 In this episode, you'll learn about a new design material which might hold the secret to designing services that don't fade away over time. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Josina and this is the Service Design Show Episode 95. Hi, my name is 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 Josina Fink. Josina is a researcher, designer and teacher and the reason I'm so excited to have her on this episode is that we're going to talk about a recurring theme over the last few episodes and that is how do you actually get services implemented. Josina has done a lot of research about this on this and one of the key ingredients are social structures and also moving from designing off services to designing for services. So that's what we're going to talk about in this episode and if you stick around till the end, you're going to get away with knowing what's beyond the double diamond and there is a lot more. If you find these videos helpful, make sure to click that subscribe button and that bell icon because we bring a new video at least once a week to help you level up your service design skills. So that's all for the intro and now let's quickly jump into the chat with Josina. Welcome to the show Josina. Thanks Mark, happy to be here. Awesome to have you on. You had an amazing presentation at the Global Conference so I feel lucky that you're also starring today on the Service Design Show. For the people who haven't seen your presentation and don't know who you are, could you give like a 30 second introduction? Sure, happy to. My name is Josina Vink and I have a background as a service and systems designer mostly working in Canada in the US in healthcare and have since moved to Sweden and then now in Norway. So a bit of the kind of North American and Scandinavian influence around service design just finished up my PhD with a focus on service design and now I'm an associate professor here at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and I do research and teaching on service design and my focus is mostly around health and care. Your last name sounds a bit Dutch, not a bit. It sounds Dutch. It is Dutch. It's Dutch. All of my grandparents immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands. Some of them I think were given candy by the Canadian soldiers at a certain point so I think they had a sweet spot quite literally for candy so I'm a product of that. That's a fun fact we didn't know about you. Do you remember your very first memory of service design? When did you get in touch with it? I mean I have quite a broad understanding of service design so that for me and it wasn't called kind of service originally but that was part of the thinking. I had always I had my heart set on being a physician, being a primary care doctor and then after kind of doing my undergrad and thinking about things I went I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Patch Adams with Robin Williams but it's this guy who has a fun hospital and the idea is that you know patients are the doctors and the doctors are patients and everything is he kind of reinvents how the healthcare system works and I went to visit the real Patch Adams in West Virginia for a month and he and the kind of Institute, Gazuntite Institute there introduced the idea that design you can design your relationships you can design the structures not just the building of the hospital but you can actually kind of design the ways in which we exchange service so that would just kind of sparked up maybe I don't want to be a doctor maybe I actually want to think about how we shape things in these health and care relations so that was what got me onto it and I guess they didn't use the word service design back then no not at all and yeah I think I was practicing service design before I got any label for it of course we should we should get a t-shirt with that because that's what everybody says like I was doing service design because I realized it was called that way if anybody has a good idea for a t-shirt well this this making this one so any who um you've sent me some really interesting chats and it will be a little bit different than we usually do I think on the show well every episode is different but this one will be for sure I've sent you a few of the famous service design show question starters and as always we're going to do some interview jazz ready to start I'm so ready I was born ready let's go good so the first topic ladies and gentlemen that we're going to address is called social structures just see now do you have a question starter hmm let's see okay let's go with this one how can we so with that how can we uh become aware of social structures and intentionally shape them in our service design processes what do you see when you close your eyes and think about social structures very good question I see this like invisible glue between us as humans that is kind of like keeping us stuck together and I also see this like big wind blowing device that's kind of like guiding our direction in a certain way so it's these like things that are moving us that we're not fully aware of um and that it kind of connects us between people but is yeah interesting question invisible glue that holds us together uh and because of this amazing explanation I forgot what the rest of your question was so how should how how can we become aware yeah how do we become aware as service designers of death right yeah totally and and then to shape them because if we're going to actually adjust how these things inform us we have to be aware of them first why why is this on your mind why are why is this an important topic for you because for me and I know a couple episodes back you had a conversation with Lynn about implementation and some of these challenges of moving actually getting service design to stick and for me this is part of like a key to that conversation and if we I have had so many experiences where myself and my team members have spent so much time crafting this kind of like perfect service offering and addressing all the touch points and trying to get it exactly what would make sense top for a good patient experience or whatever that might be and then in the long term it kind of gets eroded or it actually just gets rejected by the culture of the organization that we're trying to put it in and so for me if we don't pay attention to the social structures which are the kind of norms and rules and roles that are guiding people then one our thing might not get adopted in the first our service design kind of won't get adopted in the first place but also if we don't actually restructure those things then it it will get eroded over time it doesn't become entrenched in socially how we do things so I'm curious like why is this more important for instance for service designers than I don't know product designers or like that if I would have somebody else on the show they would say we should be looking at the financial aspects and we should be looking so why why why social structures for you I mean okay a couple of things on your question I am a person who sees service design product design is not necessarily something that's separate from service design I see product as a means that service can be exchanged so my view of service is like an exchange of knowledge and skills that's what service is and a product could be a way of doing that so in that way I for me it's fundamental to service is how people interact and how we exchange this knowledge and skills and what's guiding how we do that our social structures so the only way that you and I know how to have a conversation or know how to relate is because we have some shared social structures we introduced ourselves when we first started talking and even though we've grown up in very different places we still know how to relate and exchange knowledge and skills and that's because we have this kind of basic norms and roles between us one person speaks and the other person listens and those things so that is service exchange and yeah these are the guiding principles of service exchange so they are the kind of key for service design one one of my favorite sayings that I've been using over the last time is that I see organizations as our design material but basically what you're saying is that social structures are also a design material yeah so actually I'm in an academic role now so if you look into the academic literature organizations are actually made up of social structures so in that way if you're interested in seeing organizations as material how we organize the ways of organizing and getting that to stick is actually social structures an organization itself is a form of a social structure we have rules in place around what an organization is we have norms and culture around it so we're totally on the same page I think when you're thinking about that and then comes the question like if we want to become what's the word more fluent or more skill literate with this design material where should we start because I think it's not something that is being thought in service design schools yeah that's the thing I'm trying to teach my students now so very good we're trying to get there but I agree it was not something that I was taught and not something that many people are taught so I've been exploring different methods of doing this so one of the ways that I do this is often like take a story that might be typical or that I might have gotten from an interview and then use that as a reflective tool for people to actually unpack what are the norms that might have led to this kind of story or what are the underlying beliefs in how they're talking to each other and this is might be a way to help us unpack some of those things and also I've been using kind of the metaphor of the iceberg that's fairly typical as a way to unpack a kind of service system to think okay what's on the surface of the iceberg are the physical things that we can exchange so you might see tables and chairs in a room and then what's underneath that are the kind of social structures so the norms around okay we sit around the table the person at the head of the table might have a certain degree of power and we know that how we sit and sitting is this kind of norm so you can kind of use some of the physical ways in which an interaction happens or an environment is and then try and go from there as a way to unpack things so yeah I'm exploring different tools and ways of doing that and bringing that into the kind of service design process and vocabulary and for the people who are interested in this you've sort of already did the hard work and dissect social structures into more fundamental building blocks right you already mentioned a few but if people are interested in this check out your presentation at the global services conference because there you explain the pyramid and how it works and what the building blocks are right that would be a good starting point I guess yeah and I think so there it gets at this like regulative aspects that you know when we talk about policy and rules the normative aspects like roles and norms and then the more like cultural cognitive like beliefs and values and things like that and I think yeah seeing the kind of breadth of those social structures can help us really tap into them in a better way all right so many questions about this one but I'm sure that the other topics will be interesting as well so let's move into topic number two okay which I'm surely ties into the first one because this one is called collectives okay why I'll go with why and why aren't we already considering collectives in design that's my question um what kind of collectives yeah so I have a hunch and from my experience a sense that design is quite individual focus like we we make a user journey of one user typically moving through a service um and so I'm meaning collectives of different a group of people and how they relate to each other as opposed to just making services that improve one person's experience actually understanding how that affects a group and the relations of those people when we're thinking about that hmm okay I'm I'm thinking about like where when I'm designing I'm usually thinking about a group of people not just one person well the person is the group is represented by a person yeah so what's the how is the difference good good thank you for that question yeah so I'm not talking about like a group of individuals that might be like a user segment or something like that what that I'm thinking about um the collectives that that maybe user might be a part of like families could be a collective or neighborhood within that as a collective so shifting from this kind of segmented customers to actually seeing how people are embedded in collectives in an existing way so not just designing bank services for an individual but thinking about families when we're thinking about kind of how we're doing service um design or thinking about the implications when at the moment we're working on a project that is a service design project for transferring services from the hospital and primary care into the home so are we thinking about the unintended consequences of that not just for the patient it could be a great experience for the patient to be at home instead of the hospital but what does that mean for a family member who then has to live in a hospital-like setting at home or what does it mean for their anxiety that a nurse isn't so close or so nearby and then what does it mean for the neighbor or their jobs and so really I'm and I don't have the answer to this one yet it's something that I'm kind of setting out into explore is can we develop approaches and ways of thinking that really to appreciate this relational collective quality and the things that kind of emerge from relations as opposed to looking at kind of the person as a unit of analysis and expecting that we'll kind of get it right with that focus hmm and well I guess this makes uh this this uh abstracts it abstracts it to another level it it becomes even more holistic the design process with which can be enriching but also more challenging like where do you start I'm yeah um but I guess the insights that you gain from understanding that somebody is part of a family and that brings a certain dynamic into play allows you to make better design decisions that fit somebody's habitat yeah I think part of that is like a zooming in and out a little bit like yeah we can't always stay in all of the collectives that someone is a part of and that couldn't get too complex but zooming out to understand those relations and then zooming in to understand the kind of smaller units I think can help us drive at that but I also think if we're if we don't recognize the blindness of our arbitrary boundary focusing on the individual then I do think we have more unintended consequences than if we do zoom out and really appreciate the embedded relations that this person is a part of so yeah so our responsibility so right thinking on the on the fly I don't know if that's an actual English saying but thinking on the fly what what I'm seeing is that I can imagine a design process where you sort of set certain design principles for the collective level and then when you go down one level to make it more specific to specific user groups you take those collective design principles into account and then something I think that's a cool idea well thank you somebody needs to prototype it or already has yeah I'm sure have you seen any inspiring examples you just mentioned one where this is happening yeah I mean you've had Sarah Shulman on the show with In With Forward and I think In With Forward is a good example of a group that is really concentrating on communities and how ecosystems are supporting some of that work and thinking about the relationships between individuals and yeah even some of the work that Sarah did before in Australia was very much focused on kind of families and relations and things like that so I think yeah that's one great example of a more kind of collective focus in the design process and a way of engaging and being with communities as opposed to just extracting kind of insights from particular individuals so I think In With Forward for sure is is one but and I think others are talking about it and there's others that are calling themselves more community-based service designers or people that work of course in participatory approaches and and service design but I think still we need to get even a little clear that it's not just participation from an individual frame and with an individual perspective but really getting more at that sort of relational quality of collectives because and and I'm interested in part also because I think we have a quite a western bias and I'm interested in the idea of decolonizing service design and I think you know the western cultural model and in here in Norway for example it's very individual focused just in general so that's a cultural bias that as we're kind of going out into other places and I'm working now with a service design student and we're going to be going to Shanghai to do some service design work there and so what will it mean for us to consider a more collective culture and how does service design adapt to those things and I think people are already doing I'm not at all guessing that we're going to solve it or have the answers I think we have a lot to learn from more collective cultures around the ways that they're designing. If people listening or watching the show have some good inspiring stories please share them in the comments we would love to know. That would be great. You already hinted upon this one in the previous two topics but the third topic is about who is designing. Can I, this is already a question maybe. Tell me. Yeah okay but I yeah so who who is designing? What do you mean we are designing? Yeah so I mean I was taught about you know designers designing but as I in my PhD research I got out into the field I observed service designers designing in healthcare in Experial Lab in Sweden but then I also observed folks in the healthcare system and recognizing they're also doing designing of these services on the fly. I saw one physician who I was observing before he went out and did rounds in the clinic in the infection ward he reoriented how he took the information from the electronic health record so that he could talk to patients in a different way and then I actually realized after that observation that he as he kind of took a chocolate from this board in the hallway that the discharge nurse had left a chocolate to incentivize him to set early discharge dates so that they could plan so both he was designing how he interacted with patients because he knew that this what he had written down in his paper would influence his conversation but the discharge nurse was also designing the service by incentivizing with chocolate saying you know you need to set this early so we can plan and have a smoother transition out of the hospital and this is design work and I think if we deny that as design and the everyday kind of aspects of design I think we're doing a disservice and we're it's just reinforces this very corporate western model of design that is undermining design that already exists in communities and in different yeah different cultures and ways of being so I think there's a lot a lot of value we could get from actually just appreciating the kind of ongoing and continuous process of designing that everybody is doing in their daily life yeah and I'm not sure who said it but I think the saying is like there is no no design there's just good design or bad design right although yeah to jump in on that I am like a bit empty the idea of like good service design and bad service design and I know that this is like there's some new books coming out on this and but for me and I think it has value I'm not at all I think we can become more literate about what makes a good experience in a service and things like that but that to me also gets that like one cultural lens and one kind of context that if we develop principles for what is good service design and what's bad service design that doesn't necessarily like accommodate all different contexts and all different perspectives or people with diverse needs uh in that and sometimes I think there are tensions so if we say all design is contextual uh all service design is contextual what about stop lights isn't it good to have like common stop lights across Europe that we can all understand and have that interact so it's yeah I think there's tensions and we need to be thinking and challenging what we think is good to understand the way that other communities and other people are also understanding good and that that might be different and really having conversations about that and not just making assumptions that our understanding of good can be universally applied I want to go back to a point you made about everybody is already designing whether they know it or not and you mentioned I'm going to refer back to your presentation again at the global conference you mentioned something about intent that really triggered me like for me design is all about intent um like the doctor that you just mentioned the other nurse with the chocolate like if she does just that it might she she might be doing that with a certain outcome in mind but once she starts doing those kind of things with intent then for me at least it really becomes design and what's do you see that relationship as well totally for me that's the boundary unintentional and intentional at the heart of design is intent and I don't think that means that we have intended outcomes it's more just like that our aim is intended when we're when we're shaping with intention around a particular direction that to me is the differentiator if we're just acting and reproducing back to the social structures thing if we're just kind of reproducing social structures or carrying out a service exchange in the way that you know is entrenched in our society I don't think that is and maybe even just reacting in a way without intention that might be changing something for me that's not design things can change without design but design is really about that intentional exactly and and is it our role more and more to label this and show people that they can actually do this with intent and then in that way help them to to become more informed designers I'm looking forward as well yeah I'm I'm I'm curious of this one I've been grappling with it for a while like is is it best that we really just enhance this kind of collective intentionality around design and I think in many regards that's really what a goal of a service designer as I see it could be is really enhancing collective intentionality to shape a service system but if we're like becoming super aware of social structures and hyper intentional all the time might that become a really difficult system to navigate and if we don't have some of that collectivity so maybe it's back maybe they all actually thread into each other a little bit that we need the kind of forming of collective intentionality as well to actually build that kind of design process in a way that works but I think as designers for me that's one key evolution moving from just designing services and these particular offerings to actually tapping into everybody's ability to design and helping them do that more strategically and intentionally and maybe even shifting some of the power dynamics around who gets to shape these service systems that we're yeah I like the word collective intent then it almost starts like sounds like a movement right and we we know what movements look like yeah but we can have bad movements sure yeah who are we to judge what is good and bad yeah with consequences that we don't like sure yes I think that is there's power in this sort of collective intentionality to change things and maybe also this ties into well everything starts dying into each other like if you're designing for a user segment with a specific intent but which might be conflicting with the collective intent then right then yeah and that's where the social structures come in too I think if the if the collective intent is to actually maintain certain social structures that are already taking place then there is that conflict but I think recognizing that conflict is a really powerful thing in the design process and really working with that misalignment potentially between the things we want to bring into the world and take place and the collective intent that might be existing and really make that part of what we're designing and working with is there something that you'd like to ask us the viewers and listeners of the show is there anything that we can think about and help you maybe answer a question well haha I mean there's a few things on the last couple ones I think as you mentioned before like if you have strategies around recognizing collectives tapping into collective methods and approaches you've been toying with that are more about relations or exploring some of that domain I'd be super excited to hear about them or projects and in that regard too I think examples from other cultures and contexts indigenous ways of designing that factor in collectives would be really great to bring into the public discourse a little bit more and then on the last question I would love to hear if anybody is really working with that notion of everybody designing in their everyday life and helping people build that kind of intentionality and capacity and what that sort of literacy around service design looks like recognizing that everybody's doing it and just helping them become more literate so if anybody has any ideas around how to do that or ways in which it hasn't worked I think that would be I would love to hear and be super excited really please people comment comment on this episode and I have one more question for you regarding everything we've discussed like most examples that you've given are sort of in a non-commercial environment is that by coincidence are you gonna yeah you're gonna make me disclose my ideology so I have a background in business as well as design and I've always been critical of the organizational structures of business and the ways in which we've given them rights and what that means and how that has worked for our social systems and our environmental systems and so I'm pretty intentional about the work that I'm doing trying not to feed into that kind of capitalist system although it is inadvertently anyway I'm not at all saying that I don't think it necessarily doesn't apply in that context but actually I'm interested in furthering it in spaces outside of that due to my own kind of vision and hope for shared collective intentionality around that but I think there's a lot of applicable spaces in the I think if you're looking to commercialize a service for example you need to understand the social structures that are in place in an existing service system if you're going to try and scale it that's pretty fundamental you might need to adjust some of the structures of your service system based on context and things like that so I think there's a lot of relevance but I'm not so interested in it and yeah that's not where I'm placing and investing my time but yeah fair enough fair enough if people want to learn more about this and maybe get in touch with you what's the best way to do so oh they can connect with me on twitter it's just at jocina vink um that's probably best or linkedin is also okay all right and any of your publications next to the global conference presentation is where can they find those yeah if actually if you just look up my name on research gate they're all there so people can happily yeah any of my written work and my phd that kind of brings a lot of this work together you can fully access that and in the appendix has a bunch of methods for working with social structures and all things like that so cool great well jocina thanks for enlightening us with these topics today and giving us even more to think about and making service design more even more holistic which is uh which is always a good thing so thanks it's my pleasure thanks for having me mark i hope you enjoyed this chat with jocina and don't forget to leave a comment down below and share this episode with somebody who might find it helpful as well that way you'll not only help to grow the service design show community but also help me to invite more inspiring guests like jocina for you if you want to continue watching more inspiring service design thought leaders check out this next episode because we're going to continue over there