 I'm Maurizio Maïs and this is the Service Design Show. 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 if you don't want to miss anything, be sure to subscribe to the channel. My guest in this episode is Maurizio Manes. Maurizio is currently a professor at SCAT. He's also involved with LiveWork and he's been traveling all around the world doing service design. For the next 30 minutes or so, we'll be talking about topics like who are service designers and what are the three fundamental pillars. We'll talk about why service design makes sense from a business economic cycle perspective. And finally, we'll also talk about service dominant logic and how it has the power to transform the way we see service design. If you want to fast-forward to one of these topics, check out the episode guide down below in the description or just stick around and enjoy the whole episode. So let's jump right in. Welcome to the show Maurizio. Thank you. I'm really glad to be here. Maurizio, you have a long history in service design, you have an interesting background. And I'm really curious, do you actually recall your very first memory that you got in touch with service design? Yes, it was 2008 and I was working on an IT company and at some point the way we were developing software at that time, it wasn't working and I tried to figure out how could I solve this? How could I involve the users in a better way? And actually researching on the web, I found out the service design network and right away I got in contact with Birgit Magher, she was really welcoming. So that's how everything started. Back in 2010, there was also the period that actually the first service design network conference was in Amsterdam. Yes, 2008. Were you there in 2008? No, no, I wasn't, unfortunately, but since then I've been to most of them. So you've handed me three topics that we can discuss in this episode and all three, like we said, we can talk for hours, but we need to keep it short and for the people who haven't seen any of the previous episodes, I have your three topics here on the paper and you also have a few papers containing question starters, right? Yeah. All right. So I'll pick one of your topics and I'll invite you to pick up a question starter and then we'll talk about this topic, right? Yeah. Okay. So let's start with this topic, Maurizio. It's a topic called three pillars. Do you have a question starter and can you hold it up for those along with this one? The three pillars of service design I would choose, who are service designers? Explain. We have here at SCAD a lot of contact from companies wanting to know how they hire service design, how would they assess these candidates, what they would expect from them and actually to be able to respond to their curiosity or need, we end up developing three pillars. So to help them mostly HR people to understand what service designers are and what to expect from them. All right. So one of the pillars is understanding stakeholders. The first one understanding stakeholders. The second one would be developing innovative opportunities and the third one would be understanding institutional transitions. Of course we end up developing a whole way to assess and explain these three pillars but basically is a service designer should be able to understand stakeholders both from a qualitative and quantitative perspective being able to assess these stakeholders in a meaningful way. So they know the now, what's at stake now. The second one would be developing innovative opportunities. Therefore is the whole design, co-creation, creativity, and the third one is to understand how to move from A to B. So A would be the stakeholders now. B would be these innovative opportunities and a service design should be able to know how to get from A to B in the most effective and sensible way. And the last pillar that you described seems like, all three seem like an important one but I can imagine people ask you the question is a third pillar really a part of service design because it sounds like change management and transitioning organizations. Do you believe that this should be a core skill of service designers? Yeah. If we understand design and service design as a way to augment the potential to act of people and stakeholders for instance. Service designers should be able at least to understand the challenges of doing this. It's really at some point it's really easy let's say to create innovative opportunities but making this transition from A to B is not very or it's not as simple as it seems and being able to understand this may set the standard for a good performance service designer. So how do the HR people respond that you've presented these three pillars to? Yeah, actually those three pillars were developed in a partnership with several companies and HR people. So it's kind of a language that they are at least being accustomed to. So yeah it's been useful they really enjoy so we break down those three pillars in how to assess a better definition of what implies each one of them. So it helps them better picture both the candidates and the employee that is supposed to develop service design in an organization. What do you find the most interesting about these three pillars or what are the things that you're thinking about the next steps? I guess the next step is exactly what you just asked is like how to turn these three pillars and the whole explanation about them and how to assess them and turn this into a more easy and accessible way. So deliver to companies a common understanding of how to assess and evaluate even the service designers from this three pillars perspective. Do you see also students using this terminology to explain at home what they do? Yes, yes, yes for sure and then they use a very much a much more simple way to explain this to their parents. It's quite nice to hear them like echoing this to their parents it's interesting. For the people who want to learn more about this is there any documentation literature presentations or should they just go to SCAT and study with you? So far it's an internal document. Our students have access, we have access, our partners in the industry have access to this but it's not yet been released as a public document but it will be so. Let's use the comments in this video to start a discussion about this so we'll see what happens. Yes, yes. Welcome. I like discussions. So Mauricio let's move on to the second topic and it's quite a different one and this second topic it's called the economic business cycle. Yes, yes. And then you have a question started that goes along with this one. Yeah, it's the why service design from an economic business cycle perspective. So the first question Mauricio what do you mean with the economic business cycle? Let's clear that up. Okay, the economic business cycle as defined by Schumpeter in the 20s of the last century is the dynamic that occurs from innovation. So something, a new product or a new way of doing things is created. It creates value profit at some point it becomes routine, it's copied so the laggers come in and then profits dries and it usually ends in a crisis. So this way, this economic way that we've seen all over the world is said or was named by Schumpeter as the economic business cycle. And it has two major, if I can summarize the economic business cycle is one is the what Schumpeter called brain activity phase and I called the design phase and another one is the routine phase. So creating routines that so the whole efficiency process that drives profit and mass produce products. So those two phases we've been seeing from the I don't know the last 60 years a shorten of the routine phase. It's becoming easier and easier to produce mass produce products and figure out routines to make them efficient. Thanks to the engineering and management researchers and practitioners, it became really easy at some point you have companies today that are just focused on the design part, the brain activity and just outsource the production and management to third parties or China, whatever. So but the funny thing is that although the routine part has shortened the design part because it's always the new trying out new things, hasn't. So it seems to I don't know the layman let's say that the design is getting more attention but it's just because the other part is being sort out in a way that it's been easier and easier to routinize things. So what you're saying basically is that design isn't becoming bigger or more important. It's just the other part, the routine part is getting smaller and that's why we all believe as being in the design industry that we are getting more important but it's the other way around. The other industry is getting smaller or efficient in a sense that it's becoming really easy to routinize things. So and also what he proposed and then the service dominant logic reinforces is that service as Bastiat said in 1800 is the begin, the middle and the end of the economic cycle. So this cycle is basically a service life cycle. So being in service design at this moment when the routine part gets shortened is an awesome opportunity. So we started with the question how does service design fit in into the economic business cycle? How would you summarize that? So the economic business economic cycle is basically a service design cycle. You create something, you try to routinize this to implement this and you drive all the value that it can create. At some point it's so used or drawn, the whole values is drawn from it that it dries out and you have to start again. So basically it's what service designers do. The designers do at large but service designers are more focused on the core of the economic business cycle which is service. What is the thing that excites you the most about this topic because you seem to be excited? Yeah, I know it might not seem sexy but from a consistent perspective, if you need to have a strong theoretical background to support what service designers do, it's just perfect. The father of innovation all the way through service domain logic today points clearly towards service design. At some point it's possible to say that even companies that don't know service design, they must be doing service design although not in the better way but there's no way because they are part of the economic cycle. Economic business cycle, yeah and everything is service so they are and nowadays with the prominent design role in the economic business cycle, they cannot help but do service design. They might be doing wrong or badly let's say but they can't do anything else but service design. And then do you have a question around this topic? What is the thing that you're trying to figure out or is this all specifically to this topic right? Yeah, again I guess I have as a professor of service design my main question how it's always how to get this message across. How to transform this in a way in a narrative that augments the potential to act of people like when they hear they say aha oh now I understand what's happening. It's always my main concern is how to get this very dry and theoretical and from my perspective awesome theories to the people and enable them to act better. That's my main question all the time so how to get the message across. That should be a thing that designers and service designers should be good at so it shouldn't take too much time. Mauricio we're moving on because time is flying by and I have the third topic in it's again a cryptic one maybe one of the most cryptic ones we've had on the show so far and it's the SDL XNM number five so service design logic XNM number five And do you have a question starter that goes along with that one? Yeah Mark this is the for me it's a very dear one and I say how can we define service design from the service dominant logic. Service dominant logic XNM number five how can we use that to define service design? Again that's not a very sexy thing but actually it enables us to define service design a very consistent way just let me say something first we all know that service design has many definitions like it's I don't think that one definition would be correct over others but this one especially because it comes from a very good body of knowledge that's been involving throughout the years the service dominant logic and at some point the service dominant logic proposed five axioms so it's kind of not easily question five sentences and the fifth one when I read for the first time was like a very good surprise for me which is the I'll read it is value co-creation is coordinated through actor-generated institutions and institutional arrangements not sexy at all but when you read you say okay value co-creation is a product of a coordination of institution mm-hmm so at some point to create value to co-create value someone something must coordinate institutions so when you think of going to a restaurant there's an institution called restaurant there's an institution called waiter there's an institution called food all the expectations that evolve around those institutions someone has to coordinate them and from a service design perspective that is actually what we do right right yeah you have like okay we have to create a new I don't know insurance service so there's a you have to understand the institution and not the organization the the institution insurance what people expect from it what values can be created from it and then you have to coordinate this and at some point design new arrangements mm-hmm so although again it's not a message that get across easily from academic let's say and mostly a theoretical perspective it defines in a way service design that it's very very helpful to drive further research to drive more friendly discussions and definitions of service side what do you mean with more friendly instead of saying like value corporations coordinated through actor-generated institutions to show arrangement yeah yeah you would say like a service design is a way to create and I like to stress this to create new forms of augmenting people's potential to act so when you create a new service you're concerned or you should be concerned about all the stakeholders not only the service provider or are the customer but all involved stakeholders into augmenting their potential to act which is creating value and and then do you see this domain of service dominant logic as something that we as service designers should know more about and explore more definitely actually it's it's nowadays the first paper that was published on 2004 by professor Varga and Robert Robert Lush it's the most cited academic paper of the century so yeah yeah we have like 16 years only but it's it's nowadays the most cited paper so as I always say you can hate or love service design serves them the logic there's no problem what you can't do by now is not knowing serves them the logic it's it's a very consistent open-ended body of work constantly evolving so it's not it's not gospel it can be reviewed revised and change as it evolves and actually this is the main force behind serves them logic is this not and then the the whole body and the whole researchers involved they they are not professing a faith this is it's it's a work that's evolving it's it's not the truth it's a perspective on service that it's really really interesting so if you would have to point somebody who wants to learn more about this what is the first research that you would say to look up the actual papers that explain the service dominant logic are quite dry and very academic but I've been writing or trying to translate this for a very day-to-day language so I have got a couple of texts about this published but anyway Google it Google service dominant logic and and you find amazing things for service designer I guess at least I tell this to my students you can't not know this and I must be honest so far we've done 20 episodes nobody has mentioned this before so that's quite that's quite interesting yeah and it's it's it's how academia things evolve so it was the first time it was published was in 2004 so in terms of writing about service design there's a very sharp rupture in 2004 papers before 2004 are considered old they are so and and papers that don't cite certain dominant logic either way so even either supporting or criticizing or being against certain logic today they don't I have for instance I have a lot of contacts I receive a lot of contacts from students all over the world to discuss about their research project master and PhD projects and the first thing that I asked them is have you read serves them dot it serves them the logic papers if they didn't I asked them to first read and then we can talk because if you didn't read this there's not much we can discuss about I think you're giving a lot of viewers homework I'm a ratio but that's good that's good so I'm a professor yeah that's good it's it's interesting to know that there's such an amazing pocket body of knowledge that we can tap in tap into Maricio final question for now I'm sure that you have questions that you want to figure out yourself and you already touched upon that you are thinking every day about how to spread this to a broader audience is that the main question you have or is there is something else you'd like to ask the viewers were viewing or listening this episode yeah I guess my main concern now is how to get this message across there are valid consistent and meaningful theories that could support our work there are their mature it's hanging low hanging fruits and I see a lot of discussions going on in the service design world that they are old now by now those theories could jump us ahead like ten years and there's still discussions about those not most but a lot of the issues that we discussed in the service design world were already solved by research we just have to okay this is it okay let's move on let's talk about something else it's like the saying that service design should be human-centered we destroy our planet by being human-centered so we serve design should be holistic not centered at all should be a very 360 degree perspective it's not just the human that's there but should be a lot more holistic and that's why I always teach and try to to to get my my students very comfortable and knowledgeable about ambiguity so how can we jump into a context and be effective by dealing and and and perceiving this context as ambiguous as possible and drive value from this instead of trying to fight ambiguity right exactly the other way around like drive value from this ambiguity so just to serverize this if people want to help you out it's especially about how to spread this message across through the service design community and maybe even in a broader community right yes yes in a lot not even repeating what I said but translating what I said right so okay yeah making accessible okay I got you more this oh this but that should be said or the message should be that way to to be more meaningful to to a broader audience hopefully some people will pick up the the gloves and start working on it chewing on it yeah yeah yeah that's that's one of my main desires by being at your show yeah awesome so Mauricio thanks for your time I have the feeling that we have much more to discuss but we we scratch the surface and again thanks for making the time and sharing your your thoughts yeah Mark was my player and that's completely thank you very much for inviting me and this is the service design show