 I do my afternoon coffee delivery. So what's in there? Hold on, hold on, hold on. Dude, you can't open that. Whoa, sorry. Don't open it up, don't open it up. What was the secret? Hey Nora. Can you watch my YouTube channel while I'm gone? Yeah, but I need a million subscribers when I get back. Challenge! So how do you become a leading service design agency in the States? Is it any different to work at a U.S. agency compared to Europe? What's their secret? How did harmonic design do this? I guess we're going to find out. Hey Mark. James. Come on in. You know why I'm here, right? I think so. I want to know the secret of harmonic design. Can you help me out? I can try. I want to see everything. Where do we start? How about right here? All right. Let me show you the wall. This is our wall of harmonicas. Who makes these awesome? We do. All right. Everybody, when you become a full-time employee of harmonic, you sketch within the first week, theoretically. Yes. You sketch your own character. And that gets associated with you on the website. It's on our internal systems and on your business card. What are harmonicas? We are harmonicas. The team early on voted themselves. Was it a democratic process? It was. Patrick and I didn't choose that at all. Which one is your favorite? I don't know. They all have different flair to them. So I like. Please no politics. So which one is your favorite? OK, let me ask you. Which one is your least favorite? That's an easier question to ask. No, I'm not going to say. I like them all. I don't dislike any of them. Maybe mine. I don't particularly love mine. But it's because I'm the only one who actually didn't draw his own. OK, you cheated. I did. Usually the place where the magic happens. Welcome to Harmonic Central. And it's literally because it is kind of the center of a lot of our life when we're in the studio. Where is everybody? Everybody's working from home or distributed today. So I picked a good day to actually sneak around and open all the cabins. You did? Oh, nice. Got a big table intentionally for meals. And often, especially around holidays, when we have a lot of people in the studio, we'll extend that table and we'll have big meals and potluck or we'll have catered events and stuff like that. This is our first big holiday party after we became a company. Nice. And it was a Polynesian theme at Trader Vicks. Part of the tradition of what we do and how we create and maintain our culture is we have these artifacts of our events because those are often the favorite times that we have in team building is that when we come together and just have fun, we enjoy the work. But we enjoy having time together, too. Hidden almost in plain sight. I see one bottle standing quite lonely over there. What's the story of that? Well, somebody has taken it upon themselves to put all of the other booze away. I'm smelling something really good over here. This is our liquid caffeination station. Liquid caffe... Sorry, repeat that. Liquid caffeination station. Like that. As COO, that's my primary role is keeping folks caffeinated. That sounds good. I do my afternoon coffee delivery. So what's in there? Hold on. Dude, you can't open that. Whoa. Sorry. What's going on? OK, so we were approaching, I think, what could be the secret of harmonic. And then this happened. I don't know if we'll be able to keep the footage, but apparently there's something going on with the fridge. That's how the camera will be over. This is what it is. And... And mobs. Yeah, for you. Thank you. To take with you on your travels. I'm sure that this will be helpful in the service design show studio. Thank you. I hope so. Hopefully it will keep you awake during your late night editing sessions. And then, of course, the mega board. The mega board? Yeah, we like to say it's the largest seamless dry erase board east of the Mississippi. You wouldn't expect it to be so empty that you erase a secret. Good. It may have been on here, but it's not right now. We're getting prepped for people to be here. And by the end of the week, this will be full. How important is this to harmonic? Early on, very, very important. We were very much a face-to-face organization. Now we've moved online and we collaborate more digitally. But I'll tell you, when people are in the office and working with each other face-to-face, we're constantly on the whiteboard. People like to draw. People like to illustrate their thoughts and ideas. These are our team rooms. Can we go inside? Absolutely. Right. So what's up with the name? Now retired, the rooms are named after our brand colors. Named by the team, of course. Part of the culture that we've created is that it's really about everybody can contribute to what harmonic is and what it means to be a harmonica. This is probably several different conversations. You look at the color. They're color-coded. Yes. If you're in the studio and you need heads-down time or to be on conference calls, you can just huddle in here. Please tell me more about this special character over here. It's our avocado. This is a formal portrait of the atomic avocado. The atomic avocado. So this is already getting closer to the secret. It's pretty close. Avocado definitely has something to do with it. What do we have over here? This is our big room, also called Dangerine. What happens to Dangerine? Large collaboration space. This is where when we have a team that is mostly based in Atlanta, we often meet here. Even though we can work from wherever, people like to work together still. We've got really great views of Atlanta on three sides of our space here. And that's one of the reasons we got this space. It's just because we have windows on three sides. And designers are finicky. They like their natural light. This is Edgewood Avenue. It runs into Old Fourth Ward and is a historic part of Atlanta. And of course, it's usually a little busier than this when Georgia State's in session, but they're on break. And we have little animals. You'll notice little animals and stuff around the office that people have contributed. I see a sheep over there. We're no sheep, but we have an affinity for animals. That's one of the other questions when people join. It's actually part of the interview process. Cats or dogs. Coffee or tea. Yeah, or sheep. So what's the next space? Where do we need to go? This is a dirty swimming pool. There's a target. Yeah, we're trying to. Who are you trying to hit? I don't know what that is, actually. Who's there? I like the fact that this has even expanded beyond the walls. Yeah, we never have enough writing space. You never have enough writing space. I would agree. Lots of creativity going on in here, you can tell. So service experience, service management, service operations, and service strategy. Yeah. And in the middle, service maturity. Yeah, we're doing a little business strategy conversation in here. I love it, and other people do, too. And I think one of the things that is kind of thematic is that the times that we have together are those moments that we remember. This is just a making space. What's the thing you miss most when you just meet virtually? It's the after-meeting chat, and just like walking back to where you're sitting, or going to seeing who's around for lunch, and just going to do a random lunch and hanging out with people you don't usually get as a chat with, or you haven't been on a project within a long time. How often do you get together with the entire team? At least three or four times a year. At least that's the intention. It hasn't happened over the past few years, as you can imagine why. But this is actually from before the lockdowns. Really? Yeah, the team was at the Atlanta Zoo doing a service safari and experimenting. Literally a safari. It was. And experimenting with using non-human actors in blueprinting. What's in the cabins? Paper. Legal paper. Hey, we've got all the stuff you need to run a workshop. Colors. What else? I'm going to snoop around. I'm still looking for the secret. You're not going to find what you're looking for. I'm still looking for the secret. We've got our private cubbies here. OK. Somebody left their box of drawers. What's the most precious thing for you inside these cabins? Well, I love the merit badges. What are these? These are merit badges. So when you do something for the first time at Harmonic, you get one of these for your laptop. OK, so what's the dock for? That's the Heck Yeah Rubber Ducky. Heck Yeah Rubber Ducky. When you do something cool. This is, you know, coffee is for closers. Coffee is for closers only. Purple Heart is for after the US military Purple Heart. Are you still waiting? Do you've collected all of them? Or are you still waiting for one? How is your collection? My collection is pretty weak. Oh, that's not good. They don't let me out of the cage often. And all the things you need to run a workshop, including time timers. My favorite. I wouldn't know how to be productive without one. Yeah, those are pretty cool. So how close are we getting to the secret, James? Because that's why we're here. It's cumulative. Oh, I think it's. So what's what's the next thing that adds to the secret? Well, you've got atomic yoke. Atomic. So we like this like 1950s kind of flair on our color, probably, as you can tell. But also, you know, a great room for hanging out, good view of Grady Hospital and downtown area here in Atlanta. This is probably the room with the most light because you have three windows in it and they're facing different directions. Do they have your own space here? Or does everybody make it all up? Everybody jokes about this phone booth being my office. Yeah, this is I'm going to pull Ace Ventura. You can do all nighters in that one. Well, lots of conversations have been had in that booth. What's one of the conversations you still remember having in that booth, a fond memory to remember? I think the first time we spoke, I was in the booth. Well, there you go. And now we're here. Yeah, because back then, there were probably more people bouncing around and it was probably noisier here. All the rooms were filled because we used to assign each room to an engagement. But this is a conversation with space. Are we going to sit on? With Nicholas Cage, another harmonic or contribution to the space. So what happens here? Just chat, listen to music, read. Because we're adjacent to the library, also called inner depths. What's the music that's usually on? It really depends who's in the studio first. I like just kind of chill like down either down tempo house. Patrick likes indie. Indie? Yeah, he likes indie rock. In the name of Patrick Quattobon, we'll sing this happy Monday song. You mentioned something about the library. Is that still something we need to explore? Absolutely. The deep space? How did it? Inner depths. Inner depths. So OK, sounds intriguing. If you're looking for the secrets of harmonic. We are. That's why we're here. You might find it in a book or two. OK. The team are avid readers and writers. This is actually a working library. So what's happening here? This is a collection of people's favorite design and related books. And we usually have about 50 copies of Patrick's book here that he wrote with Chris Rizden. I see some classics. Yeah. I think this one was one of the first books that I actually read, subject to change. So yes, so Patrick and Steven seeded the library from their own collections. And some of these books are, I think, checked out. These shelves are usually pretty full. But anybody can contribute. And often when we buy books for the company, we'll get an extra copy for the library. But lots of reading and writing going on here, as you can tell from our active blog and social media speaking on the various conferences. Everybody's welcome to contribute to the decor in the office. You can see our pie print. That was designed by Steven Taylor. It is pie to, I can't remember how many. A lot of numbers. How many digits, yeah. Oh, a design. Even more classics over here. I've seen that book a lot of supplies before. So that's a pretty popular one. And funny enough, this is services I'm thinking, sort of at the seed of Harmonic's story. Back 15 years ago when Patrick and I were working together at a large engagement. And trying to figure out, lots of conversation. We were up in Charlotte. And lots of conversation about how to apply UX principles to how people operate businesses. And bring that human centeredness in. And like, lo and behold, this practice is emerging from Europe into the United States called service design. Is there something else to the secret? We could go back to the lobby and look. So we're going full cycle? Yeah, absolutely. And of course, part of the theme is, I think, probably picked up on is that the company is still clay. And we're always evolving and trying and changing. And a lot of what happens here is determined by the people who work here, not just Patrick and myself. We've sort of tried to guide folks in the right direction. But a lot of it is independent. A lot of what goes on here is independent of us. And I think really makes it a great place to work because people are self creating and testing and trying, experimenting. What's the thing that you're most proud of that the team contributed to the sort of the way harmonic has turned out to be? Openness and willingness to share and learn from each other. We're not a big hierarchical company. We're relatively, not to say we don't have titles and hierarchy, but we're relatively flat. And we all play on the same field. So anybody can contribute in any way that they can make of it what they want. It's their job to do it and participate however they want. If it's their internal operations and they want to help out with that stuff, we have internal projects that help push the project, the practice forward. Memorabilia and artifacts in the office. Steven is often contributing these cultural artifacts, which he made as a... I recognize this, but tell us more, what is this? Yeah, this is the iconic IDO. I think it was a medical device. The walls, I think. One of our engineers who wasn't quite satisfied with the discussion at hand leaves the brainstorming session for five minutes, makes the ugliest prototype in the history of IDO. It was like a whiteboard marker with some scotch tape around it and a little clothespin thing. And he brings it back in and hands it to the person who was sitting next to him in the brainstorming session and he says, hey, are you thinking of something like this? And nobody laughed. This medical advisor picked up the device and said, yeah, something a little bit like this. And Steven found that to be inspiring and was inspired enough to recreate it as closely as he could, you know, as a memento and a reminder of it's important to play and have fun, but you can do serious work at the same time. So have we gone full circle? Is this, is this the end of our journey or is there anything left? I can really go for another cup of coffee. Okay, it's time to do the thing that every service design professional just loves to do. Let's synthesize all the things that I've learned through my research in Atlanta and figure out if we have found the answer to the question that we started with. What is the secret to becoming a leading service design agency? Well, there are definitely a lot of clues. The positive spirit of the team, the creative and playful culture, the space that invites collaboration, the longterm vision of the leadership team and of course we can't forget the office dog. There are really some other questions that I still need to ask them. Remember that moment with the fridge? That was weird, right? Well, I guess I'll just have to come back next time. And we'll one big harmony.