot of people that enjoy it. But I have seen in my own work that it comes in very handy in places like big organizations People are a bit skeptical about, how to get started with those things, and then it provides a thing where you can say, Google uses it, Lego uses it, and that's how it's written, and it's a formula, so we can't do it wrong, it's just a process, and you like processes within your company, so it's just another process.

But it's design thinking disguised within kind of a very recipe like process, which to me feels like it's a wrapped in a way that people who think in Excel spreadsheets, like what will I do in all of the hours of the day, can then see the value of it. And in that case, something like a design sprint can be very useful.

And to me it's less about saying design thinking is absolutely the best thing, but rather about saying what approach might be the best one for this project. Knowing also that everybody has a bit his own favorite toolbox, and that you will be biased and usually also use that kind of stuff a lot.

I imagine that I haven't at all answered your question. I have done kind of my very sweet thing, which is, Swiss people always say yes and no. We even have in German a word for that, which is Jein, which is the contraction of Ja and Nein together, so we even have a word for staying neutral, when we answer.

So maybe, do you have a bit of a follow up thing? or something to add on that you would like to share? 

Igor: Yeah yeah, of course, there's a lot of different schools, techniques on design thinking, but I was, the question was more about if do you consider co creation? It's, it should be something that should be included in the, in during the process, not because I used to do that and I find A lot of barriers to, to implement such a thing, because people don't believe on the process because people, when you said sprint, you were talking about that.

If you said a sprint. Within a large organization, and you mentioned five days of workshop, everybody laughed to you, and if you said, oh, yeah, it's a Google method, they said maybe they do. In, in Google, but we don't have time for that, so I've, it is one of my, like my pains during the process, the processes, so I am just wondering if we're pushing too much.

To do that and maybe it's unnecessary, but I love it because when you create a solution from those methodologies, it the, yeah, it comes out with a validation of the team or the different teams. So you don't need the politics between the design and the implementation of the solution because everybody knows why you did it.

No. And yeah, maybe it's more about that and just said, yeah I'm here because my kids are Swiss so I know this we, 

Daniele: that's exactly the, we, 

Exactly. I think you're really building on something which is very strong here, which is this question that I feel, which is, should we push for the perfect design thinking, service design, co creation thing, or how far is it okay to adapt it?

To the company. And just to, it 

Igor: should be because when you're in a commercial project you should do it as you can. But it's more like taking a step back and saying do we really need the co-creation? No, it's more about that know, okay, considering everybody empathizing and all that, 

Daniele: I can share how I usually deal with it, which is I often try to have kind of at least, a sparkle of it. If not the big fire, the big thing, at least have a tiny bit of it. And there I'm a bit less I'm a bit more pragmatic than a few of my friends, who would say either we do it right or we don't do it.

I'm more on the side of. Let's give to people the taste of it, and once they build up the taste then it might happen that they want more of it, it's like kids, when you give them coffee, they hate it, the first time every kid usually hates coffee or they fake it because it's dad takes coffee, so I want to be like that.

But. Or beer or pepper or, all of these things are things that you learn to appreciate. And I think sometimes we are, in our enthusiasm, we are giving way too much of like we're giving, here is a test, here you can test 20 types of of beers in one go, instead of saying, hey, We're going to go with an easy simple beer that is going to go nice and we're going to add some lemonade on it, just to, so that you build your your taste buds.

And I think that's how I basically try to do it. And to your question on co creation. I find that you can have these co creation things without naming them. And that's how usually how I do it, which is saying, Hey, could we just have a call about this? I just have a few questions. Oh, it would be so nice If, so that I don't have to spend 20 hours scheduling 20 calls, could we just have 20 minutes all together on that day where you already all meet and we just extend it a little bit, and basically we're doing a workshop, but nobody calls it a workshop.

It's just a meeting and you still get to the co creation thing without disturbing people with with with the names and stuff, if this is stuff that is difficult. And, frankly said, there are projects where, you know, when it's just about making a process maybe at that stage of the project, it's not needed.

That, again, here, I'm on the side of the pragmatic people who accept that we're not making perfect projects, but we're making things that go forward, and momentum is, I think, stronger than perfection. On that side, I will be let's say, Yes, it can happen that we don't do a big co creation session within a service design project.

And and so that's okay. And yes, I will say there is nothing to me that is absolutely essential. So that's is there something that is absolutely essential so that it is service design? I'm not sure, but I have many friends who think the opposite. So that's my very Swiss way of saying it.

We just have to do things as we feel make the most sense within the problems that we have. Anything else on your side, Igor? Okay. 

Igor: No, it's okay. Thanks. Thanks a lot. Have a good time. 

Daniele: Wonderful. So I'm checking if we have other questions that are here. So one question is, maybe we can organize a physical service design meeting here to get to know each other, a service design meetup.

And yes, indeed, this is something that is happening. So there are for Switzerland, but also for many other countries, there are also local meetups that happen. For example, there is a few ones that happen in in Zurich. There will be another one happening in Zurich soon organized by by a student of the Master Service Design at ISU.

And, if you say you'd like to have a local meetup, that's always my thing is organize it, nothing keeps you from, posting it somewhere. And if you think that you need help to have people, you need a bit of help to promote it just let the team know and we'll promote it.

The goal here of this committee is not To say, everything has to happen from through the core team, but basically everybody can do a Service Design Network event or just a Service Design Meetup, and I would highly recommend that if you want to have a physical event, Just go for it, build it, make it happen, create a tiny prototype.

And for those who maybe are not already in the willingness to make it happen, just look around and there are always some that are being made and there will be in a few months, one in Zurich for people speaking German. Let me see if we have other questions in here.

So we have another question from the start that I missed from you, Linda, which is a very personal question. How are you feeling in your new university teaching position? Very good and very messy at the same time as it's something that I so we changed location I'm changing jobs and things.

So it's still in the phase of, Trying to fit the new chaos into a structure that makes sense where things don't fall through the cracks but the one thing that I, that makes me very happy is the, all the coaching session with the students, all that time with the students is something that I really deeply appreciate and this is where I feel like you make the most impact, this is in these personal conversations that you can have each week and again.

And so that's really something where I said to a friend this is a bucket list thing for me you know to be able to be in that role is a bucket list thing, and if I can be of help to make that happen I'm very happy. And and as it's an interim thing, we will see how long that goes, but I'm very happy that I could be of help when help was needed, and we'll see how long that goes.

Good, I'm just checking I see there is another question, I think. Maison says, I'm coming from product position with less skills in both programming and design. Service design is quite new to me. 

Skills and Mindsets for Service Designers

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Daniele: What makes a good service designer? Which skills, tools need to be excelled to be successful? A good one.

Let me answer this question with a few links also, so that it's going to be a bit more useful and direct. There are a few things which I would call are the kind of service design mindset or the service designer mindset, which are ways of thinking about Oh, I just sent that to one person.

Let me send that to everyone. Sorry for that. So in the chat, you have a link to a free course, which is what is the service designer mindset. And obviously, that's my view of what a service designer is. But there are a few ways that service designers think a bit differently than other people. And I think it's quite important to get into these mindsets.

Even before skills, I think it starts with mindset. There is a great guy, the co founder of Headspace, the meditation app. He has written a book back in the days about mindfulness and meditation. And in his introduction, he explains that there are three levels to meditation. And I feel it's the same for service design.

The first level is Mindsets, so you can understand the way of thinking without doing the work, but at least that's already one thing is to understand how people think about the work and how they do it, but maybe you're not practicing, so that's the first level. Then there is level number two, which is The practice level where you practice it in a kind of a small scale thing.

So for meditation, that will be having a mindfulness session, a guided one, for example, with a nap, like Headspace, where you do that 10 minutes a day, every day. That's, you're using the mindsets in practice within kind of a a little space in your life. For service design, that's usually in work, where you use service design at work in your work projects, innovation projects, and so on.

And that's where the skills come in. And then we have the third level, which is bringing it in everyday aspects of your life, which usually people don't do. It's I'm a service designer, and It doesn't go then in your family setting and all of this stuff. And just a few weeks ago, I've I spent a bit of a weekend to explore that idea.

What does it mean to Bring service design also in your everyday life. And again, free course that exists out there that you can explore to see how you can use those elements. To answer your question a bit, so that's what was a bit of the general answer to your question, which is, There are different mindsets, there are different skills, and then there are ways of using that in your everyday life.

Now to come back to your questions about the skills, so if I'm going back to your question, which is which skills, tools, need to be excelled to be at good performance? And I would, if I had to pinpoint that to just one tiny scale, it would be curiosity. Sounds very philosophical, but usually if you are someone who is really curious, then all the rest comes with it.

Which means that if you're curious, you're okay to speak to people that you don't know, that you maybe feel uncomfortable speaking to because you want to learn something. And so you will make the effort to go speak with these people. And if you're curious, you will notice that there is an art form to it, which is called interviewing.

And so you will learn about that and slowly but surely you will get into it. If you're curious you will want to Make things happen faster to learn more because you're curious, then you will get into stuff like prototyping and then you will then learn about tools that help you to prototype. So if there was one skill that I had to give, it would be just that one.

But if I had a few more that I could give I would say the one, the only one tool that I feel is different from Service Design to all other practices is maybe just the Service Blueprint. All of the rest is basically the same that gets used in design, in marketing, Personas, Customer Journeys, all of that stuff is also used in many different practices.

So Maybe if you want to know the one different skill that will then make you interested about new skills is learn what is a service blueprint, because in it, you will then learn a lot of stuff like a service blueprint is basically a customer journey with a backstage, which is a what happens in in the service to build it.

You already then learn about, oh, what is this, what is a customer journey? If you learn about a customer journey, you're going to learn about that it's, that to make it, you need to do some research, some interviews, and stuff like that. Maybe use personas as a way to synthesize. And so it's maybe the most interesting entry door, I would say, to service design, if you want to go on the tools perspective, is start with the Service Blueprint, because it will open a lot of questions that you then can explore to learn more.

Obviously, as an entry door, there is much more after that, but I think definitely to me is curiosity. And if I had to choose one tool, I will give the service blueprint. What I've heard from a few companies who have, who hire service designers, especially agencies, is that often they don't look for perfect service designers, but instead people who have the mindset of, I can learn new skills.

I'm very curious. And these people make very good, then very good service designers in the end. A bit of a general answer, but I, I tend to not be too much kind of a tool driven in my responses because tools are just tools and and you can just choose one. But I see you are on screen, so maybe I, you have a kind of a follow up question.

Meisan: No, actually you answered all of my curiosity and I'm looking forward to being in your class in September. 

Daniele: So you decided to do a program in service design and often these decisions are not so easy to do and they come with a lot of reflection. So what is the thing that made you decide, Oh, I'm going to do service design instead of product design, spatial design airplane design or whatever else?

Meisan: Yeah, I think the answer it's the same with all of us. The experience. Experiences of bad service. I want to see how I can make any difference to that. 

Daniele: So basically seeing how bad things can go and wanting to make them just a little better for the next people who get to go through them.

Meisan: Yeah, I'm so curious. 

Daniele: Lovely. That's a very lovely and optimistic goal to have. And I'm excited that we will be able to work on that together. I will see the next weeks and even years. Awesome.

Closing Remarks and Thank You

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Daniele: I want just to say a big thank you to all of you for all of your questions, for joining in and spending this time together.

And a big thank you to all the people who make these events possible and you are part of them. Thank you to all of you and see you at another time. 

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