 I'm Birgit Marger and this is the Service Design Show. In the Service Design Show we talk to people that are shaping the service design field about the current state of the industry, exciting new developments and challenges up ahead. Today I'm talking to Birgit Marger. Birgit is of course the co-founder and president of the Global Service Design Network and she has been a service design professor in Cologne for over 20 years. Welcome to the show Birgit! It's great to have you here, thank you for inviting me. Of course. Birgit, I was looking in our archives here at Thirdewal Falls and I stumbled about something that we both recall very well. This is the very first edition of the Touchpoint, the magazine of the Service Design Network April 2009 and it actually features something that is coming up again and I'd like to start with that. And that is the, let me see if I can find a very nice picture. It's a small picture here actually, you probably won't see it. But this was the global conference in 2008 in Amsterdam, right? Yes, that's amazing. I mean you're really privileged to hold one of these first Touchpoint issues. They are sold out for I think four years now and people are hunting them already. So yes and in 2008. You and I were part of the conference team doing the very first service design global network conference ever and it was quite a challenge and I thought it was super successful. I think you guys convinced me to do it. I still recall our meetings in Eindhoven and Utrecht very well. You said it's going to be successful. We are going to have more than 200 people there and I said okay, you are very self-confident my dears and you were right. I think we had almost 250 people in Amsterdam on the very first conference and it was an amazing conference. Talking about amazing conferences, Birgit, we're now in March of 2016 and there is some news, right? Yes, exactly. Thank you for asking me. We are going to have the ninth service design global conference again in Amsterdam. So we are coming back and we are expecting approximately 650 participants. So we have grown a bit and I think we could be even bigger but we have consciously decided not to have more than 650 people because service design network conferences have always been a bit of this family feeling and I think we have to make sure that we don't become a conference machine where suddenly we do not really relate to each other in a personal way. So yes, we will be back in Amsterdam in October and I hope to see many, many familiar faces and of course also new faces joining us there. So the conference is coming back to Amsterdam, that is really exciting news. What is the place that people who are looking at this video can find more information about the conference? Well, I think you should just go to service-design-mine-is-network.org and this is where we will find the latest news about the Amsterdam conference but also about another one-day conference that we will be doing end of June in London. The UK service design community is one of the most active besides the Dutch community and so we decided to have a one-day conference there on June 30th and you will also find the information on service-design-network.org website. You will also post any relevant links in the video comments below so that anyone who is interested in the conference will be able to find it really easily. Really excited to have the conference back in the Netherlands. It feels like we've grown but we're back again. This is an interesting question because I'm really curious if you have an answer. What is your first memory of service design? When did you ever get in touch with service design? My first memory is sitting together with Michael Erlof and Fritz Holbach, two very dear friends of mine, eating oysters and Michael Erlof said to me, you know what, wouldn't you like to become a professor of service design and I almost died swallowing the oyster too fast and I said, no, because I had never heard of service design before and I think Michael Erlof was one of the pioneers using that term and it took me a while to bring together a service design with what I was doing at that time. I was being an organizational and HR person, organizational development and HR person at the time and I was helping in the transformation of organizations from product and technology focus to more of a solution and service focus so in the way I was designing service organizations and helping to change educational processes, cultural settings to be more service and solution focused but I had never thought that I could be the one to develop the discipline of service design and that was maybe in 1992 or 1993 when I was almost dying on an oyster in Cologne. What eventually convinced you to become that professor? I think the idea never let go after I heard that for the first time I started to dive into service marketing and what would be different if designers would be looking at this so I was constantly thinking about the contribution that design could make to a world with better services and I saw many, many opportunities. I think from the very first time I heard that word and I started to think about it. A little bit nice history that I don't think a lot of people know. I think you're the first one I ever told about the oysters. We might use it as a title for this episode, we'll see. I found a pearl, I have to say you could really think that while we were sitting there I found a pearl in oysters and it has been growing ever since. Yeah, well that's a nice metaphor. We have a format for the show and as service designers we believe in co-creation so we're going to co-create the questions and let's just explain to the viewers how this works. I have some topics that you gave to me on the things we want to talk about and in my most beautiful handwriting I've written down something on a piece of paper and you also have a stack of papers, right? Can you show them? Yes, so I'll hold up a topic and you'll hold up a question starter and we'll take it from there. That's how easy the format works, co-creation and action. I will start with the first topic and it's the topic of uniqueness Birgit. Okay, how can we make sure that the uniqueness of service design will be saved? This is one of the concerns that I'm having because service design has I think developed in an amazing way, I think we have developed the discipline, we have many amazing people out there, we have great projects out there, but still I feel that these buzzwords of design thinking and service design are always endangered to be watered down by service marketing approach or by business approach that take them to them and spit out something very fast. Just recently I read this article by McKinsey on journeys and touch points and I thought, oh wow, they are talking about journeys and touch points and I read through the article and service design wasn't even mentioned. So I think that the marketing people and the business people are very smart and very fast and taking words and using them and then throwing them away. I think service design in itself is a slowly growing and very consciously and very solidly growing discipline and we just have to make sure that we are not, you know, harmed by this very fast digestion of buzzwords and using them and throwing them away. That's a bit of a concern of mine. Is this maybe a part of the success service design has been having for over the last years? It's part of the success. I think the conferences, the publications and the practice of service design have really shown the value, but it's also maybe an indication that we need to be stronger and putting our claims out there and putting these claims as service design and making sure that these methods and tools that we are using are seen as part of a bigger concept and a more holistic approach and that in the end it's not that, oh yes, journeys, I've heard it before. So let's move forward and I think we have to make sure that we communicate strongly as service design community, that we put our claims there and I think it's all service design network is aiming at that we join our forces as service designers and make sure that we are heard as a voice of service design out there with its uniqueness. So a topic that relates to uniqueness but also concerns me is, well, focusing on what really service design is and maybe defining it can have a sort of a downside effect because a lot of people talk about service design, customer experience, user experience design and I don't think we want to create new silos. So it's really interesting to still have the uniqueness of service design but not exclude ourselves from the other design disciplines. How do you see that? I think you're totally right. I think there is, for one thing, a lot of overlap between service marketing, service innovation, user experience. So I think there are many neighbors that we are having. Still, I think that we need to make sure that the design in service design stays strong. I can teach organizations service design skills. I can teach them design process and methods and still I think, I strongly believe that service design approach is different from what an organization does that has gone through a one-day service design seminar. So yes, we need to collaborate to bridge the different disciplines and still I think we need to strengthen the design within the service design. Yeah, so that's also a topic we are strongly focused on. It's the design part within service design that really makes it stand out from other disciplines that are related to us. And I think it's funny that designers should be really strong communicators but I find that the marketing people and the business people are in a way like stronger in pushing their worldview out there and as a designer. So I think we really have to join our forces to make sure that we are seen and heard and that the uniqueness of the design within the service design is not by others and put in waste. Right, yes, we agree on the topic, absolutely. Let's move on to a second topic. Let's do this in the middle. This is called the service design day. OK, what if on June 1st, 2016, more than 1000 service designers worldwide would do something that makes service design buzz. So that's the idea and that idea was born just a couple of weeks ago when we thought about strengthening design and service design and when we thought about what could we do as a community to create awareness for service design, to create hunger for service design and to make service design strong. And the idea is that on June 1st, 2016, for the very first time, we will call it the service design day. We will invite service designers all over the world to do some small activity that will make service design buzz. All right. And we as Global Service Design Network will make sure that there are platforms where all these thousands of activities will be seen and heard and we will make sure that the media all over the world will talk about the service design day. So it's one of these activities that we as a community can do to make service design strong and to create this feeling of uniqueness and connectedness that, yes, we have as designers. How can we contribute to a service design day? What do we need to do? Yeah, you do something. Think about something that will make people look and listen to service design. Post your plan on Hashtag S.D. Day. Hashtag S.D. Day, yeah. Hashtag S.D. Day, yes, we will communicate that hashtag within the next couple of hours, basically. Post your plan on Hashtag S.D. Day. And then let us hear what in the end will be the impact of your service design day activity. So Hashtag S.D. Day will be promoted. We will have a big united view on all the activities all over the world under that hashtag. And if in the next couple of days we will start pushing it out and it's the thing you could sit in front of the city hall of Denmark or Amsterdam or Utrecht and have a big sign in your head that, Mayor, you need service design. And just raise a conversation with the city hall about service design and the impact it could have. So any big or small event and activity that will make service design buzz is welcome on the service design day. Are there any activities that you know of already which you are excited about or is it still work in progress? It's work in progress, yes. But I assume that by next week you will be able to see the first creative and interesting ideas underneath our hashtag. Excellent. So follow the hashtag S.D. Day. Exactly. Is this something that you plan to organize or stimulate every year? Will this be a recurring event? Yes. It's something that should happen every year and it's also something that should happen as a co-creation process. For example, here in Cologne, we will be inviting all the active service designers for a co-creation session in order to get the best ideas of what we will do on S.D. Day. And I hope that many others will also co-create events and buzzing activities. It's not planned to be like big things. It's not supposed to be conferences or workshops. It's more like funny things that make you stumble over service design. And I'm sure that this community will come up with amazing things. And I think it's a good activity that is well going to join in the forces with the service jam and other activities that we already have. But I think it's worthwhile investing some energy in coming up with good ideas. Will we hear something about the service design day at the conference? Sure, we will give a wrap up. Nice. Best of. All right, service designer. Well, I need to think about what we'll be doing at the 31 Volts with that. Still, still no idea. We are going to highlight the best activities early June. So we will monitor what's happening and there will be a best of collection. And I'm pretty much convinced that your chances to be among the best of are pretty good. Well, thank you for the confidence, Birgit. We have one more topic we want to cover. And I think it's a very relevant one. And it's a really important one for us as a service design community. And that's a topic of impact and implementation. OK, so let me take the how much how much yeah, how much value does service design create? And I think that's a super relevant question still. It's not totally new, but it's been on my mind for the last couple of years. And there's different facets to this question. I believe that service designers tend to be very much focused on the exploration and the ideation phase of a project and that we still have a bit of a weakness when it comes to the implementation part of the whole thing. And I think that we need to focus on on developing our competencies, our capacities, our methods, our tools for implementation. One of my BA students, Lena Hummers, did a very interesting research. She mapped all the methods and tools that service design is using and talking about. And it's really interesting to see how how strong we are when it comes to exploration methods, to ideation methods and how thin the layer gets when it comes to implementation. Now, of course, you could say implementation. That's, you know, where the business people should roll up their sleeves and get it done. But I believe that the quality of implementation is very much depending on what is done in the early phases of the project. So I think that we as a service design community should be focusing also on our capacities and our unique contribution to the implementation phase of projects. And maybe there's one more of a set because I said how much. It also means that that we need to prepare the evaluation of the value that we create through the projects. And we have to think about that from the very beginning. If we are not able to measure the value that we are creating with the project, it will be very difficult for us to communicate and to sell service design. And in the end, that's what we also need to do. We don't only need to be super creative and conceptual, but we also need to be selling our capacities and our potential impact. All that this is, of course, a discussion. I think a lot of service designers are having with their clients is how do we explain the value that you've created or related to the project? Some and a lot of the times that these discussions are about, we created awareness or created new insights or created well, all those soft and tangible things. Yeah, but they want measures and I think we need to learn to speak the language of our potential clients and we need to be able to to translate the value that we have created into KPIs into some kind of measures that they understand. That's quite interesting. In last year, the services network for the first time launched the Service Design Award and for the Service Design Award, you can only contribute projects that have been implemented and where the value that they have created has been measured. And I was really surprised, positively surprised, how many projects we collected that have really been implemented, that have really created value and where the value has been measured. And this year again, we are doing the Service Design Award and the call for contributions is open until I think 27th of May. And I think this kind of like, you know, showcasing the projects that have been implemented and where the value has been proven is very, very helpful for the Service Design community as a whole. So this is one of them. Yeah, you've been in the industry for 20 years and this is a very relevant development at this stage. If we fast forward like five years and we look back at this period, what do you think has happened? What do you see upcoming on the horizon related to this topic? Well, I definitely see that many companies will have installed Service Design as an in-house competency. I do observe that under the roof of business, innovation labs or design labs, Service Design plays a very important role. And I see that very many of the big players are building that capacity within their organizations. So I think that will become more or less a state of the art. I also see that more and more of the big consultancies will buy Service Design competency. I think John Maeda has shown it quite nicely in his research that the design and the Service Design are very appetizing to the big players. I think the last big merge was VPRO buying, design it before we had Capital One going for adaptive paths. We had Accenture going for Fjord. I think this is a trend that will continue. And last but not least, I do see that on the educational level, more and more universities will be teaching Service Design. And that is also something that I see as a big challenge for the Service Design Network to to push more educational and more academic development in the market. Because if we create hunger for Service Design, we also have to make sure that there is a great education and great Service Designers are available on that market to be hired. I agree. And what interests me is when you talk about the the fact that Service Design is becoming more and more in-house capability within large companies. I'm really curious if that will lead to more necessity for explaining the value or the fact that it's an capability actually requires less explanation of the value. So I think it could go both ways. You're right. And I don't know which way it's going to go either. In a way, I tend to think that it will require less explaining because it will become quite natural to do Service Design as you do product design or graphic design or interface design. I think it will become quite natural to to be working with Service Design. So I assume there will be less explanation necessary and less explanation. And also in in that fact, less explanation about the value it creates, you know, the need to prove the value because we know how it works and we understand the value. So it will be a debate between Service Design as a capability and Service Design projects. I think Service Design projects still will need to explain the value and maybe quantify the value about Service Design as a capability. I think that will be less. Yeah. And you know that we have started to build a case study database a couple of years ago, and it is like constantly growing. And I think also this case study database builds a backbone of the proof of value. And I think that's really important, especially for young agencies. You know, they start out, they strongly believe in Service Design. They are very passionate about it. But how how do you explain what you're doing and how do you convince your potential client that it's worth it? So I think you have to be relating to some kind of either academic papers that prove the value or you go to case studies and look what they've done and look how it can be done. Yeah, that is the benefit of the fact that Service Design is just growing, growing. The number of case studies is increasing and we have more stories to tell. Exactly. That's great. And I think it's great that you have the channel to, you know, to share with people the stories. Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing and what we're aiming for with the show. One of my final questions, Birgit, and you probably, as a professional Service Design, get this question quite often for people that want to get into Service Design, people who are not in the service design industry right now, what would be your single most important tip you could give them? I'm sorry, I'm not really sure if I got a question. Is it more like people that are on an search for education or more companies that I want? It could be anyone coming up to you and asking you, well, I want to get into Service Design, what should I do? Go to Amsterdam in October. It's not only a great city to visit. It's also a great place to learn about Service Design, to dive into the network, to make great connections. So I would say go to Amsterdam in October. And if we can't wait to go to Amsterdam? Yeah, then go to London in June. Go to London in June. If you can't wait for June, go on the Service Design Network or a website and dive into all that content from Touchpoint. You have shown the very, very first print copy and it has grown ever since. So dive into all those amazing materials, the case studies, the publications that we have gathered throughout the last years. And you will be very, very knowledgeable about the landscape of Service Design. Dive into the material. I think that's a good thing. Is there a question you'd like to ask the viewers, the people who are watching this episode, is there a question you have for them? Yes, let me know what can Service Design Network do for you. I would be really interested to know what kind of support initiative equipment do you need and what could Service Design Network be doing for you. So really feel free to to Twitter me, to mail me to post it on the website. So please, please let us know. We'll add all the contact details about that. So Birgit, I think we're going to wrap up again. Thank you very much for your time. I know how busy you are, so I'm really happy that you made the time. What are your thoughts about the topics we discussed today? And if you have any suggestions on who we should invite next to the show, be sure to let us know down below in the comments. If you enjoyed this episode and like to see more interviews with Service Design pioneers, be sure to subscribe and check out some of our past episodes. With the Service Design Show, we help you to stay one step ahead by talking to the people that are shaping the service design field. Thanks for watching.