 In this episode, we'll be talking about what is the craftsmanship in service design, how can you design the project experience of our clients and finally about service design in the Middle East. So if you're interested in that, keep watching and here is the guest of this episode. I am Mahmoud Abdelrahman and this is the service design show. Hi guys, my name is Mark Fontaine and welcome to a new episode of the service design show. This show is all about helping you to create more people-oriented services and we know that this is important but also comes with some interesting challenges. So that's why we talk on the show about topics ranging from design thinking and customer experience to organizational change and creative leadership. If these are the topics you're also interested in, know that we bring a fresh new episode every two weeks on Thursday. If you don't want to miss anything, be sure to subscribe to the channel. And if you enjoyed this episode and would like to show your support, click that like button or leave a short comment. It lets me know that the things we're doing here are appreciated by people like you. My guest in this episode is Mahmoud Abdelrahman. Mahmoud is the managing part of Hewth and Hewth is the first service design agency in Saudi Arabia. He has a strong passion and interest in how to scale service design to the level of families. In the next 30 minutes or so, Mahmoud will be talking about the craftsmanship and service design, how to design the project experience of our clients and about the state of service design in the Middle East. If you want to fast forward to one of the topics, check out the episode guide down below in the description or just stick around and enjoy the whole episode. And in case you'd like to listen to a podcast version of this episode, head over to SoundCloud.com slash service design show where you'll find this episode and other previous ones. For now, let's jump right in. Welcome to the show, Mahmoud. Thank you. Thank you, Mahmoud. Nice to be here with you. I'm super excited again to have someone from what I would say the Middle East and you're in Saudi Arabia Mahmoud, can you tell me a little bit how did you get involved in service design? Where did you meet the term? So I was interested in product innovation. That's back in 2008, 2009. I was looking for masters to further develop my knowledge in the fields and I stumbled on the program in Laurier University of Applied Sciences and I applied, I ended a few courses as non-degree student and then got enrolled in the master's program. So the first day I actually sat in a classroom about service design that was January 29th, sorry, 2010. And how was your first encounter with service design? What did you think when you first met the term? It was quite interesting. It had more of like new tools, etc. that would bring to me rather than I would say I had in my toolbox. So I have come from project management and marketing strategies background. So the whole set of tools in the design field was quite new to me. And I remember it was the first person I ever learned anything from about service design that was Mikko. Mikko Kvistu, that was in Laurier. And I remember Mikko said, I will teach you guys about the tools that I know and I will be expecting during the course that you also come up with new tools. And I think that was quite motivating and that happened during the course. So actually I have, at that time I remember I designed a new tool called concept blending and Mikko was quite kind and nice that he taught it in the course in the next intake for the students in the following year. That's the way I like to hear it. So you developed your own design tool. Yeah, that was then. And I think that's something that we have to always keep doing. I mean everyone is really sharing the knowledge that they have with us but doesn't mean that we stop there and there's so much to learn from. So that was the beginning. And then I finished the Masters during the years I was working in incubation innovation areas but quite far from service design innovation. I was trying to apply as much as possible, built the interest in the region and then I moved to service design consultancy four years ago. So this is when I started the service design team in Aramis that's currently in huge. Cool. Mahmood, we have three super interesting topics we want to talk about in this episode. So let's quickly move on. And you have the famous service design show question starters and I have your topics here. And now that we were talking about service design education let me start with the first topic and it's the topic of craftsmanship. Do you have a question started that goes along with this topic? Yeah, so I have why. So why discussing craftsmanship in service design? And what is craftsmanship in service design? Well, I think it would be something that everyone would easily expect but because it's not quite discussed I would say there are reasons why we need to discuss that. I think it is in essence touching us as designers. We want to always be better and we want to advance. We want to feel that we are doing something during our career and leaving impact and legacy as well. We want to leave examples so we want to teach through examples and reaching a level of craftsmanship is something that you do that through. The question is quite easy to answer in many other fields even as close as product design. Probably there are areas where deliberate practice is much known as in sports, etc. These questions are quite easy. I mean the standard you are trying to reach is already set for you and you are trying to work towards that. But in service design is quite more complex but it doesn't mean that we avoid it because I believe it is what fuels the souls of us and the souls of our colleagues and our team members. It is what makes them feel satisfied at the end of the course. So what you are saying is that the discussion about craftsmanship in service design is partly difficult because the standards haven't been set yet or are not clear? Yeah and I think there is a reason why we feel that discussion of craftsmanship in service design is difficult. So service design is collaborative in nature. It is not about you yourself. If you want to say that is the act of craftsmanship or level of craftsmanship. How can you really reach that? How can you really influence that and make it happen? If it is so collaborative, it is about you, your colleagues, your clients, your clients, staff, etc. It has also many parameters. It is very complex. So it is quite difficult. And then you can never guarantee the success of development and implementation of your concept. So if you stop at the design phase and you are never there on a daily basis when the service encounters are happening, then how can you really make sure that the craftsmanship is there? So probably I think we need to start with defining what could be the craftsmanship in service design. Like what could be the views of craftsmanship in service design. And I would like to bring in the ultimate example that they think and pull out some frames from what we have here in the office. So I don't know if you can see that clearly, but this is someone who is quite happy with something that he has in his hand. So he is showcasing a touch point in reality. And I have another photo of that same person while he is clapping out of excitement. So the point here is if you want to assess and evaluate the level of craftsmanship, it is in the final outcome. If the customer of the service that you have designed thinks it is craftsmanship, then that is craftsmanship. But there are so many things that go in there. So I think I want to break it down into two different things. So let's differentiate between mastery and craftsmanship. Because I think that makes things easier for us. So mastery is about reaching a level of skill in what you are doing. But it is only that you are quite skilled in doing that. Craftsmanship adds to that the element of application. So you are quite skilled in using the tools, following the process, et cetera, et cetera. And you are applying that as well. Interestingly enough, when I was looking at the topic of craftsmanship, Google says it has been highly used and most used. And you can see the curve has been declining since then in the 1950s. It has actually been less used by 60% since then. I don't know really what's the reason behind it. Is it more about newer terms came in there? Or is it that's not so much discussion about detail orientation, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that's an area to look at. So let's look at like if we can't really and easily reach the final results of craftsmanship, and I will come to a few things around how we can probably achieve that. Then let's look at interim views. So I think we have the tools mastery. So if you think someone is a master of service time, he knows how to use the tools. We have the process mastery. You can develop the right process for every project. And then we have the outcome mastery. When I see the outcomes, I'm quite happy with them. But then probably we can add a number of... Mahmood, my question would be there is still a lot to explore around this topic. And if you had to pick one thing that you could explore tomorrow around service design craftsmanship, what would that be? What question would you like to explore? The question would be how can we probably make it happen and so enable the end result of craftsmanship? So I mean we will be trying to do the interim mastery frame or definition probably, but we want to also see the results of the craftsmanship to the end. And that's a problem because we are always disengaging from the organization after the design. So there are things that you can still do while you are trying to master the tools, etc. And few things I feel very fascinated with Mark is when I see some jobs being more like a performance. Like in so many fields, you see a person who is actually doing his job, but you feel like it is a level of skill and mastery to being a performance. And have always been inspired by these people. Why do they reach such levels and we don't. And I think if you break down everything that we do on a daily basis, do you think how you handle a meeting would feel like a performance? Do you think how you do insights and you do research, etc., etc. could feel like a performance. When I see you doing something, I feel like this guy is actually delivering a performance for everyone to see. But then if I want to speak about the realization mastery, so how do you really make sure that whatever you did, assume that you have the mastery and you have that craftsmanship in the work you did. How can you make sure it is realized until the end? So if you can't be present in every encounter, can you minimize deviation? So can you actually set some touch points that could probably be the least for the delivery to be deviating from while the delivery is happening? So normally you would find that digital touch points are much more consistent in delivery versus some human touch points, for example. Another aspect I want to look at is designing for the most possibly implementable. So while you are trying to dream so far, there is an element that you're not going to be involved in which is actually the transition between the reality of today and the design that you want to make tomorrow. So if you want your design to be meeting somehow the reality that's happening in the future, probably you need to design for that. So what could be probably delivered now? One element that is always neglected is designing for the transition and behavior. So you design this experience and the blueprint and operations behind it. How would people really change? People don't have configuration files that you can change some values and the next day they have amazing habits and amazing spirit and different culture, etc. So how can you really embed and extend your design into the areas where we actually look behind. So this is the design we want to see happening and we now start designing for it to actually emerge in the organization. And I think if you do that then you have to look beyond your design. So you have to design for your design to actually happen and then you need to see them as... You have to design like the context. You're designing the context and the conditions to which your design can be realized. And a lot of topics we could still further explore. But let's leave it for the craftsmanship at this. And so let's move on to a second topic because time is flying by. And the second topic is one that hasn't been on the show from what I know and it's called project experience. Do you have a question starter that goes along with this one? Yeah, so who are we designing for? So we are most of the time designing for our clients, clients. There is the reason why we are being hired, etc. And the client is most of the time neglected in that process. We do it naturally. I mean we think we need to build more engagement, etc. But we don't spend much time or efforts or we don't plan to that much more proactively. And I think it is simply the act of designing for the project life cycle and the actual experience of your client as he goes throughout the process. So why is that important? I think it is important because it helps you for each project to make sure that you are attending to your client in his position at the moment with his goals, etc. in the right way. It helps you also build the interest in his circle as well as in the organization and help him also get the buy-in much more. And then you will find in some projects it's actually... So what you are actually talking about is the emotional journey that our clients go through. We should have a client journey map. Is that what you are saying? Exactly. So you need to think about the journey map of your client, their touch points and service moments as they go through. And I think they are only engaged with how exciting it gets, etc. And then beyond this novelty element when they are used to the concept there are some other elements that you and some other moments you have to design for. But when you actually start to considering scaling that up you will find that in larger organizations and I'm speaking about giant larger organizations that becomes something very essential. Because the time you spend with your client and the journey you go with you need to scale that up really quickly and very, very fast. You will see that you need engagement from someone who is in a remote area. You will need to recruit people for research in some other parts of the organizations. You don't have time to onboard everyone. You don't have capacity to do this. Probably some of the projects you may have to even onboard some audience that you can't easily reach. And then you will start to see how can we make sure that we are actually not only about the emotional part of people feeling interested but how can we make sure that the design goals of everyone who is touched by this project is actually reflected in our work and actually reflected in our designs. And then it becomes more like more of communication but on a larger scale but within the organization. So what would you say is the biggest challenge when designing a project experience? Normally, so the client is always, because he's engaging with service and agency he's expecting you to be walking the top. So he's saying, okay, I invited you to design the experience of my client. I want to make sure that this is being reflected in how we deal with things and he's expecting you to always do things differently, right? He wouldn't necessarily see that you have very limited resources and you need to put them towards the end design rather than beautifying everything and making everything much more proactively thought and in details, etc. So that's a part, that's where you will not really have enough I would say, resourcing put to that part while you still have to deliver it. And have you put this into your own practice? So have you been thinking and actually designing more project experiences in your work? And if so, what would you say is one best practice that you could share with us? What is something that works really well? Yeah, so we have been trying with few things here and there for example looking into transforming a project report into a newsletter so that's more nicely, like more visual, it has better content and people like to engage with it much more. Thinking of how you'll be keeping your client engaged and in multi-channels about the project and making it more of sort of attending to his needs when he needs to know something rather than demanding and pushy. And then in larger organizations we had to actually go much, much beyond this so we had to look into stakeholder profiling we had to go into segmentation, design drivers Did you make personas of your own clients? Yes, so we did. So in some cases you don't really have to make personas because if you are designing for the CEO for example, he's quite clear some very key figures in the organization etc. you can also probably segment them much easier and when you do that you start to understand what is it really that they are expecting it's not really about being nicer and more visual, no it is that this is the metric he will be looking at things if you want to speak to him, this is what you have to touch on this is the KPI he's measured on if you want to go and talk to him, you want to reserve a meeting with him this is what you have to talk about anything else he will not really care about so being able to really understand the goals of everyone when they are engaging what is it that they are looking for and are you using just the basic tools that we know in service design that we use for the end user or do you think we need some special kind of tools? So we have designed internally some canvases for designing for such engagements we have done more like project level and also individual service level if you are working on like a pipeline of services within a larger project what could that look like we had to develop sometimes some what we call enablers like what can you do really with them so if you want to give them something, if you want to roll out something what could that be and there are few things that are in the post element not so high but on the impact element they are quite good one of them is what I shared here and I have a full article about that so it is called customer advocacy posters so it is basically about capturing the person while he is engaged in something and having a quote with that and creating a poster for him out of this and immediately it connects with something that encapsulates a mission and a value that he believes needs to be delivered and it reminds him on daily basis when he sees that tank in his office et cetera et cetera that this is what I read That is really good so I guess if people would like to share their ideas and learn more about this they probably just can reach out to you right I will make sure that your contact details are in the description of the video I have one post about the customer advocacy poster and probably some discussion can start that link will be in the description I think it is a super interesting topic and it is definitely not discussed enough in the service design field at this moment so I will do my best to spend more attention in the show at this Mahmood, the third topic I am rushing it through because time is scarce and there is so much to discuss so the third topic and I am really curious about this one is called service design in the region I haven't defined what the region is but maybe you can Yeah so I don't know I would say how so how is the landscape how does the landscape look like so region I think I would say it is limited to the GCC probably that would be much easier so how the landscape looks like at the moment I would say education we need much more education about design in large and then service design in particular it is quite new topic anyway worldwide but we don't yet have structured programs around it there are some in the training but not in the academic education consultancy there are some emerging organizations as agencies and such I think we need much more and then there is the issue of talents do we have talents or is it quite difficult so I think we have to work on both of them I think there is so much need but not yet necessarily translated into demand so you will rarely find people coming and asking you and approaching you for service design scope we have been suffering from that in the beginning but now we do really receive such requests but in general you will be speaking about service design to the customer experience manager it could be products and services manager it could be to the IT director depending on what engagement you are engaged in so this is how it looks at the moment so I think the opportunity is quite large for everyone and if you look are there any things that are specific to the region that you think make it suitable or interesting for service design so let me give an example I've talked to quite a few guests from Latin America and there is a whole service mindset in Latin America or the service mindset is different in Latin America compared to Europe and the US how does that play out in your situation so I think in sequence because business process management is looking at the operational element of things and has been quite a large wave before we look into service design in the region so people continue to mix these and I think one of the things that we have to always do is to build the relevance so people understand how they actually play together and then also highlight the differences so how do we do that and we have to actually build the whole content around that to always be able to answer the question as it emerged but there are some few things that are also related to the level of ambition for people and probably what they are expecting so one interesting thing people would probably need to know is that unlike how it is worldwide that you are told that the more finished the prototype the less feedback you get and that you need to make it much more raw I would say it's the other way around so the more finished the prototype and more polished etc the more feedback you'll be able to get the less it will actually be provoking any feedback or taking somehow seriously and we had to actually redesign our process in specific areas around that to make sure that we are always getting the feedback that's expected sometimes there... So that's a really crucial thing how do you fix that because quick and fast prototyping is for me such a key element of the design process and when you have to work with finished prototypes then you lose a lot of the value so how does that work? So I think we are using other ways to do it so when we want to make sure... So there are different objectives and rules for prototypes so you have prototypes that are made to communicate things you have prototypes that are made to test and then we have prototypes that are rolling out for production and they have different names for them so when we want to communicate something we would rather not do a wireframe for example if you are speaking about the digital bit and find other ways to do it because we notice that wireframes are not necessarily for example taking that seriously at that stage people if you give them finished screens etc they will be much more willing and much more responsive and giving you feedback on that So and that continues for actually everything so all over the project people are expecting stunning visuals quite nicely finished outcomes throughout the process etc so people have to really attend to that element and take it into consideration it could sometimes not be about the content but it's more about how the content is presented Does it tie in with the culture or... Can you explain? So people are always expecting higher quality in things and then accordingly they feel not taking so seriously if they see low quality outcomes and also you need to be much more visual and interactive in your outcomes rather than longer documents that would require long time in reading etc and that would also be another tip that people need to take into consideration I actually in the most recent trend report that came out one of the three topics that I talked about was culturalizing design methods and that's pretty interesting what you are also talking about a lot of the things we know about the design process and the design tools are based on what we think and feel in the west Europe and the United States but sort of I'm getting the feeling it doesn't work out that well in all of the rest of the world so culturalizing design methods is I think a really interesting trend I totally agree 100% agree The question that I have right now is these were the topics that we just explored but what is the thing what is the question that you would like to ask the viewers or the listeners of this episode? Yeah, so in reflection on all the topics that spoke about and you saw how quite broad and long the whole life cycle is where would you draw the borders and boundaries around service time? Where does it really end? I'm not so much worried about where it starts but do you think the end of delivering the outcomes of your project is the end? Do you think being there while it's being developed or implemented is there rolling out being there on a daily basis? That element I think it needs to be further discussed and I would be interested to hear the views on that Yeah, I definitely agree and this has been a topic also quite a few times on the show so can we better understand or agree or disagree on the boundaries of service design so leave your thoughts in the comments people Mahmood, thank you thank you for your time it's time to wrap up this episode Thank you very much thank you for your time thanks for having me Mar What is your biggest takeaway from this episode? and which tools or methods do you use while designing a good project experience? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments and remember more people like you watch these episodes and your comment might just be the thing that helps them to have their next meaningful breakthrough If you're interested in learning more head over to Learn.ServiceDesignShow.com where we'll be offering courses that dig deeper into the topics we talk about I'll see you in two weeks time with a brand new episode thanks for watching and see you then