 I'm Marc Stichthorn and this is The Service Design Show. In The Service Design Show we talk to people that are shaping the service design field about the current state of the industry and the exciting new developments. Today our guest is Marc Stichthorn. Probably a lot of you already know Marc because he's the editor and co-author of this book called This Is Service Design Thinking. Marc is also doing two service design related startups called Smepley and Experience Fellow and some of you may already have seen in during a presentation or talk he gives all around the world. Welcome to the show Marc. Thank you. Was that a good introduction? Was that sort of correct? Thank you. It was great. Short and snappy. I like that. Short and snappy. Marc, I'm going to ask this question to all of my guests. What was your first memory of service design? What was the first moment you got in touch with service design? I was working in the tourism industry doing innovation projects and I was struggling with the way I was teached. I was educated about innovation in my classic management education because I studied strategic management which was pretty linear thinking, linear tools and stuff like well you have an idea first you need to do write a business plan and then execute and I failed really hard again and again doing that. When I then heard first time about design thinking service design I got really intrigued and it felt to me like a boy opening a box of toys because suddenly I had names for stuff I was doing but I caught it differently and I realized that the way I sneaked through a project actually wasn't sneaking through a project it was just iterating but I didn't know that I was iterating at that time. I was thinking I was failing all the time and then well I got really intrigued in that and I learned a lot more. And can you recall the speaker or the article or the book that you touched and found the subject? I can't recall really but I think it was, no I can't, it was 2007 that's for sure and it was related to tourism because I was working in the tourism industry and I don't know where I read an article about design thinking I got really interested in that. I moved to Austria where I started working at the SCI business school here where one of my projects was actually service design, teaching service design, having research project in that and that was the moment when I really started researching in depth about that. So not only practicing it even though calling it differently but then really digging into the heritage of a young professor. I was yeah I'm still but like a young professor so I'm just at a university for a few days. Mark let's go on to the topics you pointed me to. We have found a format to actually make this into a co-creation session because in service design we love co-creation and believe in the power of co-creation so we're also going to co-create the show sort of. Let us explain the format how it works right? I have a topic right here and I'll hold it up and you have a different stack of papers right? So you have a different stack of papers and your papers start with a question starter. I'll give you a topic, you'll pick a question starter and then you can ramble on the topic whatever you like and then we'll continue from that. Perfect. Easy right? Okay so let's just jump right in and I'll pick this one because this is probably a topic a lot of service designers can relate to. This is service design, design thinking, UX, customer experience, interaction design and a lot of other design disciplines. Yeah, let me... How do you count to death? Oh I picked that one. I picked why? Why what? Why the heck do we have so many names for doing more or less the same thing which is design? I think it's really strange because we're having so many discussions right now going on on defining what exactly is design thinking compared to service design, compared to UX design and so on and so forth where in practice what we're trying to do in organizations is we're trying to break down silos. We try to connect different departments, we're trying to connect people, we're trying to co-create like you said we're doing this show. But then at the same time in our little bubbles of design thinking service design we're building up silos again and say oh no this is not part of service design, this is part of design thinking or this is part of UX or this is part of CX and what the heck. I don't understand it. I don't get it. I don't know why the heck we're building up new silos when we all follow a similar iterative process maybe with different slightly different tool sets whatever but it's all ribbon mixed anyway. Well my question would be is who is creating these silos? Is it the designers or is it the outside world trying to understand design and put it into something they can put in a box? I think it's both. Of course if people like to learn about that and they hear different phrases they like to understand what's the difference and it doesn't really make sense if you're new to something why you have different labels which appear a very similar thing. And then of course you have the petitioners, agencies in health departments and I see two different approaches there so on the one hand you have the agencies who say we don't care how you call it because basically all our clients are calling it differently anyway depending on the organization culture and so we don't give them which label you put on it. But then of course you have other agencies and in health departments who already build up a reputation in a specific field and they like to defend their own field saying oh no this is service design or this is UX and not design thinking and I can understand both sides but I think as a community we would really grow much easier, we can learn much easier from another when we get rid of this language barriers. Well final question about this because what do you think needs to happen to break down the silos within design? I don't know, I think that there, I mean on the one hand there will be always buzzwords right and design thinking service design nowadays is a buzzword and now that a bold statement. Well it is like that, if you take a look at all the business consultancies they are all saying they're doing it now right so definitely it is a buzzword and if Harvard business review titles design thinking comes out of age yeah I mean we see attention that's we agree on that. Yeah so I think we have to look beyond the buzzwords to understand rather what is a process, what is a tool set, how do we work, what is the culture and that is more important than just the label of it and if we agree on that then it doesn't really matter which label you put in that but look beyond that to understand what is the process and how do we work together then we can really proceed. We need more collaboration instead of more definitions. Exactly, I think having a good discussion on how we work is much more valuable than having a discussion on how we call what we're doing. Well let's use the show for that to discuss how we work because I agree with you. Mark let's move on to the second topic. All right I'll pick this one it's called research and practice. Yeah, what do you want to do with that? Well as I have so many questions started here let me try to pick one randomly so I don't know what the question is going to be. I just pick this one, let's see what it is. When will we finally do really good research in practice? What do you mean? Well often I see so my background is partly academic, partly in practice so I just really try to connect both worlds and then my background is also in management so I got trained a lot in quantitative tools before I moved into design and learned more and more about qualitative ethnographic approaches and what I see is that many companies nowadays use service design however you call that I call it service design and sometimes as an excuse to do bad research because they say I just just service design we just need some qualitative research so they go out do a few interviews they come back and say okay that's that's what it is and that's not really valuable so you can then base design decisions on really wrong assumptions because they only come back to prove the assumption what they already had they just do a little bit of research heavily biased and then they develop products which suits their own need and not the need of the customer because I didn't really understand. So it's like using just research for checking a box rather than actually doing proper research. Exactly so I think just as an example even if you if a large organization try it's really hard to do that they sometimes plan design research with a gun chart so I've been in a project where they had a huge whiteboard every morning they had a meeting with a team of almost 15 researchers where they said okay we need 500 interviews we need 300 in-house visits we need and so on and they just tick boxes it's okay let's try to get 10 more today so we're done without even looking at the data so for a few months they were only collecting data without looking at the data and at some point they started to drown in data and they were looking for approaches how can we actually analyze it now now that we have like 500 interviews 300 in-house visits and if you if you have an academic approach in there you know that actually this approach is useless because in quality of research what you're looking for is theoretical saturation you want to find for example the five biggest bugs in your customer experience if you talk about an existing experience and once you've got it and further interviews further observations only prove what you already know there's no need in doing further interviews anymore so I really recognize what you're saying and I think it has a lot to do with people actually going into design research with a validating mindset rather than a explorative mindset is that something you recognize too absolutely absolutely and I think also in design there is a place to validate moments so if we think of prototyping the whole idea of prototyping is of course to test things so we have a list of topics we need to validate we have hypotheses assumptions and we need to test them and that makes sense but the beginning of a project where you rather need explorative stuff it doesn't make sense so I think there's often a culture clash in people sometimes use an excuse to do less research and sometimes they still use the same mindset the same framework they're used from quantitative fields just applying it a quantitative field I think we need we need a better education yeah this is really a hard topic because it really requires different culture different mindset and it's about embracing uncertainty which is really hard if you're in a surrounding that it's about that's about gen charts and predicting how many interviews we'll do absolutely so any any ideas on how we can move a step beyond the current research methods well what I think what I see in in business and academia right now is that there is actually a trend away from only focusing quantitative stuff to mix method approaches where you mix quant and quo or really to different qualitative approaches and now with increasing technology it becomes also much more accessible for companies because you if you have snippets of videos from users for example if you have videos of observations in-house visits and so on it's often much more powerful to see a customer failing using your product or service than having statistics about how customers are failing and I think we need both we need to prove yes this is a real issue but then we need the qualitative bits and pieces proving or showing why actually they feel and I think these mixed method approaches get industries getting that and I think education is moving along with that and it will be just a matter of time I think it will be a very good step if organizations would just be a little bit more patient in their research and not jumping on the assumptions from the head start just patience patience would be a good cure I think for better better design research well time is money right yeah well go slow to go fast I'm not sure who that said that but go slow to go fast exactly exactly mark you already hinted about something using new technology and new tools let's move on to the final topic and it's called tools and software tools and software let me let me let me pick I like that how much how much I'm not going to answer how much it costs but I'm going to answer how much technology tools and software do we actually need in in service design and you mentioned that in the beginning without our company we moved away from doing projects and we really focus now on developing tools and software for service design that's what we're doing with both startups mapping and experience fellow and we are totally aware that there won't be a software who can solve everything but I think there are a few problems companies always struggle with where specific software makes sense so how much do we need definitely we don't need any technology when we do workshops because I think hands-on workshops hands-on prototyping session journey mapping session with pen and paper this is absolutely gold and there won't be an exchange for that and of course collaboration tools help if you don't get a team in one room and so before you don't do anything do it virtually fair enough but I think a face-to-face workshop is still the way to go however there are these moments after a workshop where you have your walls plastered with paper templates and postings we all know those situations exactly so that is what we try to tackle then with with Smappley with the software to quickly progress afterwards where you can print it out again but then it should always connect the hands-on pen and paper work with the digital the digital should always be a level on top which helps you well which makes your life easier that's the whole idea of it and I think we shouldn't try to get rid of the hands-on work really do you think designers are a bit scared to use technology no I don't think they're scared I think we love technology actually but one of the key things in service design is or the key skills for me is actually facilitation so how do you work you know how do you moderate a workshop how do you set up the workshop how do you create an experience that people within the room feel safe and are open enough to share and try out things and technology won't help you there yeah that's that's a human skill and I think we don't need to be scared of technology there but we need to use it in that moment where it makes sense we'll put some links to your tools in the description of this video because I hope a lot of people will just give it a go and give it a try and see how it enriches their process I think that's really valuable well I don't want to make a sales pitch here so I'll do it for you we'll put the links we'll put the links in the description okay thank you what is the biggest challenge developing tools and software for service designers it's I think it's the same as every startup we got the same issues I mean financials so one startup we financed we bootstaffed so we financed it out of our own pockets we financed it through our projects and was just developing part of it at some point it needs more attention which again means you can't do less projects you really need to focus on them that's what we're doing now so we stop doing service design project I still do my talks my workshops I train the trainer works on stuff but I don't do service projects anymore because we really want to really need to focus on developing the tools and then you have all the the classic issues you have a small team limited budgets you have huge roadmap of features you want to put in there and you want to create a great experience you don't have the time and money to do everything right from the beginning so definitely we're failing and but I think we are pretty open about that and we communicate that so we really live the service design spirit of cooperating with our customers having usability sessions we talk a lot with them incorporating that so we I think agile development process merges perfectly with the service design process so we talk about customer experience sprints so we do research we put into the development we launch it we start all over the game every two weeks basically is there a way the viewers of this video can help out in any way creating meta software can you repeat the question so you're you said you are involving users and actually practitioners in the development is there a way people who are watching this video right now can participate well sure basically everybody can participate so you can you can sign up for free for for 14 days and even just in the trial period and try it out and give us feedback so either schedule a call with us schedule a usability session with us where you share your screen and we watch you working with that um schedule session where we talk through how you use it in a workshop or after a workshop and what worked but didn't work and through that we are developing us further and we're doing that a couple of times a week actually and having these sessions okay good to know and the final thing about software is I'm really curious to see new software and tools coming up and experience in which phase of the design process it will be like you already said that probably won't be in the works of facilitation will it be in the research phase will it be in the analysis phase probably in in both but I'm really curious to see what happens in the field I think it's it's it's a great development because we can see that already that there is more and more different software coming up very specialized to very specialized topics and for me it's also interesting because I think we as a as a Serpentine community can use that to get a step or to get a foot in the door to companies now that research companies like Forrester for example put out reports on software available software for customer journey mapping what we realized is that companies start they don't care they just buy the software they start using that at some point they realized yeah this is a software okay I can do a journey map but how do I get to the data to it and suddenly they reach out to to us and ask us look how does it work with the well maybe you should actually work with one of your local services and agencies and get some training in that and and maybe do a project with them because it's it's just a piece of software it's like Excel or Word doesn't help you to write a book you still need to do it interesting interesting thought and I think you're you're spot on there will be it it makes it really easier for companies to jump on the bandwagon of customer experience customer journeys research and then and they open Pandora's Box they don't know what they've started then that's the need help so a lot of my when I talk at conferences I speak a lot at at UX management conferences and in a few weeks I was speaking at a leadership conference at Harvard Business School which is crazy that they invite somebody to talk about service design and what I'm telling there always is stuff like a customer journey map is not a fucking deliverable and because that's what many many think we buy this software we do a journey map and then we're done no you're not and that they should base their journey map on research and not just assumptions so a lot of my talks I try to educate them and I try well not educate but at least give them the hint that really just assumption-based is not the right way to do that and they're going to figure by doing that and I hope that through that we will grow the the whole service design community even more thank you for your contribution to the service design community so far to the software Mark we're sort of heading into the final phase of our talk the question I want to ask you is people that want to get into service design people that want to start with service design what is the single most valuable tip you would give them don't try to learn it out of a book I mean I'm I'm guilty with that myself with the book I did with Jacob but we designed it as a textbook not at the go-to research and resource so my single most valuable tip for that is if you really want to learn about service design join one of your local global service jobs but I think that is a worldwide non-for-profit event where you can learn how to or you can experience in a kind of pressure cooking format in 48 hours how this process works you learn new people I think that's one of the best ways to get into service design awesome is there a question you would like to ask the audience the viewers a question that you have yourself and that we will give the opportunity for people to comment on on this video yeah oh yeah sure well with with our new focus now that we really stepped like we took a step back we were not an agency we don't do project we really want to create tools and software for you guys doing service design out there and we already have a few products now out there but it won't end there so we have loads of ideas of what else we could do so my question to the community would be what do you need what what do you really struggle with and there's not yet a solution and you would like somebody to to take this task and develop something to help you well we'll see what comes up I think I'm cute struggle with a lot of things so Mark thank you for your time and it was awesome talking to you thanks for taking the time to be part of the of their service design show and a concept we are still developing what are your thoughts about the topics we discussed today and if you have any suggestions on who we should invite next to the show be sure to let us know down below in the comments if you enjoyed this episode and like to see more interviews with service design pioneers subscribe to our channel and check out some of the past episodes with the service design show we help you to stay one step ahead within service design by talking to the people that are actually shaping the field for now thanks for watching