 Hi, this is Jamin Heggeman and this is the Service Design Show. Hi, I'm Mark van Tijn. Welcome to your two-weekly service design update, where you get to learn what some of the world's best service designers are currently doing. We talk about the current state of the industry, exciting new developments, and the challenges up ahead. The Service Design Show is all about helping you to become a better service designer, so you can make a bigger impact on the world around us. We bring you a new episode every two weeks on Thursday. So, subscribe and make sure you don't miss any of the episodes. Every comment, like and share really helps to grow the community. So, don't underestimate your influence and click that like button down below. It really means a lot. My guest in this episode is Jamin Heggeman. Jamin is the head of design at Capital One Financial Services and he's part of the Service Design Network management team. In his spare time, he plays soccer and Bruce Beyer. For the next 30 minutes or so, we'll be talking about topics like giving service design away, doing service design in-house, and the need for a compelling vision. If you want to fast forward to one of these topics, check out the episode guide down below in the description or stick around and enjoy the whole episode. For now, let's jump right in. Welcome to the show, Jamin. Thank you. Jamin, you've been part of the service design community for so long. I still remember the first service design conference we met in Amsterdam back in 2008, something like that. Yeah, it was quite a long time ago and we had the opportunity to talk again back in October, again in Amsterdam. But I'm really curious. What I don't know is what was the very first time you actually got in touch with service design? The first time was actually my first week of graduate school at Carney Mellon University. I had never heard of service design and I started grad school and the Shelley Ebbinton was the graduate professor at Carney Mellon and she had created a conference, a service design conference and it was taking place the very first week of my graduate school experience. So I got to go and got to see people like Berkut Mager and Oliver King and Chris Downs and just really opened me up to a world that I didn't know existed. But since then I have the conference after that I directed and since then I've actually hosted a service design conference I've been involved in one every year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You go back quite a long time and Shelley is I think now doing head of service design thing at Fjord, right, or Accenture. Yeah, I forget exactly what her title is but she teaches or she's running like a service design academy within Fjord. Yeah, yeah. Well, good that you're on the show, Jayman. I'm not curious what we'll be talking about. So I have a few topics that we can talk about and you have a few question starters and let me just pick the very first one and I'll do them in a random order so to surprise you, right? Great. Oh, yeah, yeah. This one, let's start with this one. This is a very positive topic and it's a topic of giving away. Do you have a question starter that goes along with that one and can you hold it up? I would say my ballpark right away but what does that mean? What does giving away mean? Help us out. Yeah, so that was actually inspired by some conversations that I had with Todd Wilkins who just spoke at the service experience conference, gave a keynote talk and he and I were talking about having a conversation like this before figuring out if he could be a good speaker for the service experience conference and he had worked at IBM and was part of that whole movement going on with an IBM to bring design in and build up that capability and he found himself in more and more situations where he could not be involved in everything and he had to essentially start giving away design, giving away service design and hoping that the people that he was giving it away to would care for it and do well and I find myself in the same situation but when I talked to him about this, I, it made me very uncomfortable and it was, I felt like it hit a nerve for me but also within the service design community around how much we own service design and the expertise versus being collaborative and open and teaching other people and empowering them to do some of the things that we do, recognizing that not everybody is going to be an expert but they need to start somewhere and there's so much work to do that holding onto it completely ourselves is probably not the right answer so we have to start giving it away more. Well, it's interesting because when you talk to people who enter the service design community, they're always like, wow, this is such an open community, it's so collaborative but you're still saying that we are holding onto it too much, it's too dear for us. Well, it's, you know, in a way, it's our baby and I mean, for myself, I put so much time and effort into the practice, into the community and yeah, I think in our action and in our design work and what you do as a service designer, you kind of are naturally collaborative and empowering others but it can get a little bit touchy when other people say, oh yeah, I'm a service designer too and you think, well, but you just went to a workshop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, somebody recently said that the service designer's worst nightmare is somebody saying, yeah, I'm a service designer. I just learned about it last week. Well, I think it brings up a good question about the skills and the craft of service design versus the mindset and participation but we also need to, especially for those of us who are, who have been around for a while and have built up a level of expertise, just be comfortable with, you know, people who are just coming into it and starting out and, you know, taking their first baby steps. Well, yeah, that was one of my biggest insights from the conference in Amsterdam that sometimes it's easy to forget that for instance, we got a 10-year head start. We started back in 2007 and you don't always realize that there are new people coming in every day to their field and they are having the same discussions we were having eight years ago, right? So that's easy to, I'd say that's easy to forget and, you know, I'm really curious what will be needed in your perspective to share more and democratize service design more next to feeling comfortable with the fact that people call themselves service designer. Is there anything we can do to speed up the process? I think, what can we do to speed it up? Oh, it's interesting that you use the word democratize service design because that is the language that we're using within service design. That we're using within my division of Capital One and that's really something that I've been asked to use how to design is how do we, how do we democratize design? They don't, you know, they're not a place where they would come directly and say, hey, bring service design. As the advantage I have is top level support for that kind of scaling and if you can get that, I mean, that's been the big challenge for design. But if you can get that, that's great. If not, I mean, what we're really doing to at least experiment with this is find some teams to start and see how it goes. So I've been introducing service design tools to operations teams, people who really don't interact much with at all actually with our design teams and don't think too much about the way they, how they're interacting with us from end to end. So the tools of service design are really helpful for them. And just giving them those tools and letting them experiment themselves and getting them to own it, I think is the way to scale it fast. Maybe that's one of the big questions for the coming years is how can we make, how can we give people the feeling that they own it, right? I think you said it really nicely. How do we give others the feeling that they own it? Because that's really powerful, right? Instead of us having to convince them. And yeah, and I think that's the giving it away part. That essentially the cadence that we started to fall into is very short introduction to a particular method or tool. Going through an actual, going through the actual problem or service that the team has. And all I do in my design team does is help facilitate that. So it might be something like, oh, we're gonna help just show you what the current state blueprint of your service, or your piece of the service looks like. But then once we do that on Post-it notes, we don't even take that with us. We just leave the room and say, this is yours. We're gonna come back in a week or two after you've worked with it some more and we'll see what we got. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no expectation that we're gonna continue to work with it. So, Jamie and we touched upon it quite a few times and let's move on to a second topic. And sort of you're already talking about this, but maybe you can introduce it with a new question starter and this topic is called in-house. Any specific thing? Why did I go in-house? Yeah, because you left working for all sorts of fields and focus yourself, touch yourself to the financial sector. Yeah, well, some of it, some of this question is my choice in some of it was not necessarily, but so I was part of Adaptive Path, a design and service design consulting firm. I've been part of Adaptive Path for four years before we were acquired by Capital One, which is a bank in the US about two years ago. So, first we moved in-house through that acquisition, but I decided to stay to explore some of the challenges that I felt we weren't able to get at from an outside agency and wanted to see if being in-house and being a strong service design team that was already built in-house, essentially, what that would do. And I think we made a lot of good progress, but recently, about five months ago, I decided to take this new role as head of design for one of Capital One's divisions, financial services, which is home loans and auto loans. And I did that because I felt that while we were putting together a great system of service design and how all the pieces worked well together and how we collaborated, we really, there was still a disconnect between what we were doing and what was happening on our partner side and on the business side and the way they were thinking about innovation. And I felt like I needed to get closer to that. So that's why I made that move and that's where I am now. And I feel like that's really my mission to figure out how really to bridge the gaps between what we've been doing in service design and what's going on in the product and business side. So that's, of course, super interesting because I think a lot of service designers struggle with the fact that they failed to create impact in the end. We come up with a lot of insights, good research. We get people engaged, but we eventually fail to make the final impact. Is that also what you all recognized and made that move? Yeah, I mean, so like most agencies, we've had our share of really good work that doesn't get implemented the way that we thought or just lost steam after it's engaged. And we had clients prior to Capital One. I had a client for three years doing services at work. We did a lot of different things. We, you know, from the visioning work to pilots and launching things and getting new experiences into market. So I wouldn't say that, you know, none of it gets into market, but- It's a struggle, yeah. Even with a long engagement like that, what I saw as soon as you pull out and that pressure is not applied anymore, the organization just naturally goes back to doing the way, the things the way it did. So I felt that the real culture change that's needed and the behavior change that's needed means that you can't just do it from the outside. And I think increasingly we're seeing this, you know, we saw it with UX, with companies saying, okay, we can't outsource this, we need to bring it in. We're starting to see services line, go more in-house, think Capital One's acquisition and adapt the path as it's accelerated that visibility. Yeah, yeah. And, I'm just gonna say something else. Well, so if you, you know, that's everyone who's watching and listening and viewing the show from an agency perspective is of course curious, what is your biggest takeaway? You know, if you would leave Capital One today and start at an agency, you'll start your own new agency. What would you do differently? Is there something we can do differently? Or is the only way to do it also from the inside? Well, I think I would probably have different conversations with my clients. Like what? What is success and what are we trying to achieve? And I'd probably have more frank discussions with them about what it really means to do this kind of work, what it's gonna take from them and what will be successful or not. So for example, if they're not really engaged, if they don't really have the time and commitment and they see this as an add-on, it's not gonna work. It will have a short-term impact on the organization, but it won't have long-term. And I think probably I would do a mixture of project work but also capability building for the organization, helping them own the work and develop the capability themselves and being, I guess, comfortable with whatever we let them with is not, they're not gonna be expert service designers, but they need to commit to having that capability, not just the work. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's so recognizable and it's also so challenging because you have to be at a very high level in your organization to have these kind of discussions, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, again, I feel humble that I have access to the head of the division and the presidents of each of the lines of business. That helps. Yeah, I can have those direct conversations about what we need, but not everyone's there. And so, I mean, it would be a different thing if we don't have that, how do you start? And I think what people are, what we did in the double path and what I think what I see in the community is what you can do for now. You engage with part of business, you find a partner and advocate for what you're trying to do and you try to create that energy. But it's gonna be difficult to really change the way the organization works in a very rapid way without some kind of buy-in to, yes, we're going to experiment with this. And maybe that's the way to talk about it. It's not just about doing, it's not just about doing the work or creating the vision and coming up with a great experience. There's another component to that and that's building the capability and maybe framing it as a, hey, is there a part of your organization that we can experiment with? And it doesn't mean that your whole world's gonna change but we wanna see what that impact is. And if that works, then you can think about scaling it to your organization. Those are not the conversations that I was having before and that's what's really top of mind for me now. All right. So many questions still around this topic but let's move on because I think the third one will also be interesting. And your final third topic is about compelling vision. We all need one, so. I don't know, I might go with the wild card again. Again. What is a compelling vision? Good question, Jayman. Well, I wanna just talk about this because it, as I am interacting more with my business partners and especially as we're going into the end of the year, everyone's thinking 2017 and the future and having a vision, I mean, that's part of the language of organizations and of course you're trying to rally everybody around that. For me, when I say vision, I have a particular idea in mind of what that means through my service design work since I think a big component of service design is storytelling and vision creation in a tangible way that other people can easily understand and align to. But I don't think that that's the way vision translates into the business world. When organizations talk about vision, it's usually language and even referencing examples like Steve Jobs, the vision was with 1000 songs in your pocket. Boom, let's go there, right? So and that provides some guidance, but I think in service design, we're talking about more of an experiential vision and something that feels meaningful to people. And that is done through storytelling, whether that's storyboards or videos or other methods. And I don't necessarily think that, I mean, I guess I find that that's a challenge for the larger business community to understand the need of that. I think when they see it, they respond to it, but when we're having this conversation about creation of a compelling vision, there's something missing there. Well, I've, in one of the previous episodes with Eric Flowers and Megan Merler from Practical Service Design, we were talking about, they mentioned, once I start talking about jobs to be done, people get back to the core essence of why we exist as an organization. And I think what you're saying, the compelling vision also strongly relates to that is a sense of purpose. Is that true? Yeah, I mean, it's a sense of purpose, and it's, but I think for me, it's more of the articulation of the vision and ensuring that everybody can see it and knows it and believes in it. And, you know, you maybe may know that at places like Airbnb, they have their vision of the experience up on the wall and a very open space. They brought in Pixar artists to illustrate it and, you know, they map their touch points to that, but everybody kind of sees like what we know. It's not just this part or this thing that you're dealing with. Like, we all know that this is what we're trying to do. Yeah, yeah. Is the purpose. And so that it's something that the whole organization knows, this is why I'm here. We're trying to do that. It's not my little part. And it's not just the words that that's in the top set. Yeah. And what you're saying is that this is important in the business world. We need to find a way for them to adopt this more. Cherish it. I think what we need is a, what I've been finding is that there's, the business language of vision is different from I think the service. Right. Right. And like most of what I think needs to happen for service design is just a much tighter lending of the two. So I think they compliment each other. But I think we need to find a way. It's almost like a language barrier thing. When I hear somebody say vision in a leadership position and I say, hey, we need to create a vision. And they say, yes, we do. I don't actually think we're saying the same thing. But it's needed. And I think both sides are needed. And besides Airbnb, are there any stories or companies that you know of that inspire you that you think have done this really well? Or is Airbnb the best example? Airbnb is probably the best example that I know of that ties directly to the way I, I guess, think about creating that vision. You know, a lot, I think a lot of companies now create videos and things, but I feel that the way that they, the way that they've created it in their workspace so that it's visible to a large number of people and just part of their environment is what's key to how they did it. Because a lot of the artifacts and things that we make or like video I just said might get shared around but then it gets lost. Especially things in the computer to find their way into a dark place and never seen again. Those are the things on the computer, but I just got chills down my spine. By walking through companies that have their hallways filled with stock photo images of their core values and saying we're a team and stuff like that, that's not what we want. Just to be clear. No, I think, yeah, I think you wanted to be more real. Yeah. More real of like what you're trying to achieve, more connected to your customers. Hey, it'd be even great to have a vision for your employee experience and show what you're trying to achieve there. But yeah, I mean, I think the reason I brought up the compelling vision topic was just the disconnects. I feel and what I'm not really seeing in organizations too much to help drive people and rally them around a purpose, this is the experience we want to create and then finding a way to organize around that. Right, I think I know what you mean. Jamie, we're sort of heading to the wrap up of our talk and I have a final question and that is, is there a question you'd like to ask the viewers? People who are watching this episode would like to comment or anything you want to ask them? I guess, I mean, I don't know if this is a great question, but I guess I'm curious like what people feel that they need now to do services and work, especially when there's a lot of, the tools are out there and they're easy enough to kind of pick up and try yourself, but what are the big questions now? I mean, it's somebody that programs conferences and has conversations like this with other and trying to find what content is gonna be helpful for people. Yeah, what are the big questions in service design now that can really help people be successful? So you're asking a question back, that's interesting. What are the big questions, right? What are the big questions within service design? That's basically your question. Yeah, well, I would love to know from other people what they think that is. Comments, comments, give us a lot of feedback and comments on this question. Jamie, thanks for making the time. Really happy to have you on the show and thanks for all your insights. This is great, my pleasure. What are your thoughts about the topics we've just discussed with Jamie? What do you consider the big questions within service design at this moment? Let us know down below in the comments. The service design show is all about helping you to become a better service designer and make a bigger impact on the world around us. If you enjoyed this episode, check out some of the previous episodes and if you haven't done that already, click that subscribe button. For now, thanks for watching and I'll see you in two weeks time.