 I'm Arne van Oosterhoem 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 challenges up ahead. Today I'm talking to somebody who's been in the industry for a very long time, Arne van Oosterhoem. Arne is of course the co-founder of Design Thinkers and he just told me he's... when he grows up he wants to be a real artist. Welcome to the show, Arne. Thank you. Awesome to have you. Arne, this is a question I start most of my interviews and it's about your first memory of service design. Can you remember the first time you actually got in touch with service design? Oh yeah. Oh boy, that's a long time ago. I was working at a communications agency. I was the creative director and I think I was looking for new inspiration and we were already kind of interested in doing things differently in a new way but I think it's also because of the rise of... I think Twitter was just born. Which year? 2007? 2008? No, no, 2006 or 2005 I think. And it must be somewhere around where Twitter just came about because I remember that there was this conversation starting online about service design and it was mainly in the UK there were these two agencies that just started engine group and live work. They just started that time and I was so inspired by the way they communicated and the way they were very open about everything and I was stuck in this very competitive agency world which I didn't like at all. And I thought, wow, you can share all your methodologies and you can just open about stuff and it was so refreshing and I thought, I want to be like that. I don't know what they do. But it was very attractive as the openness. So it must be like 2005 or so. How long did it take you to jump on the bandwagon? Well, so I think in that same year I also heard about design thinking and being proposed this thing that wasn't part of a specific expertise so it was in between the creative world, the design world and the business world and I thought, hey, I think this is where I am. Does that have a name? Well, that's amazing. I think this is where I should be. And at that time I was already kind of thinking of starting my own company by chance as well because I didn't want to be part of, because if you have an agency, a communication agency or an advertisement agency, you're always the last to know. Basically your customer has a solution and they will give you a design brief and they already have the solution to say, we want to have a website or we have a campaign. And I noticed that there was so much changing in the world that you have to look at things holistically. So I was already really curious about can I be at the beginning of the process and design thinking was sort of the thing that sparked the first spark. So at the same time I kind of get to know service design and I decided to start my own company about 2005. I first tried to kind of change the direction of my agency but at that time nobody knew what I was talking about. What are you talking about? What is that? Service? What? Design? What? I just want to create a beautiful campaign or I want to do graphic design. So the easiest way basically for me was to kind of say, I just want to start from scratch. And I think we took the official leap in 2000. I think Chamber of Commerce, basically the signing was 2007. I still remember we had a session I think in Amsterdam. A guy from England showed up to talk about service design and it was I think 2007. It might be the very first time we actually physically met. Right. True. We're getting old. And the rest is history, that's for sure. So I'm here in Utrecht at the Auldergracht Jorn Hotel in Amsterdam so we might have some background noise, livelihood from the real streets. That will be okay I think. Arne, let's explain the format. How are we going to do this for the people who are watching this for the first time? The whole idea is that we believe in co-creation and we should actually practice it also in the show. So you have a set of question starter and I have a set of topics written on paper and you also have some things scribbled down in a notebook, right? Yes. Let's give an example. You're a service designer and you have how much? So you'll use the question starters, I'll use the topics and we'll create a conversation from there on. Sounds simple, right? Absolutely. It's my turn Arne. I'm going to choose a topic and it's up to you to see how are you going to move on. I'm going to pick the topic of scalability. Yes. How can we? Yes. So how can we? And I think it's a really important question. It's a question that we get a lot because it's very much workshop based, the work that is being done now. So which question do we get a lot? How can you work? So how can we scale service design within our organization? All right. So the question really is about how can we make sure that what we do in our department, which we call service design, if we did a workshop and if we did another workshop and then what? How can this spread or what do we do with it? How can this service design thing that we do touch every bit of our organization? And that's something that a lot of people struggle with. I think one of the answers is that actually service design should not be a department. All right. So service design is part of culture. It's actually behavior, which is why I really, truly believe that when you're in service design, actually what you're doing is you are changing behavior. You are in change management, but in a very different way. And it's something that is more implicit. So you can do workshops, but actually what you do is really important. So journey mapping and all that. It's really important. It's very much forward-looking. Like at the end of the workshop, you have these and these results. It's very good. But actually how you do it is even or even more important or at least just as important because how you do it makes it also sustainable. It makes it that you want to work like that again because we ask silly questions like, did you actually like it? Was it actually nice? So how you do it? Did you actually share? Did you actually co-create? Did you actually do? Did you actually involve the right people, et cetera, et cetera? So how you do it is really important. And the other thing is don't turn it into an apartment. It's a way of working. But that's really hard to scale, right? Unless you're going to get the IBM approach and hire 1,000 designers and put them throughout your whole organization. Is that a way to scale service design? No, I think it's basically practicing what you preach when you preach service design is start small. Start small, learn how to do it and start involving it. I always say don't start a project. Don't start this kind of organization. Start a movement. It has to be a movement because it's all about changing the way you do things. And it's not about hiring a couple of people you call service designer and then you do service design. It's actually about you have to evolve your company. It's about companies in transition and everyone's involved. Everyone. But it starts small. Don't implement service design and then try to scale it up too quick and make it too big because then it's going to fail. You have to learn how to do it. It's part of your culture. It's part of your DNA. What we see in our practice is that it's really easy to scale a tool. Everyone starts doing customer journey maps and then we're customer centric and everybody has a customer journey map for their department. That's just on the tool and even not the method level but that's just on the tool level. A very good point is exactly what I mean. That's what you do. So you can teach everyone customer journey mapping. But how you do it? Did you do it together with the right people? Did you actually do it with your customer? Did you go out and talk to really? Did you really do that? Because usually they didn't. Did you actually build empathy? Did you really involve the right stakeholders, the right people, the right time? Because it's a lot about how you do it and when you do it. Did you do it at the right time with the right people in the right way, in the right safe environment? A lot of rights in your answer and getting the right people, defining what is right, I think that's a big opportunity but that's also a big challenge for a company. Well, it's also common sense. So a lot of the things that we teach our customers, I think, is about common sense. It's about asking silly questions. We've always done it this way and we say, let's do it another way. No, we can't. But why? We've always done it this way. Well, why have you always done it that way? Why can't you change the way? So companies come to us with a question. The first thing we'll say is that, let's look at the question. Is that really the right question? And so that first part of that fuzzy front end of innovation, that first part is usually the hardest part because this is where you have no answers, you only have questions, but allow that to happen. Give people the time and the space, creating safe space for people to actually question things and ask things. So again, this is about how you do it. It's not just what you do. It's how you do it. Did you actually spend time in that fuzzy front end long enough so you know that you actually explored, you actually did explore opportunity and etc. So I think scalability is a really important question, but you cannot implement surface design or slash design thinking without using surface design slash design thinking. And it sounds really silly, but we've seen a lot of companies trying to implement surface design without using surface design. So without actually thinking about questions plus using these tools. Who are these people? I think the challenge is that scaling service design requires, like you said, starting small, but it needs big support because it's transitioning their organization. And that's not a task you will achieve when you... Absolutely. So if you do not have management support, don't do it. Seriously, it's not going to work. You might want to start trying to convince them, which is something different than implementing a scaling. You might want to do that, but before you have total support, it's not going to work. So they need to create environments at the stage for you to be able to try it, to explore it, to experiment, to start small. But it requires a new style of leadership. And I think the biggest challenge or one of the biggest challenges of most companies is actually that if they want to make the leap to this sort of this new world, they need a new style of leadership. That's a big task. Yeah, but that's why it's so much fun. So it's not a boring time. This is the right time to do this kind of stuff, right? Anna, let's move on to our next topic. And I think it's sort of related. And it's called Beyond Buzzwords. Yeah, yeah. Good question. What do I add to it? Maybe this one is good. Why? Why do we need to move beyond the buzzwords? I think it's important to give clarity. I think there's a lot of confusion. We are called design thinkers. Design thinking is getting hugely popular at the moment, which is great. But service design, is that different? So we talk to customers who have never heard of service design. And we talk to customers who, you know, actually everybody's heard of design thinking at the moment, but because of how the business view. But you know, there's people who do lean startup. There's people who come from agile development. There's people who have, you know, whatever kind of angle they are from, but we're all part of the same world. We are all part of the same problems that we see. We're all part of the same solutions. We're all part of what's happening out there that drives us to find new ways of doing things. So we just came from this angle, and the people from agile development came from ITICT angle, and you know, lean startup came from that angle, et cetera, et cetera. It doesn't really matter if we don't use our sort of, if we don't use an open mindset to talk to each other and to learn from each other. So don't stick to your buzzword. I mean, we by chance call ourselves design thinkers very naively, but that's a time we didn't mean anything, so now it seems rather silly, but I mean, it's not about the word. The word only is language, and it means that it's a tool that allows us to talk to each other. And so if you have your flag planted on service design or lean startup, I mean, let go of this, you know, collaborate, co-create, learn from each other. Why it's important for us is because we can learn from each other. For me, it's like you're doing design thinking. You have never heard of service design. There's such a wealth of knowledge and talent out there. You know what? How is that possible? But at the same time, our clients are also confused. So we actually have to say, what language do they talk? Do they talk service design, or do they speak design thinking? So we're like, okay, oh, they talk about design thinking? All right, so we'll call everything. We have to change our slides on key work. You know, it's like to change the words. And then some people started calling it service design thinking, to kind of like, yeah. And so I think it's a good conversation to have with the community. And I'm not saying I have an answer. I'm not saying that so for now on, we're going to call it whatever. But I think that we should go beyond those buzzwords to talk about what it's for. It's a means to an end. What is the end? It's about human centric development, human centric problem solving. That's what it's about. And all of us are trying to do this. We just provide a tool set to get to that goal and get to that. Yeah. And who cares what the tools are from? I mean, if there's six... Who cares, Arna? Who does care, actually, because... I don't know. But I do know that there's the school, you know, and then there's SDN. And then there's like, you know, there's a service... There's something like, what? No, maybe that's just German professors speaking, but I don't know. But I'm saying it's about what it's for. We practice what we preach. These are means to an end. The means are tools. The world is our tool kit, you know. We are open-minded. We are curious. We are creative people. All of us are. What are we trying to do? What is the question, you know? And it's about people trying to create value for other people. But I think also, you know, having this sort of flag helps the community at this moment to get around and actually... Sure. ...enlarge the topic and create new knowledge. So... Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know. So, I mean, obviously, again, it's useful to create community and to create language. But don't use it to create walls around communities, you know, because that's sort of what's going to happen. It's been happening. So it's not there to create, like, this is mine. You know, it's not to create islands. It's to create bridges. It is to have conversations. That's what language is for. So... And it should not confuse the hell out of your customers, you know. And it's not a marketing gimmick. Don't use it for your PR, you know. That's bullshit. So it's about creating value for people. And we use everything we have to do so. And whatever language you speak and whatever, the point of design thinking or service design is that you actually are open-minded and you co-create with people from different backgrounds, with multidisciplinary teams. The whole core of what we do is about sharing, being open and not claiming things, not saying this is mine. This is my idea. No, it's not. It's about building stages and platform for other people and helping them, you know, and being facilitators. And how do you see this progressing in the next few years? Because I'm pretty skeptical about the walls coming down. Well, so I think that like we've seen this, you know, happening for a couple of years, obviously, which is a logical thing, is that the big business consultancies are moving in. We also do journey mapping. We are also design thinkers. We also do services. And they're smart and they're brilliant people. But I think the main problem of these companies is that their business model is also broken, just like their customers' business model is broken. So if you do not practice what you preach, you can't really preach anything really. So it's very difficult for them. And I think that collaboration is basically the new competition. The people who can collaborate best are the ones who are going to flourish. And it's not about creating huge organizations based on, you know, industrial revolution models. I think the new world is for the networks. And for people who understand that actually it's about, you know, connecting people and which is, you know, that's the core of what design is. It's connecting, you know, things that are not connected yet or connecting them better. I think you have to be able to do it so skeptical in a one way. Yes, I think it's going to be hijacked. It still already is being hijacked by large consultancies, companies, organizations, you know, even SAP offers design thinking, training courses, you know, fine. And we train them to do so. So I mean, it's, you know, that's, but I think that's our point. We are actually facilitators and we believe that if you are truly human centric, I think we're going to create a better world. And if you're not truly human centric and you're really truly not doing the right thing, you're not really applying it to yourself, you're not going to be successful. But I think it's going to be struggle as anything is, but I really enjoy the way it's moving at the moment. And I think we are supposed to be very flexible and agile and open. And so I think we'll be okay. And I think it's my, maybe we'll call it differently in the future. But I don't see a big threat at the moment. I see a lot of opportunities for companies like ours. Okay. And I think what you just said is also very good. Rich, of course, the last topic I've written down here because you talked about networks and collaboration. So Anna, the last topic is the service designer. Good question. Who are the service designers? Yes. People who know me, I often say there's no such thing as a service designer. I don't believe in the service designer. I don't understand. I think we have people in our organization, actually we call them service designer because our clients look for service designers. So it's a bit of a complicated thing. I think that it's kind of, you know, started a conversation often where I say, you know, either everyone in an organization is the service designer or no one is. All right. And I think to that point what we see now is we are working increasingly for HR department. So, you know, we work for Coca-Cola HR and Global Business Services. We work for L'Oreal HR. You know, a lot of these companies see that actually innovation is not just on product levels, not just service levels, also organizational level, internal service level, but also how you operate the style of leadership. And they are looking for service design to help them really change their organization. And I think that so we train, you know, HR people to become facilitators. And I think that service designer should be replaced with a facilitator, someone who understands how to connect the different dots and how to create safe space and how to really get people to share, et cetera, et cetera. I think that that will be really good. I think it would be really good skill to have within your organization. So when we started doing service design, I never thought I was going to work with Coca-Cola HR. I didn't even imagine working with Coca-Cola, obviously, because it was, you know, a tiny nothing. So that's already a big leap, but also, but for HR, like, oh, that's amazing, because they want to be able to do it. They don't want to have those skills. They want to be able to become what we might call the service designer. And I think that's a fantastic evolution of what we do. I think either it would be, if I'm not wrong, wrote in this book that we shouldn't hire design thinkers or service designers, but we should become a design thinking company or design-driven company. Is that something you're advocating, too? Yeah, I mean, not getting lost in, you know, the semantics of what exactly. But the heart of what it is about is right. I think it is about, I think new companies are what you could call design-driven companies. It doesn't mean everyone's a designer now, but it's more about being empathetic, being open-minded, being collaborative, and being a prototype in company. Start doing things really quickly and iterate. So being iterative and human-centered, these are the two elements that if you have those, you are what you could call design-driven company. And I think that's, you know, and the other thing, which is something that's been said by Charles Leadbeater actually in the very old book, we think, but it's so true and it's so true in many levels. He had this really interesting anecdote. So he said, traditional companies are bigger on the inside than on the outside. New companies are bigger on the outside than on the inside. And that's so true. I mean, you know, companies like, you know, startups like Instagram, for instance, if you look at how many people work at Instagram and how big their influence and their impact is, you know, it's completely the opposite to what we are familiar with. So I think we are moving to that world and I'm really positive about, and there's a huge reason for it. And I mean, we were, so just as a last point, we work for HR and they tell us, for instance, listen, we are losing talent to startups. How can we keep talent into our company and keep them there? And how do you, you know, because we can't at the moment, because people work for us and for new generations. And actually I was talking to this manager and I said, yeah, for a new generation's work is very different because it's part of your identity. It's not just for security. It's outside of what she said and she was in her 50s and she said, Arna, listen, it's not just for new generations. Well, one second, Arna, I thought this would happen. There's a car coming to pick you up, Mark. All right, goodbye. Well, yeah, so my anecdote was that way, I was talking about this to this manager, this lady from HR and she agreed with me, yes, yes, yes, it's different, but she also said, Arna, listen, I'm in my 50s, I want to work differently. New generations, yeah, right, I want to work differently. I don't want to work every day in a marathon because work is every day here in my company, the marathon just to pay the bonuses of senior management. Why am I doing that? What's the point? And being scared of making mistakes and you know, we know the story. So how do we create an environment for people that they can be happy, silly words, and actually make mistakes, learn, and mistakes not being right work, but learn basically as we do as human beings by trying stuff, trying things out. How can we create that environment? Is the biggest challenge maybe to first become let's call it a design driven company before you can actually go outside and... Well, it's common sense, right? Of course it is, but I don't think a lot of people, a lot of organizations have coped with this yet. No, but they know, they know, I have never met anyone within a large corporate that did not agree with that idea, but they just don't know how to do it. So the first battle is maybe much more internally focused than externally. So we moved from service design being this idea of creating beautiful services, wonderful services that created great experiences for customers to actually saying, because I think that in the old literature of service design, it's all about looking at your end users and looking through the eyes of the end user outside in thinking. We moved from saying, yeah, okay, that's really important, but actually what's maybe even more important is looking from the inside. So why are you in the business that you're in? Companies have no clue. So how do you make decisions? You only make decisions based on how much profit they will make by doing something, not based on values or anything. So if you come up with this wonderful service, how do you implement that? How do you run it? How do you keep it alive? How do you actually execute? How do you actually do this? There's a lot of around brand, for instance. Brand became so much more important the last few years. Being authentic, being real. So doing what you say you would do. Practice what you preach. Acting, the way you act represents your brand. It's not just an add-on. It's just a logo on your building. You can't ask advertisement agencies anymore to create this buzz around your brand. Or run your whole company through training and then hope everybody will be different the next morning. So it is about you really have to be authentic and real and do what you say, etc. Which is a big task. But if you make it, it is fantastic. It is beautiful. You're going to be happy. Wow, you can actually make money and be happy doing it at the same time. Which is like a very novel kind of thing. It's a big promise you're making, Arne. Yeah, but I literally believe in it. And it's very difficult, but it's worth it. I think this will be a frontier that design thinking and service design will really need to develop itself in the internal frontier instead of next to the external customer-focused frontier. I think we'll see a lot of development in the coming years in that field. Yeah, I think so too. Arne, we have a lot to discuss and we could go on for quite a few hours, but let's try to round it up a bit. My question to you would be if you encounter people who want to get into designing and service design, what would be your most valuable tip? What is your golden tip for them? Get experience. Get experience. Don't just read about it. Don't just look at videos like this. Go out and do, do, do, do. Create your own movement. Start stuff. Mark, you and I, when we started, there were service on drinks. There were all kinds of events. Create the community. Be the movement. Go out and do stuff. Find out how you can be active because that's the only way to learn. People will look for experienced people. In any way you can get experience. Start your own projects. Do it cheap. Do it for free. Start stuff yourself. If we look for people, we look for people who are doers. That's the trick. If you find out how that works, it's a bit of a trick. Sometimes you think, how can I start? Don't wait for people to give you the break. Just go out and do it. Just go out and do it. Anna, this is your opportunity. Do you have a question for the people that are actually looking at this video right now? What would be your question to them? My question would be, if you look at your own work environment, if you look at the things you do day in, day out to make a living, what would that look like in the future? If you really, really decide on what that future would look like and wouldn't it be creative if you do actually create a value for people? Real value? Real value, not just creating products or whatever. What would that look like? I think it's an important question because I think that if all of us start thinking about how can we make this world a little bit better? I know it sounds very naive, but if we all start thinking about how can I make the world a little better? Even just for the people that you work with, I think it's going to have a huge impact and I think that's important. Really curious what people have to say about this in the comments, so we'll keep an eye on that. Arne, I really, really want to thank you for your time and taking the opportunity to actually sit in a hotel and take the time and share your thoughts because I think it's really important and really valuable. Again, thank you. What are your thoughts about the topics we've just discussed with Arne? And if you have any suggestions on who we should invite next on the show, be sure to let us know down below in the comments. If you enjoyed this episode and like to see more interviews with service design pioneers, be sure to subscribe to the channel and check out some of our past episodes. With the service design show, we'll help you to stay a step ahead by talking to the people that are actually shaping the service design field. Thanks for watching.