 In this episode, you're going to learn how to overcome the limiting perspectives on design and how you can gain the superpower to not solve problems, but let them dissolve. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Arash and this is episode 124 of the Service Design Show. Hi, I'm Marc and welcome to the Service Design Show. On this show, we explore what's beneath the surface of service design. What are the hidden and invisible things that make a huge difference between success and failure, all to help you design services that make a positive impact on people and business. The guest in this episode is Arash Gholam. He's a teacher, a writer, and most of all a systems thinker. You might have heard about the hero's journey. Well, in this episode, we're going to talk about the designer's journey. We're going to explore systemic design. We're going to talk about understanding people and knowing yourself as a designer. I walked away from this conversation with Arash with a much greater awareness of what it truly means to be a designer. And I hope you'll walk away with the same. This is one of those episodes where everything is interlinked. And I can imagine that you might even want to listen to this twice. There's just so much in here. And as a follow-up, we're going to do a webinar where you'll be able to ask questions and dive deeper into the topics we've discussed here in this episode. If you want to see the details for that webinar, check the show notes. Depending on when you're listening, you might still be able to register and join us live or you might be able to catch the recording. If you're a service design professional who enjoys conversations like this, make sure you click that subscribe button and that bell icon because we bring a new conversation every two weeks for the last five years. So click that subscribe button. Now it's time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation with Arash Kalaam. Welcome to the show Arash. Thanks for having me, Mark. It's a pleasure. Yeah, it's a milestone episode 124. This is the episode five years plus a few days after the first one came out. So you're here. Well, I'm very happy to be able to mark this milestone with you. I hope we'll have another five years of the service design show running and at some point we'll actually get to episode 250. Seems far away, but we'll get there. Arash, we're going to talk about a super interesting topic. I think it's a topic that hasn't been covered a lot on the show. But before we dive into that, I can imagine people would like to know a little bit about your background. So could you give a brief introduction into who you are and what you do? Yeah, I'm Arash. I'm originally from Iran. I've been in Switzerland for the past 12 years. I have a background in engineering and industrial engineering and then in management and management of technology. Then I switched into mathematics applications of mathematics for a simulation of complex and adaptive systems, a field that is called system dynamics. And afterwards, I again switched lane and went to the psychoanalysis field. So I'm now for about three and a half years a psychoanalyst in training. And starting from summer, I can start my private practice in psychoanalysis. And yeah, this is my educational background. Not a typical service design background, at least not the one I've been hearing about. So I'm wondering what our chat will bring. Arash, for the past few episodes, we've been doing question rapid fire rounds. And I'm going to do the same with you. So I'm going to ask you five questions. And your task is to answer them as quickly as possible. Okay, okay. We'll do my best. Let's give it a go. Question number one is what's always in your fridge? Can you come again? Yeah, what's always in your fridge? Oh, what's always in my fridge? Wow, that's a good question. I like homeless a lot. I'm a vegetarian and I make sure I keep a good pack of homeless in my fridge. Yes. We've added that one to the list. Oh, right. Which book are you reading at this moment, if any? Well, I'm reading actually one of my problems is that I cannot focus on one thing. So right now I'm reading a number of books at the same time. I am going through the works of William Blake, the poet. At the same time, I'm reading a book on chaos and order. I'm reading a book on designing social systems as well. And basically, I'm also preparing for my examinations and psychoanalysis. So there's a couple of books on psychodynamics that I'm going through. So this is the challenge I'm going to face. Well, add a few interesting links to the show notes. Now, with your diverse background, I'm really curious, what superpower would you like to have? Inspiration, basically. Being able to be inspired by the mundane and being able to inspire people. This is for me the most important thing. This is why we're here, I would say. Cool. Sounds very exciting. Question number four is what did you want to become as a kid? Writer. I wanted to become a writer. Yeah. And I think you've partially managed to actually do that, looking on your blog. Yeah, I'm working on it. I've published a lot of book chapters, academic ones, but right now I'm working on my first book, which is at the intersection of systems thinking and design thinking. So it's work in progress. And moving on to the question, the final one is when did you first encounter service design? Well, it was during my PhD years, actually. I did some work on systemic design and systemic service design, but it was not in any way attached to the school of thought that we have right now in design thinking. So it was basically producing some systems models that could capture the essence of design when it comes to a service. So I published quite a few of articles in that field of systemic design and systemic service design. And that was the first time I came across the field. That goes back to 2009, actually. And you already mentioned a few terms that we'll be using a lot in this episode. So to start unraveling where our conversation will be heading is when I was preparing my notes, sort of the final conclusion for me was that we'll be exploring the limited perspectives on design that we have today and how we can break out of that and what the consequence is of our current perspective on design, right? Would you agree that that's going to be the main topic? Absolutely, yes. And another thing I had noted here was this is like the classic quote, and I'm not going to memorize it perfectly, but it's about we cannot solve the problems from within the context that they've been created, right? That's kind of the thing we'll be addressing. You mentioned two key terms already, systemic design and systematic design, right? Yes. Can you explain the difference between both so that people like me understand? Yeah. You know, the difference goes back to the difference between the two words, systemic versus systematic. Many people use these two words interchangeably, but there is a big difference. Systematic means you are following an orderly sequence of process steps. First is second, third, and fourth, most of the times. Right? Yeah, a recipe, a procedure, processes steps in a linear fashion most of the times. And this is what we have, you know, in the field as, okay, empathize, define, ideate. It's very systematic. You follow a procedure. Systemic basically comes from the word system, and it has to do with changing of the system, right? So systemic design does not mean that you follow a process step. It means that a design that somehow targets the system as a whole, not targeting a fragment of the system, not targeting a problem within the system, not targeting an improvement that we need to bring about. It's about the system as a whole. And that's why we call it systemic design. And systemic design would be related to something that I've encountered a few times, systems thinking, right? That's, I guess, related to that specific field. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I would say systemic design is the marriage between systems thinking and design thinking. So if the product of this marriage will be systemic design. Cool. Now, before we unravel and unpack what's in this topic, I'm curious, where did your journey start to trying to unravel this, explore this topic? How did you stumble upon this? Well, you know, it goes back to my bachelor's years when I was studying industrial engineering. We had a course in systems thinking and there for the first time, things started to click for me. You know, I was exposed to a set of, let's say, techniques and mental models that could somehow alter the way I was looking at my environment. And I could suddenly see things I couldn't see before. I could ask questions I would have otherwise not asked. So that really sparked an interest in me from from early years in my bachelor's program. And then I followed these systems thinking school or paradigm. I wouldn't call to I would like to call it a discipline, because it's basically a meta discipline. It's a trans discipline. And yeah, this is something I followed during my master's studies for my PhD dissertation at EPFL, Equal Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne or the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. I worked with systems thinking again. Then I went into the quantitative part of systems thinking, which is system dynamics. And I followed that branch of systems thinking as well. So I've been somehow involved in it. And at the same time, I realized that there is more to systems thinking than we have defined as disciplines. If you really want to understand it, you have to transcend the disciplines in which it's being applied, or they have the word systems or thinking in them. And for instance, psychoanalysis is a great work of systems thinking, understanding the relationships between subsystems within us and how they result in emergence of personality. This is a marvel of systems thinking work, in my opinion. Already a lot of questions on my mind. One of the things I would like to understand before we get into the benefits of using systemic thinking and systemic design, you already hinted upon it's like it helped you to ask different questions. But what do you feel are there limitations within our current perspective on design? I would say the fact that we start with the statement of a problem without being able to question that problem and somehow overturn it completely. So, okay, you know what? That's not the actual problem that we need to address, right? That is one of the, I would say, one of the limitations that we have currently. The other thing that I think is a limitation is that we are treating design thinking as a discipline, you know? The same as systems thinking, in my opinion, it should not be treated as a discipline. It's an intersection of various disciplines. And for me, that includes psychology. That could include, let's say, operations research to some extent. It could include mythology, ethnology, right? So, this is various field that come into an intersection, and that intersection is design thinking. It's not a road on its own. That limits us, because when you look at it as a discipline, this discipline should provide you with theory, with, let's say, frameworks, with tools, and it doesn't, right? And then that's why we are dealing with templates, which are predefined sets of concepts off the shelf, right? So, this is another limitation. In my opinion, we need to be equipped with, let's say, the set of conceptual tools and techniques to create our own tools if you want to embark on a journey of design. So, being fit with a problem statement, this is what you need to do. And these are the tools you need to use to do that. I think there is two ways that basically creativity, visioning, intuition of the designer will be hampered, in my opinion. I would say that design thinking isn't a term that I like to use. I just read a stick to design, but I know a lot of people use the term design thinking. But you mentioned something about not having the opportunity to sort of frame the problem. You start with a problem statement. Isn't one of the first things people do in the design process to re-evaluate if they are solving the right problem? I would say that should be the way it's done, right? I'll give you an example. In education, for instance, this is a service that I'm very familiar with. And it's a service that is very valuable in my opinion, especially these days. We had a situation when there was COVID, examinations, the usual way of giving exams could not be implemented anymore, right? Because the students could not be supervised during the exam session and so on and so forth. So we had a problem, quote, unquote, right? The problem was that some of the teachers were using multiple choice questions for their examinations that came from the textbooks that they were basically using for their courses. And now they couldn't actually do those type of examinations as the students were home because easily they could consult their books or exchange messages with their classmates through a wide variety of tools, applications online, so on and so forth. So there was a problem. What would we do? And then there were a whole bunch of different solutions that were offered, how the problem could be addressed. One was they somehow went and subcontracted a company that would block the freeze the students' screens so that they could not launch any other application or anything like that. That would, in my opinion, be a problem solving. But then, of course, students can have multiple devices. There is nothing you can do about that. That's not a very efficient way of doing it. I would say you would ask the question instead of saying, what would I do so that I could supervise the exams the same way as I would in a physical, let's say, examination setting. I just told them, how about we design the exams in such a way that the students cannot cheat? Right? I would say that's a different approach. That dissolves the problem. It doesn't solve the problem. So I would say systemic design deals with dissolving the problem by coming up with a design of the system that has the problem with a new design of that system so that the problem disappears, basically. So this is what I mean by questioning it, not only different dimensions of the problem at hand, but the essence of the problem, whether that is what we need to work on at all. And I recognize this from my own practice is, at some point, at the start, usually, it's really good to ask the question, why are we actually doing this? Where, in your example, examining students for a certain reason, and if you start to question if that's actually still relevant and important, then if the answer is no, then you don't have to design a solution to actually examine the student. And I think the thing you're hinting at is you can solve the problem by letting it dissolve and not be a problem anymore. Exactly. If your goal is to help students become smarter and wiser professionals or something like that, then there are different, then that opens up new opportunities to find ways to do that. Absolutely. And you know, when you start this line of, let's say, investigation, then you get to some really crucial points. Then you're wondering what type of skill set should the educator possess to be able to design exams in which the students cannot cheat? Even if you give them the questions a day before the exam, they can just consult anyone they want and so on and so forth, but the act of cheating is not possible. And this requires a whole new way of looking at education. Then you cannot just deal with a fragment of education, which is examination or evaluation of performance. And cheating is a symptom within the system rather than the problem. Absolutely. So this reminds me of, I think it's a model by Richard Buchanan, the four levels of design where you eventually have to zoom out and start thinking on which level of design am I acting? And the level that we're talking about in this case is, I think, defined as level four, the systemic level. And it's really important that you ask yourself on which level can this or should this challenge be solved? Exactly. I really agree with this different levels of understanding when it comes to a phenomenon. You can treat symptoms, as you said, symptomatic solutions, suppressing the symptom for a short while before it comes back stronger in a different form. That's why we say the act of solving problems is designing new problems. So you design new problems at the same moment you're solving a problem. That's event level interventions, suppression of symptoms. Then we have patterns and trends in which these events belong to. You have to be able to see them in the broader scheme of things. Patterns of behavior that can, these events can be singled out of. Then we have structures that give rise to those patterns. There is a structure that is producing multiple patterns. One of those patterns is the pattern that is relevant to the event that is right now, the event of interest. But then at the very bottom of these layers is the mental model, is the worldview, is the paradigm that gives rise to the design and the generation of that structure. So act of systemic design cannot proceed without dealing with that bottom, that really crucial point of high leverage, which is very subtle, very subtle. And that level of paradigms, mental models perspective is where you sort of see the deficiencies of our current design methodologies and tools. They don't allow us to address these challenges at that level. Yes, there is two reasons, Mark, in my opinion. One is that there's a lot about the service. We talk a lot about the service or a product, right? But there's a field called phenomenology. In phenomenology, your interest in a phenomenon is about anything but the phenomenon itself. So especially in human activity systems or social systems or social technical systems, how people perceive something, how people derive meaning or attribute meaning to something is the crucial thing. It's not about the thing. It's about the perceptions of that thing. It's about the attribution of meaning. So we need to work with that point of view. But if you're in an engineering technical system, for instance, the design of a, let's say production line, it's about that. It's about that artifact of design that we're thinking about. We're talking about, right? In human activity systems, on the other hand, we need to work with those perceptions. We need to find a way to understand them, right? That's the first thing that we're not doing, in my opinion. There's a lot about the technicalities around the service and the methods that we are using are all a lot about the service as if there is an objective reality out there. And you know, for instance, one of the tools we use is called service blueprints. Blueprints is a word that is borrowed from engineering and technical drawings. It shows that the metaphor we are using is at the level of technicality of the service, not at the level of subjectivity around it. And I think I understand what you're saying. And I'm starting to think the thing that we're designing or at least most of the people who are listening to the show are services. And services are produced by organizations. Organizations are factories, have processes, are driven by these kind of processes. So it's natural to think that that's the object of design, the process, the interactions, the environment. And I can imagine it's hard to step out of that. As a designer, you're in that environment. Yeah, it's difficult to switch the perspective. And to be fair, that's the easy bit. When you're dealing with processes, with technical components, that's easy to manage, it's easy to model, compared to the ephemeral perceptions of individuals that changes over time, quite rapidly. So those are the things that are difficult to work with. There's this Sufi story that there was a person looking for his keys for a while. People notice and ask him, what's happening? What's wrong? He says, well, I'm looking for my keys. They say, where have you lost them? He says, I've lost them here. And they say, where are you looking there? He says, because here, there, for instance, there, actually, there is more light here is darker. So there is no chance that I can find them here. So these things are a bit more in the shadow, and they are dark, and they are subtle. They're difficult to be observed. Got it. And then my pragmatic mind steps in here. And I'm thinking, let's go back to your education example. The thing that you're asking or advocating for as far as I can understand is at some point, you have to start questioning the educational system, rather than trying to improve the way we sort of educate at this moment, you have to sort of think, why are we educating? What is the goal? And then that's quite a hefty challenge. And where would you even start with something like that as a designer? Well, it's a very good question. And I think it's a very relevant challenge right now. I would say one thing we're suffering from education is fragmentation. So we have a lot of fragments in an educational system. If you look at an MBA program, students in that MBA program go through as many as 20 modules. And there is not a module that connects these modules. So they go learn fragmented pieces of information. But the reality is not fragmented. In reality, you face interconnected holes. Okay, that's one thing. Second problem that we have is basically the topic-based approach. We have topics. I think if education is to be designed in a systemic way, we have to transition from topics to skills. What skills do we want individuals to be equipped with? And skill is basically a tangible capacity to carry out, let's say, a task, an intellectual task, let's say, in our education world right now. And skill-based education is different. And because the whole setup will be different, if we want the individuals to be able to carry out specific, let's say, tasks at the end of their education, we need to align all the modules so that that is basically accomplished at the end of the day. Imagine you're designing a house. You're not designing a house as a set of rooms. It's okay, I'm going to design a set of rooms and then miraculously, the house is going to emerge. You think what type of, let's say, feelings or impressions that people who will be residing in this house will need to walk out of this house with. You start with that. What do I want to give them as a designer? And then you start playing around with the space. You start differentiating space, right? And you never improve a room unless it improves the house, right? You always have the house, that totality of the space in mind when you start with working with the rooms. Unfortunately, the way we are working in education is we are working with the rooms and there is no vision of the house at all in our mind. And this sounds a lot like service design for me because the rooms you describe are maybe the individual touch points. So what you want to do is you want to create a holistic experience. And you said you always design with the entire house and mind that would go even a step further. You're designing with the feeling or the experience that somebody wants, that you want somebody to have in that environment. So I see a strong parallel with the way of thinking and the mindset that a lot of service designers currently have. But I feel that you're still feel that that's not enough. We're still missing something. Yes. What is that thing? Yeah. You know, I've seen some of the recent books that are coming out. You opened the books filled with canvases. You know, 60 canvases, 70 canvases. And one of my friends who is very active in the field told me that there are as many as 100 canvases right now. This is a fragmented view. It means that we are dealing with fragments here, right? The same thing is with if you look at the sustainability field, we're suffering from the same problem there. We have the Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs, and they are divided into 16, 17 different categories neatly packed, separated from one another. But in reality, if you improve, for instance, poverty is going to touch on sanitation is going to touch on education and the other way around, right? So you cannot do just one thing. What we are lacking in the field is a theory. And what I mean by a theory is not an academic view. Anything we are capable of doing in the outer world is a result of a theory, is an understanding of how the world functions, the worlds within or the worlds without. So we lack that holistic theory that can connect us across these layers that we talked about. The layer that starts with mental models, assumptions, worldviews, results in creation of structures, results in emergence of patterns, and then at the top we have the event. Something that can, a thread that can help us connect across these levels. This is what we're lacking. And I believe systems thinking, systems thinking, and the theories that exist in systems thinking world are a very powerful, let's say, source of inspiration for seeing and mapping these connectivities. Got it. So, and you already mentioned it, but the thing that we're missing is sort of the foundational layer up on, which we make decisions, for instance, within the service design process. Well, now the service design process might be very compartmentalized and very methodology and tool driven, just following the recipe without actually thinking and considering at first what is the kind of experience that you want to create. And that's foundational layer is the thing that you see in systemic design. Yes, absolutely. I see it there because it can enable us see connections, interrelationships. There is so many interrelationships in a, let's say, in a service context. The relationships between the designer and the artifact, right? Between the artifact and the users, between the users and the designer, right? There is layers after layers of relationships that need to be mapped and understood, right? We lack the language of interrelationships in the field. And this is the reason why we have all these fragments of templates. I wouldn't call them methodology because methodology is of a much higher grade in, let's say, in an academic classification. They are recipes. Recipes. Recipes, recipes, we can say, let's say, procedures or templates or checklists that need to be used. We need to tap into something which is richer, you know, in order to somehow embody those, let's say, insights required for seeing complexity and feeling comfortable with complexity. We need to tap into a theory which is much richer. And we need to be creating our own tools, you know? I see some sort of a consumptionism, not only in buying stuff that people are doing more than ever, but also in using intellectual products, right? We are consuming these many tools and templates that emerge every now and then. And one thing which is, in my opinion, common between all of them is that they disappear, you know? No one talks about balance scorecard anymore. No one talks about strategy maps anymore. I do. You do, okay. So the one that comes from many years ago, I'm talking about the one that is for a decade ago or maybe there's a new tool right now that is called like that as well. But yeah, they pass. Yeah, they are fads and they go away. I always give the analogy of music. I say classical music has always been there, will always be there because it has tapped into some sort of richness. What is the timeless, timeless aspect of the methodologies and the tools and the foundations that we use? Now, maybe we can... Could you help me to make it a little bit more tangible? So if I want to start thinking and designing on a systemic level, what are some... You mentioned not methodologies, but what was your... The word that you use? Theories? That techniques. Techniques. I know you have a six week course on this, so we will not be able to teach systemic design in a few minutes here. But what are some things that I could start doing and maybe start learning about to actually start doing this? Yeah, I would say when you think about systems thinking, systems thinking is a lens, is an attitude. There could be a wide variety of techniques that come under the umbrella of systems thinking. One of them, for instance, is understanding emergencies. Emergence is a very powerful thing. Now, imagine water. Water, neither hydrogen nor oxygen have qualities of liquid. But when they come together, water emerges out of two gases. This is emergence. So the wetness that we experience is the result of our interaction with water. So wet is our work. It's not the world of oxygen. It's not the world of hydrogen. The same is with N-R-C-L. The saltiness is the result of the emergence of the molecules that we experience as observers, as people who interact with that, as something which is salty. For some people it may not be salty, or some people it may be too salty. So this is an emergence. We need to understand emergence. Let's say the essence of systems thinking can be expressed as one of the techniques understanding and mapping emergencies. How technical properties of a service assemble together and they result in something which is not at all technical. It's something which is very subjective. It's something which is context dependent. It's something which is observer dependent. Understanding this linkage is a big job. Did you give an example of a technique that allows us to do that? Yes, yes. Imagine we have technical properties of a service. This is the things that we know. For instance, if you talk about the service that we derive from an iPhone, there's a whole bunch of technical components that as users we do not know. So those are the parts of the service or the product that are related to the vocabulary of let's say the designer, the world of the designer. Then there are parts of the service or the product that emerge. Those are the tangible dimensions, the properties of that. From this point on, we can start seeing what type of interactions individuals have with the tangible parts. There is this tangible part of a service or a product that connects the technical part to the subjective part. In the subjective part, we need to be a bit more precise in defining the type of emergencies. That's why I use a lot of analytical psychology in expressing emergencies when it comes to human behavior. We perceive things through our sensational intuition. Then we act upon or assess things through our feeling or thinking. We need to understand if we are in, let's say, in contact with a tangible service or a product, what type of intuitions or sensations are evoked by that product for us. We have to characterize those. What type of feelings or thinking do we employ to assess that input of information about this? This, let's say, sensation, intuition, or basically feeling thinking is the way we perceive and we assess. This gives us a system of readiness for action. Then we act upon a service. Our actions at the end of the day depend on the assessment method, the perception, the tangible dimensions of the service that are not perceived equally the same way for different individuals, of course. Then they are connected to the, let's say, technical properties or technical components of the service. This is a line that shows some connectivity. Then you might want to ask yourself what type of benefits would those actions create for the designer? It's a reverse, let's say, method. You have to ask yourself, as a designer, what type of actions do I want my customers to take? What is it that I want them to do, basically? Now, how can I walk backwards or work my way backwards to understand how those actions can emerge out of their assessment and perceptions and the tangible dimensions of the service that I choose to show to them or to expose to them, right? So, basically, these are the type of ways that we can start looking at services differently and we see some connectivity across them. As you said, this is something that cannot be expressed in a short period of time, but just to give you a taste of what we mean by multidisciplinary and interconnectivity and somehow weaving in different worldviews together. This is just a simple example that I thought could be useful. And the first thing when you started talking about an iPhone that came to my mind was, okay, the notifications. That's an artifact that is sort of designed with a specific intent in mind. And you could say that it triggers a subjective sensation. Most people will probably want to press on it because they feel a specific fear of missing out or something like that. And when you just focus on the red, unread number of messages on your iPhone and you might think, okay, that's just, that's the layer. But what you're actually saying is you have to sort of peel back all the layers that are behind this and it starts with what is the user trying to achieve and what maybe MI as an organization trying to achieve and then sort of the visual icon or the vibration on your phone is eventually just one expression to trigger that evoke that sensation. Exactly. Yeah, this is the starting point. That is the starting point. From that point on you have to start following. And that's why I believe understanding users at the persona level is not enough at all. We need to understand people, not personas. And persona in Latin is a mask that is worn by an actor in a play. And that mask changes from one act to another act from one play to another. So the same way, the mask we wear in our lives, the way we, the mask we wear when we are home, the mask we wear when we are working with our colleagues, the mask we wear when we are dealing with our boss at work or friends, they're different. We cannot understand an individual based on a single mask. We need to dive deep into those psychological processes that I mentioned about perception and assessment. So I have an interesting take on personas because I know it's a much debated topic in the design space. When you say we have to understand people at a people level, at a personal, a human level, I totally agree. The challenge we have is we cannot design solutions for the needs of every individual. So we have to sort of generalize things in order to deliver stuff. Yes. How? What is your take on that? Well, there's two points here, Mark. You can generalize things with the knowledge of the nuances that exist in your basically target customer base. You know, you understand the nuances. What we try to do in our training is that we have a service and we want to show to people that this service can be perceived and assessed in eight distinct ways, completely different, right? Very, very different ways of approaching the service in terms of perceiving it, in terms of assessing it, okay? Now, a designer can choose to design for the common denominator of, let's say, the target audience that it has with that knowledge in mind. So, okay, now I know what type of response I will expect because each of those eight ways of, let's say, interpreting or perceiving or acting upon the service will result in different types of actions as well. You know, a person who is a thinking type, introverted thinking type, right? This individual is going to look a lot into conceptual world, into the world of ideas, right? This is his world. What type of actions can we expect from him? Very different from someone who is a sensation type and his, for instance, has a high degree of extroversion, right? These are the type of, this understanding will help us fine tune the type of responses we need. And then we can embed some ideas for some people with that disposition, with some people with this disposition. We cannot design something for everybody because it becomes something for nobody at the end of the day if you design for everyone. But then you have to ask yourself, what type of individuals, broadly speaking, with what common disposition, psychological dispositions will be attracted to what I'm doing here? What is it? Who are my target? Are there people more or less with this, let's say, setup when it comes to their mental apparatus or are they differently set up? Yeah, so what you're, my interpretation of what you're saying is there's nothing wrong with generalizing for who you're designing. We need to do that. The thing that we need to keep in mind is the mental models of the people we're designing for. Yeah, we should have a refined understanding of who basically is going to interact without service. And you know what? But there are many ways, sorry to interrupt you, but of course there are many ways to describe a who. We're already describing a who. There are many ways to do that. And that's where we need a theory to tell us distinctly, let's say, specific ways in order to categorize individuals in a way that we don't lose any of those essential properties. I give you an example for movies. A movie, we might imagine a movie is for a general audience, but actually when you dive deep into movies and you understand, you try to understand them from a lens of psychology, then you see that there are elements in the movie that speak to this type. There are elements, the music speaks to that type, right? The settings, the scenes, the makeup, the plot. So there's so many things we can play around with a movie. And at the end of the day, there are different ways of engaging different audiences, right? Not maybe they don't know exactly how they're being engaged because sometimes it works at a subconscious level with them. But in a lot of movies that understanding exists in the mind of the desire, they may consciously choose to put aside the target groups. Okay, this is not who we are going to work with in this specific, let's say, setting, but that knowledge is essential. And you know what, Mark? There's another part of that knowledge which is very important as well when it comes to the compatibility of the service with the service designer. That is something that whenever we talk about human-centered design, we talk about customers. But the first human that engages with the service is a designer. So the first customer of the service is a designer of the service. So you have to understand the compatibility. There is a lot of talks about startups failing because of not finding market opportunities, competition, technical deficiency and so on and so forth. My claim is that a big reason why startups fail is the lack of compatibility between the psychological disposition of the designers in the startup and the thing they want to achieve or they want to do. If that fit doesn't exist, this is not going to work. And no one talks about it. No one talks about the importance of it. No one talks about measuring that fit. No one talks about approaching it from a theoretically sound way that can give us a clear cut understanding of what's going on in terms of that compatibility. So that's a really interesting take. And I agree with you that I haven't heard a lot of people talking about the compatibility between the design and the thing they're designing, designing for, designing. Before getting too much into detail, what would be a way to assess that compatibility? How do you even express that? Well, there are basically some very useful psychological assessment tools out there. As a part of my study, I worked in a group to fine-tune one of these tools and that is one of the tools that we are using in our training as well. The tool gives us a very, basically, clear understanding of what are the relative enjoyment level. Now, it's not about capacity of individuals at the end of the day. It's about how much do they enjoy something relative to other stuff, right? For instance, for me, is learning. I know. Nothing can top that because I have an introverted thinking disposition, right? That clearly speaks for itself. So I should be involved in anything that is education related, right? Learning related teaching and stuff like this. This is very clear. So because I enjoy that, it's not because I can't do other stuff, it's because I enjoy it. So there are tools that we could use. Some of the very famous ones are not as theoretically sound as, let's say, or as accurately measuring those dimensions that need to be measured, but there are very good tools that exist in the market that can actually do that, but they're not very well known. So by taking that, then you can clearly see what you enjoy most in your life, right? And in my opinion, that needs to be linked to what you do. If you want to inspire people, you can do other stuff as well. You can probably pull it off, right? Doing well, right? Meet, let's say, acceptance requirements, but you will not inspire. That's the thing. Going back to the beginning of our conversation, if that fit doesn't exist, you will not be able to inspire others. And this, know yourself, that's the first starting point of designing. And this reminds me of a conversation which was quite recent here on the show where we were talking about applying game design, theory and game design methodologies in the world of service design. And in game design, it's quite known that there are certain types of gamer profiles. And this is basically something similar. There are different types of personalities within the design community. And you have to, it helps when you know what type of profile you are so that you can align the challenges you work on, the methodologies you use with who you are. Absolutely. And you know what, Mark? Once you have that knowledge, you can configure teams based on that. See, okay, this is my dark spot. This is something I can't do personally. But I can employ someone who can do that, then I can focus on what I enjoy doing. So, we cover each other's weaknesses. So, that is also a very good tool for creation and configuring teams and for avoidance of tension between some team members. Because if someone has my exact opposite psychological disposition, okay, there's a lot of projection, negative projection between me and that individual that is going to hinder the collaboration between us. But once we know this tension exists, we can have an intermediary person who has some disposition that allows for a communication between me and that individual. So, it's also pretty useful in configuring teams. And then on the other hand, then you can go and work on the, let's say, in the typology of, let's say, the customers, understand the customers world. What typologies are we after? We cannot be after everyone. We have to define it precisely. And this can help us understand at least, these are the top three typologies that we can address very well with what we are doing. This is sort of the big challenge in, I think, the way SERVS design and especially design thinking is presented these days. Like, what you see is a superficial layer, like you said, the canvases, all the toolkits, all the method cards. And those are really easy to grasp. They look nice. You can really quickly get your hands dirty and start working with them. But at some point, you'll run into challenges that have nothing to do with the methodologies you use. They'll have something to do with the fact that you don't have theories that help you to understand the challenge. And like you just told, that you don't have theories that help you to understand yourself. And, right? Absolutely. I fully agree. Not the problem, again, if you want to look at it from a systemic point of view. One canvas is an event. This trend of emergence of canvases is basically a pattern of behavior that we are seeing right now. What is the mental model that is giving rise to these, let's say, all these publication houses or all these universities promoting them? In my opinion, the mental model down there is that people want immediate results. I want something now. This instant gratification, which exists, which is somehow fulfilled by shopping, buying things immediately, delivered to you in 30 minutes, whatever, is also showing itself in the world of learning as well. People do not learn for the sake of learning. They don't want to invest in property, they invest in different things. But when it comes to learning, you have to invest, you have to pour time into ideas so that they incubate and then you can use them. You can build your own tools around them and then change your mindset. In my opinion, people ask me what is design? I would say we should ask ourselves when is design? Design is happening when the mindset of designer has changed at the end of the design, something fundamental about the worldview of the designer has shifted. Some sort of a transformation has occurred in the designer. Metamorphosis has occurred. If it has not occurred, no design has taken place. Problem solving probably has taken place. Continuous improvement might have taken place. Reconfiguration, restructuring of different products or processes might have taken place. But design deals with creating significance. The word shares a root with designate significance in French, which means meaning. So there has to be a subjective, profound human dimension to design that needs to shift as a result of the act of design. And it will not shift if you're using a template. As you said, you use it quickly. It takes you five minutes to learn it. There is a short learning care for it. But then what are the outcomes? What can you get out of it? What can you transfer into the next project? How have you changed? These are the things that will not be accomplished. I can imagine it's a lot to grasp. I was thinking what is an easy way to start. And my answer for everybody who's listening is have a really critical look at the books that you're reading at this moment, the medium posts that you're reading at this moment. Are you reading books where the tools and methodologies are presented? Or are you reading books that help you to understand who you are as a person, as a designer? Are you reading books that explain theories and fundamental principles, rather than things that you can start applying the next day? I think I was just looking for a starting point here. Would you agree or would you have another suggestion here? Absolutely. That's great stuff. And what I would always say to my students is that if you want to learn systems thinking, stay away from anything that is called systems thinking. If you want to learn about design thinking or design, stay away from any book that has it in the title because these are meta disciplines. You have to see them in a context to understand them. And I would say we have to look for wisdom generation mechanisms in our lives. Wisdom by definition is context neutral. If you have learned something that you can apply it in a completely different context, then something has grown on the wisdom dimension. If it's bound by a specific context, a specific, let's say, time of usage and there's an expiration date on it, that is not wisdom. That is probably some disconnected pieces of information that you have picked up and it will be gone. So I would say test the relevance of the ideas, the rigor of the ideas by the possibility of cross-fertilize them in different contexts. If it's possible, if you can apply it to your own life, many people say, okay, we want to solve this problem of business and whatever. Some of the people who take my courses at the end of the course say, oh my God, I never expected to undergo some personal transformations taking this course. And this is what we do not advertise. You say, okay, this is a course about, let's say, systemic design. But at the same time, those ideas have relevance for our personal lives, the pattern of relationships immediate to us in our setting, right? In our, let's say, homes before in our offices. And I think we need the courses like you're running, the programs that are running to give people an excuse to undergo this experience, because it's really hard to invest into yourself, into learning some fundamental principles when you are sort of driven and, yeah, pursued in a world where short-term results are expected from you. Like, yeah, so we need more excuses to allow ourselves to invest in those kind of things. Yeah, yeah. One small addition I had when you mentioned this is, I mentioned, like, you need to read different books. And you said something about standing the test of time. Like, if you pick up a book, and it's not at least 20 or 30 years old about a specific discipline, you might want to reconsider. Like, pick up books from the 60s, if they are still relevant, if they are still best-selling and seen as an authority, then you probably want to dive into them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is absolutely, Mark, there is this sentence by Wolfgang Paul, the physicist, quantum physicist who says, what's still older is always the newer. And this is very paradoxical at the same time, very meaningful. It means you go back and find those timeless stuff. And most of them, most of them are not from these recent years, these things pop up and they disappear. But those timeless things will always stand the test of time because they result in transformations inside individuals before products or services. We are obsessed with this outer world dimension. Everything is out there. The service is out there. The praise is out there. Satisfaction comes from outside. And that's why there is not much investment in ourselves. There is not much understanding of what's going on inside. This inner world is not explored fully. Nothing can be, let's say, transformational for the users if it's not the result of the transformation inside a designer. When I teach a course, Mark, I always change my teaching material because I say, if I do not learn new things in my classes, how can I expect my students to learn new things? So this cannot be a one-sided thing. I need to be challenged, equally challenged, the same way that my students are challenged in the course so that we can all learn. Otherwise, learning does not occur for them if it does not occur for me. So this is something that may be a bit sounding metaphysical or hippie or whatever, but this is the essence. This is the principle according to which I operate. And it's made things very fulfilling and pleasant for me. That sounds like a very good promise to start investing in this. We, Arash, agreed to run additional webinar based on our conversation here because there's a lot to explore. We want to give the audience an opportunity to ask questions. I'm sure this will raise a lot of eyebrows. So depending on when you are listening to this episode, the webinar might already have been recorded and done or you might still have an opportunity to sign up and join us live. Check the show notes for the details of the webinar. We'd love to have you here. Arash, how would you summarize our conversation in the last hour? Well, I really liked it. It was very fluid for me. I really like conversations like this when you don't know where it's going to end, what direction it's going to take. I think what you're doing is very valuable, Mark, bringing different point of views into the field. And these dialogues that it was, I would say it was a very good example of a dialogue, which is a free flowing movement of meaning. If you go back to the meaning, the etymology of the word. So I think it was very meaningful for me, the questions that you asked. I hope I could respond to them adequately because we didn't have any, let's say, visual aids, some slides or pictures to be added. I hope this made sense to our users. I would tell them that the way I would summarize what I said is that basically, you know, you might have heard about this hero's journey, you know, the hero venturing into the unknown and then coming back with a boon, with a gift, with an elixir. I would say we should have a parallel called designer's journey. The designer's journey into the unknown, into the world of learning growth, into a world where we learn how to hold tensions, right? Between wanting to do something immediately and investing into something which is more profound and time, let's say, time taking. In a world, venturing into a world and getting accustomed to a world where we have more tolerance for ambiguity, we have more tolerance for uncertainty and we are comfortable with complexity. This is, I would say, what a designer is, a person who's comfortable in the face of complexity. They can dive right into it. Some of my PhD students come to me and tell me, you know what, we are lost. We don't know what we're doing. We are confused. They say, beautiful. That's exactly how you should be in the journey of your doctoral studies. If you're not, this is not research. It's just a simple search. So I would say design is about developing this tolerance for confusion, for not knowing, being comfortable with not knowing, finding meaning in not being able to understand immediately the meaning of something. So these are some of the ideas that I try to live by in my everyday life, in my, let's say, in the courses that we've designed and the type of work that we do. And they have been really fulfilling and really helping me in my journey of individuation. So it's some final words. I hope this makes sense. Yeah. And I think you just dropped the title of the episode. I've already noted it down here. Arash, once again, thanks for sharing this. I'm looking forward to seeing you in the webinar that's going to be fun as well. Thanks for coming on. If you want to be part of their follow up webinar that Arash and I are running, make sure to check the show notes down below and find the link where you can register for the webinar or where you can find the recording. Apparently you're enjoying conversations like this. So click that subscribe button and make sure you don't miss any future episodes. Thanks a lot for watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.