 Hi, I'm Case van Dock with TomTom and this is the Service Design Show. I'm Mark van Tijn and in this special episode of the Service Design Show we're going to give you a taste of what to expect at the upcoming Service Design Conference that is taking place in Amsterdam on October 27th and 28th of 2016. My guess in this episode is Case van Dock. Case is the head of design at TomTom but he's also a little bit of a development nerd. Let's jump right in and ask Case to give us a preview of his upcoming talk. Welcome to the show, Case. Hi Mark, how are you doing? Great, it's nice to have you on the show and my very first question to you is let's jump right in and can you give us a 30 second pitch of your upcoming talk for our conference? Okay, so the theme for my talk will be about designing hardware products. Hardware products in today's kind of mobile centric digital reality. I'm not really sure about the title of the talk yet but it will be something along the lines of maybe software is not so simple but hardware is really, really hard. Or in other words I want to talk about how difficult it is to create meaningful but differentiating hardware consumer electronics that work well with people's digital connected lives. And I'm going to talk about how a strong customer focus rather than a technology focus helps us as TomTom being successful in that space. So of course services are strongly tied to digital and software and your talk will focus more on hardware, on the hardware aspect. Exactly because most service design and service services are usually mobile apps, web, backend system and the interaction between them. And obviously many hardware products have become or have been sent into oblivion because of the rise of the smartphone and the mobile phone. But for us as a consumer electronics product company it's actually essential to find opportunities to work within that ecosystem and to find hardware products, tools for people that actually extend your lives, take away or take out hurdles and obstacles and provide kind of meaning additional value to that dominantly digital ecosystem. And I can imagine that this is a super relevant topic as the interfaces to hardware are changing so much these days. You take the Amazon ECO for instance and all these kind of things that designing into intuitive hardware becomes really interesting. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's at the same time it's very difficult as well. So on the one hand indeed like upcoming interfaces like voice recognition, speed support, augmented reality, virtual reality pose a whole new kind of world and ecosystems where designers are only kind of scratching the surface of at the moment of what those interfaces could mean and how you could really leverage them to create meaningful customer and customer experiences. But in our daily reality we're not there yet. Really we kind of look at products like wearables, outdoor consumer electronics that also fit that same purpose still to improve upon what's out there to make products that have less hurdles and less obstacles to use than some of the products that we find around us and learning where those opportunities for improvements are is essential for our kind of business. Because as you know, consumer electronics is like swimming with the sharks. It's a highly competitive space. There are many competitors out there. It's a fast pace environment where you have to really be agile and be on your toes in order to survive. And that can only happen by really, really understanding the customer very well, understanding what their needs are, where they find issues and problems with existing products and how you can improve upon that. So I can relate strongly to this topic and I'm really curious what will people learn and know after seeing your presentation? Well, I hope what they take away is that design thinking and relentless if not obsessive customer focus is quite essential for staying alive in the aggressive competitive space of consumer electronics. That's for one. But also that making better tools for people is often a matter of simply removing friction and hurdles from today's solutions. It's not always that you have to think very revolutionary. Most improved products really come from what it already says, improvement. In addition, I hope that people take away that design led product envisioning and visioning and concept creation is a very important factor in aligning the various disciplines at larger companies like ours. We run like a plus 4,000 people organization. And in order to make sure that people are aligned and work towards a common goal, design has a very important role to play there because before any product is being realized or before any product is understood by the organization, we can bring it to life. And we can inform other parts of the organization of what a potential product experience could become. And I think that is a very, very powerful angle that designers have that is not always broadly understood. A million questions that pop to my mind about this team, but I'll wait for your talk. That's good. And my last point actually is also that there's hope and there's opportunity for device makers in Europe. And I think for the Europeans that attend the conference, that's quite a positive and upbeat message. Consumer Electronics is not only a play for the Asian and the US part of the world. We have a fighting chance as European and we got the creativity and know how to claim our space. Is that also your motivation for addressing this team? Bringing hope? It's wonderful. But I think my main motivation is that I think that hardware opportunities are underestimated. Like I think many brands that are active in the app, web, back-end space kind of underestimate the power of a physical component to your product and your brand experiences. When you can include a tangible aspect to your customer experiences that you can feel, that you can smell, that you can hold, that makes a significant potential difference in long-term customer loyalty. Right. But I guess software, like you said in the early beginning, is easier in hardware, is hard. But maybe that's changing with the whole IoT stuff coming up. Absolutely. Yeah. I think technologies like 3D printing, electronics platforms like the core, the socks of devices becoming much more ubiquitous. The rise of cheap hardware platforms that can be easily embedded in a range of products absolutely has lowered the threshold to make stuff and to make stuff. And design should be challenged to do that, to use those abilities. Absolutely. And I think it's a bit of a lost craft that part of our design industry and as I said, like tinkering with hardware and creating a tangible aspect of your products is an important message. So I'm sure you will give us a lot of insights, but I'm also sure you have some big questions around this topic too. What are the questions that keep you awake? One deep question maybe. Yeah. It's basically what we talked about briefly before. I'm very curious to see how customers' experiences are going to evolve in a world where voice and speech and augmented reality become the new in and output. So basically where screened services are disappearing and where interaction is getting much closer, if not part of your body. And I think we're only starting to scratch the surface of how to properly design for such a new world. And I hope this event will help me learn a bit better from other people's experience there. Cool. Kay's final question. The conference is coming up. What are you looking forward to the most? I'm mostly looking forward to external views. If you work in a company like Tonton and any larger company for that matter, you always tend to get a bit myopic and inward focused. You run the risk of not being outside enough and not seeing enough of external developments. We try a lot by staying engaged with the startup community and obviously having our research standards in user research, in technology research, in marketing research. But having worked also in design consultancy, there is such great value in working with different company cultures and getting the view of people from those other cultures. And I think that is the primary benefit of any network event and that's what I'm especially looking forward for here. So I'd encourage people to grab you by the coat. I'm not sure if that's an English saying, but start a talk with Kay's that there would be a message. Everyone understands what you mean with that. So Kay's, that was all we have time for actually. Thanks. I'm looking forward to your talk and see you at the conference. Kay, thanks Mark. Thanks for having me and all the best in the final preparation. If you enjoyed this talk and like to see more interviews with service design pioneers, be sure to subscribe to the channel and check out some of the past episodes. If you want to learn more about the conference, check out www.service-design-conference.com. Thanks for watching and see you in the next episode.