 Hi, I'm Mark and this is the service design show episode 100. Let the show begin. Welcome to the special episode of the service design show. In this episode, there is no guest in this episode. I'll be answering all your questions about service design, about the show and even some questions about me. So this episode is fully dedicated to you, the service design show It was actually quite scary to prepare this episode because I wasn't sure if you're actually going to send in some questions. Well, I got lucky because I got too many questions, too many questions for one episode. So if you enjoy this kind of Q&A style format, let me know by sending me a message on LinkedIn and who knows, maybe we'll repeat this kind of style in the future more often. So yeah, four years of the service design show actually over four years. I'm going to talk a little bit about again, the questions that you asked and they will also include some of the highlights of the past four years and also look forward to what's coming up in the next 100 episodes in the next four years. So I'm really looking forward to answering your questions. Let's jump straight in. This question is from Karabo. Let's check it out. Hey Mark, it's Karabo here from South Africa. I wanted to ask you, because I've been listening to your show for the past two years, how has service design transformed your life personally and also how has the business side of things been for you? What has been the most difficult? What has been the most enduring and how have you applied the service design principles to your life and your business? Looking forward to being super famous. There are a lot of questions in this one, but I'll start with the first one. How has service design transformed your life personally? I think, well, you have to understand that I come from an engineering background. I have an engineering degree, a software engineering degree, and design was a thing that didn't exist for me. So when I entered the world of service design over 13 years ago now, it opened up a vast new way of thinking, a way to explore problems, a way to understand the world. So service design has had a major influence on me personally. And I think I really enjoy combining the sort of engineering mindset with a more creative, divergent design approach mindset. So that has had a tremendous impact on my life. The next question is from Giovanni and he asks, in an evolving service design practice and required skill set, will the show require an iteration on its current format to better serve the different personas in the service design community? What can we expect of the show in the future? Giovanni, your absolutely right service design is shifting, is evolving, and so will be the show. Really soon you'll see some big changes here on this channel. I've been reflecting about the last four years and looking at what kind of content has been the most helpful and will be the most helpful in the next 100 episodes. One of the insights that really emerged is that there's a lot of content out there nowadays about service design, but a lot of that content is quite high level. It's high level content. It's content that might also be suitable for non-service designers, non-practitioners, and I think you here as the service design show community are practitioners, are people who have dirty hands, who run into day-to-day challenges, who have to deal with day-to-day shit, and I want to help you to deal with that day-to-day shit. I want to help you overcome roadblocks that you might encounter. I want to be the push that you need to take the next step and at the moment that you feel like, forget it, I'm quitting. I want to be there. The show wants to be there to help you get to the next stage because I feel you as a community are doing amazing work. You're creating a better world. You're creating services that create a smile on people's faces and it's really important work so we need to continue to be doing that. So how will the format evolve? I can't tell you all the details but within two or three episodes you'll notice a shift in the content that's here and the shift will be geared towards helping you overcome day-to-day challenges. More practical, more tangible, just to help you get through the day and be more effective, be more successful. The show will help you to win. The next question is from Livia from Brazil and her question is what problems do not suit Serb Design as our approach to solve them? Great question and I think as a Serb Design community we sometimes suffer from the God complex. We've been trained to create solutions to we feel that we have the power to shape the world and come on we can do anything and that is just not true. Sometimes we need to let other experts step in and do their work and there are I think a lot of problems that Serb Designers should not attempt to fix, especially problems where humans are not an important part of the solution. Mathematical challenges, chemistry, maybe even process oriented kind of things and also I think Serb Design excels in challenges, in wicked problems where there isn't a fixed outcome there's just that order isn't a right and a wrong answer. It's not binary. It's a situation where you can strive towards doing something better. There is not a final outcome, final solution, final state. You can provide better services. It's not just a good service or a bad service. You can strive to create better services. I think Serb Design is really well equipped for those kind of challenges and again, there are many, many challenges that Serb Designers shouldn't try to attempt to fix. Let's get away with that complex. The next question is from Mahmood from Saudi Arabia, who has also been a guest on the show. So what do you think are the not yet of service design? What is the thing that's like everybody believes it's very essential, very important, but nobody has figured it out yet? The first thing that comes to my mind regarding this question is how do we make Serb Design business as usual? Design and Serb Design is still seen as a creative practice and it is. And I think we need to figure out a way how we can make Serb Design into a business practice. Doing Serb Design is good business. So how do we move away from that image of being the creative people into moving into these other people that help to build better organizations without losing our identity, our philosophy, our mindset? So that would be what I would say is that not yet. Let's move on to the next question and the next question is from Jane and she asks, which is a question that is really relevant at this moment, I would be interested to know given the current situation, whether you think Serb Design projects could be done entirely online and if freelance Serb Design is working remotely, could be the future? Makes total sense that this question arises now during COVID-19 where everybody is working from home and working distributed or remotely is the thing. So can Serb Design projects be done online as a whole? I'd like to flip this question around like what are the elements and aspects within Serb Design that can't be done online? What are the fundamentals within Serb Design that we need to have a physical presence? And I was thinking like research, doing local field research, which is really important in Serb Design, that is hard to replace. But then again, I was thinking about a project that I did at the studio where we used WhatsApp to do diary studies to do contextual research. And that worked remarkably well, especially when we combined it with using a tool like Miro to sort of evaluate the diary studies and to do basically video calls and a whiteboard. I think there's a lot we can do. To be honest, and I've said this in the past multiple times, I think as a Serb Design community, we've been quite maybe hostile and hesitant to adopt new digital technologies in our field. We tend to see this as a really analog craft where post-its and sharpies and brown papers are an essential part of it. And that if we lose those, we sort of lose the soul of what it is that we're doing. And I get that. But I also sort of regret that I don't see a real hunger for looking for ways in which new technologies can enrich, augment, and maybe even speed up the Serb Design process. So I would be really keen to see new technologies being adapted, adopted in Serb Design more quickly, more experiments being done. And of course, let's not go to a situation where every service focuses on delivering digital services. That's not the way we want to go, because most of the services that we consume in our day-to-day lives are still analog, are still analog. It's just a small fraction that is digital. So let's not get sucked into creating only digital, only services. And again, there's a charm in the analog part of our field. I think the charm of doing physical prototyping, of enacting stuff, of building things out of cardboard, that's really hard to do online, to replace. And that's the charm, that tactile aspect of our field, like having the glue on your hands, working with scissors and cutting cardboard again, making quick prototypes, just thinking with your hands, Lego, like doing stuff with Lego is really important. It creates a different dynamic. So to wrap this question up, can we go fully online in a few projects? But I would be, let's keep the charm and let's keep the power of thinking with your hands, and seeing how we can use digital tools to augment and enrich that. I would love to know, by the way, from you as a community, have you seen good examples of what I just talked about? Leave a comment. I would really love to know. The next question is from Margeau from the Netherlands, who's been a longtime fan of the show. And she asks, what is the biggest change in service design that you've seen in the last four years? And there are two things that immediately came to my mind when I was reading this question. One is that we've had a ceiling when it comes to getting our ideas into the world. I think everybody in the field sort of agrees that we're creating solutions, but we're not creating impact per se. And that is a real problem. So the conversation is shifting around. I don't really like that word implementation, but delivery on how to get service designers to actually create impact rather than just results, artifacts, outcomes. It's a really important discussion to have. I think if we need to have that discussion, if we want to stay relevant, otherwise, well, service design will disappear in a few years. That won't happen. I'm sure of it. It won't happen, but we need to have this conversation about creating impact and focusing on actually changing things. And the second thing that came to my mind, like what is the biggest change in the last four years, it has to also be the rise of internal service design teams or companies building internal service design capabilities. And that relates to what I just said. I think one of the ways we'll be able to create impact is to be very close to operation. We need to help people who are actually delivering the service, creating the service experience, interacting with people who are consuming the service. We need to be super close to them. And we need to make it into an ongoing operation. So service design going in the house is what, yeah, it's a super big change shift. And it's something that I expect will continue for the coming years. So thanks for that question, Margot. Next question is from Radka from the UK. So if you were to create an episode for users and help users understand how to be a really good user to help the service providers improve their service, what would you include in such an episode? Well, I'm curious to find out. Thank you very much. So it's actually flipping it around. How can we help customers, patients, students be better service consumers? That concept has actually been on the show. Alex Nisbeth, I don't remember the exact episode, but it was one of the first episodes, talked about how he worked on a visitor and spectator experience for the Olympics in London, how they were thinking about how to be a good spectator. And one of the things that I remembered from the chat with Alex was that services are co-created. So the experience isn't fixed. And what I would include in such an episode on how to be a good customer and how to be a good user was to keep in mind that you can co-create the experience. It's your at least half of the equation of what happens. So as a user, customer, as a patient, think about the outcome that you want to create. And you don't have full control over it, but you have a really high stake in it. So yeah, co-creation of services is really important. And what kind of outcome do you want to create? That's what I would include in that episode. And let's move on to the next question, which is from Primas from Slovenia. And he asks, Hey, Mark, it would be great if you had a learning during these four recordings of the 99 episodes that you made that helped you to fundamentally rethink how you see your profession, your daily life and the world around you, a renovation that was so radical that you could never go back to the previous state of mind. I had a few and I'll just share one with you here. For me, one of the big renovations was that the perspective that we have on service design on the world around us is just one perspective. Like the perspective comes from a scientific background, from a rational background, from a manufacturing background, and a lot of the assumptions that we make, a lot of the biases that we have originate from that worldview. But there are more worldviews. There are worldviews where there isn't a very strong distinction between humans and nature. And we can learn a lot from that. There are completely different perspectives on what a systemic or holistic view means. So yeah, I think I've become more aware and more humble in the opinions that I have and understand that they originate from how I've been indoctrinated with a worldview that's not per se the same worldview as somebody might have in Asia or Australia or Latin America. So I tried to keep that in mind. Here's a question from Christopher from Australia. He says, I'm a design practitioner from Australia. What have you learned from chatting with service designers from around the world? Does each region have a different flavor? Yeah, the answer is simply, yeah. And it has to do with the fact that service design is so strongly tied into culture. Well, services are actually strongly tied into culture, norms and values, expectations about what services mean and what they should deliver differ around the world. And also, the social contracts, like what is appropriate in certain parts of the world different differ. The conversations that I've had with people from China, for instance, and the way they describe how a brainstorming session works in China is quite different than how it works here in the Netherlands. And also, with people at the conversations that I had with people from Brazil and how the perspective on services is completely different in Brazil than it is in Germany, for instance, that obviously impacts how we work and how we should work to create value. So services are always intertwined with local cultures, with local traditions, with local heritage. And yeah, I like the word flavors, but it can be different words. There is always a local twist to service design. There should be. So please, if you grab a service design book from Amazon and you read about the tools and methods in there and how it should work, always put your own perspective on this, always try to make it fit better to your local context. Don't just copy and paste, always tweak it, always improve it so that it fits, aligns better with your norms and values. So yeah, thanks for the question, Christopher. The next question is from Majek from Poland. The question I'd like to ask is, make it about yourself. Tell us something about you that we don't know. All these episodes were around service design because that's the topic of the show. However, I would imagine people would like to get to know you better. Well, this can be a long episode, but I'll give it a go. I live in the Netherlands with my girlfriend and two kids. Like I said, I have a background in software engineering, so I know how to code and I love to create stuff that makes light. So I still love to code as a hobby. I'm happy that it's not my profession. I have a Polish heritage and I speak the language still a little bit. Don't challenge me on that one. One of my personal highlights in my career has been that I managed to actually become a sports journalist for my favorite football team. So I managed to get myself in between the newspapers, the television stations, and all I did was just use Twitter. That was back in the days, 2009, when Twitter was just coming up, and I managed to do match reports using Twitter and stand next to the players and be amongst the journalist crowd with an official badge. That was a big highlight. One other thing that I'd like to share is this is maybe a good piece of advice for aspiring service designers. The thing that helped me so much in my service design career was that I took improv theater classes. I don't know how long I think it was a year, but doing improv theater has been invaluable in my service design practice. It teaches you, it gives you confidence to be in front of a crowd. It helps you to be positive. It helps you to co-create. Improv theater is, I think, one of the most underestimated skills or educational directions, I don't know how to call it, that you can do as a service designer. I know that there are some people from the improv theater scene within the service design community. If you're looking for education, don't go doing MBAs, go to an improv theater class, a few of them. And the final thing, I'll stop. For the last year, I've been obsessed with FPV micro drone, so putting on a goggle and racing around, flying across trees and mostly into trees. That's my latest passion for the last year. Here's the next question. This question is from Amranani, which is a really fun question. Regarding service design and customer experience, who's the father and who's the son? Actually, I think there are relatives or siblings. For me, the way I understand it in my own head is that service design is a very effective way to deliver and build great customer experiences. Customer experience, for me, isn't a practice. It's a field. It's something that we strive for, that we can create. It's a concept that we cannot understand. And service design is, amongst a few things, is a toolbox. It's a collection of methods. It's a mindset. It's an approach. And it's actually a thing that maybe the outcome of service design is customer experience. It is a customer experience that you can influence. You can influence customer experience through service design. So who is the father and who is the son? I don't think that either one is. I would rather call them siblings or relatives. Next question is from my dear friend, Yuri Schilders in Singapore. And here's a really short question. 100 videos, that's a big commitment of time and energy. Was it worth it? That's a really good question. And I won't go into how much or how little time I actually spent on the show. I started the show when I was still running a service design studio here in the Netherlands a year ago. I decided to dedicate all of my time to this global service design community. And was it worth it? The short answer is yes. And for me, it's a definitive yes. Because I've been able and privileged to learn so much from some of the smartest thinkers around the planet regarding service design, heard so many perspectives, really learned that the service design community is a global community. And I think I've gotten a richer perspective on service design, but maybe also a more humble perspective on service design. Because the way we see service design here in the Netherlands is different than it's seen in Peru, for instance, or in Australia. So understanding that those different perspectives exist is really valuable. So to summarize, was it worth it? Definitely. And just as a side note, not a lot of people notice, but one of the reasons the show started out is that I got asked to write a book about service design. And I didn't see myself locking myself up in a room for a year or longer, and then coming out with a book. So I wanted to find a process which was more iterative, where I could get more feedback quicker. So I thought maybe we can do short interviews that I could use for the book. And then I started doing interviews. And I found so much joy in doing these interviews and sharing them with you that eventually the book, even though it was quite far, never materialized. So was it worth it? Again, yeah, definitely. In the episodes of the show, I always invite the guest to ask a question to you, the audience of the show. And I'm going to do the same for me. So I have a question for you. And that would be what challenges are you facing that you would like to see the show help you with? What are the roadblocks, the pitfalls that you see on your road to success? What is the thing that if it would change overnight, would help you to drastically be more effective and impactful as a service designer? Let me know, because that will be the inspiration for the next 100 episodes. How can we help you to be more successful as a service designer and create services that win the hearts of people and business? Let me know. I'm really looking forward to your comments. If you made it all the way here, leave a comment on this video with the hashtag 100 because you're one of those people who wants to grow as a service designer and make more impact and you stick around till the end of these episodes. So hashtag 100 in the comments. I want to thank you for being part of the service design show community. And I want to create the next four years, the next 100 episodes of the service design show together with you. Let's shape our field. Let's push the boundaries. Let's not settle for mediocrity because we're doing an important job here. We're creating services that make the world a better place. So let's do that for the next four years. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next episode.