 In this episode, we'll be talking about a better definition for service design, we'll talk about how the digital transformation and service design go together, and finally we'll address one of the biggest challenges in service design, and that is implementing solutions. Here's the guest for this episode, let the show begin. I am Seren Pigment and this is the service design show. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the service design show. This show is all about helping you to design and deliver services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business. My guest in this episode is a collector of airplane sickness bags, but he also wrote a book on service design back in 2009 and in new book one, book is coming out pretty soon, his name is Seren Pigment. In this episode, we're going to talk about what is wrong with all the definitions of service design that are out there, and what is a better definition. And we'll also address, like I said, one of the biggest challenges in service design and that is implementing our solutions. That's what Seren will be sharing in this episode. And speaking about definitions of service design, if you are interested to learn how to explain service design in plain English, make sure you check out my free training on how to do that. Check the show notes down below for the link to that training. And we released new videos in this channel every week that help you to level up your service design skills. So if you haven't done so already, click that subscribe button and don't forget to click that bell icon so you'll be notified when new videos are out. That's it for the introduction and now let's quickly jump into the interview with Seren. Welcome to the show, Seren. Thanks a lot, Mark. Nice to be here. I really look forward to talk to you, but first of all, for the people who don't have a clue who you are, could you briefly introduce yourself? I can. I am from Denmark. I have been working in service design for the last 10, 15 years. I'm not a designer. I come from a communication background. 15 years ago, I think I heard about service design from a Finnish friend of mine. And I started to digging into the topic and it was a complete revelation for me. It was outstanding in many ways. It solved a couple of the problems I had and I would say the rest is history. I started writing books about service design and done a lot of keynotes, presentations, workshops, whatever. How many books have you published? Just one or multiple? Actually, I'm working on number seven. Oh, number seven? Gosh, wow. Yeah, it's crazy. So we could introduce you as an author or a writer. Yeah, you can. You're welcome. The first two of them were about project management, so that was completely different. But the rest of them have been about service design and related topics like customer journey, service recovery. And we're working on a new book about service design which will be published earlier next year. I think we'll talk about that in a second. You also almost answered my other question that I asked everyone and that is how did you get in touch with service design? What's the story behind that? How did that go? Well, it was a Finnish friend in communication business. And as you know, Finland is strong in service design. Yeah, absolutely. And back in, I guess it was 2008 or 2007 or something like that. My friend, Marku, he called me and he said, well, you should look at the service design thing. And I went to see him and went to see if he was either, I wouldn't say drunk or something. But to try to find out what he was about to do because he had plans about leaving what he was doing and turning towards service design as well. He did something else. And then I discovered that there was a topic called service design and that not least that the Finns are strong in this. And I have been in Finland talking about service design and listening to great service design a number of times. Cool. So you gave me a really interesting topic. I think they're super relevant for everybody who is watching and listening to the show. So are you ready to dig into them? Absolutely. Okay. I already told you we're going to do interview jazz. So we're going to improvise. And I'm going to pick the first topic, which is definition. And do you have questions started that goes along with this one? You're going to do it. You're going to do interview jazz. And what does it say? It says why. Well, wow. So what question could you make out of this? Why a new definition? Okay. Is there a new definition? Yeah. Actually, as I just mentioned, over the summer, I have been working on a new book about service design with a colleague of mine. Mikkelsen, which is a designer as well. And we have been, yeah, been writing this book which will be published next year. I believe that, you know, and many in the service design community know that there is an ongoing, I wouldn't say joke, but at least the story is saying that if you ask 10 designers about the definition of service design, you will get at least 11 definitions. And I completely agree with that. When I, when we were working on this book, I tried to dig up all the definitions we could find. And there was a lot. And I tried to take them apart and assembly them again and try to see what was strong and right and wrong about them. And we ended up with, I don't know if it's definition number 12, but at least a new one. Okay. And our definition is very, very simple. And there is a reason behind that. Because our definition says that service design is about designing services. I add a lot of things to it, but service design is about designing services. And we use it, of course it is. But at least from my point of view, that's not obvious. Because service design is often compared to or looked at in different ways where you could say, is it really service design you're talking about? In my opinion, it's extremely important to double click on design and to double click on service if you want to understand what service design is. Right. Sorry for interrupting you. But I think I can add 60 other definitions to your list because that's the question I ask almost all my guests. But I'm thinking I run a service design studio, but I wouldn't say that all of our projects really relate to designing a service. Although we are a service design studio, is that what sort of makes this thing so complex that a lot of service design projects aren't actually about designing services? Perhaps. But at least what I'm trying to say is that what was new, interesting, relevant for me when I discovered and when I work with service design is the design tools, the design methods, the design thinking, the design doing. And if you want to understand that, and what I mean when you talk about all the different definitions of what service design is, that is often that you try to take, of course, the most important part of what design is and put it into one sentence together with the most important part of what service is. And then either the definitions, in my opinion, will be extremely simple and not covering the whole topic, or they will be extremely long. One of the last definitions I found was a co-created definition, which was very, very long, not easy to understand and very difficult to remember. So in my opinion, that's the reason why that's something I'll add about our definition. But the reason why we said that service design is about designing services, meaning that you have to double click on design and understand what design thinking, what design doing is. You also have to double click on service to understand the nature of the service. Yes. We have added a word to the definition because we believe... To make it even more simple. Add to the complexity. A little more complex to say that service design is about designing sustainable services. And how? Sustainable in which sense? Two senses. In the sense, in the, I would say, classical sustainable sense. That is the question of, that we as service designers should be focusing on designing services that from an environmental point of view works. That we leave the planet a little better than it worked when we took it over. That's the classical sustainable part. The other part of why we call it sustainable. It's a question of balancing a service which is attractive, effective, and or different. Meaning that it's a question, at least not to balance attractive and effective. That we create services that are attractive to our customers, users, patients, whatever. But also effective for the organization behind the service. It's so easy to create something which is attractive. We could have open 24-7, you would never wait, whatever, but that would not be effective. It's also very, I wouldn't say easy, but it's possible to create something which is very effective, but not necessarily attractive. So the balance between those two, and I'm not taking the pride of inventing this. I know that Birgit Marga and many others have been focusing on this as well. But I think the balance there is extremely important. And the next thing, the first thing about it is differentiation. That in my point of view, coming from a communication background, I still believe, or at least now I believe, that the easiest way to differentiate yourself from your competitors is by creating services that are different, that are better to some extent. Instead of just telling them that you are good, showing them that instead, and you can use service design in my opinion to do that. Super interesting. And I think the clue in your definition and saying that you need to double-click on services and design, I think some other guests said it in the show. The problem with service design is that it combines two complicated words into something even more complicated that people don't really understand what a service is and they don't really understand what design is. So the design of services, it's hard to comprehend. Final question regarding this topic is, you've done a lot of research about this, but what was the aha moment for you? When did you get the big insight? You mean when I started working with Söbtetan? No, when you were working on this new definition, on this new book, what was the moment that you thought, oh, now it starts to make sense? I think the whole process, we have been two people working on this book and it's the second time that I write a book together with somebody else. And that is no doubt, it's a challenge. It's much easier to some extent to write a book on yourself, but the great things about writing a book with somebody else is all the discussions. And I would say that I have heard myself say something that when I just heard it, then I suddenly understood it or suddenly saw it in a different way. And I remember that we have had a lot of discussions about the definitions and they were very, some of them extremely complex and extremely, they were not wrong, but they were so complex and complicated that perhaps we understood them and perhaps we could remember them and then suddenly we had this, well, isn't it just about this? And I can't remember the exact moment, but it was a lot of discussions, a lot of coffee and perhaps... Having to verbalize or to explain to somebody else what you're thinking is one of the best ways to help yourself understand what you're doing. Let's move on to the second topic, drum roll. The second topic is about digital solutions. And I'll try to do as you say. How can we? Typical. The classic design question. How can we challenge the digital solutions? I have a secret that I would like to share with you. I am not as old as I look. Lucky me. Because when I'm saying what I'm about to say, some people would say that I'm very old or very conservative, which I'm not, at least not yet. I think that you could get the impression that no matter what the problem is nowadays, the solution is digital. You don't care about what the problem is, what the reason behind it is, just make an app or just make a website or whatever. And I have no doubt, like so many others, that there are outstanding, fantastic, great digital solutions out there that I was traveling last week. I love going through Copenhagen airports with the possibilities that we have on self-check-in, self-service in many different ways. I can use the app to understand when my plane is delayed or where the, you know the journey. It is great. I have so many possibilities on using digital solutions to do things today that I couldn't do a year or two ago. My family and I, we have exchanged homes with people around the world because of the internet. And we have never met those people. We have talked to them. We have perhaps skyped with them and things like that. But we have slept in their beds and used their cars and used their kitchens and whatever. Just because of applications on the internet, that is great. But I'm wondering if all solutions automatically get better because they are digital. And I'm wondering if you as a service designer should wonder if there might be better solutions than digital solutions. Why are you worried about this topic? Where is this coming from? It's coming from actually what I said earlier about the attractive and effective things. Because I don't believe that just because it's digital, it's effective. Not always. I mean, I have been working with clients where some people just simply said why don't we call the customers? Why don't we just pick up the phone, call them and talk to them and ask them what their problem is. Talk to them. And I think, I don't know about... I have watched some of your episodes in this show and I love it by the way. And I'm not completely into all countries of course. But at least from my point of view, at least here in the Nordic area I see solutions where you are focusing so much on the digital part and just forget the simple things in life. Just forget also about the human relations. I read about, I think he was called Krukov, a general in the American army who said the closer you are to the front, the closer you are to your customers or something like that. And I think that's one of the dangers about digital solutions that you are creating distance to your customers. We have been working for a large bank here in Denmark. And they have a lot of digital solutions. As one bank director said, we have never had as many touch points with our customers as we have today. And at the same time, we haven't... It's so seldom that we see our customers. And that is critical I think. I also worked for a hospital where they tried to use, again tried to use different digital solutions to improve the service experience, the connection to the patients and the relatives. And then there was a hospital who said, why don't we use a piece of paper? Because those patients and relatives are in emotional difficult situations and then we ask them to download an app or go to the internet. And sometimes that is not the best solution. Why don't we just give them a piece of paper and say, if you have any questions, here is a guide how to write a great question or have a place to place your questions for the next time you see the doctor and you can use the relatives and use that in a great connection to do that. So I'm not... It's important for me to say that I don't believe that the internet will break down or that we shouldn't use that. Not at all. I love them in many contexts. But I just believe that we as service designers should and have an obligation to try to also look at alternatives. Yeah, I can totally agree with that. First of all, I think the best way to learn about service design to work on the most basic offline services, right? To redesign a restaurant, to redesign, I don't know, anything that's not digital related. That's the best way to sort of try to understand service design. And while you were giving examples of the airport, I remember that we worked for an airline company here and they sort of have interaction with 40,000 passengers, I don't know, a month. But they understand their customers as passengers, not as people. So that's what I'm also getting from your story, that although we are sort of literally having a conversation, we're not talking about the right things. We try to make things smarter, more digital, but we're not making them more human per se. I agree. I agree. So it's like the digital transformation is like the magic word right now. We, next to digital transformation, we need a human transformation, people transformation. Yes, I agree. I agree. We also worked for a customer that suddenly said to us that they had seen an increase in the number of customers who called them by the phone, although that they had a number of different possibilities across digital platforms that customers could contact this company. And suddenly they saw, over time they saw an increase of customers contacted the company by phone. And when they dig into the number, it was obvious that it was youngsters, it was young people who used the phone to call this company, which was a kind of surprise because we were more or less confident that most customers or at least most young people would use digital devices to contact this company. And they did, but they used the digital device that they also always have in their pocket, namely the phone. And it's perhaps, I don't know how or why, but they just used the phone to call a guy and said, we have a problem, solve it, let's move on, instead of going into contact form and all these things. So perhaps there's waves in different directions. I see this pattern happening with myself. I was calling using the phone today with the Dutch railways. I could have probably gone on Twitter or send them an email, but I picked up the phone three times, I think, to sort something out. What is your sort of tip or advice for people who are dragged into the digital transformation train movement? How do we bring the human part back into that? What would be a good first step? I have a friend of mine who has decided to go back to his old Nokia telephone, mobile phone. And the only thing he can do on that is to make a call. I think he can text, he doesn't do it, but I think he can. He can't take any photos. And he has really gone on an offline journey. And I talked to him about it and he said that it was amazing. He loved it. I don't know if you'll stay there forever, not at all. But he really, really loved it. I think sometimes we should do that, something like that. Really trying to see what happens if we try to step out of it. And probably we'll see. I mean, it's also a kind of a service design method to try to look at the world with different eyes. And then why I could say, I mean, it could also be a tool. We use it in some of our workshops to say, what would the solution of this problem be if it is not digital at all? If we didn't have any, if internet didn't exist. Exactly, yeah. Human transformation, let's push for that. We have one more topic left, so let's... Oh, there we go. I'm worried about it. This one is a big one. This one is a really big topic in the service design world. It's called implementation. It is. How much? How much implementation? A lot. Or a little. Or a little, yeah. Being not a designer in a service design world means perhaps to some extent that I'm... I try at least to be extremely open and focused on the multidisciplinary part of service design, saying that service design is not the solution on everything. We can drag in different kinds of methods or disciplines that could solve the problem. I think that's important when it comes to implementation. When we were working on this book, as I mentioned, I found an article in Torchpoint, I think, that said that somebody had read a number of books or dig into all the different organizations, the agencies that have created method cards or trying to pull together all the different methods. And they made a list of where these methods applied, and it was so obvious that there are so many methods in discovering what the world is really about, mapping journeys, creating new ideas, prototyping, all that. And when it came to implementation, there was so few what you would call service design methods. I think that's quite interesting, because for me it meant that as a service design company, you have to be focused on implementation if you want to have your customers taking you seriously. And I have seen a number in huge companies seeing a number of projects that was beautiful, designed, great observations, fantastic insights, great ideas, wonderful prototypes, and then it was just left to the companies to implement. And then a number of things happened, often what happened was that nothing happened, or something else completely different happened that was supposed to happen. Well, what happens is a lot of disappointment. That's what's happening. Exactly, exactly. And I think that we as service designers should be really, really open-minded and focusing on trying to drag in relevant methods, relevant tools from perhaps some of those that we try to differentiate us from, including business tools. I mean, some of those guys, Jay-Z, Kotler, whatever, they have tools that you at least could start on and try to understand. They might not be as funky and sexy as some of the design tools, but perhaps they work. I think when we talked about digital solutions, I'm not completely sure about this across the world, but at least some of the companies working in service design that I know, I have seen them developing from what you would call perhaps full-service service design agencies. Focusing on all the right things, saying all the right words, having the full-scale model. And today they are mainly focusing on digital solutions. I see the same. Why is that so? I believe that when I work in, for instance, I work together with a number of the classical consultancies, consultancy companies, houses, and they understand the situation where they have to train 500 people, changing their behavior, changing what they do, changing what they say. And that is, that's not easy. Definitely not. And it's very different from what I see many of the service designers do and understand. And it's definitely not done from your home office. It's done out in the company. And it's a completely different world, but you have to, I believe that the service designers must be able to understand this, must be able to be there, and try to say sometimes, I mean, if you avoid training 400 people, then you might have the situation that the companies would say, that the customers would say, okay, we go to others who are able to do that and the classical consultancies are. I'm going to make a bold statement, but I think still the service design community is in large amount pretty naive when it comes to implementation. We sort of don't find it interesting and haven't put much time and effort in actually understanding how to do it, what it means. And we really run the risk that somebody else will come, like you said, and we will become irrelevant if we can't show the impact of our work, right? We need to take it to the end. Absolutely. Mark, I completely agree with you. What I see happening in our projects, and I'm really curious how you approach implementation, but I think implementation in service design has a different nature than implementation regarding architecture or products where you create a blueprint and then you implement. What I try to explain to my coworkers here is that in service design, for me, implementation starts on day one. Implementation is like, it's an ongoing process the moment your project starts, and that starts with things like understanding what business KPIs are, understanding what the resources are to sort of scale up, things like that. And I would really love to see more people talking about that. What is your experience regarding that? I must say I completely agree with you. We say that implementation starts long before the implementation. Exactly. And that means that we try to involve those who have to change or at least involve those who must make their colleagues or their employees change, involve them very, very early in the process. I have been working on a very large project over the last couple of years where all employees in a company, it was around 2,000 people, they were involved in the project. And I'm not naive because of course it's not always possible and it could be much larger companies than that. It's not always possible, but it's definitely at least increasing the chances of really making changes that you involve people. We have a tendency to defend our own ideas. And if you have as a human being the feeling that this is my idea, I was part of that process, then the chances are that you will fight for it, you will work for it, you will change your behavior are bigger. I'm not saying it's easy, I think it's extremely difficult. And I think it's, of course I think it's the most important part and I think it's extremely difficult, but I think that some of those situations where you, the best situation, perhaps some of the best situations I have experienced in service design projects are situations where you see the light and people's eyes and say, well, I don't fight for this, I'll work for it. Well, let's do something about it. And of course we have to be campaigning, we have to be there helping them, providing the tools and it's not a journey that ever stops, I believe. You have to change the culture, you really have to change a lot of things. You're inspiring me also because I think it's also the message we convey to our clients and the way we help clients to brief service design agencies because I don't see a lot of clients asking a question to actually materialize upon ideas. They ask for a customer journey map, they ask for user research and that's what we deliver, but I think it's also up to us to educate clients that why do you want this customer journey map? I can make you a customer journey map, but what is your end goal? Do you want to change something? Do you want to implement that? That's what I want to talk about with you and you'll get the customer journey map in the process. Again, I agree with you Mark, asking the why question. Yeah, and not accepting projects where you need to make a customer journey map, right? Accepting, I recently had an opportunity to sort of co-design a brief for a project and I said, I will only do this project if you can promise me that you will set aside a budget for next year to actually implement five solutions and I'm going to help you to figure out what these five solutions should be, but I'm not going to make you a customer journey map just to make you a customer journey map and I think that's our obligation to sort of help our clients also to understand that. I agree and it also makes me think a little of the fact that customer journey mapping is I think perhaps a little off track here, but still customer journey mapping is a great, great tool that we see a lot of companies understand and ask for. But mapping existing journeys is, in my opinion, quite dangerous, I would say, in the sense that the risk that you customer will be really disappointed about what your work is there because you use a lot of time mapping basically what you already know. Instead of focusing on what could we do instead. And I don't know if it's a huge problem but I have seen it sometimes that we know we are going from A to B and we use a lot of time on mapping the existing journey instead of saying what could we do. We know we are going from A to B what would be a great attractive, effective, different journey instead. I think what I have learned from, I know a number of classical consultancy houses here in the Nordic area, what I have learned from working with them is the ability to ask the difficult questions and also demanding something from their customers. And I think that could be one of the challenges to service design agencies as well. We are new in the service design field. Some of us are extremely excited when their customer calls us and gives us an appointment, a job, whatever. And then everything is possible and you don't question your customers because you just want the job and you don't challenge them and the great consultancy houses are great at challenging their customers. They know what they are doing and they know that it is necessary and that works. I think we are on the same page with regards to implementation. Super interesting topic. We are heading towards the end of this episode but I want to give you the opportunity to ask us a question. Is there anything you would like to ask the viewers, the listeners of the show? Then I will ask you a question that I get sometimes. And that question is whether service design is just another boss word. Will it disappear? What would be the next thing? And yeah, what will happen? Is service design a new boss word? Well, it's not new anymore. Is service design still a boss word? Not new word, but just a boss word. I'm really interested in what the people will say about that. So let's keep an eye on the comments. Sören, thanks so much. I think this was a super interesting episode and I want to thank you for sharing what's on your mind these days. Thanks a lot. I really enjoyed being here. So what is your biggest insight from this episode? Let me know down below in the comments. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd really appreciate it if you click that thumbs up button and grab the link and share it with someone who might benefit from the things we've just discussed. Don't forget that you can always sign up for my free course on how to explain service design. Check the link down below or I think it's on this side. Thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.