 In this episode, we'll be talking about scaling and implementing service design in a thoughtful way. We'll talk about what you can do when clients approach you already knowing what the solution should be and how far can you go to make sure that your solution is used for good and not evil. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Chelsea 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 to do work that makes you proud by designing and delivering services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business. My guest in this episode was born and raised in California but currently lives in New York City where she's the co-founder of the Public Policy Lab which was the first service design practice in the USA totally focused on the public government. Her name is Chelsea Mulden. Chelsea has a unique view on what it means to design public services in a city with 8 million citizens and of course all the challenges associated with that. That's what we'll be talking about in this episode. If you're new to this channel don't forget to subscribe and click the bell icon to be notified when new videos are out and that is each week. And if you haven't done so already also make sure to check out our Instagram page where you'll find content that's not posted here on this channel. That's all for the introduction and now let's quickly jump into the interview with Chelsea. Welcome to the show Chelsea. Glad to be here. For the people who don't know who you are could you give like a 30 second introduction? Sure. I'm Chelsea Mulden. I'm the executive director of the Public Policy Lab or an innovation lab for government based in New York City. Alright. If people want to learn more they definitely need to check out the Public Policy Lab website because it's awesome. I really like it. Well thank you so much. We've got a lot of case studies of the projects that we've done with New York City public agencies and other government partners over the years. Chelsea we were doing the pre-talk of this interview and we were also talking about service design and we said you started doing service design since 2009. Do you actually recall the very first memory that you got in touch with service design? You know I actually remember the very first time that I ever made a journey map which was actually in 2003 and we didn't know to call it a journey map nor did we call it service design but my colleagues and I were working on a project about the New York City yellow taxi cab and trying to think about how taxi cabs would be regulated differently if they were treated as New York City's most iconic public space and we ended up doing a mapping of the taxi driver's experience connected to the taxi passenger's experience and I thought wow this is a really smart and interesting way to think about what it's like to ride in a cab but at that time we had no idea that what we were doing was essentially applying a service design lens to something where that hadn't been done before. That is such a common story for a lot of service designers to say I've been doing this for years I didn't know it had a formal name. What happened with the taxis eventually? We made a bunch of recommendations to the agency here in New York City that regulates taxis some of which they were interested in and some of which they were not that's pretty typical I think when you apply service design and government We'll talk about that in a minute. And the taxi drivers obviously in the taxi industry has undergone a lot of change because of the advent of the network transportation companies. Chelsea we did something really interesting before this episode that I haven't done in any of the 66 episodes before this and that is we crowdsourced some topics to talk about which is really cool and I have them ready over here. You have the famous service design show question starter so are you ready to do an interview Jess with me? I am. Alright let's start. I'm going to be selfish and I'm going to start with the topic that I that I sort of recommended I wanted to talk about and that is scaling and implementation. So can you do you have a question starter and can we make an interesting question out of it? I'm going to say why is scaling and implementation or why is thoughtful scaling and implementation difficult in a public sector context? And why did you specifically say thoughtful implementation? Well I think that lots of things get implemented but they don't necessarily get implemented thoughtfully. I think that there is often a rush to push things that are really at the stage of prototypes into scaled implementation and that's often for really sort of respectable and understandable reasons. A lot of times government agencies are really excited to have professional design capacity available to them and when a design team begins to create tools and interactions and services for them they're like oh this is so exciting great this is better than what we have now. Let's get it out there into the hands of the public as soon as possible to begin improving their experience. But then that doesn't allow for thoughtful small scale rollout and testing, further iteration and improvement, meaningful evaluation of impacts. There is so much interest in having better solutions available to the public that it just means that you don't always have the opportunity to do the same kind of carefully staged implementation and evaluation that might be helpful. So recognizable. It's actually something that is so relevant in one of our projects that we're in right now. Clients sort of feel like you're going through a design phase stage and then you have like your prototype and then the next step is okay now we're going to roll it out. It's not even scaling this rollout. They're thinking rolling it out to everybody. We need to train everyone or whatever. What have you found? Have you found things that aid and help to do thoughtful scaling implementation? I think that we now 10 years into doing this work are better storytellers about the steps in a design process. I think we do a better job now than we did in early years of saying to partners at the beginning of a project here are all of the steps that we expect that we will go through together. Let's talk about what that's going to mean in terms of time, in terms of budget, in terms of resources on the part of your agency, in terms of making a kind of long-term commitment to this work. It's hard for people sometimes to balance the tension between a research and design process is exploratory and therefore there's no way to know at the beginning exactly what you're going to end up with, but at the same time the necessity of committing to seeing a process through a deliberate field testing, piloting, and evaluation process when quite rightly the partners say, but what is it exactly that we will be testing and evaluating? And you as the designer have to say, we don't know yet, we'll have to find that out. But just having that conversation early on is so critical for success and we now very much expect that any project we do will involve this long period that we call phase zero, which is all the conversations that happen before the project actually goes forward. And that's for the benefit of everyone. It's for the benefit of our public partners, it's for the benefit of our team, so that we are very certain that we are actually going to be able to be good partners to one another. And be impactful in the end. So what I really like about this story is and what I've been trying to preach also is that implementation starts from day one, from day zero. The implementation within service design is like it's an ongoing process. It's not a confined step, right? At least that's how I experience it. One of our project partners, a leader of an innovation team at a city government, said to me once, he said, Chelsea, you should never work with someone who can't implement what you design. And that I think in a government context is actually a real possibility because there's not a market pressure to bring our work forward from design to implementation. In fact, implementing a new service design or policy design solution in a government context often means a new outlay of investment which is not going to see returns in terms of sales. It's going to see returns in terms of a better citizen experience, which is everyone's end goal but doesn't have the same kind of market pressures driving for it. So really exploring how our partners intend to implement the things that we will design together, it has to happen before the project kicks off or else there is some considerable danger that things will not actually get used. It will, if you don't have these conversations, it will become a discovery project and a project about exploration to inspire people rather than, well, which might also be interesting and good. Sure, but not, it doesn't in the end have the same scale of impact that we hope for. Yeah, and that's what we are not trend forecasters or trend watchers, right? We want to impact the people who we're eventually working for. If you had to summarize your learnings about scaling and implementation in like one or two tips, what would you say next to start the conversation from day zero? Start the conversation from day zero. Commit to the implementation process from day zero. I think there was a time when we were more willing than we are now to say, okay, we'll just engage in a sort of a discovery process with you and then we'll see if that suggests it will lead to design or we'll engage in a discovery and design process with you and then we'll see if that suggests how it can lead to implementation. I think more and more we seek partnerships where our partners are also agreed that implementation is where we're going and we are planning from the beginning that that is the intended goal. I mean, this is not 100%. There certainly are times when partners come to us and say, hey, here's this thing. We know it's really important. We can't at this point commit to implementing but we need some exploratory help just to even set the stage for that. But even then we're looking for instances where there's a lot of pressure on the agency to make change so there is a strong likelihood that exploratory work will lead to subsequent change. Super interesting topic. I think this is one of the biggest topic for me in the design community right now. Chelsea, let's move on. Where shall we end with? So let's keep this one for the end. Now we're going to do a crowdsourced topic and this topic has been brought forward by Emily Tavouladas. I'm hoping that I'm saying this somewhat right. Emily is great. Professor, you Emily. One of the topics she submitted was jumping to solutions. And once again, the question for you, do you have a question starter? It goes along with this one. And I think that this question that she was asking was how do we help, I'm going to actually say, how can we help policymakers keep an open mind rather than jumping to solutions? Like as she said, assuming that blockchain is the answer to everything. Exactly. Which apparently it is. Again, super recognizable. I think we get a lot of clients who say we, not an app, but we need to do something with blockchain. Or maybe even we need a customer journey map or we need a persona. They start with the deliverable. They start with the end. So how can we help them to have an open mind about that? I think that part of this is just saying there is no design process without there being a research process. I can't cook a meal for you if I have no groceries. I have to have the raw ingredients which allow me to then actually generate the design outcomes. So there has to be a research process and the research process is actually going to drive the design process. So sure, if you think, if you dear partner think that the solution is an app, great. Absolutely. Keeping that in mind. We'll explore users app usage and app desires, but in as much as we are doing that we are also going to be looking at other aspects of their lived experience and other things may present themselves which they almost always do. I have actually yet to do a project where users have said what I wish is that there was an app. Yeah. I think it's really, like you said about cooking the meal, I always like to think and work in analogies and metaphors. It's like somebody coming up to you and saying, okay, you need to get me a soup. And then you're like, okay, I can get you a soup. First get me the ingredients. And then we might end up with a soup but it might become something else as well. That's the thing we need to explore. I think there's another thing here that is just to this question of why might policymakers think that the solution is blockchain? Part of this also has to do with understanding that as a designer the users for whom you are designing include your partners or clients. It's not just the end user of the service or the policy or whatever it is that you're designing for that in our instance we may be thinking about members of the public and frontline service providers who are interacting with the public but policymakers also have needs. Those needs also influence whether or not our design solutions are going to succeed. So part of that is exploring with them what is it that makes you desire blockchain? Is it actually that you think that a ledger based encryption system is going to solve your problem or is it that you have heard that this is a cool new thing that everyone should be using? In fact, then what this relates to is some desire on your part to be innovative, to be at the forefront of change, to show that you and your agency and your team are taking proactive steps to better serve people using modern tools. Exploring the motivations that clients or partners may have for saying we think it is Solution X is also part of your job. Absolutely. So empathizing with our own customers is super important and that is something that we often overlook, I think. I don't know that you have to empathize with them. I think honestly that the role of empathy in good service design is overstated. One can seek to understand without seeking to have the same felt experience. One of the things I heard you say is first acknowledge that we will be exploring Solution X and then move on from there. Is that the way to prevent roadblocks and barriers? Yeah, I think if people say to you we think that this thing is super important, then one thing about being a consulting designer to others is that they are always more expert on their service and policy than you are. And you just have to acknowledge and respect that from the beginning. They have all kinds of information about how their current system works that you don't have at the beginning of the project. So if someone is telling you that a particular outcome is desirable or a particular need is the primary need, then that's absolutely something that you should listen to and try to engage with. But you have to also leave yourself enough space and sort of carve out the right to have the space to uncover things that are unexpected. Maybe it's also about being humble as a designer in a way that an app might actually be the solution. Sure. We don't know either. And saying that it isn't the solution upfront sort of puts yourself in a position where we shouldn't be per se. There's always a tension between leaving one's scope so wide open that you just wander in the wilderness, picking up all of the rocks and looking underneath them, or so narrowly defining the scope of what you're engaging around that you miss seeing some really amazing opportunities. So trying to find that middle space where you give yourself enough room but not too much room I think is often part of the challenge when you're first scoping what your inquiry areas are going to be. If you, again, if you have to summarize this and give one specific answer to Emily or one tip to Emily, what would it be in regards to clients that want to start with a solution rather than with exploration? So I think two things. One that you commit always to feeding your design process with a robust research engagement so that you can uncover other potential solutions while at the same time exploring why it is that your partner and client desires the thing that they desire. Sounds good. Are you ready to move on to the third topic? And that's the crowdsourced one as well, which is Philip Frost brought it forward and we'll explain the backstory of this in a second but the topic is design for good. So I would say how far can a designer go in guaranteeing an outcome which is a good outcome for design? Which, the sort of background story for this was that Philip said recently they shut down the internet in Zimbabwe regarding the elections or, yeah. And the question was, you know, what happens if we use design or service design for creating change that's in benefit for policymakers, government, public services which might not have the same agenda as the society or the community or the individuals in that society have. That can be attention, right? Sure. And I think it's actually a really important question when you are, and I think this goes for people who are working as we do with government agencies, I think it also goes for people who are working in the private sector and who have to, who should also be asking are the things that I am designing for my employer or my client, do they actually generate benefit in the worlds or are they benefiting my employer or client but destroying democracy, for example? Yeah. I think that you have to have some professional code of conduct which is based on a set of moral values. I can't prescribe what other people's moral values are but I would hope that everyone would agree that we should seek to do work that doesn't cause harm. That you should ask is the implementation of this thing that I am designing, is it going to be harmful to people's well-being? Is it going to deprive them of liberty? Is it going to deprive them of opportunity? Is it going to deprive them of human connections or relationships that are meaningful? So thinking about the degree to which one's work if fully implemented and scaled generates positive outcomes that significantly outstrip any negative outcomes and explicitly have you sought to imagine how your work might generate negative outcomes for some people. Because if you are, for example, designing for... To give a brief example, we have done some work with the City of New York thinking about how to deliver public services through digital channels. How can government services be more digitally available? So that's great. Except what if you are a senior citizen who doesn't have access to internet in your home and even if you did, you're not comfortable using computers. What happens when the agency no longer has a phone number that you can call, just assumes that you will use the website to get information? What if you are someone who's not a legally documented immigrant? How are you going to feel comfortable interacting with a government agency if there's no mediated community-based source for you to go to for information as opposed to going straight to a government provider of information? So thinking about how something that might be super desirable for a broad middle of users may actually create significant problems for people on the edges of the user base. It's asking those questions throughout one's development of solutions is really important. This is really interesting because it sort of keeps you sharp on thinking what are the side effects of the thing we're putting into the world or maybe what are the long-term, what is the long-term impact of the thing we're going to deliver? I think one thing that's super obvious in the work that we do that I worry sometimes is not super obvious in other people's design contexts is that when you are designing public services and you're designing them in an environment which is as radically diverse as New York City where you have people of extraordinarily different income levels, very, very different personal backgrounds, different education levels, different linguistic capacities, all of that, you are actively forced to consider the ways in which the users of a service are not the same as you the designer and that your own lived experience is not actually a useful proxy for the experience that the user is going to have with the policy or the service that you're designing. So you have to push yourself to think what would this be like for someone who is not me and I worry sometimes that in commercial contexts where you have generally middle-class people which is what designers typically are designing for other middle-class consumers that there's not enough thoughtful engagement with how that service or tool may affect people who are more marginalised. So designing for let's say the extremes what you're doing makes it more obvious that you need to spend more time and thoughtful action into understanding your users while in situations where your end users are more similar to you who might overlook this. I think there's something else to say about this question of how far can you make sure that your work is doing good. I mean one thing that is uncomfortable but I think super necessary is to notice who has power. When you are designing for the state the state has vastly more power than the citizen does. The state can incarcerate you. The state can in the United States take your life away. The state can control your body and your experience in profound ways. And so thinking about the ways in which the things that you are going to be designing are actually instruments of state power and the imbalance between the power that those instruments wield and the power that the citizen has changes the decisions that you make as a designer. So even in a commercial context thinking about the ways that some commercial entities now have profound amounts of power, social power and you as a designer have to I think as a moral actor and also as a professional who has professional ethics it's incumbent on us all to ask who in this context has power and who does not and am I specifically engaging with the question of whether or not I am protecting the rights of people who have less power. That's a big question, right? We have this example of Zimbabwe and it looks like really distant and really far away but it's probably much closer than we might think. We're always working in usually large corporate organizations where there is a power disbalance. I don't know if that's a proper English word. Chelsea, like all the other guests I want to, you've provided so much inspiration already in this episode but I'm really curious is there a question that you'd like to ask us the viewers and listeners of the service design show to think about, to contemplate upon, to share our thoughts on? I think I wonder where we go from here. I feel that we, 10 or 15 years ago we were as a design community asked to begin designing services as opposed to individual artifacts and that work has actually led to work where we design systems and we're asked to apply our design capacity to questions of sort of systems at scale as opposed to the discrete delivery of particular service at a particular moment. So I wonder what the next step is, what people think is the next step in where design can be applied to actually address some of these questions of power and inequality and opportunity. How can designers even more potently apply our tools to social questions? What's the next stage? What's the next frontier for design in general? I'm really curious how the community will respond. So do leave a comment guys and girls. Chelsea, I want to thank you so much for sharing your experience all the way from New York City. I hope and you inspired me a lot and I hope you also inspired people as part of this community. So thanks for your time. So what would you say is the next frontier for design? Leave a comment down below and let's learn from each other. If you liked this episode with Chelsea and know somebody who might enjoy it as well don't forget to grab the link and share that with them. If you'd like to learn how to explain the value of service design to these people as well don't forget to check out my free course that you can find over here specifically on this topic. Thanks so much for watching and I really look forward to seeing you in the next video.