 In this episode, you'll learn how sharing helps you to become a better service designer. You'll learn why the most effective solutions are often the simple ones. And which rules do you need to impose on your clients to deliver your best work? Here's the guests for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Daniele 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 design organizations that put people at the heart of their business. The guest in this episode is Daniela Catalonato. Daniela is a Swiss based service design practitioner and a writer slash educator. He shares a lot of what he thinks and knows online through his service design magazine and also through quite elaborate articles like a tiny history of service design, which is a really good one, and 100 service design principles, which is also really recommended. I think you're really going to enjoy this chat with Daniela because we're going to dive into some of the preconditions for service designers to deliver great work. So it's not just the tools and methods that are important, but also how do you create an environment in which you can excel. And that's what we're going to explore today. So without any further ado, let's jump straight into the chat with Daniela. Welcome to the show, Daniela. Hi, Mark. Lovely to be here. Nice to have you on as a fellow service design evangelist. Can I call you that one? Oh yeah, that would be fun. I'm still recovering from a nasty cold. So excuse me for a coughing, but for the people who don't know who haven't heard about Daniela, I can't imagine, but please enlighten us. Who are you and what do you do? Okay. Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't know about me. That's fully okay. But basically, I'm just a, bless you, I'm just a random service designer from Switzerland, basically. And I work in a big NGO, which is called the Salvation Army Part-Time, and the other part of my time, I just use it to write stuff, share ideas with people, and sometimes help friends in an emergency when they just need a bit of help for a workshop or something like that. So that's basically what I do. Yeah, but you're doing some quite intense writing and researching and knowledge sharing. Tell us a little bit more about that, because I think if people know you, that's probably the reason why they know you're right. Yeah, definitely. I think people don't know me about the kind of workshops and this kind of stuff I do. But basically, I have a blog that I'm writing down for, I think, four, five, five years, something like that, which might have like 300 pieces in it. So it's like a very short service design pieces. And it's very opinion stuff, you know, it's like, I'm walking in the street noticing something that bothers me or something that is really well done, and just explaining, oh, I found that interesting. And maybe someone else finds that interesting too. And the whole idea is just to kind of, you know, have a log of the things you see, and that by writing it, you kind of remember it. And there is kind of the idea that then you can share it too, because if you already write it for yourself, why not share it with other people? Yeah, basically how it started. It's called the service design magazine, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there is another thing with no problem. There is another thing which is called the Swiss Innovation Academy, you know, to make it grand and look fancy. But basically, that's just like the place where I put books and more elaborate courses. Daniela, you so you've been writing about service design, let's say for four or five years. Do you remember the first time you got in touch with service design, actually? Ah, yeah, it's, it's really funny because you said evangelist. And the first time I saw service design was in a church. Oh, wow. So that's why I smiled that much when I heard evangelist. Basically, it was when I was a teenager, my parents built a church in the south of Switzerland. And basically, as I was a teenager, I got into that too. And I said, yeah, you know, I can help, but no people stuff, you know, not greeting people and this kind of stuff. It's not like my stuff and teenagers, you know, they don't want to do that stuff. But then we kind of discovered, how can you make it easier for people to come in a church? And that was kind of a question, how can you make it less uncomfortable? So for example, when in Switzerland, people, when they come to an event, they always come 10 minutes early. So imagine you go to a church, you don't know, which is something we have to do. And you're 10 minutes early. So you have 10 minutes to wait, and you don't want to talk to people because it's like church, you know, you don't want to interact with crazy people. So what do you do? And that that's the first moment where kind of we thought about service design pieces, but we didn't know the name. For example, what we did was just put some loud music, having some nuts, and people generally were allowed to not speak to each other because the music was too loud. And they were allowed to just, oh, no, I'm eating. I'm doing something. It's okay. And that's kind of the first moment, I think I noticed something which was service design, but didn't know at that time that it was that. That's a really interesting backstory. I don't think I've heard a similar one yet. And do you remember the first time you sort of really bumped into the term that you noticed, hey, this is, this is a thing which is called service design. Yeah, exactly. So that was, I was finishing my bachelor in graphic design. I'm looking kind of for other things to do. And so that book from Andy Paulijn about service design, you know, the one that we all recommend to newcomers. And just read it, I think, in a day and then was like, okay, that's what I'm studying next. So that's where I want to go. We can thank Andy, who was a guest on the show, I think pretty early on. Yeah. So the book by Andy, well, most people, most people say one of the black books, like this is service design thinking and doing, but it's good to hear that Andy also influenced some people into the community. Daniel, let's dive into your topics because there are going to be a little bit outside of the regular service design topics, which is, I find always interesting to be on the fringes interview jazz. Are you ready? Yeah. Okay. So I've got them on a digital device this time, rather than a piece of paper. And the first topic that we're going to start with, I hope I can show it up, is sharing. And do you have a question starter that goes along? Exactly. What if, and the question will be, what if we will be all a service designer, more sharing? Yeah, you know, there are always the same people sharing and I'm part of those. And that's kind of a bit of the issue I see. You have the sharers and usually the sharers aren't the smart ones. For example, I don't consider myself as a smart one. No problem. I have a lot of good friends which are much more smarter than me, but they don't share. And that's kind of a question for me. It's maybe why these people don't share? And also, what if these smarter people were maybe too busy to write, who are afraid to write? What if these people would share more? And have you found like patterns? Is it a fear of technology? Is it a lack of time? Is it a culture thing? Like all of them? What is it? Why aren't people sharing? And an additional question, what should we be sharing in general? So two questions for one. Sure. So I think the point why people aren't sharing is the big point isn't technology. I think that's something maybe 10 years ago people were scared of WordPress and setting up postings and stuff. But today I think there isn't that fear. But the fear is more, you know, nobody likes to write because it's a thing you did in school that you were forced to do. And especially in my country where writing is extremely complicated because, you know, French has more exceptions than rules. It's a nightmare to write. And it feels like you have these associations to, oh, you know, it's difficult. And then you have also the association that is like, you know, who writes Einstein? I'm not Einstein. And then it's like, oh, the imposter syndrome. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's a big point, you know, especially also in cultures like the one of Switzerland where it's like, it's, it's, it's rude to show off, you know, it's rude to say, I know, you never know. There is always someone knowing better. So writing is can be seen as a way to show off, to say, I know. But, but it's okay, nobody knows really. So I think that's basically the big problems. Yeah. So how do we, yeah, let's first dig into the other question, like, okay, what is it that you hope people in the search design community would be sharing more of? To me, it's less of the how to do blueprinting and this kind of stuff, but more like, this is, this is what didn't work. Or this is the small thing I did, which worked for me, you know, like the very small stuff where people say, you know, when I do a workshop, I do this at the start, and it helps me to get into the mood, or it helps people to get into the door. This is the way I deal with clients, you know, I think we have a lot about the methodology, but less about like the behind the scenes, how, how do you feel good as a service designer? How do you treat your clients? How do you get new clients? I think you're doing an awesome job with your course, where you say like, Oh, this, how can you T, how can you sell services? I think we need more of these stuff, because the methodology, we have that a lot. We have a lot of books about methodologies. And that's, that's sort of the easy stuff. But once you, it's like, understanding the theory of customer journey. No, I won't, I'll try not to. It's like understanding the theory of customer journey mapping, for instance, and then getting into a workshop and then actually having to do it and then getting your face slapped by reality, right? And then sharing those kind of tactics, for instance. Exactly. And you know, like sharing the bad stuff, you know, like sharing when service design doesn't work, because it's not a secret formula. It's not a magic thing. There are places or there are moments or there are specific projects where it's a bad idea to do it, to do service design. And that's kind of interesting stuff to me too. You know, kind of stopping this kind of grandiose thing, Oh, it can fix everything, can save the world, but more like, Oh, we did that, and it didn't work. Why? Maybe it's our fault. What did we do wrong as a series designers? Yeah, I like the failures and the previous episode, which aired with Simon Mahana was really about what is the scope of service design and at which point do do we sort of lose credibility? And we're overly optimistic as a design community thinking that we can solve basically anything, which is also like a superpower. But at some point, well, yeah, you have to say this is not our thing anymore. Coming back to sharing for the, for the thing, it's like, not the technologies rather the not being wanting to be the smartest person in the room, like, but I think you have a different take on that, right? Like, why should we be sharing more? Why should people be sharing more? I think, to me, it's first, it's a great way to remember by sharing you remember better what you do. I had this college teacher, she was an art history teacher. And I was always amazed by the fact that she knew all the dates, you know, like, for thousands of years, you know, every day of every piece was like, how did you do that? Like, how can you do that? And I asked her, I asked her and she told me, you know, I have a secret. It's, I didn't know any of these dates before I started teaching. It's when I started teaching that I really remembered them before I just remembered them for the exam and then they just went off. But by teaching them, it came always back. And I had to find a way to make it relevant for me in a way that I can say it. And that's quite interesting. It's, it's very selfish to share in a way, you know, it's selfish because it's a way for you to better remember. But it's all, and I think that's the big point here. It's that many people miss this idea that you can share in a selfish way because it's first helping you. And then if it helps someone else, that's good. Right. Maybe when I think of doing the show and getting people like you sort of on a stage and listening to what you have to say, for me, that's, that's a way to learn to hear smarter people than me talking about things that they are important to them. And if there's a community of people out there who also enjoys these kind of conversations, then that's a nice plus, but I still would enjoy doing these talks even if nobody would listen. People don't stop listening. I love you. Please continue listening. But I think that's the point you're making. Like you have to do it in the first place for your own benefit, sort of, right? Yeah. And I think it's not only sort of, it's really the idea is first do it for yourself. And if it helps a guy somewhere in South Africa and you're living in Switzerland, you know, that's good. But if it doesn't help anybody else and just helping you, that's great. And, you know, something which is great with all these networks, social networks and everything is that if it's any good, it will pop out. And if it's bad, nobody will notice because there is too much stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So you don't have to worry too much about the effect of the thing that you're sharing, right? Just share because it's valuable to you because you'll remember things because and then if somebody else is interested, it will find its way. Yeah. If we're completely honest, like most of the articles I share, I just like write them as quick as possible. And I don't even proof with them because the idea is for me to just write and to learn. And it's not the idea for me to write a perfect text, you know. So usually there are tons of mistakes, you know, it's okay, I don't care because that's not the idea, you know. And I think that's the big point is that and the other point that helped me a lot in this idea of sharing more was to say, hey guys, this is just a draft. And when you say that it's you're helping yourself to say to the world, if you don't like it, it's okay, it's a draft. Sure. But everything I do is a draft. Exactly. I think that's the right attitude in general in design, like anything we do is a draft. And then it becomes so much easier to be open about the work you do. Daniela, let's keep it at this for the topic of sharing, because we have two other ones that I love to dig into with you. So I ready to move on. Good. Yes. Sorry. I didn't hear it last bit, but I think it's okay. So the second topic is relationships. Yeah. Is maybe why, why do we forget about relationships in the service design so much? What gives you the impression that we forget about relationships? The feeling I have is we are very focused on the tools, the techniques, technology, you know, we're very like, oh, to fix this problem, we created a new process, we created a new app, we created a new co-creative system, we know, and there is not much things where people just say, we didn't do anything outside of giving people space or time to foster the relationships. Because usually it's no fancy solutions when it comes to service design. The most problems I see are often not about processes, not about the tools, not about the knowledge, but more about people either not communicating or either not knowing how to communicate. And that's kind of interesting to me. So I recognize what you're saying that a lot of challenges, a lot of solutions might be over complicated for the challenges that we're actually solving, because maybe we want to come up with new ideas, shiny ideas, revolutionary ideas, rather than ideas that sort of tackle their root cause at a very fundamental and basic level, right? That's the same observation you're having. Exactly, yeah. What did you about it? The point here to me, and for example, I had a conversation these last days with someone which is pretty high in the leadership in an organization, and the person we spoke about like she has a big plan for the field workers of her organization. And she said, yes, you know, it's sometimes complicated because they don't want to do what we ask them to do. And then we spoke together and we kind of discovered that in her life, this person spent mostly 80% of her time on actions and had like only 20% of her time at work to nurture relationships. And as a publication, I said, like, what if we flipped that? What if you had 80% of your time to visit the workers, the local chapters, and then imagine when you ask for a task, what happens? And then she said, yeah, they know me, they know I've been helping, so it will be easier. And it's kind of interesting, you know, to this point that we spend a lot of time on actions, on preparation plans, concepts, which then people on the bottom are just like, yeah, I don't really care about that. And not helping, just because the relationship isn't there for you to say, I recognize that you do some good work. So I'm gonna acknowledge what you're giving to me and gonna take it as something valuable, because I know you Mark, if I've seen you, I had a coffee with you. So I believe that I'm doing it not for because I believe the tool you're giving me is helpful, but I'm doing it because I want to please you as a human. Sure. Yeah. I'm wondering, is there something broken in the service design process, as we know it right now, which is causing us to come up with this overly complex solutions, and to miss these fundamental issues? I don't think there is something broken with service design. I think it's rather that it's something very human that we tend to towards the shiny stuff, you know, because nobody wants to say like, oh, I spent two years of research to just understand that people don't spend enough time together, you know, which is very obvious. So and I think that's the tendency we have, which might be unconscious, but this kind of bias towards the shiny stuff, the technological stuff, the stuff that makes a good case study, you know, it doesn't make a good case study for a company to say, we spent two years on the field, we discovered that people don't talk to each other. And the only thing we changed was to give them more cafeteria poses. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't sound like it's not sexy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's in general the challenge with simplifying things. It's really hard to get clients to value you. When you say we've removed stuff rather than added something. Right. Yeah. Exactly. And that's pretty difficult. And then, and then don't get me right. Don't get me wrong. In a way, there is, there are stuff which it's extremely complicated and you need all the technology and all the stuff. I totally believe that it's just that in some cases, we over complicated because of these biases that we want kind of to shine maybe, or that as as companies, if we don't have something to shine, it's such really difficult to keep doing business in a way. So maybe we should post this as a challenge for the services and community in 2020 to think about how can we create interesting case studies around doing less creating more impact by simplifying things rather than doing new stuff? Like can we shine a light on projects where the most simple solution provided actually a lot of value? Yeah. And then it's just a matter of what's the right metrics? You know, what's the right way to sell it? You know, is it just by showing? Okay. With that, we just impacted people to feel more relaxed. We saw that people feel they are more open to communicate. And that's just a matter of knowing, oh, it will not change tomorrow like the sales, but people have a better confidence in their leadership, or people feel that they can share ideas or this kind of stuff. And you can measure that very simply in a way. And it's then the client who is more excel based, you know, like wanting to see shiny stuff, you can give him a shiny number because, you know, okay, the situation isn't shiny, but the effect when you measure it is quite shiny. And you can use that. It would be nice if you share a solution and somebody says, well, was it really as simple as that? And that you proudly can say, yes, it was really as simple as that, right? It's it doesn't. Simple solutions should be celebrated. Okay, so Daniela, let's wrap up this topic of relationships and move on to the third and final topic of drumroll, please. It's the topic of rules, rules. As designers, we don't like rules. Yeah, in general, how much or how many rules would would we need as designers? Yeah, we have we have sort of a love and hate relationship with rules, I guess. We know that constraints stimulate creativity. That we don't want too many constraints rules. So what is your take on the topic of rules? But yeah, so basically, when it comes to rules, they really helped me in the last months to make sure that I'm not doing more harm than what I bring as positive stuff. And what do I mean with that? Is I know that as a designer, I'm quite good in specific situations. And I'm very bad in all situations. So for example, the situations I don't really like are the situations where, you're working with clients, and the situation is so fucked up that everybody hates each other. And I can work in that, but I get no fun out of it. And I have good friends who are really good in these situations. So what I do in these moments is kind of I use my rules. And I have three rules for that. And I basically tell the client, you know, I have three rules. And you just have one, there's just one that doesn't work for me here. So I'm not allowed to work for you. But they have a very good friend that can help you. How do clients respond to that when you say that you have a set of rules? Very positively. At least here in Switzerland, that works very nicely. Because it's not you saying like, oh, you're a very scary kind of company with very strange ways to work. But it's more like, you know, there is a policy that's the policy. And everybody respects a good policy in a way. So I'm interested in what your three rules are. But I'm also interested, how did you get to those rules? How do you know which rules are important to you? So to me, it was kind of two aspects. The first one is, where am I bad? Like, what where do I suck? You know, it's like, that's the work. What are the moments where I know there, I'm not really bringing good value to my clients, you know, or I'm creating more problems. And so for me, that might be stuff where I'm like, it's hard to work for me with people who don't respect each other. You know, that's kind of hard for me. And then as I have this tendency that I want to bring everybody together, sometimes I lose more time trying to bring people together than just going straight forward to the solution. You know, and so I acknowledge that. And the other part is just to know where you don't have no fun. You know, it's like just knowing, yeah, I can do that. I have the skills. But it's not fun for me. It makes it too complicated for me. And somebody else might do it better. So I can recommend someone who then in this situation might do it better. So basically, where do you suck at? And what is an energy trainer? Those are good starting points for assembling some rules, right? Definitely. So with regard to these rules, at which point did you notice that you really needed them? The moment for me where I noticed I really needed the rules was the moment where I started to tackle issues which were extremely complex and some kind of an inter in relationship wise, you know, where you had people where it was years of years of bad sentiments and struggle and people who are hurt and you have to work with people who basically very much hate themselves, you know, and hate each other. And you're kind of asked, bring these people together, make a good workshop and fix this little problem. That was great. So this is my cat. Yeah, for the people who are listening to the podcast or just a cat jump out of Daniela's head, basically. Yeah, anyway, exactly. Yeah. And so basically, at that moment where you notice, oh, here, by doing what I do, which might be a workshop or facilitation or something like that, what will happen is that basically, I will put more gas on the fire. Instead of acknowledging with the team, it's, you just have a personal problem, guys. It's like, you don't like each other in a way that is very mean, which you can't be productive in that environment. Right. And that those three, those rules apply to your specific situation. But of course, like for every you, everybody working in service design, these rules might be different. And the challenge is like, what would your, well, if we change maybe the phrasing from rules to policy, like what is your policy? What is what, what do you state in your, maybe we need to have a fancy name like an ethical policy or something like that. That allows you to deliver your best work. Maybe, right, that helps you to set conditions to deliver your best work. Exactly. And yeah, and it doesn't need to be like a fancy public thing. It can be just your secret sauce to basically explain to someone, oh, that's not a, that's not something good for neither for me or for you. Or it can be a very public thing where you say, oh, that's part of our branding as an agency or as a company. That's like, you know that we work in these conditions. Final question about these rules, like how quickly are you able to feel if a client is actually abiding these rules? Like when you say, there should be mutual respect among the team members, they can say, yeah, sure that it's there. But you don't know for sure. So how do you figure that out? So usually for me, it works like that, that I have kind of a preparation meeting usually. And that means within one hour, you kind of get to that point. But you never ask the question, like, do people have a common respect for each other? Because obviously you can't say no to that. Yeah. You know, but it's, you, you notice that when you, when you ask people and you say, oh, that's great for the preparation, I will need someone who is from leadership and someone who is from the field. You know, and then you create kind of like a micro prototype of a moment where you kind of already see the interactions. And that really is helpful because in just a few minutes, you see, hmm, is this healthy? And that's very on the example of respect. But for decision making and all the other stuff, it can be all the tiny prototypes that you just do it within an hour. Yeah. So that's, that's next to knowing your policy. You also have to think about how you can sort of what are indicators of this policy. And I like the word the way you use the word prototypes, like how can you do small prototypes to, to see if, yeah, if these rules are the experiment. Yeah, what's the experiment? That's, that's really interesting. Daniel is super interesting. Like, I think it would be really helpful if people would have their own personal policy. For this is your chance to ask a question to the community. Like, is there something that you'd like us to think about? Comment up on. Yeah, for me, the question will be coming back to this first topic of the sharing bit. It's what can you do tomorrow to share more? And don't think just about writing, don't think about just a video or something like that. It can be one on one. It can be whatever, you know, it's like, what can we do tomorrow already when you watch that and do something very practical where you share what you have learned? Okay, so what is the first smallest step you can take towards sharing more of the things you know? Something like that? Exactly. Yeah, definitely. Daniela, for the people who are interested in what you do, I want to reach out. What's the best way to get in touch with you? The usual LinkedIn. I have a fancy name, so there aren't many people with that name. So I should be one of the few or I think that's basically LinkedIn. Like that's become the main platform these days in 2021. Yeah, let's see where it's in 2021. I'll make sure to link all the profiles down below. And please don't die. I'm still here. I'm still here. Don't worry. Daniela, thanks so much for sharing this, for giving us some provoking thoughts and questions to start this year off. It was really nice to hear what's on your mind. And thanks for the invitation. It's a big fan of the show, really helpful to me in the past. I really used it when I had to go somewhere else, like in Asia, like to prepare myself and see how other facilitators work. So yeah, it's a big thank you to you. My pleasure. And keep up the good work, Daniela. So to reiterate Daniela's question, what is the thing that you could share today or tomorrow? And I want to add to that, what is the roadblock that is keeping you from doing that? Leave a comment down below and let us know. I hope that you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful. And if you did, please consider sharing it with somebody who might find it helpful as well. That way you'll help to grow the service design community and help me to invite more inspiring guests like Daniela. Thanks for watching. And if you're looking for more, check out this, this episode, and I'll see you over there.