 In this episode we'll be talking about how do you find a healthy balance between thinking and doing. We'll talk about why it's so important to build communities as part of your service design process and finally we'll discuss how do you get people to take a step back and look at the root cause of a problem instead of having them jump straight into ideas and solutions. Here's the guest for this episode, let the show begin. Hi, I'm Fumiko Ichikawa, this is Service Design Show. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the Service Design Show. This show is all about helping you to do the work that makes you feel proud by designing and delivering services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business. My guest in this episode is Fumiko Ichikawa. Fumiko is the founder of a think and do studio called Republic in Japan and in this episode Fumiko will share a really interesting perspective on the notion and the importance of communities in the service design process and why communities might be the true and maybe even most important deliverable of a service design process. If you enjoyed this episode with Fumiko and you'd like to see more don't forget that we bring new videos here on this channel at least once a week. So if you haven't done that already be sure to subscribe and click that bell icon to be notified when new videos come out. Now in this episode we had some tech issues that prevented us from delivering the audio quality that you're used to from the show in general. We hope to have that fixed for the next time but hopefully you still be able to enjoy this episode with Fumiko. So without further ado let's jump straight into the interview. Welcome to the show Fumiko. Hi Marc. Really nice to have you on. We had a chat up front and you're my second guest from Japan but for the people who don't know who you are could you give us a little bit background about your story and what you currently do. Sure. My name is Fumiko and I run a company called Republic together with two other directors here. We have an office in Tokyo and Fukuoka which are two big cities here in Japan. I have been running for five years but before that I worked for a telecom company in different countries and then became freelance and then was working for another company then the big earthquake happened in Japan you might have remembered and that really gave me sort of like a turning point where I thought like perhaps this job that I'm doing which was constantly about changes and innovation I hoped that that would be not just for the big companies and big cities but also for different type of size or the lifestyles that we have in different parts of the world. So this is how we decided to sort of set up the company and now we are here. Fumiko the question that I ask all my guests also is do you remember the very first time you sort of got in touch with the term service design? Well I have been looking at some of the videos that you had on the YouTube and I was thinking perhaps it's about 10 to 12 years ago. Oh really? And it wasn't through conference but it was through how other people started to refer to this new domain called service design and perhaps you have heard company based in actually Amsterdam, standby? Of course. And also we have some great global design research network called REACH which was initiated actually by standby and they've been referring to this fascinating domain called service design and that's how I got to know this world. Okay that's cool nice to hear that it started somewhere in the Netherlands. We started the service design network chapter in the Netherlands to get it with standby in a few other studios back in 2008 so that was a good period. Fumiko you sent me three really interesting topics. I've sent you of course the famous service design show question starters. We're going to do an interview Jess. You said it's going to be a hard part but we're going to just try it out and see how it goes. Are you ready to start? Yes. All right let's I'm going to pick your first topic. Yes. Drum roll please let's see if we can see it. It's praxis. All right so I would choose how can we. All right so what's the what kind of question? How can we and praxis what does what kind of question does that make? Yes so republic is a think and do tank meaning that we try to think about theories and how can we actually approach different problems whereas always the execution is where we learn more. So we have to go through this think and do and we refer to this as being in the praxis meaning that we always think and try and do it by ourselves. We always have reflections from each project and then we try to do another cycle. And I think this is really really hard as soon as you get into the field or certain domains once you start doing your projects there's lots of people lots of sort of like a legacy different things start to be it's very very messy and then it takes more time than you ever expected so the think part always gets smaller and smaller and I realized while I had conversations with different practitioners that they hardly have chance to think and this being quite a big challenge and I hope that also other people could give us advice how to really do this praxis is a big challenge I think in the service design domain. And it's a challenge because you get lost in the operational stuff and you don't have time to or you don't take time to reflect is that the challenge? Exactly and also another thing is once you start to be involved in let's say a local government's projects and then it becomes about traveling it's about being apart maybe sometimes no internet you are out of office constantly and then what we realize is that it's more effort for us to communicate or exchange knowledge is that we've shared and I think that becomes even harder when you cross the border so there's so much more effort that you need to make when you need to put an effort in to just simply think through. Yeah so thinking is maybe it's something we take for granted but it's actually something that you have to work on and maybe you have to put structures in place otherwise it slips through it slips through all the other tasks. Exactly so why yeah so that's the reason why that we try not to just do the thinking by ourselves but rather involve other people into the think process and make a project that we initiate and I think that seems like an example so we try to not to work for a single company as a client and we usually try to initiate topics from our side rather than asking somebody to bring us requests and this gave us some advantage because now from the point of the starting point it's not exclusive to a certain company so we will say let's think about the future of ownership or let's think about how citizens can be involved in how the city would be in the future and then people who are interested in our research work would be joining our program and they can also give us good examples we can also try to give our good examples so we are so mutual in the thinking process and we all gain from that mutual contribution. Yeah that's really interesting I've had these conversations also with clients who sort of find it hard to initiate new projects that are about innovation and about things that haven't been proven yet and I just said you know you need to put out a challenge out there and sort of look for partnerships instead of trying to yeah so and what is your biggest insight related to praxis and actually have you found a way to make this work to balance the doing and thinking part a bit more? So I think it kind of relates to some of the other topics that I'd love to talk about after this but if you think about coming up with the new ideas or new ways to solve things that we would like to solve through design in the end what happens is that often we are breaking different silos that we have at the moment so at the end of the project if it's successful whatever you do most of the cases you're breaking silos meaning you have to make a new connection so why don't we make that connection from the beginning rather than trying to go as far as you can as a client and agency but rather try to connect everyone together so that's how we approached one of the first projects we did as a republic what's the client was the fukuoka city government and also their directive council we set up this studio called fukuoka it's an innovation studio fukuoka and we tried to bring different people administrators also some designers creators some of them were running different public organizations or nonprofits so by the time we run the program we already have this diverse community which has completely different language and have almost hard time understanding even if we're all japanese so this worked quite nicely because already that community is breaking the silos anyways yeah yeah so the starting like you said the starting point is really different that's right you you hinted already upon the second topic so let's move on into into that because your second topic yes it's called community and once again interview jazz a question starter okay so what if what if we can establish community through the design process what what is your perspective on community maybe that's the question we should start with so as soon as we started to work for non corporations meaning often governments or universities what we realize just right after we started the project is the budget limitation and also ultimately who's actually paying for our projects that was one of the questions i had on my mind right and you know it's it's basically somebody else's money it's if it's government it's tax and it's coming from the people that we're supposed to work for so and usually the government they have annual budget so regardless of how much time we think we need we are hoping to leave something in the community or the government or the area that we are involved with and the most important thing or the asset that we can leave regardless of sort of like end point i think we realize it is the community and to be more precise it's the community of change often when you work for different institutions i think there's a really strong power especially in japan maybe to not to change so in order to really have this sense that it is okay to change or there are other people in the society who thinks that there are different ways to do things so we feel like breaking the silos making different community you can also say perhaps ecosystem as well some people would say in that way i think it's a critical asset that whatever we do we can leave as a sort of like a regional or local assets i really like this because i've been having a lot of conversations about the deliverables of the design process especially the service design process like we don't make stuff we make stuff but it's usually not the end result and now that you said it i realized that in a lot of cases we sort of we haven't called it a community but there's always a group of people who's leading yes the change and that is actually a really good deliverable from a service design perspective right exactly and motivated people engaged people i haven't thought about that that it could be framed as a as a deliverable of the service design practice but it is you're absolutely right yeah so i think that's the part actually that service designer can actually contribute already in the beginning having a bit of this because always at the beginning of the process some kind of a research takes place and if you want to deliver a certain service which has a certain quality every service designer would know that you have to conduct some research to understand who are the stakeholders who are perhaps the hidden stakeholders and then to sort of drag those people out maybe listen to them and so you have already those points or dots so all you need to do is to make the connection so that even if you disappear from that chain everybody would somehow have an advantage over this network yeah i think if we would be more conscious about the fact that we're building communities we would be more deliberate about building these communities because when i look at our project it's sort of like a byproduct in a lot of cases it's sort of a necessity and but i think we would really take different actions if we realize from the the community part it's really something that we want to leave behind that is that a really important part of the process definitely so in a way i think ultimately what we are challenging is that although perhaps we have the skills and knowledge about this process of service design but ultimately what we're trying to ask is the whole community to be involved in that process and perhaps in the end it is not us to deliver but then to practice or to take the same path with us and perhaps we're not the researcher but they are the researcher they are the designers they are the entrepreneurs they are the owners of the of the change right we can we can sort of initiate it start it facilitate it get it going but eventually to make it sustainable it should be owned by somebody else exactly what is what is the thing that you still find the hardest in relationship to building these communities or creating these communities i think one of the challenge is really whether this person can find the urge to change within them it's it's so ironic because in the end you can do whatever you want but somehow we as human beings once we choose to be in a certain society or organizations uh surprisingly you just let some of your passion or the vision or will let go so um we we talk about it's funny we often refer as a waste in japan we um have um burnables non-burnables and um we call some individuals as burnables meaning that if you maybe or sometimes they just lit by themselves they are fueled by themselves they were on fire all the time and not everybody is a burnable type of people but some people can be ignited and they can burn together some people are completely non-burnable so even if you go close nothing happens but i think as long as there's somebody who's maybe self-burning and the burnable people around i think it goes around so probably the most crucial part is how can we make that first batch so other people can be somehow involved in that process yeah how do you find those people how do you identify them how do you yeah really cool um i think it's time to move on to topic number three and i think they all sort of relate to each other so burnable people that will be maybe that will be the title of this episode i'm really curious all right topic number three is called reframing i would say why do we need to reframe um and a reframe what for me go to be precise um so for us um what we most with most of the prefectures and the city governments that we are involved with uh we offer certain programs which involve the local citizens or perhaps uh some of the entrepreneurs so and we go through this five or six month process so they can come up with new projects or new businesses and along the way we build this community so they would have some other supporting group of people and what we realize as the biggest challenge is that many people are so eager to come up with the ideas they want to jump they do research they say oh we met these cool people and then we want to come up with the ideas right now and we have to say be patient you have to make sure that you're not coming up with hundred solutions to hundred problems what we really need to think about is because everybody's time resource uh energy is limited we have to find out the reason behind all these hundred problems why we think um this come appears in the current society and then perhaps we should be aware of our existing perspective and how can we shift it so any idea that we can come afterwards are all effective and viable and to have to kind of inform that not now not yet not the idea yet and then try to preach the reframing process is quite hard yeah I can again so relatable to what you're saying because people get inspired really quickly and that's a good thing but a lot of ideas are sort of reactive we see we have an observation and we sort of immediately jump to the solution and um getting people to sort of take a step back and to uh think about root cause um I don't know what it takes but uh that's the like you said that's that's a really challenging part right it is it is because everybody is in a rush yeah they feel like they need to come up with the idea so they feel safe yeah but um yeah I think we we need to be make we need to make sure that you have this fuzzy and quite the unnerving like a really nervous moment so you're kind of feeling stuck and frustrated but you're on to something that you've never encountered before I think a lot of people who are watching or listening right now sort of are smiling because this is so recognizable that feeling like I I have no idea where this is heading oh my god this is going to be a disaster right and all the stakeholders are sort of rebelling and everybody is questioning the project in general and you sort of have to push through that phase because like you said something something is brewing something will emerge I I like to think about service design and design maybe in general as an emergent practice it it you have to you have to be busy you have to be working with the material and then at some point stuff starts to emerge it seems out of nowhere but it's not it's never out of nowhere right now well what is your um a trick or a preferred way to keep these people engaged in this in this chaotic period how do you keep them motivated and confident and right um there's I think maybe a couple of tricks but one is of course to surround them by the people who have overcome that frustrated moments so we never go freehand meaning that we always have what we consider as mentors for any of those participants we always have say five or six mentors because depending on who uh the challenge that they face and the solution that mentors or advices that mentors can provide is different and they will somewhat show the way and I think that's much stronger because um where you're stuck can be very different depending on the person's skills and experiences but to those people who have experienced that not just once not just twice but multiple times we call them sometimes like a serial innovators um they they exactly know where these people are stuck with and can help to guide the way so that's one very strong I would I wouldn't say motivation but like uh support that we can provide yeah and it's a safety net right and uh yeah that's a really good thing to to sort of give people trust and somebody that says it will be all right don't worry exactly just we need to just keep going um and it's quite amazing um because we have so many people who has done this um some people came up with the really amazing products from some companies it could be services they're actually working on something and they also share their experience and knowledge about the market uh the advice can be many different ways but I think most important advice that they can give is really about trusting what they feel right now like feeling important rather than the company said you should pursue this um say AI or IoT or all these buzzwords around technology it's so much powerful and it almost transformed the person uh so when that happens we feel pretty um assured yeah and you you hinted about something really important I think uh with uh which is you know we often say trust the process right but it it's also just as important to trust yourself that's right and I think that's sort of really undervalued um in the current design community right trust the process yes that is true if you go through the process good things will happen but you in the process you also need to sort of trust your instinct trust your gut build upon your experiences that you have and sort of don't let that don't push that away and ignore that because usually that gives really good hints about if you're doing the right thing right so I would say that without the trust to yourself screw the process yeah yeah that's that's true that's true because we all are the same program to everyone but whoever makes it who doesn't make it or with the some people who needs more support often there is less self confident that's it that's it that yeah yeah and maybe that maybe we should have some specific activities to sort of give people regain their confidence uh in in themselves that they are doing the good thing and be able to listen to that right that's really good thing for me oh um you get the opportunity right now to sort of ask us the service design community who's watching while listening to the show a question is there a thing you'd like us to think about to crush our brains crunch our brains on not crush our brains yes but um the very i'm coming back to the very first topic that we've already discussed which is really about the praxis how do everybody think and do because especially if you're constantly putting out putting um what you study and doing ideas and executing it um you feel like you drain you you need a new input so that cycle is really um healthy cycle that everyone should have especially when the world demands so much of us so it will be really wonderful to hear if anybody has their own stories about thinking and doing and how they switch between the two i would love to know more so so uh that's the question right it's not uh specifically how you think but how do you balance that that's right how do you make sure that you next to doing yes you'll also find the time to think about the things that you're doing right that's right what are some methods tricks hacks that people use to to make sure that they are not just like robots but they are consciously doing the things that they're doing yes is that is that the question you've mailed it yes yeah i'm just trying to understand so that i can comment on it fumi go um it was really great to listen to what you have to say to get your perspective i think you are some really uh gold insights here in this episode time flies by but we i think we gave so much value so thanks again for for sharing what's on your mind these days well thank you for hosting this and i really admire your work thanks thank you so what is your tip for balancing thinking and doing leave a comment down below and inspire the other people who are watching this episode and if you enjoyed this episode don't forget to click that like button and share it with somebody who might enjoy it too don't forget that you can sign up for my free training that will help you to explain service design in plain english the link to the training is over here thanks again for watching and i look forward to seeing you in the next video