 In this episode you'll learn why service design can't live without digitalization and digital can't live without service design but also learn how to move from customer journeys and service blueprints into something that actually triggers action and finally you'll also learn how practicing non-linear decision-making makes it possible to move from incremental to radical change. All that is coming up in this episode with these two guests. Hi, I'm Christina. Hi, I'm Lisa. And this is the Service Design Show. Hi guys, my name is Marc Fontaine and this is the Service Design Show. The show where you get to learn what some of the world's best service designers are currently thinking about. So you can use that knowledge to transform services and businesses all around the world to become more human-centered and eventually more successful. We bring you a new episode every two weeks on Thursday. So if you don't want to miss anything, be sure to subscribe to the channel. My guests in this episode are Christina Carlander and Lisa Lindserv. Lisa founded and manages the design agency called Doberman where Christina is currently a service designer. In the next 30 minutes or so, Christina and Lisa will be talking about three topics. Service design and digitalization, how to create an actionable strategy and finally non-linear decision-making and radical change. If you want to fast forward to one of these topics, check out the episode guide down below in the description or to stick around and enjoy the whole episode. So let's jump right in. Welcome to the show, Lisa and Christina. Thank you. Hi. Awesome to have two women on the show again and you both have a long history within service design and I'm really curious, where did it all start for you? So what is the first encounter with service design you had? For me, back when I was studying cognitive science, I think it was 2003 or so where I first heard the term service design and then it felt kind of obvious that of course everyone is thinking about all the touch points and how everything connects. But then I started in digital as an interaction designer and I realized, no, that's not the case at all. And then it's been kind of a long road to go back to that actually. And I think for me, I was not as early. For me, it was more of, I think in 2008, somewhere around or 2007 or something around there where people started to talk about it and I was starting to reflect, is this something new? And for me, it was more a name of something we already did, but I had no idea that there was a term. So it kind of was both framing something we already did, a movement that was requested from our customers, but also it got me curious, is this a profession or for a movement or what is it? And what is it? What did you find in the last eight years? Does something exist like service design? I would say for me, I think it could be different, but for me, it's not a profession. For me, it's a mindset. It's really a way of viewing how you work more than like a specific category. But I think that also tells a lot about me, because I don't think of anything as a specific category. What is it for you? For me, it's kind of, I think the service designers are a type of people though, like we think in certain ways. But also I think it's a natural thing. If you own a hotel, you also do service design without calling yourself a service designer. Yeah. And we hear that a lot. People are coming up to us and saying, oh, I didn't know it had a name, what I'm doing. It happens so often. So let's dive into the three topics you shared with me. And you've got a bunch of question starters that I've sent you and I've got the topics here. And I'll pick the first one and it's up to you to go create the question that the other person will answer. Right? Okay. All right. So the first topic I have here is called digitalization and digital. Okay. And I will take this one, when will, when will we stop talk about digitalization and see digital as something natural in services? And I think it's already happening, of course. Digital is all over the place. And we talk about digital, but maybe as, at least when our clients approach us, we see that they talk about digital in silos. And then they have the rest of the organization. They are not always kind of thinking of that they are having the same goals or doing the same things for the same customers, but rather seeing it as maybe complimenting. We have an app that's complimenting our service or we have non-physical meetings, but they don't see that this is also something that kind of enhances the service is the service. And we think that we need to talk more about ecosystems and how everything works together all the time. And digital is the part of the future. And it's going to be a very natural way of approaching service and being the first touch point maybe. So have you found a difference between clients that are starting from the digital side and then moving into service design compared to clients that are starting from the very physical services and then moving into digital? Is there a difference there? There might be a difference in how you think about your service and what your service is. And that you see that if your service started off as only represented in digital, then you might see that if you expand into the physical, you think of that differently. That if you start up a store, the store has different purpose than it would have if you started off with a store and then added digital to it. I think also it's something around if you're an old school company or if you're in startup and a lot of startups have digital as something that is super natural in their ecosystem, it's almost like service design becomes a little bit easier when you're coming from digital because you do not have to use it as an argumentation tool. And I could sometimes see like in traditional company, it's used to find the right solution so that you can prove it. Whereas in maybe in a more digital company, the way that I would look at it is that it's more of a natural tool, natural way of looking at the world. So I think the way that we apply our tools are different more of how old the company is. But what do you mean exactly what you need to prove it? So it's a little bit like if you're a traditional company and Christina would say I have insights that customers think like this and that. In a traditional company they're going to ask her how many customers did you use? Can you show me a customer journey and that customer journey needs to explain everything. So it's proof that this is the direction where we go. Whereas I would sometimes see a little bit younger companies who could I think listen to Christina earlier and start to prototype new services and start to apply the insights earlier in the process. Okay, so let's move on to your second topic and it's called let me hold it up here. It's called actionable strategy and do you have a question starter that goes along with this one? Of course we do. So I think it's around how can we make service design to contribute to an actionable strategy? And then I'd say that it's about creating a story. Having stories makes the organization and everyone in the organization understand their part and what they're supposed to do. And we see that when we complement strategy with solutions and show like this is how your ordinary day is going to be from now on, then we can really see for each one who's going to provide to that service that they understand what their part would be and what they need to train and what they need to change. So is this is this topic born out of the sort of frustration that we often create a lot of plans and a lot of roadmaps and action plans, but there isn't a lot of action or? I think that it's that frustration. I think all of us have made brilliant concepts and strategies, but then we don't see the end customer to meet these new ways of of delivering a service or a product. I think it's that, but it's also something around speed. One of our frustrations is that we don't see organizations being able to act as fast as they can because it's still like management lingo instead of being like actionable lingo. So how can you how can you make everyone in an organization get what is it that is requested by me and the way to do that is to make sure that it's described in a language that everyone understands. That language are stories. The language is stories and also it's visualizations not only models and the people but also see what what do we put in people's hands what are the experiences and how does it look because that also gives new images to people. Yeah at least it's not PowerPoint charts or Excel sheets or documents or yeah. And also it's not the service blueprint itself because the blueprint contains everything and then it's easy to get lost. Yeah well you start to become a manager and you start to become you start managing stuff again instead of of creating action creating movement right. Yeah and I think one of the reasons why we as designers are you know asked to do these important things is because we can be concrete we can visualize things we can make them into something that is easy for a lot of people to understand. So we also need to think of it as tools for internal buy-in or internal comprehensiveness or something like that. Do not only design the touchpoint itself but also the activation of for people internally to get it. Have you seen sometimes I've seen in our project that it's sort of backfires that we're really good at making things tangible and then for instance you present a prototype and then people start to react on the prototype and they forget to see the strategy behind it. It's a it's a real complex thing to kind of test an idea rather than usability when you start showing prototypes and I think we struggled a lot with that but we usually when we put it in in a in a storytelling film or whatever it is we try to not make it super detailed but having it kind of plain that there will be some sort of button here that says something but maybe not the whole context because that evokes that oh this is done now I can give feedback on interface not the idea. But I think this also goes along with that we as service designers cannot go into an organization and just play one part so we also need to train the whole organization to understand what is a prototype or you know what is this supposed to mean to me and that is not only done through this scenario or story it has to be like several things that you do within in an organization to kind of avoid the behavior that you were describing. What are the when we look at an actionable strategy where do you get your inspiration from to actually make a strategy actionable so what yeah what is your source of inspiration? I think I think I think one of the things is that because we are creative people we we get inspiration from all over so I don't think that we can say like from one part or the other it's really about continue to be open and playful to try different things and then we try to tell each other like I get super inspired when I hear someone here who tried something and this action really worked or I tried this thing and it did not really work at all and so through being open and sharing a lot I guess yeah all right and and also I think from the people we meet because whenever you meet a user or an end customer it's always that inspiration also that you see okay how can I visualize how to change only this behavior a bit. But the question also comes you know it's not by reading management books probably right it's through other means that we find ways to make to do the work we do right. I very often say that the society that we live in today that I call the prototyping society there is no management book the only way to find out is to explore ourselves and also tell this to management teams like I'm sorry I cannot give you the handout the only thing we can do is through trying different ways and see what works and remember what did work and then continue to improve that's the only thing whereas in the linear like what I call the delivery society that that's where people have been training and we already know all these books so the inspiration needs to come from all over and from within to find out how to do this. So okay you're already hinting up on the third topic so let's just let's just make it happen and the third topic is I don't think we've had this one on the show yet it's called nonlinear decision making and is there a question starter and of course there is. When will nonlinear decision making take over from linear? First of all explain the difference for you. So in a linear decision making you know we it's a hierarchy so you know you take the most difficult decisions on the top like on the board and in the executive team and then the lighter decision would go down to the people who knows the customer whereas I would love to and you also measure things and you have like systems and policies that are very structured this way and this way whereas I say the nonlinear way of working and decision making in the nonlinear way is a super creative way of looking at your organization. So first of all I think it demands you to be musical when a decision needs to be on the board and when a decision needs to be closer to the customer and you cannot put that in a policy I think that that is something for the organization to be more fluent or musical about and the other thing is to understand that when you evolve or develop an organization it needs to allow that you do different ways of making decisions so one way could be this time let's do a discovery or a pre-study this time let's just try it this time let's have a six months project this one two days and to have that flexibility for me is a nonlinear way of running your organization. Christina anything you want to add? Also I think it's about not having in timing as well not having the like the big decisions first and then make them smaller but be able to have also a thinking that okay we can think in parallel both strategy and detail in the beginning and in the end. Yeah so I look at it as for example the way that I run Doverman is really inspired by this so I'm thinking like okay if we have 100 people who work here who are all super smart and experts I better that you know how can I get the most use of them so nonlinear decision making for me could sometimes be that I delegate to everyone to take a decision and sometimes it is not these three people sometimes it's me and for me that it's not structured in this kind of hierarchical way it's more creative and the way that maybe we work with users. And a big question of course is how do you take traditional companies along this way of thinking and along this way of working? I train them so whenever we work with someone and kind of help them to find out you know how do we innovate a new offering for you we always suggest that we also train the management to understand these new things so instead of a business plan I'd like to see a prototype but then we need to see have an executive team that understands that a prototype it's not for you to say yes or no it's for you to give feedback for an iteration so we take management teams on on kind of service design journeys where they hands on through experience-based training basically do an innovation journey and then reflect what type leadership do I need to do more of to develop more of this and we do and it's been super fun and very very interesting to see how fast they actually can change and I think this is really essential because if we don't do if we don't help them to learn this vocabulary they won't be able to judge the value of the work people do right exactly and then we won't see the change that we want to see and I think it was something that you said Christina on storytelling and being visual so a couple of weeks ago I worked with an executive team and I think that they are pretty advanced now so I asked them the question between you and your vision to be super customer centric what are the barriers and I asked them to write the barriers on boxes and then build a wall you know between them and the vision so they're so officially in the room like wow this is this is what's between us and and our vision and then I asked them what how can you take each box and through your leadership see if you can lower these barriers and make your more customer centric so then for me that's kind of you know using all the tools that we have in our toolbox to also help them accelerate to become more customer centric Christina again anything to add and for me it's also I think non-linear it it also sounds fun and I think that leaders want that yeah it also sounds scary sounds scary but it sounds modern and sounds creative I think that's also an argument though okay if I'm a big if I have a big organization and we need to modernize it's not only through digital and our touch points but also how we are and how we are and if we start thinking oh non-linear okay that's also a very good argument oh yeah I want to be right yeah but I think if you say some scary the reason why I think we can do this right now is because it's super scary to be a traditional corporate company because the world is changing so fast so you know what's the most scary thing to stand still and be traditional or to adopt into a world that is is new to you and sounds you know maybe unfamiliar in the language but is maybe your solution to become a more fast moving agile organization so we as service designers are in a good place right now right the pressure is building and people are just yeah in the position where they have to try different things right definitely um we're heading toward the ends of the toward the end of the show and I always have a final question and that is uh this is your opportunity to ask the viewers a question so is there anything you'd like to ask for the service design community yeah is there anything on your mind the question that you would like to share with uh with the community uh okay I have one question why don't you start more companies I think that service designers would be brilliant in being entrepreneurs and I currently see a lot of service designers as you know in being consultants and a lot of service designers who work in big you know corporate companies doing fantastic work but I'd like to see a few more service designers who start their own companies okay that's one me I think I'm more in the um if that's kind of from from the other other angle I'd say as a service designer I think what I struggle with right now is to see how much how do we expand our minds to be able to grasp everything because service design tends to always be everything it's all perspectives so many target groups and see kind of what methods do we need to absorb that math because also the tech is coming like a like a storm uh and we need to be able to have have that minds that's very open all the time in that new at some point will explode hopefully not all right so why don't we start more companies and how do we cope with all the things a service designer needs to understand no learn about right all right well we'll see how people if people react in the comments so that's all the time we've got for this episode thank you thank you for your time and I'm very happy to do a two-person interview again okay thank you bye bye so what are your thoughts about the questions Lisa and Christina just asked let us know down below in the comments this show is all about helping you to become a better service designer by sharing real-life stories of people that are currently shaping the field if this is your first time here and you'd like to see more interviews with services and pioneers be sure to check out some of the best episodes and don't forget to subscribe to the channel now thanks for watching and I'll see you in two weeks time in a new episode