 In this video, you'll learn how you can use the power of Grituals to design better services. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hello, I'm Ted. Welcome to the Service Design Show. This is episode 170. Hi, my name is Mark van Tijn and welcome back to the Service Design Show, the show where we explore the secrets of what it takes to make businesses big and small, more human again, all to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business and our planet. Our guest in this episode is Ted Matthews. That is the chair of service design at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Okay, so when you think about rituals, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Is it religious rituals like prayer or baptism or the things alike? Or maybe more everyday rituals like birthday, game nights or maybe even your morning coffee? The truth is that rituals are so ingrained in our daily lives that neglecting them in your design process is somewhat like neglecting the human in us. Rituals truly offer an opportunity to connect with your users on a deep personal level. And that brings us to the theme of this episode. How can you incorporate the emotional power of rituals in every service you design? Rituals in order to make businesses more human again, we really need to embrace the moments we cherish, celebrate and remember in our design process. So if you stick around until the end of this episode, you'll know what rituals are and how they differ from habits and routines, how rituals shape our day-to-day lives and how you can integrate the sacred services approach in your practice. As you can hear, a lot of interesting stuff is coming up, so I hope you're ready because we're going to jump straight into the conversation with that Matthews. Welcome to the show, Ted. Hi, Mark. Hello. That's always a good start. Ted, looking forward to discussing the topic that I've introduced and our introduction, we'll dive into that a bit more. You have a really interesting role if people look you up on LinkedIn, but maybe some of our listeners haven't done so yet. So maybe it would be great if you can elaborate a little bit more about what your current role is, what do you do, what's your situation like these days? Yeah. Well, thanks for inviting us on the show. It's great to be able to talk about these things. But I'm a practice in service designer. I think it's really, I'm also working in academia, so I'm an associate professor at the Oslo School of Architecture Design and I'm head of service design there. So I think, and I also try to practice service design when I can because I think it's really important for the students, some of them are my research that is actually based in practice itself. But last year now, I finished this very long PhD, which was much longer than it should have been. But if it's a very long PhD, which is sort of explored. What, you know, what rituals could mean for service design and explore sort of some of the peripheral elements around it? So things such as the power of symbols, storytelling and how do we sort of work with extraordinary service experiences? And this has opened up a whole sort of world of working with sort of highly experiential services, particularly working with football, a professional football, working with finance, working with telecoms, all sorts of stuff. And it's been a really rewarding. A hard journey because you're working with quite complex theory from social anthropology and sociology and a cultural theory. That was a very long introduction to. Oh, yeah. That's cool. The whole podcast there. Sorry. We can finish now. You say that. I think we'll be able to scratch the surface of a 10 year PhD today. It's a super fascinating and interesting topic that I hope a few people will get inspired by and dive deeper into after today. But before we do that, we have a ritual of our own here on the show. And that is to do a quick lightning round. I've got five questions for you to get to know you a bit better as a person next to the professional. Just the first thing that comes to your mind, we won't elaborate on these answers. But yeah, are you ready? Oh, I was ready as I'll ever be. Yeah, I hope so. What's your favorite food that? Oh, a Xiaolong Bao soup dumplings. Amazing. All right. What did you want to become when you were a kid? An entrepreneur. I wanted to be an archaeologist. That's what I wanted to be. What a book or books are you reading at this moment, if any? I'm such a nerd. I'm reading this book here, which is called Rituals in Psychotherapy, Transition and Continuity. A classic. Everybody has their one on their shelves. I'll definitely bet I'm stories. All right, next question. If you could be an animal, which animal would you like to be? Oh, I'd like to be one that flies. So I don't know what maybe a swallow or something like that, which is kind of just beautiful and amazing or a lark ascending, something like that. And the final question is, do you recall the first moment you got in touch with service design? Yes. And that's kind of probably back in 2007 when somebody told me I was a service designer. So it was kind of one of those moments where I was just kind of thinking I was a designer and somebody said, yeah, but you're a service designer. And I said, no, no, and then it was one of those. Well, what kind of things do you do? Well, we do active mapping and we're trying to understand the points of contact between people and public services. And they said, you're a service designer. And I pushed back against that for about five years. The face of the Nile. Yeah, but I have gone back to calling myself a designer again, because I think it's it's a it's a I think we mix ourselves up in so many different things that it would be a shame just to sort of say we just design services because I think we design so many different things. Yeah. So without going too much into semantics, I've I've been letting go of the word designer. And maybe it's nuanced thing, but I'm moving into a service design professional, just like with somebody who's in health care, a health care professional, and that can you can have many disciplines there. I don't know if it really makes a difference for me. It makes a difference. I think it's a more inclusive way of thinking about it becomes a field rather than a profession, if that makes sense. Discipline. I'm still I'm still into calling myself designer. And I think I think for those of us and maybe this doesn't sound inclusive, but I think we should be we should be proud of the work that we've done in design through the years. I think we should also be ashamed of some of the things that designers done through the years. But I I do think design is a very is has a specific set of skills and tools. And that's learned through our engagement with materials, through making. And, you know, I think we've kind of disconnected design process from the designer itself. So I hear this cliche all the time. So design thinking, I'm a design doer. It's almost like you hear speeches now. I'm a design doer, not a design thinking, but in a way, it's correct. I think there is something about the act of doing design and engaging with material. I say, again, the making, the visualization, those skills are classically connected to design that are really valuable. So I'm not quite ready to give up that title. And if, you know, it's I mean, I spent what I spent first six years at design school in the 90s. And then I've worked with my profession through many years and I'm proud of those skills that I've developed. So not not want to exclude people, but I think it's OK to be proud of those particular skills that we bring to the design and services. We're not going to go deeper into this rabbit hole, but you go on. Let's talk about this. Let's do that off camera this time. Yeah, but you did provide a very nice leeway into the topic of today because you mentioned working with materials. Product designers, industrial designers, we know that they have very tangible materials. They work with economics, they material properties. We understand that. But there are when you're working with services and maybe with experience, there are different types of materials which are less discussed, but are nevertheless very fascinating and interesting. One of the materials that I've been using or learning to is the organization as your design material. That's not the topic for today. The topic for today is rituals as a design material. Correct. Yes, absolutely indeed. So I mean, so I mean, I think one of the one of the things that we find as material for services is time. So how do we design with time? How do we understand how do we change it and work with it and those kind of things? But we're also working a lot with people as material as well. If we can, it sounds very controversial to suggest that people have materials. But then one of the things that's really, really important is also culture and the cultural context within which people we find them and designing for them is also an enormous rich pallet of materials to work with. And I think when people think of rituals, they think of something religious, but we rituals are part of our everyday life. So we have something, it's a symbolic action that expresses something meaningful and it's really powerful for individuals, for groups, for society. So something as simple as a handshake is a ritual. So if you look at Irving Goffman's work around this idea that these interaction rituals that we have, just something as simple as a handshake, it's a symbolic interaction between people. It's a ritual and what it helps us do is actually deal with the anxiety of meeting someone. So it's like, there's an anxiety, what do I do now? So let's do this performance together. And then suddenly from sort of you put your hand out, you shake hands, you remove your hand again, and suddenly we know each other. But that's also culturally informed and culturally enclosed. So you both need to know what the handshake means and you both need to know how long you shake hands for those things we don't really think about. But if you shake hands for a very long time, someone's going to think this is really weird. But of course, we have rituals daily. We have sometimes people have rituals of leaving the house. We have rituals of weeks. Some people have some day dinner, at least in England. And then we have calendrical rituals like Christmas or birthdays. And then we have these rituals through life. Like rites of passage, like maybe getting married or birth or what have you. So we don't often think about these rituals, but they infuse our everyday lives. And there's such an important part of our lives. And if we don't if we if we don't design with rituals in our services, then we're not really that human centred because they're so important. That's my argument. It's just so important part of what we do. And I think that as material, it can be deconstructed, understood, unpacked, those kind of things. So one of the things that say people like Van Genneb shows, who's a folklorist from 100 years ago who wrote a fascinating book about rites of passage is that there are structures to ritual. So already we can see that there are structures. This is this idea there's a phase where you leave something behind a period of transition or liminality in the middle and then a period of reincorporation where you kind of come back from your ritual experience change and you'll find that in a handshake. You know, separation, put your hand down, that's separating from not knowing you to shaking hands, which is kind of weird in betwixt place and then removing your hand. Now, I do know it. Now, the point of telling this is that once you start to see those structures in ritual, then you can start using it as material for services. And and what you're doing, you're adding meaning to time. So certainly it's not just about how do you pass the time? How do you add touch points to get somebody through a service? It's like, how do I find moments of transition in a service experience where I can actually design these transitions and give meaning to time? But of course, there is a there is a material just in the time aspect, but there's also the all this other rich cultural material. And as I say, if we are to design rituals, then we have to understand the cultural context within which they emanate from or will be used within. So we then have to understand, you know, are there any props we can use? So what are these symbolic props that might be meaningful or valuable to people? Is there a narrative behind that which we will draw from the communities or the users or whatever that we are going to work with? So yeah, I mean, how long do you want me to go on about that? Because you could you have to stop me because it's such a rich palette of material here. So yes, I'm going to stop you because there's so much to unpack there. And I think what could be interesting before we dive deeper is wouldn't it be interesting to briefly touch upon the differences between rituals, routines, habits? Because when you say rituals have meaning and you give the example of the handshake, I can imagine somebody listening right now would say, how is that? How is that a ritual that's just like a task or maybe a habit or so? Could you briefly touch upon that? Yeah, I mean, I think I think I think this is something very intentional about rituals, and I think handshakes are intentional. And I think that if you if I mean, I think a lot of people experience those I mean, in those cultures where people do shake hands, I think what a lot of people experience when covid came, you were no longer allowed to shake hands and the divide that that creates of not having that form of communication that's that's performative becomes really very difficult. And I think sometimes when you remove a ritual, that's when you really notice it's either a habit or a ritual. And one of the examples I sometimes use is that routines can sometimes feel ritualized. But I think when the real difference happens is when you add something that has absolutely no particular value, that has some deep performative meaning for yourself. So an example that I use is there are routines of leaving your house sometimes, so you may make sure you've got your keys and then you turn on your burglar alarm and then you leave the house. If you create the addition of, say, three taps, which is a kind of makes a kind of closure on your departure and maybe for you, it symbolizes that you'll have a better day if you make your three taps. Then that's the adding of some kind of performative symbolic act that sort of really demonstrates something internal to to be able to sort of cope with the day. Routines and rituals are quite close, habits and rituals are quite close. But it's the I think it's the additional of some kind of intentional meaning that really matters. But again, these these there's some kind of theoretical fine lines here between what Goffman might see as a ritual and what Saban again, it might see as a ritual. But I don't know if that answers your question. I think so. It is it is kind of it is woolly. I can I can appreciate is that it's kind of some overlapping parts. But it's this kind of intentionality that's really important. The intentionality and like the expressing inner meaning. I don't know if you use that that work and you already touch upon this. But that's going to be like with all things service related, super contextual and super personal. Like what has meaning for me might not have meaning for you and might be a routine for you and might be I might experience it as a as a ritual, correct? Yeah, I mean, totally. But I don't think we ever existing in vacuums. So we do we do exist. So some things, yes, absolutely, they're just personally meaning for me. And we do create our own little rituals throughout the day. However, there's there's some quite interesting sort of theoretical view on that that they're actually even when we do some rituals on our own, they're often connected to larger cultural and ritual structures. So if we look at Rook's work from 1985, he talks about how the coming of age rituals in the in America for for for young women, young girls. A lot of the rituals that they enact, they enact on their own at home. So they're often sort of grooming rituals that they do. However, unbeknown to the subject, as probably is the case for you and I, Mark, is that we we are actually enacting certain aspects of ritual and meaning that are actually connected to larger larger meaning of society. And that's that's the difficulty to avoid if we want to avoid it. I mean, I think some of it's valuable and interesting. But clearly, you know, a Christmas ritual is going to be different for families, but they still connect to a larger accepted grouping of meaning, you might say. And even if you reject that meaning, it still exists. So you're you're taking a stand against something that's definitely there. Now, I'm curious if we could look into rituals in the context of services, because my limited understanding of rituals and vocabulary is I'm thinking of of quite experienced, driven events. Like you said, maybe a marriage or Christmas dinner. Those wouldn't be events that I would describe maybe as services. So I don't know, services feel maybe more transactional to me or. So I'm curious, like, could you give some examples, maybe of how rituals. Increase, improve services. I think that what got me sort of interested in this subject. I mean, I started looking at rituals back in the 90s with probably when I did a master's in product design at Saint Martin's. And so I got really to the idea of how do we create rituals around products how we use them and whether they increase the experience and improve the experience. And we I mean, people have designed rituals around products for for for years. And then just the way we design the way we open a cigar. It creates anticipation and experience. And a wonderful chap at Imperial College called Weston Baxter, who's an associate professor there. He's been doing, you know, experimenting around food. So, you know, if you if you design a little ritual around the consumption of food. So just something as banal as clapping your hands. He showed that the test groups who tried this one without a ritual, one with ritual had thought the chocolate tastes better. So if we just take on that sort of micro ritual level. There's obviously potential here to improve rich service experiences through smaller ritual interactions. And and some for example, I was working with a telecom company. And so we have new technology that comes in, which is, you know, tapping to pay with your telephone. So it creates new sort of a new space for rethinking. How do we work through these almost like rituals of paying a dinner? So, you know, you're out with friends, oh, no, I'll pay. No, you pay. So which is kind of a ritualised performance. If you if you follow Gotham's view of these ritualised performances between us. So it's like, how do we design a ritual of this new technology tapping to pay with the phone that creates a better experience for everyone and heightens this experience? So we can take just that as a simple, a simple view. However, I think so, there's one thing about designing rituals themselves and finding the right points in a service to to use them. So entering a restaurant or being welcomed at a restaurant or, I don't know, you know, entering into a hospital. What's it like, you know, the reception? Can we do some ritualised things to make this this easier? Or using the ritual as an entire structure for the redesign of a whole experience. So I was working with the Norwegian Football Association with professional football with the national team. So it's like, well, OK, you think maybe football is pretty ritualised already, but we do know with national football, it's more difficult to engage people because they're not as close to it as, say, a local club. And it's so, well, how do we lift the experience of going to the stadium and bring back more meaning so that people actually want to go to the stadium instead of staying at home and watching it on TV? So then it's like then using ritual structures of separation, transition, liminal and re-incorporation to design a very new kind of customer journey. So you've still got before and you still got after, but then you've got the the main part of the service experience with phases that creates a sort of intentional emotional outcome through the whole game. And then you're designing these sort of service encounters, I call them meaningful service encounters, where we can try and perform out some of the meaning that can happen in the service. So this is in a hedonic service and we can see that that might not seem relatable to say hospitals for banking and those kind of things. So so just to recap, I think it's the identifying potential moments of transition where you could add something meaningful or alleviate anxiety or using the whole sort of ritual structure to create entire experiences with high points, you know, because there's a kind of an emotional and experiential high point in the middle of in the middle of a ritual experience. So what I'm trying to work with now is to say, well, what does this mean? In medicine, so I'm working with a doctor at Stanford at the moment to say, well, you know, we're seeing this enormous amount of burnout and stress for doctors. So how could we design a sort of change of rituals or transitional points in these very stressful shifts just to kind of work with self care at those moments? So here again, it's like, can we find these emotional airlocks that people can sort of, you know, decompress a little bit before moving to the next task and rituals can help do that. So, yeah, I think I think there's I think there's potential for rituals as the small micro interactions. I think there's the potential of ritual frameworks to create drama to do for a larger service experience. I think it's relevant for users, but I also think it's relevant for staff and people working within, you know, stressful or difficult services. I'm fascinated by what you just said. And I'm thinking of sometimes it's easier to think about what's what do we miss if our services aren't infused with rituals or aren't designed with a ritual perspective, like tapping, paying the bill, tapping the phone. Like how would you what do you use when you look at that kind of sort of moment or service? What's missing from your perspective there? What's the opportunity there? Well, I think I mean, I think just I mean, this this is again, I think my answers are too long. Sorry, Mark, but I think we have some social norms. And I think we I think say like I think the example is the handshake when we take the handshake away during covid, we struggle a little bit. It feels weird for quite a long time. I think say like we have digital meetings. And if you remember the start of covid, that was dreadful. We had none of these transitional rituals to find a really good way to come into a digital meeting. So it all stands about and we don't know how to take the word of a room. We there's no fruit on the table. There's none of that sort of those, though, or biscuit or refreshments. It's kind of this really awkward, weird, interactional digital space. But as human beings, we're not just that. We are cultural beings. We're social beings. And we we're used to those kind of formative interactions. So things like paying, it becomes a form of ritualised behaviour. Where, you know, these things are said, oh, no, I'll take this. No, you know, and they and Coffin would point to those those kind of terms and those interactions as a form of ritual, because you're sort of performing out that thing of sort of the socially acceptable things. No, I'll pick no, I'll take this or whatever it might be. And then if you remove some of those existing performative aspects and you're bringing something new into it, how do I integrate that into my sort of normal repertoire of micro rituals? I think the other question then is a broader one. And I think this is about what should services be like, OK? And I think there is there is there is some tradition in in in service design, which is interactional and it draws from service marketing and service management and from interaction design. And I see a lot of service and brilliant as it is. It's very much about quality and efficiency. How do we make things easier to use? How do we make things faster? All those kind of things. But not everything in life needs to be faster. And maybe there's some things that could actually be better and more experience rich. So one of the areas that we're investigating at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design is this, you know, this idea of highly experiential services. So this is referenced back to Zomadink and back in back about 10, 15 years, start of my experience centricity. Simon Clarke, were they obviously a big voice in this area? And it's to say, well, how do we raise the craft work around the experience? It's like, if you can imagine, there's a crafting of an experience in the service. And so how do we create these experiential rich experience? And so I think ritual is one of those things that lifts that creates that. So if you look at a retail outlet like AirSop, I don't if you know AirSop at all, it's it's a it's a soap and, you know, grooming shop. They always have beautifully designed interiors. It's beautifully crafted. They always have a sink in the room that you can wash your hands and try the products that the way that the staff work all that stuff is beautifully crafted as an experience, you know what I mean? And and I think that there is great potential to not just think about quality and efficiency all the time. And this also thinks really important within public services as well. So I think one of the areas that I'd love to spend more time investigating, but I don't is this idea of serviceization. So how do we how do we turn products into services and get people to consume services instead of products? And we see car manufacturers now say like Volvo with Volvo care, where they're trying to get people to subscribe to their cars rather than actually buying one. And they've tried to create a kind of experience around it with a personal valet who helps you with Volvo. And it looks more like a quality hotel experience rather than a car experience. Now, the reason I'm talking about this is that I think if we want to get people to move from products to services to hopefully reduce our carbon footprint, we have to make those services better than the products. We need to have to make those services better than the products. So I believe in an idea that maybe we could actually reduce our carbon imprint by creating these services that are just so amazing experience rich services that people will drop products because they're actually better. And so I think there's a I think there is a need for revolutions in efficiency, which San Giorgio and Moroni talk about. I think those are really important. We do need revolutions in efficiency, but I do also think we need revolutions and experience to encourage people to choose services over products. And this is one aspect. So rituals or experience rich, they heighten your experience. They can create really positive and heightened feelings. So why not be using them? Another very long answer. I'm sorry, Mark. I like these answers because there is so much to unpack and excuse me for just taking a snippet out of your answer and pulling that threat. When I'm listening to your story, I'm hearing different things like rituals can be a way to increase value perception. They can be, like you say, just a way to create better services. What I'm also hearing and correct me if I'm wrong, again, the example of the handshake and when that goes missing. Rituals are a way to make things easier and more comfortable. Like without the handshake, you said things become awkward online and I can imagine the same goes. And again, I'm picking, I'm just picking out some of your examples, but paying the bill can become awkward. And if you have a ritual that feels that that fits within the culture, the social norms, you could say that it makes the service efficient, but it's not the word that we're using there. It makes it more comfortable, easy, familiar. That's the thing, at least one of the things that I'm getting out of your examples. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's absolutely correct. So and I think this is maybe one of the difficulties of talking about rituals is that the more I've dug into this, and that's probably why my PhD took 10 years because I couldn't help myself. I'd read one thing and then I want to read the next thing, I want to read the next one. It would have been just so much easier if I just said, what would the theories of Goffman or what would the theories of Van Gennet mean for services? But instead, just all this huge kind of worms, which just became too extensive. But there's so many theories about ritual and all of them are really interesting and relevant. So there's one thing about just ritual as a way to alleviate anxiety. It's just one area that's interesting. So these small performative acts that allow us to know how to do things and make a transition from one phase to the next phase. And whether that phase is leaving the restaurant, getting to know someone or getting married, they're just these kind of social performances that allow us to get from one place to the next place. But if you look at, say, Durkheim's work, and this was really my starting point, because I think I was what fascinates me 11 years ago is how euphoric people got just buying Apple Macs. So people would be getting these extraordinary, heightened, pavescent experiences buying Macintoshes, which is kind of crazy. I can't imagine somebody buying a Hewlett Packard and getting quite as amazed. But so and there's a lot written about that in consumer culture theories. So Russell Belk back in the 80s starts writing about almost the sacred experiences that people are having around their products. And so what was interesting for me is like, well, if this is obviously delivering enormous value for people, they're really enjoying these products because of a form of ritualization, sacralization. What could that mean for services? You know, encourage people to use services to their products, it all can always sort of area. So there is this other part of ritual, which is we haven't really touched on enough because I've been talking about this idea that just relieving anxiety, which it doesn't. It's not just that. If you look at Durkheim's view of ritual, what's happened is what's called collective effervescence. So there's this idea, there's a collective heightened experience that comes out of ritual interactions in groups of people. Now, that could be sinister, but I also think that it's also very positive. So going to a concert, going to a football match, these are heightened, wonderful experiences where people have a shared focus and it kind of just disrupts some of our views of services design, which is this idea, oh, we need to design for individuals. It's about this, you know, if you look at service dominant logic, this idea is that it's an internalized, phenomenological value is understood by something that's happening in our heads. But we do see phenomena where people have these collective experiences, intersubjective experiences where people are able to sort of feed off each other and have really good experiences. So we see some service and literature, it's about, well, you know, how do we manage other people in the store so that the individual can have a great experience? Well, why don't we design for users, or maybe what can we design experiences for participants rather than users? I don't have the term user, it always seems like you kind of bake someone down to their interaction with a service, you use this, so that's all you are. But actually we're rich humans. So how do we create these experiences? Well, maybe we design for collective experiences instead of thinking always about individual experiences, which again, maybe could lift services to be more attractive than owning an individual product. We could actually have these collective experiences that are really high and really wonderful, designed for specific groups of people that delivers meaning and creates really fantastic service experiences. So there's different aspects of ritual, which of course, a 45 minute podcast isn't going to cover, but I think we can see these as, and that's why they're so important to us through our sort of human development, is to have these micro exchanges that deal with anxiety, or maybe in fact, coming of age as a ritual is about anxiety. But then through the rituals, we can create these heightened and extraordinary experiences for people too. These heightened experiences, you gave two examples of the concert and the football match, I can imagine, like again, a marriage, you're going to church or something like that. There are some similar experiences. Have you seen examples where these heightened experiences are brought more into, I don't know, our day-to-day services, or is that really tricky? I mean, that's yet to be designed for, but I do think we're one of the things we've talked about with my colleagues at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design is this idea of these extraordinary, ordinary experiences. So how do we maybe create these small, little service interactions that make us go, oh, that was brilliant, that was a really nice thing. So they're not out of this world. I mean, I don't think you could maintain the service experience that's like a marriage experience and be in the groom or the bride or vice versa. So I don't think you could create that. You don't want to create, you don't want to go to the laundrette to clean some clothes and be going, it just wouldn't be sustainable. So I think this is kind of like, you might say that if you had a volume switch on it, so maybe there's some light little rituals that you want to add occasionally through different aspects of a service, onboarding or arriving or something like that. When you're leaving or those kind of smaller things that just allow you to have these simple interactions, but maybe there is call for these greater experiences or heightened experiences. And this, which is a great segue to talk maybe about, I think say for, I think often we think about services about these interactions or a touch point. So for example, with an insurance company, you may have a whole of life relationship to the insurance company. And usually, all you're getting really is a letter occasionally to tell you that you're premium, it's kind of cost you more each year or this is the situation, I think. But it's such a long-term relationship. And most of the relationships I've had over 30 years, there will be some form of ritualized interaction at some point. The meaningful relationships we've had. Now, you might argue, and this is fair enough, and I'm just using this as an example of the top of my head that maybe we don't need a meaningful relationship to our insurance company, but there surely is some potential to raise the experience or I'll give a better experience if after 10 years, I get a letter that just said, thanks for being a customer 10 years and we're having this thing that we'd like you to come to. But the point I'm making is, is that I think we don't also have to think about every service experience has to be heightened, but we can also use time, maybe a calendrical one or one over a longer period of time to add more meaningful experiences along the way, especially if we have a longer relationship with a service. Yeah, two things that came to mind when you were sharing this example, and I'll share them both and then it's up to you which avenue you explore. Sure. I mean, I would be interested if rituals tend to lose their value if they are too frequently repeated and like do we lose meaning as in if we would, if somebody would stand and share it every time we walk into the grocery store, like would it still have value after, I don't know, 20 encounters? So that's one thing that I was curious about. And the other thing is like, what would you say to people who say, well, this just sounds like an unnecessary luxury. I don't need rituals with my insurance company, like you said, like they just need to do a good job. I think to answer the first question, I think yes, but it depends what the ritual is. It really depends what the ritual is, I think. This is not something I've investigated, so I'm speculating really. So I think it depends what the ritual is. So a handshake, we never really get tired of, it still seems kind of okay. And it depends on the context. And I also think with any of these things, it's also about what feels authentic. So I think if it feels superficial, or super superficial, as I'm gonna say, it does feel like this person's just doing this for the sheer hell of it. So there has to be something at stake for you and your relationship to the place that you're going. And I think, say for example, the rituals work really nicely at AirSoft, because I do think a lot of people who use the AirSoft cosmetic brand are quite loyal, they have an emotional attachment. I think it kind of can work in the football for the same reasons. So I think it's an interesting investigation to look at how much is too much and is it about the levels of elaboration around the ritual or is it the sensible authenticity? What's that aspect? So the question about the insurance, do I need to have a ritualized experience from my insurance company? I think it's, I don't know. I would have, again, that would be something to really look into. But I also think because we're having a discussion about rituals and we're unpacking what rituals are and suddenly we have this, we're starting to understand, oh gosh, they have meaning and they have structure. But some people don't even recognize at times that they're engaged in a ritual or ritualized activity, even if it has meaning to them. Because a lot of people identify ritual obviously, it's something that happens at church or in a synagogue or in a mosque. But obviously they're happening all over the place. So again, I think it's about are we fully able to identify things as ritual? And I don't know the answer to your question and I would love to do a study about ritualizing aspect of interaction between customers and the insurance companies. But we did something with banking and that was also quite interesting to sort of look at potential space where customers could come together more and maybe sort of when you move from one credit level to the next, is there a kind of transition and what's the story behind that? What fits with the symbols of those things? And it did seem to show some value for people but I think again, it's identifying the right context for this, so as I've gone back to what I said before, I'm not sure if the laundry is the right place. But I think it's identifying needs that either one of this kind of anxiety question and the other one is too, could we just genuinely create value for people with heightened experiences? You mentioned something about does it feel authentic and that's also maybe a thing we should briefly touch upon like what are the ethics around or ethical questions around rituals? There's always an agenda, especially when you're dealing, well, no matter who you're dealing with, like there's always an agenda with a handshake. It might be to get into somebody's favor or well, if it's your own agenda, then it's relieving anxiety. But in other cases, I can imagine that, no, can there be malice intent around rituals? And if so, what would that be? Well, I mean, clearly, the ethical questions come up quite a lot, really. And I think it's because it feels like a degree of hawker's focus in designing rituals, which obviously can create these strong emotional responses. And then there's also the fear of mass suggestion. We're going to work with groups of people and create these experiences. So I think any design that we do is about, there's a form of manipulation, I think, because we're creating channels for people to have experiences and we have an idea of the experience that we want them to have and we're trying to design maybe those different channels and different touch points to give somebody an experience. So I think the closest I can come to is working sort of looking at the ethical questions around nudging. So nudging, I've been also talking about nudging in service and how do we sort of affect people's behavior, maybe more positive behavior, those kind of things. And I think that as long as it doesn't disrespect that sort of human autonomy, then I don't think it's problematic. I think, and I think if the intention is to give someone a great experience, then I think that's, we are curators of experience anyway as service designers. I just think when we start talking about rituals, it seems a bit scary because it seems much more manipulative. But I think all designers have a form of manipulation because everything that we put into someone's space is because we have a clear idea that we want them to have an experience of some form or another. So I think it's about being respectful. But I do think one of the things that I, at least from my approach, is to really deeply try and understand the group of people I'm designing for and the things that matter to them. It's not just adding meaning, something coming from the side. And this also addresses the question about authenticity. I think it's really important to try and, so the big part of the process that I do is, is to go deep into a form of sort of cultural analysis, to try and understand what matters to people. And I think any of that material that you use from what matters to people, you have to handle very, very carefully because you're now curating experiences for people that's using things that matter to them. But I think designers have often been those kind of cultural intermediaries, cultural interpreters to create objects or experiences that can connect people in really meaningful ways. So like anything, it could be abused. I think that's, I think that would be always my message. And I think it's about doing it in a really respectful way for the people who you're designing for. Yeah, can be abused for sure. And I think if we look into the dark patterns, knowledge that's already around, that's going to be applicable here. Another thing I want to explore briefly, as you mentioned, you do a lot of research around what's meaningful to people, right? Are there any sort of subtle differences compared to what serves these art professionals already do? Because I can imagine somebody listening to this will say, yeah, I'm already researching what people find meaningful. Is your work more specific, different? Are you looking at other aspects? Oh, I mean, that's a good question. I wouldn't say we have a monopoly on designing for meaningful experiences. I really don't think that. And I think good designers have always dug into what matters to people. I do sometimes think, and I'm going to stick my neck out here, there has, because of the way service design has developed, and as I said, you sometimes have drawn a lot from interaction design, service management, service marketing, there can sometimes be a tendency to look at the functionality. How do I make this touch point easier to use in relationship to other touch points? How do I create an easier experience to use things? Now, that's a sweeping generalisation. But I think there is a tendency towards that because of where we come from. And I don't read a lot of service design literature that's about designing for meaningful experiences for people. So there's not a lot of literature out there which suggests that at least people aren't writing a lot about it. However, I think a lot of good designers, going back to where we started, this idea of a professional designer will always be trying to locate their designs within the culture where they're working and to make sure that it means something, at least just to be usable so we can actually read what will be presented with, and I'm not talking about read as in text, but read culturally, read what's actually been presented to us. But I don't see the literature out there that says a lot about how do we design for meaningful service experiences. There's stuff in there from product design and there's stuff in interaction design, but less so in services design. So I'm saying we don't have a monopoly on it and I think good service design will always have that in their mind to be able to create that. You've been exploring this topic for many, many years. You've done a lot of presentations publicly, privately to many corporations. When you share this story, what's like the most common question you get? I mean, I do get, oh gosh, that's a really good question mark and now I have to think, question mark. Here's a question mark. I don't know. Question, yeah, what questions do I get? I usually, I mean, I think most people see that this value and it's one of those things where we hear talking and I can't show you a presentation for those people listening on a podcast can't show a presentation. And it is funny as a designer to be not be able to create visuals to show people because it makes it so much easier. So I'm describing to you the football game and as a ritual structure and I'm normally will have behind me a big picture of the customer journey, the ritualized customer journey for the football pitch that I can point at things. So I think it's one of those slow burn things. I present this to people and they have to think a little bit and say, and then afterwards it's like, well, how do I find, how can I utilize this and find value? I've had the occasion to question about ethics and again, it's one of those things I think it's really, really important that we discuss. And I say, I'm comfortable with using the approach but I can see that some people might see if it's used in the wrong way it could be quite manipulative. So that's come up occasionally. But I think, I don't think, I don't know if I have an answer to that mark. I'm sorry. But most people probably just start thinking, this guy's crazy. What the hell is he talking about? Let's get out of the room before he tries to ritualize this. So let's hope this inspired some people who are listening and they would be interested to start going down this rabbit hole. What would be some good resources to start? Yeah, I mean, obviously this is, we'll feel like a moment of self promotion but there are a number of people I think have got some really interesting work in this area. My work specifically around service design. So you can find my PhD online and you can download it from the Oslo School of Architecture Designs website. I don't recommend reading it, it's a nightmare. It's too long and it's too complicated. But there is a chapter in Simon Clappworthy's book called the, what's it called? The Experience-Centric Organization, that's the name of the book. And I have a chapter in there which I refer to my processes designed for meaningful experiences. There is also a forthcoming book by Homelid, Clappworthy and Blomkvist which is coming out in spring, which is a book about the, so this is a very exciting book and really needed. It's a book that examines what are the materials of service design? So it's a book full of short chapters about discussing aspects of the materials of service design and I have a chapter in that which is a four page, varies to understand ritual as material for service design. So that comes out in the spring. I can also recommend a book by Koushath Othink who's a friend of mine from Stanford who works, who has the Ritual Design Lab. He's looking at how you design rituals for business and what have you. And then there's also Western Baxter at the Imperial College who has a sort of human behavioral view of rituals, which is also very interesting. So that's a long list of people and I can supply you with people's names and you can propose those. Well, make sure to add all the links to that. So there's like, I think the conclusion here, there's more than enough to explore and read and digest and get even more inspired. So we've come a long way in this conversation. Many questions unanswered, but that's great. If you had to leave somebody with one thing, if they just take away one thing from this entire conversation, what do you hope it is? I think because perhaps we're not always aware of these things, but rituals are so important every day from the way we greet each other, to the way we sort of add meaning to time through the week, through the months, through the years, through our lives. I think if we don't design or be at least conscious of ritual as an important material and service design, then I think our designs are less human centric. So if you can take it, I'm not suggesting people should create these huge sort of ritualized experiences, but I just would love for service designers in their practice saying, would this be the good point or is this a really positive point for a transition that's positive and would help someone deal with something difficult and whether that's just meeting someone or maybe it's just someone moving into their last home. Could we find those rituals will help people through the day or can we find rituals that just create these lovely little experiences for people? So that's what I would hope people would see from this. Yeah. Awesome. I totally see it and I'm totally going to apply it to the services that I'm providing to the community. So thanks for coming on. This was really inspiring. I really enjoyed this episode. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope we'll be able to continue it in one way or the other, but for now we'll have to wrap this up. And once again, thank you, Ted, for coming on and sharing. Thanks for having me and allowing me to rub it on for too long at times, but I really enjoyed it myself. So thanks a lot. Awesome that you're one of the people who made it all the way to the end of this episode. I really hope that you enjoyed it. Make sure to leave a comment down below and show what is your biggest takeaway from this conversation. My name is Mark Fontaine and I want to thank you for tuning in to the service design show. And I really look forward to see you in the next video.