 Hi, I'm Andy Palijn and this is the Service Design Show. In the Service Design Show we talk to people that are shaping the service design field. We talk about the current state of the industry, exciting new developments and the challenges up ahead. My guest in this episode is Andy Palijn. Andy is currently the design director at Fjord in Australia and he is the co-author of the book called Service Design from Insights to Implementation. For the next 30 minutes or so, we'll be discussing a few topics, among them the fractal nature of service design and what service design can learn from the movie industry. So if you're interested in how to design services from end to end, be sure to stick around to the end of the episode. Welcome to the show, Andy. Hi. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's awesome. You're the second one now from Australia actually being on the show. Well, it's middle of the night here so it's looking a bit kind of dingy and dark. If we did it the other way around, it'd be more nice and sunny and you'd be all in the dark. Maybe the next time. Andy, you've been quite active in the service design field for quite a while, but do you actually recall your very first memory of service design? I do actually. So I have to sort of rewind the history a little bit. So I was mainly working doing interaction design and teaching interaction design and my history in that goes back right to the early 90s and I think I'd often thought in this way. I remember doing some work back in the 90s for a bank, a major UK bank when I was at Razerfish and thinking about the design of services. And then when I was teaching at the College of Fine Arts here as the head of School of Media Arts here in Australia back in the 2000s, we were researching. We were restructuring the faculty and I remember being struck by the fact that a lot of people were sitting around the meeting table reading bits of paper out at each other and I was thinking, well at least half of us are designers here and the rest are artists. Why aren't we up at the whiteboard designing? This is a design problem and I started thinking about the design of organizations. This is around 2000, 2001. And in that company that I had set up a company years ago or co-set up a company called Antirom in the very early 90s and a guy that I worked with as them was a guy called Ben Reason. And anyway, one trip back to London I dropped by to say hi to Ben in the studio and I think I met Lavrand and also Chris there. I think I met Chris and Ben and Ben said, well, we're doing this thing called service design. We just set up this company about a year ago and as he started describing the kind of work they were doing, I was like, oh, alright, so that way of thinking has a name. That's quite a common story for a lot of people involved in this. Yeah. So this was for the people who don't know who Ben is, the co-founders of Live Work. Right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So this must be back in 2001, 2003, something like that? Yeah, something like that. I think it's 2001, 2002, something like that. Yeah. Really the early days of the field. Yeah. Alright. So in the show we have a question format that is based on co-creation as we believe in co-creation and service design and maybe not all the people who are watching this episode have seen any of the previous episodes. So let's explain shortly how it works, right? I have three topics on a stack of papers and you also have a stack of papers, right? Can you pick one that is in front of you? I can indeed. Can I use them more than once? Yeah, you have a why and I call these question starters what you have. I'll pick a topic and you'll associate the question starter with that and then you have to answer your own question. It's that easy. Okay. Ready? Easy enough. Easy enough. So I'll start with the one that puzzles me the most because I have no clue what you mean with this one and it's called the fractal nature. What is the question starter that goes along with that one? Alright. I won't do that. No, I'm not going to do that. Look, we'll say this actually because maybe how much is partly what that relates to. So what is the question based on how much? How much can service design achieve and actually there's one that's missing here which is how far can it go and that's the question and that's what relates to the fractal nature of service design. Explain because I'm still puzzled. So I did a talk for Rosenfeld Media as a webinar and it was about the future of UX or UX futures and in fact it's a talk I'm going to do here at Service Design Australia soon. And it is about the powers of 10. Now I don't know if people remember this, there was a very famous video film and a book actually by the Eames, Rand Charles Eames, about the they start with a camera above someone's hand and they zoom out one meter and it's someone lying on a picnic blanket in a field and then they zoom out one another another power of tens of 10 meters 100 and very quickly they're in the they're in the universe and solar system and then they go the other way and they go right back down to the atomic level and it was really fascinating idea of just adding a zero each time and then illustrating it and my dad had this book when I was a kid and I used to love looking through it and one of the things I often think about the service design is how fractal it is so you can look at a small part of a service let's say let's use a telco because it's a good example of a classic service so you can look at me trying to set up my router at home okay and that's a little bit of service or I can look at the next level up which is me getting my home line installed or I can look at the next thing up which is perhaps my whole kind of ecosystem that telco or the next level out might you might think about the entire life cycle life span I have as a customer or you might think of my entire lifespan as a human being and then a telco obviously has existed beyond before I was born and it will exist after I've I've died so one of the things that happens I think with service design that's a really tricky thing to navigate is what level of that kind of fractal universe are we at because right down to at an individual touch point so the buttons on an interface yeah you're still affecting the service so if one of those things doesn't work and it causes a lot of people a classic one with telcos is people don't understand their bills right the people don't understand their bills loads of people call the call centre to query it it costs the telco a lot of money but then at the same time it's blocking up that call centre for other people who might actually have a different kind of problem and so often it's the butterfly effect right so you have one little thing here and it's causing a little bit of a ripple and when it's magnified across the whole ecosystem of a service it creates a lot of pain and it can be incredibly expensive so I think you know service design is very fractal in the sense that you kind of work out what level are we working at and then you're you design at that level but sometimes you drop down into the details and sometimes you blow out to the big picture and you have to kind of be able to rapidly move between those and think in that in that way so you mentioned this as a topic that is you're thinking about what is a question that you have about this topic so the question is and I don't even know if it has to be a question but the question is where does service design begin and end? Now we work at Fjord with a whole bunch of other people in Accenture for example and our clients and one of the things that there's often a discussion about is where does strategy start and then service design and is there then design realisation as a separate thing and then delivery and so forth and this big comes onto the other question I believe it's end-to-end I think if you reposition a if a strategist or the business guy's reposition a brand in the market they're redesigned or they're designing the service and if a coder down one end decides to change the wording on a button because it's too long they're designing the service too. Right they were up to into some of the sort of public stuff into government policy and things like that so I kind of don't think it ends but I think you have to have an awareness of where you are and to have that awareness I guess you have to understand the whole you have to see the bigger picture. You do and the trick is also then on a project is to know what can I actually design and what's a thing I can actually affect and have some kind of intervention in as a designer what stuff do I need to know is affecting my gravitational field or who's a gravitational field is affecting mine right so I mean it's orbit in some way and what stuff is just out there in the world that I need to be aware of. Correctile nature of service design it's really interesting I think a lot of people recognize this which you're saying but never have put this context that it's about design of a touch point to the design of basically that maybe the whole company makes it complex also makes it super it does right and so that's and that's the tricky bit the you know there's an expression in English I don't know if you've heard it I'm called boiling the ocean and I think a lot of projects are pitched or try to boil the ocean like we're going to fix poverty with service design and you just can't so you have to work out well which bit of the ocean are we going to put in a little pot and boil and then when we do it enough then we have perhaps boiled most of the ocean but it's not possible to do it but I think you still need to have this way of holding those two things in your head one that detail and the big picture but not let them kind of confuse each other and a lot of the kind of stress on tension on projects is people at different levels so people think well no we're designing this big thing and someone else going no we're not we're designing the small thing and there's in fact both those things of the service and they just need to know that they're at different levels. Yeah and there should be contributing to the same goal eventually that should be the whole thing. Yeah that's right that's absolutely right. All right you've touched up on a second topic and I'll hold it up and let's see if you can add a question starter to this one that broadens our perspective on service design is end-to-end. We have a question starter that goes along with this one and where we can add something valuable to the conversation. So that's this one okay so let's go for how can we. So what would be the question? So how can we design services end-to-end and it relates to what I've just talking about that. There's a there's quite a big challenge as service design and some of the sort of projects we work on a pretty large scale so particularly some of the stuff that we work on with very large companies enterprises or with with public services which are enormous and complicated. They have hugely complicated technical architectures at the back end some things that are really kind of ancient and so there's this tension where you kind of want to do something amazing and you have this whole kind of strategy and we do a whole discovery and understand the user's needs and see a lot of this is where we need to be and then you have to make sure that that central focus of what people actually need remains intact all the way through a process that might go through sort of a huge delivery teams some working in water force I'm working in agile so working there's a thing called safe which is this scaled agile framework and make sure it doesn't so just get completely degraded as it as it goes. So that's quite a challenge that's quite a challenge for service designers and people working in service design projects is actually a challenge for everyone in the team because there's a tendency to I say everyone in the team I mean by the entire project there's a tendency to fall back on the stuff you know there's a tendency for a lot of stuff to fall through the cracks and all of a sudden you've ended up making a thing that isn't the thing that you initially said you were going to make and you know it's a shadow of what it was intended to be. This is of course a trap in a lot of projects but do you have some best practices or examples that you've seen where they've been able to cope with this? I have some examples that I can't tell you about but this is actually one of the frustrations about service design I find is because a lot of our work is spent doing a lot about the thinking up front and often it's quite long term so if you're changing the culture of a company which is one of the things we'll come to or you're working on a large scale thing it's years often before it really kind of flows out into the market so I can't talk about a lot of it. But when it works well there's this trifecta and it's it relates completely to the desirable feasible and I've completely forgotten the other one. A desirable feasible and I'm blanking out is viable yes desirable feasible and viable. So which is design business and technical right so you know viable you know is it going to have legs as business technical is it going to be feasible and desirable is the design part right so when those remain intact and work across all the way through the project then I think that's when you have the best chance and actually the best example have comes completely outside of service design which is the world of filmmaking so in filmmaking you traditionally watch why I originally studied and I think it's why I have this in my head in filmmaking you traditionally have the sort of three pillars of director cinematographer and producer so the producer the money guy the director's keeping the vision what we would see as service design the vision of you know what's the whole kind of purpose and of this and cinematographer is in charge of how it looks yeah more or less it's obviously more complicated than that and what happens is they kind of make they go through an iterative process so you make the film over and over and over again so it first gets made by the screenwriter and then it gets made again as a storyboard and then it gets made again in multiple iterations of that and then it gets made again actually you shoot the stuff and you make this huge thing and then you edit it down again it gets remade again in the edit suite and often it you know takes root in the kind of public public imagination so you get this co-created sense of what the film actually is and what they managed to do is take a logistically really complicated process in a feature film there's hundreds thousands of people involved in making it and it's there's a lot of money riding on it so the business part of it is really important technically sometimes it's really difficult and they managed to keep more or less they managed to keep a vision of the final experience that's what they're all focused on is people sitting in the cinema so the many people focused on it are people going to go and see this until they're friends you know the directors obviously focused on it and so as the cinematographer is this going to draw people in are we going to be engaged so they managed to keep that structure all the way through and the sort of waiting of who has who has the most weight if you like and they and the checks and balances between them all when it works well it works all the way through the process and obviously you hear films going kind of over budget and going crazy and the director going off off the deep end and so forth but in general it's always struck me that they managed to do something that's quite similar to what we do in service design and they've got a long kind of production process history behind it so are we are we missing the director and a lot of service design projects or does a director just step out of the picture service design so I know I think a lot of service designers would love to think of themselves as the director but actually you know the director is one piece in the film thing their director is a very important piece but one piece of the whole puzzle you know you need to have everyone doing their bit and it's one of those things a bit like music or playing in a band or an orchestra you know everyone has to do their part really well but if one person rides over the top of someone else it sometimes doesn't work so there are times when the director really wants to do something and the producer would just go we don't have the budget and they have to creatively work around it and and they'll often come up with something better because of the restrictions and there are other times when the the argument is no this absolutely has to happen and so they then have to kind of get more money I think in service design what tends to happen is it's as if people have written the script and gone through the storyboarding and started shooting and then the director just disappears and then you just leave yeah so but but everyone actually so it's a loads of people just then step out of the process yeah and you're left with I mean an editor is a creative person anyway but it's almost as though you're left with you're leaving the editor or not even the editor someone who's just cutting together stuff kind of in a dark room not knowing is this the right thing yeah I need to cut together yeah and that's something that we have to really watch out for interesting metaphor and I I've already said a few times here to our clients that if you look at your own service as a movie do you consider it to be a blockbuster is it a bad be horror type experience where people get into so I think it's a really strong metaphor yeah things useful because people understand it from popular culture too yeah and anything that kind of takes it away from some obscure kind of methodology and and any of those things I think kind of helps yeah all right so Andy I've got one left here and this one is a topic that that is really recurring pattern in the episodes and you call this one design from within yes I don't know what to well let's say who are let's go for that as who are is my question to that who are or who is doing design from within so um Fjord do these uh trends we do a set of trends release a set of trends every year and their crowd source from within Fjord so yeah there's about 750 of us around the world and it's always very fascinating and one of the things that I'm involved in and as part of Fjord evolution and one of the things that we see over and over again is a question that starts often um from clients which is having worked with you could you teach us to do what you do how could you teach us to do what you do and that ranges so you have a one end the argument for design thinking in you know in companies has kind of been one right so there's not many people going why should we do design thinking maybe at the most sort of immature end of the spectrum in terms of what an organization's evolution is we know we think we want to do some design thinking but we we sort of you know what would it look like yeah most of the time though that they're coming to us saying um can you can you teach us about service design and and service design thinking and doing right the way through to uh we already have a team in house um and we'd like you to to assess them and teach them and and get them to have to have a shared language and set of methodologies and sometimes um we want to set up a design team in house yeah and I'm talking here sort of banks and telcos and you know enterprises that aren't design companies or design lit and so that design from within of of there's a there's a I'll see if um there's probably the other bit is what if here all right so there's who are and what if there's a question for us uh of what happens when when that when they do that um and in some respects you know are we putting ourselves out of out of business by by helping our clients do this I don't think we are well I don't think yeah but um the other thing is kind of who are they and where do they exist inside an organization is a thing that a lot of companies are struggling with so what is your current observation well one thing is that um one size fits all doesn't it doesn't work right so there's not a single solution it really depends on the history of that company and the way it's structured we also have found that to put them in their own group sort of as a independent department doesn't work either because as you know the the number one thing I know all your guests have also said this about breaking down silos right so to build another one with this design in it doesn't really work yeah so sometimes they become a kind of hub so or a filtration device device through through which a lot of other projects go um if they're happening within a bank or telco or whatever um and they help those project teams make sure that they're what they're doing is customer centered human centered um and connected in a service design way um sometimes so my wish for it really is that that just becomes the new normal the new way of just it's just the way we do things and it doesn't even have to have a kind of separate name yeah in the way that kind of maybe business is such a kind of loose non-descript word that that's just design should be business as usual yeah yeah that's um until we get there we have still have a lot of work to do I'd say yeah there's a lot of cultural change and some some industries and some kinds of companies that's why the one size fits all doesn't really work they have a lot of different backgrounds and histories and some some some places it's just like kind of you're pushing on an open door or there's a real desire and appetite for it within the organization they just don't quite know how to kind of put it all together um and in some cases the the organization just is really hostile to the idea um and it's usually somewhere in between so people kind of most people want to change right most people like the idea of change and likely present them a vision of what life might be like they like the idea of it they usually like it when they've got there um what they hate is actually changing yeah because it's a really painful horrible process usually because there's a point in it where you feel all at sea so a large part I guess of our work is to help them take that journey and sort of hold their hand for a bit of it and then and then gradually let go so being a part of this process what would be your biggest insight from the last two years I'd say to make this transition easier um one is that it has to have buy-in from really high up you can't have the c-suite kind of sending a message well so there's often a dichotomy so the c-suite's often sending out their kind of strategic vision message which is we want to be customer-centric we want to break down silos and so forth and yet they make their staff work in a really siloed ways in in in spaces that are very siloed with cubicles and people in different departments and so forth and so that's so that's the kind of body language that they're saying there which is we we're saying this thing over here but actually we're not making it happen uh and that needs to change and so you need to have that support from very very high up otherwise it just gets a bit cynical um and the other thing I think is to start small you know the the biggest fear you know the the classic you know a new a journey starts with the first step I think the the biggest thing that's a problem is if if an organization or someone at the top says right we're going to change from being what we are now to in within the next year we're going to become completely human-centered design-centered design-led the antibodies of that organization are just kind of kind of react too quickly and and lock it all down it's much much better to have a small success and then that creates a little gravitational pull for more people and then you get bigger success and gradually it just becomes the way of working I fully agree with you and this is also one of the topics I I discussed in one of the previous episodes with Dave Gray but the hard part about making it small is that uh for c-suite people celebrating small successes is not as attractive as celebrating big successes so that that that's my experience at least that tends to slow down the process right so having it's very true but having a kind of roadmap um then is is you know we and that's one of the things we often end up doing is is putting together that roadmap of well this is the you know I was saying about not boiling the ocean right so this is the big thing this and this is where we're going to go to but let's we're going to go here first and gradually kind of move towards that um then you kind of keep the big strategic vision intact but you don't try and do it all in one go yeah you know because sometimes those those managers then go somewhere else right and then and then you've got that whole cycle of someone else coming in and going well we're not going to do what the last guy did we're going to scrap it and you know then start again so it has to really become part of the DNA for change to actually happen and that takes time and patience it yeah it does take time and it takes um sometimes takes a generational shift as well I mean really uh some people have to retire you know and then new people come through and they've they've got a different kind of view of things yeah I fully agree um and the we are sort of heading to the end of our talk already and um I'm um my question would be you would have to give people a tip people that want to get into service design what would be your most valuable tip for them well I'm going to steal one from a designer called Brendan Dawes um and he once said if you want to be a more interesting designer become a more interesting person because I think that most of the people who I when I interview people and the people I'm kind of looking for are have two two key abilities one is uh they don't really fit in anywhere else so almost always when someone says what I go so what do you do and they go well you know I do this one thing over here but I do this other thing over here and I really see the relationship between the two but no one else ever seems to and I haven't really ever found the role that suits me um they I often want to hire them because they they kind of get it um and then the second thing is is the this ability to see patterns quickly and to uh to understand the connections and and to be able to go from that mentally to flip backwards and forwards between that that small detail and that big picture and do it very high frequency and be comfortable kind of moving backwards and forwards those are the two skills and my opinion is having taught masters and bachelor students too I kind of think if you haven't already got that kind of mind uh at from at school uh it's it's pretty hard to learn it later on uh you know you can I can teach you about the service design I can teach you lots of methods I can teach you stuff uh you know to actually do the work but the kind of way of thinking sort of needs to be there already and I haven't really sussed out exactly where it happens yet yeah it's about the attitude yeah it is it's about the way you see the world actually and and I'm I'm guessing I really am guessing that it happens much younger age than certainly than at university yeah so I I've talked uh uh quite a few times about design education um but maybe design education should start way way earlier than we're approaching it now well you know John uh Don Norman wrote a piece recently about um you know design thinking and design and it was talking about how designers could really do with a um more STEM you know science technology engineering math in there in their world and kind of the way they think and stuff and I kind of felt like he had that backwards because education tends to get rid of humanities and the arts and certainly in places like the UK and and here in Australia that that's happening terribly and arguably design thinking is actually a sort of band aid or the the lack of that at school because everyone gets STEM at school they get shoved down their throat and I think it's important I do think it's important but I think the other part's important too and so I think it's funny to see design thinking coming in to sort of business later on as it's like a sort of compensation for that lack yeah in school days um if we would have to wrap this talk up and this would be your opportunity to ask the people who are listening or viewing this episode right now what would you ask them I would ask them what would I ask the people who are listening to this episode right now um such a tough question that's the toughest question I've ever been asked um I think I'd want to ask them about their lives actually I mean I always just am really interested in people's lives and really interested in um the way they see the world and why they see the world that way so it's the whole sort of mental models thing and um the details of the kind of pains in their lives because pains always frustrated needs and frustrated needs always opportunities for something so I love hearing people's stories and I guess I would just ask them to tell me their stories share your stories in the comments that would be really interesting yeah absolutely well let's hope a lot of people do that uh Andy thank you for uh taking the time in the evening in Australia to be a guest on our show it's a pleasure thank you very much for having me here I've enjoyed it very much let's hope we meet physically uh uh one day soon I'm sure we will thanks uh thanks again for your time thanks very much take care bye