 In this episode we'll be talking about design ethics and finding your moral compass. We'll talk about the craft of service design. What is it? And finally we'll talk about the fragmentation of service design into all kinds of different sub-disciplines. Should we be worried? Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi I'm James and this is the service design show. Hi I'm Mark and welcome to the service design show. This show is all about helping you build organizations that put people at the heart of their business. The guest in this episode is the Managing Director of Engine in Dubai. His name is James Sampere. James has been in the service design field for over a decade and he's got a ton of experience. So in this episode we'll really be talking about what's going on in service design today and what are the topics you should be concerned about for the next five years. If this is your first time here on this channel welcome and I'd love to have you to subscribe as we bring new videos at least once a week that help to level up your service design skills. That's all for the introduction and let's quickly jump into the chat with James. Welcome to the show James. Hi Mark. Good to see you. We were talking before the interview and we said we met once I think in our life ages ago right? Yeah so from memory so I think it's probably about 10 years ago in Utrecht. Exactly yeah something like that. I had an interesting taste in shirts and I was coming out there talking about I think doing an intro to Engine and some of the work that we've been doing with I think Mercedes-Benz at the time so yeah a while ago. There's one photo that always stuck with me and that is when you showed like an undercover service designer sitting I think in our ambulance or something like that. Yeah. Do you know which one I mean? Yeah that's that's that was one of our service designs at the time Eric so yeah. Yeah exactly. Yeah we used to do a lot of work in the in the public sector in the UK so we were you know we were sort of shadowing shadowing the front line as he's our want so yeah that was that was from that project. James you already mentioned something about Engine. For the people who don't know who you are what do you do these days and what's your relationship with Engine? Yeah sure so Engine is a service design consultancy so we like to think of sort of one of the one of the first service design entities coming out of the UK so Engine was set up in 2001 by a couple of the founders Oliver King and Joe Hippie and they were looking to apply their design practice so originally product designers to the development and design of services. I came on board with Engine 2008 so I've been with Engine a few years and currently I'm sort of leading the the new studio that we've set up in Dubai so in the Middle East so since 2017 so we've been out here nearly three years. Hmm interesting. James service design has played an important role in your life but do you actually remember and can you recall the first time you got in touch with the term when did you hear about service design and where was it? It was I guess it was very early on in so I was fortunate enough to have done a master's at Brunel University so in design strategy and innovation. I think the focus of that course was really about how do you use design in order to help organizations innovate so large organizations and one of the sort of modules I guess within that course were the sort of shift from products to services to the idea of the kind of service economy and certainly Western economies of how you begin to have to kind of re-apply your design training to effectively a new market and set dynamics. I don't think it was necessarily articulated as service design but it was it was using design for the development of non-products so you know a lot of time we're looking at development of services. The post office, Orange, they were one of the first sort of telcos who were really very brand driven and that was also one of the first times that I came across Engine who were a very sort of weirdy beardy almost boutique kind of well this is a strange idea you know two guys sitting out and thinking they can design these services and building a whole company around it. So that was kind of my first intro to it and then I guess through my days at sort of Samsung looking at R&D I think slowly weirdly being at a product company maybe realize the importance of services more because a lot of what we were doing was five to ten years in the future and actually a lot of the more interesting work we were doing was actually in the design of service rather than rather than the product. So you've been back then? Yeah so that was about that was 2008 so sort of mid 2000s the dawn of the iPhone yeah yeah looking so I guess my my I've been talking about 2019 and 2020 for a long time and so and now it's here now we're here yeah and service design is a is a is a credible thing. Hmm James you gave me some really interesting topics I know I say that in every episode but it's it's true so I'm going to pick your brain about these these topics are you ready to do some interview jazz? I think so yeah all right drum roll or bass drum or I don't know topic number one is a called design ethics we haven't talked about ethics a lot so do you have a question starter and can you show it to us? So I was going to come in here and out this way so why design ethics? So there's a number of conversations I think that we're we're sort of having here at Engine I think design ethics is something that is becoming more and more important for us when we're thinking about not only the kind of work we do but also who we work with and I think it's becoming increasingly important as sort of markets evolve and we're seeing a number of different sort of trends in the market so things that we encounter a lot of the time are you know this idea of big data the idea of personal data within the fabric of a of a service also about the sort of treatment of people who work on the front line of a of a particular service but also elements around you know how how sustainable a service is you know what impact does it have on our planet so certainly three three big areas that we're sort of encountering you know quite a lot in our work. So let's rewind for a second like what is what is sort of increasing this awareness related to design ethics what is driving this? I think it's the I think we're dealing with we're dealing with organizations who are looking for a I guess a suite of outcomes so these outcomes might be pay you know how do we how do we not only serve these people better but as a by-product or as a primary driver therefore how do we keep those people for longer so therefore how do we earn more money from our existing customer base and how do we attract more customers and then how do we in ever increasing marketplaces how do we sort of improve things like margins so how do I balance out some of the operational costs with you know what we're what we're earning from from the service so I think why that's important to us as service designers is a lot of what we're developing and doing so whether that be okay so we're developing a service that drives a number of different outcomes so so we have to track back from saying okay so how do we how do we maintain a focus not only on what's great for the customer but how do we make it so it's a justifiable investment for an organization and how do you strike the right balance so actually you don't tip into doing something that makes a lot of sense to the organization but actually compromises a lot of the things that are the customer's value or you value as an individual like privacy for instance and I think we've seen a lot of sort of service companies come unstuck because their ethics haven't matched their their desire to innovate or their desire to create interesting services so you know guys that swing to mind you know anyone anyone who has a business that relies on the gig economy so if you think about delivery if you think about right right right right you know from line don't get access to healthcare they don't they're not they don't get full full-time employee status and we're seeing that you know go through the courts at the moment in California but all of that I think is something we as designers need to be cognizant of because we need to ensure that I always feel like we are should be a moral compass so whether within our whether we work in-house in our clients or whether we're sort of consulting to a client from an agency I think our point of view is to try and strike the balance and I think the art and science of some great service design is something that can strike the balance and and I think ethics is is a cool part of that so I see there a discussion about ethics coming up more and more and it it makes a lot of sense and like you said the moral compass it hasn't been discussed a lot in the last 10 years I think like what are the questions if people are sort of intrigued by this topic what kind of questions should I ask themselves to help them develop their or discover their moral compass I think it's um so we we we have a we have a sort of um a thing that we do from the outset which is which is just trying to understand where the organizational value is if we get this thing right so you know what does look what does good look like at the end of this right if you get this right for a customer what are the thing what are the elements that we would be delivering so they can be quite um by um tactical so they can be things like well I you know I'm able to personalize my service and actually it evolves as my best or they can be quite um or they can be quite sort of um broad like this thing is just easier it's just say this just saves me time and then we also do the same thing for the organization so actually when we're designing this service for the organization when you inwardly point that service what's the value what value does it create for the organization um now one of those things you know there's going to be a lot of sort of uh sweet spots in there so where you where where a thing is equally valuable from organization it is is for a customer that is a that's that classic thing that people say right this is a this is a win-win so for me that they're the things that becomes the some of the fabric of what you're trying to sort of use to design uh with it within the service design uh within the service that you're designing um where there's a I think often when you go through that exercise there'll be some contradictions so there'll be things like you know from a customer point of view I value my privacy from an organizational view is I want to get as much data on these people as possible and I want to be able to do x with it and I think there they are the points where you you need to identify those early because you need to then design a effectively a compromised system or a way that actually talks to both those things but without compromising without valuing one over the other and I think our responsibility as being the conduit between the customer and the organization is to represent those two views right because it makes the situations where value is created on both sides where there isn't a trade-off that's great but as soon as a trade-off has to be made you have to have like a framework to make decisions yeah and what's that framework right that's that could be a moral framework yeah yeah yeah yeah and I think what we're increasing so something that we're doing at engine at the moment is creating a manifesto so we're creating an internal manifesto which effectively um supports all of our designers in the studio identify what we believe is engine to be the right thing to do right um you know and some of those things are a response to things that we see coming down the road so for instance you know there was a big there's been a big um emphasis from organizations almost find operational efficiencies is to move from people sitting in call centers to chat box because that we you can create a simulated person personalized conversation with a chat bot and actually functionally that that's great but what are the ethics that sit behind that you know should should you um should you as a as a customer know that you're talking to a flexibility of robot rather than a person and what are the implications what are the implications to do that so um I guess the the the manifesto is a key set of guidelines for our designers that we can use across the entirety of our projects to kind of assess this is this is this is where our moral code sits exactly so if outside of this we know we know that actually we can flag begin start flagging those things and uh a thing like manifesto and then we'll move on to the next topic but um I think it's good if people start thinking about their own manifesto and the the the challenge would be like you have to know what to put in your manifesto I think that's also one of the the key challenges but that that requires some reflection yeah and it's hard it's hard right because you know when you dig down into any organization you know if you work for a you know a series of big blue chip chip organizations or even you know smaller organizations there's going to be stuff that you perhaps you know don't agree with or you don't like so actually getting the balance right is tricky and it's you know it'd be a miss of me if we're saying you know we're going to turn away anyone who doesn't have the same moral code as us but I think what we're trying to do is to ensure that whatever we touch feels right right and for the right reasons good okay the design ethics we'll be talking about that more I'm sure in the coming uh episodes uh ready to move on to topic number two yeah all right let's do it um there we go it's called design craft and I just could have probably removed design do you have a question starter um how can we yeah how can we dot dot dot um how can we um I guess get into a conversation about design craft in terms of what that means for service design so so I think um so as I'm an avid uh viewer of the service design show I know that you've talked I know that you've talked about uh craft the odd time whenever I've seen craft being discussed it's sort of at the level of methodology yeah um I think when I'm talking about design craft here I'm talking about um something slightly different so if I just sort of explain what I mean go ahead um so I think um you know what we've seen is I think a sort of maturity of of service design practice so you know in the early days um lots people was sort of explaining I remember really early on at engine yeah even when I joined in in the mid nauties we were sort of just going into client organization we were saying this is a service like this is what it's made up of people processes systems products places propositions and you can design these things we don't need to do that anymore um the next the next sort of phase of evolution I guess or maturity where people are going yeah I get that actually what a service is and the thing can be designed um and then it became about methodology so I think what we um what we were seeing is that all of a sudden service design became a credible alternative way to solving a organizational problem where they perhaps went to a management consultancy or a brand consultancy or something else and they effectively said look we've used their process before we want to see what your process is so we can sort of gather two things and to a certain extent feel okay around okay I'm gonna opt for this methodology by the way I I must remind myself that I in all of these things I have to recommend a bunch of books so there's a great book old now strategy safari well link to it down below yeah um and I can't remember the author but it's called strategy safari but it talks about how you can solve problems from different schools of thought and they talk about the design school the management school the economic school so actually what our clients are doing we're picking someone from the design school to solve a a problem which wasn't necessarily a problem I think where we've evolved since then is that we have a methodology and a robust way of working through things in a way of engaging a client in that in that transformation and I think where the conversation should be now is around okay so you've got service design but how do we know it's good service design uh huh yeah how do we know that actually what you're designing is a is a good or you know ideally great service so I guess what we've been putting a lot of sort of emphasis um into at the moment is trying to understand what that means so we don't I don't think in the community there's the language to talk about what great service design looks and feels like so we was you know question we've got on our studio wall is you know what is the aesthetic of the service that you're designing mm-hmm and seems like a sort of counterintuitive thing to ask of something that might be inherently invisible mm-hmm um but when we talk about aesthetic in service we're talking about you know how does how do you retain a consistent sort of brand brand experience through the whole thing do you create those micro moments of delight how do you design the interactions the communications how do you design the policy that sits underneath how do you support the decision making that underpins a lot of those policies so for us we're starting to shape what we think the lexicon is underneath the aesthetic of service design and and what what we believe good looks like and aren't there are so many moving parts in a service that make what that makes it uh super complex and hard to actually grasp what the craft is or are you finding really foundational patterns I think I think we have to get so another combination I think but embedded within this question is I think we have to get specific about the role that we play as service designers within with like what we bring to the table as service designers for these uh some of these problems I think the clue is kind of in the title in the what we took what we're all talking about is a deep understanding of services how they work how they operate how they're delivered plus design right mm-hmm so I think you know we're strong believers that anyone can be involved in the design anyone can design a service but actually it's designers who are uniquely uniquely placed to be able to craft a service and an an experience and then understand what it requires in order to kind of make that thing work and I think we need to understand as designers that we don't need to affect the entire organization because I think there's lots of there's lots of conversation at the moment of you need to you know in order to be a best service company you need to radically transform you know an organization of people in order to kind of deliver this service I think in our experience it's about knowing where to start it's about demonstrating that parts of an organization and parts of an operation can be changed and understanding that actually what you need to be able to do is to design the interface between the service and the experience as users or customers experience it with how the organizational how the organization operates it and demonstrate how that can work and that can be on a small scale or that can be a transformational scale but I think the key thing and the key thing that designers have is the ability to sit between a number of disciplines to talk multiple languages and then pull that thing together and not lose the essence of what we were talking about right at the beginning which is that sweet spot between okay Mr Jones Mr Akmed this is super valuable for you an organization this takes all of your boxes because that's that's the art and science a bit I think it's it's it's it's sort of important to to simplify what we actually do like that's probably Einstein who said it in order to it's probably the bono who said it like simplicity is the ultimate sophistication if you can explain simply like we are we're good at understanding the problem we are good at ideating solutions we are also good at actually creating it making it bringing it to life yeah and I think I think one common theme throughout all of your previous interviews was how do we how do we get stuff off the wall or you know exactly yeah he's um and I think it's um I think for us it's getting specific around skills and experience and I think one is talked about in a very generic sense is designers need business skills or designers need business acumen or how businesses work I think that's true but I think how far do you go right we would never expect a management consultancy to have two degrees in detail design right be able to understand the world so where is where are the overlaps and I think the overlaps and for us the overlaps have been understanding how design strategy interfaces with business strategy so understanding how you begin to feed that into decision-making processes I think it's understanding how a service operation is delivered at the point of interface and I think it's understanding how you reorganize yourself through a transformation program to achieve the design that you want that you've conceived of so I think if you see about business skills I'd like to talk about business strategy and design strategy um transformation plans and I'd like to talk about operational interface exactly I'm already visualizing a picture in my head like the the three steps that we talked about and then there's a sphere around it where we need to interface with the I don't know if this these areas that you just mentioned right there's a great book yes there's a great book called published in 1990 called the design dimension by Lorenz he was one of the first management consultancies to talk about design in the context of business he basically has a sort of artwork of a steam engine and it's called a sort of the pistons of a steam engine and design is the central piston that drives the wheels but he sort of says design is always a thing that is sat between technology marketing um I think it's technology but in a service organization that sits between operations that sits between strategy it's the same but I just need to contextualize what our business acumen means in more specific terms and for us it means those three things awesome I'll I'll draw the image and post it on LinkedIn or something like that and and get your response let's continue the conversation over there James final topic ready yeah fragmentation and integration okay I'm gonna go for how how can we so um you know it's I'd say the last sort of five six years I mean a bit of really interesting time for service design we've seen the sort of the blowing up of design thinking which sort of been a parallel track um but we've also seen very tangible evidence that design is seen as a very valuable thing and why have we seen that we've seen lots of large organizations take you know build big design capabilities in house so we think about IBM we think about um capsule one um we also think about um the acquisitions that some of the management consultancies are made so we look at Accenture we look at Accenture and Fuhrd we look at EY and Seren yeah look at um yeah McKinsey and Luna um and I think what's interesting you know from my perspective looking looking at from the outside in to that is I think two things are happening at the same time so I think um again with it with the maturity of service design I don't think we're seeing um a natural we're not seeing all service design companies follow the same natural curve and I think it's when mark when sort of uh disciplines get more sophisticated the market itself gets more sophisticated by its very nature so that brings me to want the first point which is about fragmentation so how do we understand that service design companies can have can be more fragmented in what they offer so if I look at some of the acquisitions that um say Accenture have made a lot of the their version of service design is a very digital version of service design so you know from their perspective is service design is a way of effectively helping an organization move through digital transformation and we can go further with you because we have these guys with these great design skills who can be able to kind of conceive of what that digital service now that's one flavor or one brand of service design um you know there are there are others there are ones which are predominantly around capability build so what we see is we see the guys going in and building services like so services the guys who are doing services I'm doing um you know they're going in building capabilities to help in the organization help themselves all that sort of stuff right and then there's another you know I would say we're in a slightly different engine for you know your international viewers I would say engine is is very much like a multi channel omnichannel agency you know we we uh are as comfortable in the in physical as we are in digital and it's about where our strength is is understanding the juxtaposition between those various various things um and I think the the likes of you know ideos etc have always sort of talked you know them work in that space as well so I think um one of the things I guess one of the hell might be is um clients who are buying service design um might be you know how do we how do we help them understand um our version of that how do we better articulate our version of service design and how do we support them to buy service design in a more informed and sensible way so we have like uh the equivalent of a service design phone book but I think it's an interesting you know it's been an interesting exercise in sort of saying how do you perceive this clients because obviously um you know we've we've been in conversations where they where they obviously don't quite know how to buy service design because they're going to go here's someone who's just you know developing digital here's someone who's doing everything here's a management consultancy you do you know talk about design thinking and here's actually a research agency so that is quite a complex um purchase process from a from a client's perspective so how do we ease that I mean I don't have we have some ideas of how we can support that but I think as an industry it's an interesting question like should we celebrate the diversity that we're now seeing within within service design rather than try and cluster everything together I'm I'm thinking about other fields that have that might have gone through the same challenge and the first field that comes to mind is like the the digital the web design field the interaction design UX design like everything uh is put up on a big pile and do we need to start applying and developing again an additional vocabulary like adding adjectives to service design training or service design research agency or digital service design agency is that the way forward um maybe um I guess the way I was imagining is I I think a lot of it starts with design and management education I can imagine that you might do sort of specialist modules in various versions of design execution um I think there's no coincidence for example that a lot of the guys at engine um we have a real split between perhaps people from a digital background but also people from a um product design background because we find actually it's those guys who are used to working with manufacturers and designing stuff to build it yeah so almost have the the inherent training to kind of go okay no I get this I know I know that I have to go and speak to HR and talk about their uh people on boarding process because that's part of what we need to deliver on the frontline so I can see it manifesting itself in design education um and I can also see it perhaps manifesting in um public bodies so the way the way that um you know say it's the service design network you know does the service design network have a different way you know because they're often a bit like the design council did previously like how do we help people navigate the design industry and buy in the right way that would be something that they could they could support clients clients with um and I think as we get better as agencies and and it's less of a problem I guess in-house because um although you know I'll be happy to hear from people if they think they've experienced these problems as well but certainly from an agency perspective if you've only worked with a if you're a bank and you've only worked with a digital service design agency that's your view of service design perhaps you don't think that you need to integrate your brand and your people training within that project there isn't it there's there's a there's an education piece within agency but not quite sure what that looks like we need a service design map like and we're you know on which island are you and what's what's what's more out there in in this land on this planet and sort of how instead of how far you can how far each entity can allow you to allow you to go because I think that's the other thing right sometimes you just need to bring someone in who's just going to help you work out what the proposition is and I you know come up with some big ideas and develop that vision that the whole organization can rally around we talk about that in our book so but sometimes you just need help and support with okay how on earth do we get this thing over the line and implement it now in order to be an end-to-end service design agency you would need to be massive because of the problems so another solution to that might be can can an old model work of you have these discrete separate service design companies or do you need more of a networked approach you can bring different disciplines in and out of that network and it's based around solving the problem and some sort of strategy organizations do that where they kind of you know bring in a have a loose a loose sort of collection of people they bring in around the problem but then you lose things like you know the design ethics we talked about before the methodology or the approach so this kind of fragmentation issue is a challenge it should be part of the conversation then being loosely tied together that's what yeah these kind of sort of bungee cords bungee it's kind of membrane where you can flex in and out and change the shape you already hinted upon something and this is your opportunity to make it to formalize it like is there a question that you'd like ask the listeners and the viewers of the show to think about and to comment upon I think I think a big question that we're dealing with a big question that's on my mind at the moment is in a world where design is being seen as valuable to businesses and an inherent part of how an organization remains successful and competitive how do we retain what made design special in the first place okay well think about that let's let's comment down below if you're listening to the podcast head over to the YouTube page and then comment down there James we're going to wrap this one up I want to thank you so much for your time I'm sure you could continue for quite a long time I'll I'll try to post some posts on LinkedIn to continue the conversation and there and let people join in let's do an experiment with that thanks thanks again man I appreciate it good to see you good to see you thanks so what's your take on James question how can we make sure that service design doesn't lose the thing that made it so valuable in the first place leave your comments down below and remember your comment might just be the thing that gives someone else his big breakthrough inside if you enjoyed this episode make sure to grab the link and share it with one other person today who might find it interesting as well thanks so much for watching and I look forward to see you in the next video