 So, you want to pursue a career as a service designer, either as a freelancer within an agency or maybe within your current job. But you're wondering, where do I start? Well stick around, because in this video I'm going to show you three ways you can kickstart your service design career even if you don't have any formal training or years of hands-on experience. Let the show begin! Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the service design show. This channel is all about helping you to design services that have a positive impact on people's lives and are good for business. But how do you turn that ambition to design these great services into an actual career? Well, that's what we're going to talk about in this video. You don't have to look very hard to find job listings from companies looking to hire service designers, so there's no doubt that the demand for service designers is growing. But the fact that the demand is growing doesn't mean it's easy to land a job as a service designer, especially if you don't have the educational background or the track record to prove that you're a good fit. So how do you start your career as a service designer when you don't have a lot of hands-on experience? It's certainly possible and I'm going to show you three ways that might just help you to kickstart your career as a service designer. What I'm going to talk about definitely isn't limited to finding a job as an in-house service designer. It also works when your freelancer wanting to do more service design work with your existing clients or if you're looking for a job within an agency. I'm really curious, are you currently working as a service designer and if so, how did you get into this role? Did you go to a training or did you just start doing projects? I read all the comments and try to reply to as many people as I can. So leave a comment down below and let's continue the conversation there. If this is your first time here on this channel and you'd like to see more service design related videos, don't forget to click that subscribe button. When I was in university a long time ago, there weren't any courses on service design, so I graduated as a software engineer. But when in two years I left the tech world and started my career as a service designer, you could say that in some sense it was easier back then to get started as a service designer because it was an open playing field. We had a lot of room to really shape and mold our profession. Today the field is much more standardized. When you want to get into service design, it's much clearer which skills and knowledge you actually need to possess and there is a growing number of places you can go to to actually acquire these skills and knowledge. So service design has definitely matured. I have the chance to meet a lot of inspiring people in our studio who want to work within service design. This ranges from students fresh out of university to people who want to radically take a different path in their career. But also people with a traditional design background like graphic design who now want to transition into service design. The first question I usually ask in these conversations is why do you want to get into service design and the answers range from because it looks a lot of fun to I want to make real impact. But when I try to understand the deeper motives, the conversation usually stops. Unfortunately a lot of people have a quite superficial image with what our field actually is. So my first tip is make sure you develop a profound understanding of the fundamentals of service design. Put in the work to really study the field and based on that develop your personal story in which you can explain why this is the path you need to follow. The second advice I usually give people is to get as much hands on experience as they can as quickly as possible. There is absolutely no substitute for this. Now you might be wondering how do I get hands on experience when I don't have a service design job or project to work on. Well the secret is you can develop your own design challenges. Like Lauren Curry once said on the show, a great way to start is by redesigning a service that makes you angry or start by redesigning a service that is really close to you. For example one of the students who is in my selling service design with confidence course was exactly in this situation. She started out by redesigning the experience of a restaurant that is ran by his brother in law. One thing that you really shouldn't forget in this stage is to document the process in as much detail as you can because in this stage it's not about showing the smart solutions you found, it's really about showing how you approach the challenge. So start doing service design within your current environment and don't wait for an assignment or permission. What surprises me is that some people try to overinflate the current service design experience. My advice is that you rather look at how your existing skills and background fit into a service design context. Like I said I'm not a trained service designer by any standards but my background in software engineering has learned me a thing or two about systems thinking and I've gained the ability to actually visualize these complex systems. These are very useful skills to have as a service designer but it goes beyond your education and work experience and extends into your site projects as well. For instance if you've built a community around your Instagram account that focuses on cosplay costumes, why not bring in the communication skills you've gained in that period as something that might be really useful in service design projects. And I didn't make this example up, it actually happened during an application for an internship at our studio. So the takeaway here is be confident about the skills you already possess. Don't try to hide them and use them to your advantage. Try to figure out how they might fit into a service design context. There are many ways you can actually start your career as a service designer regardless of your background. Just study the field, don't wait for permission and make sure you leverage your existing skills. I'm really curious how did you start your career as a service designer? Did you go to a university, did you follow a private training or did you just figure it out on your own? And what would your tip be for people who want to get started as a service designer? Leave a comment down below so we can continue the conversation there. If this is your first time here on this channel, don't forget to subscribe and if you know someone who might also be interested in starting a career as a service designer it would be great if you share this video with them. A lot of kickstarting your career as a service designer is of course being able to explain what you do in a simple and engaging way. If you're interested to learn how to actually do that, check out the free course that I've got for you over here. I really hope you enjoyed this episode and that it was helpful. Thanks for watching and I look forward to see you in the next one.