 Hi, I'm Stefan Moritz and this is the Service Design Show. I'm Marc van Tijn. Welcome to the Service Design Show. We had a special location during this episode because we are at the Global Service Design Conference that is taking place in Amsterdam at this moment. And I'm unlucky enough to be sitting next to one of the pioneers of service design because I can remember that reading one of your early papers and that was one of my first interactions with service design. So, welcome Stefan. Thank you. For the people who don't know who you are and what you do at this moment, how did you get involved in service design and what are you doing at this moment? So, I got involved in service design by Burs. My mom was working in web technology which at that time was physical but she was actually whole-punching programming when I was little. And my dad has worked with service so I was kind of into that quite naturally and then I stumbled into it really when I started in Cologne studying the integrated design but immediately picked up on service design and worked with Birgit and made that sort of my thing. When was that? Early 2000? That was 1998, 1999, something around that. You were really one of the first batch of service design minded people. I mean at that time it was really like, it sounds like a really good idea. And it also made kind of perfect sense, right? It's like, okay, it's the same philosophy just applied to a different context. And because the setup in Cologne was kind of very versatile you had like, let's make a fridge for Siemens. Well, hang on, could that be fresh food delivery? And it became really clear what it's about and why it's important but then how to actually do it was what we had to figure out. What has happened since the days you were in Cologne? How did your journey look until today? When I was in Cologne I figured out that to do this is not only about different design dimensions, there's also other parts beyond design. And there was a lot of interesting stuff going on in Milan which conveniently also fitted with, I liked Italy. So I went to Italy to figure out what they're doing. I have a slightly different perspective on things and then also learn Italian and then I went to Helsinki to explore the other side of Europe. And that was super cool. The different outlook on life and nature and so on and also very interesting university. And then I went to London to start working in a company figuring out what that could be in real. And then at some point I thought I need to go back and do my masters otherwise I'll never finish. And that was really cool to work a little bit and then have the possibility to go back. And that was exactly when the services and network were sort of really taking shape. It's sometimes in life it just fits to have the opportunity to visit everybody that was doing that from IDO to live work and engine, we did like a workshop together. It was for your master. Yeah, exactly. So that was awesome. Really good. And now? And now I'm in Stockholm which I also like very much from a total culture life for family, a super nice place to live. And I work in a wonderful global medium-sized company like small enough to mold stuff and big enough to make stuff happen. It's an old church in the middle of the forest. Forest. And yeah, I mean it's also one of those things when you look at life in the rear mirror it's unbelievable that that's possible to find a place like that and they want to do integrated design with the focus on service design and so on. So it's nice. Stefan, you already gave a hint in your introduction about this but I'm still curious. Do you actually remember getting in touch with the field or the term service design? Do you know the first time that you read about it you heard about it? Well I mean it would have been when I was already in Cologne. I mean obviously I stumbled on it when I looked into studying there but it really hit me when I was there what it's all about. But I don't know sort of it was Tuesday morning it was raining. Some people have a very vivid memory about it but it was infused in your life. No but honestly to me it was like finding one of those things that just made so much sense. And I guess people still say that, right? Yeah. A lot of service designers say I wish I knew it existed 10 years ago and I found it. But obviously since then I have been thinking about this a lot and you go in different iterations on that and you realize that actually it's two very unfortunate names put together in an unfortunate name. Why? What is unfortunate about it? For most people when you talk about service they think about well either sort of restaurant cleaning the tables or call center or like one aspect of service-ish things but not the experience really. When you talk about design still today many people think about funky stuff and nice things. But I think you know that is also nice being at this conference I mean whenever you come but especially this year sort of reflecting on all of that that journey that it has matured so much and it's unbelievable that it is that big of a movement that big of a network and it has a lot of diversity in it but there's also really sort of consistent streams of red threads. So that was pretty cool. You know the format, some people might not yet know the format but I've got three topics that you handed me that I'll be using and you have some papers with some question starters and we'll combine these two to make interesting questions, right? Cool. So I'm going to pick the one that I think is most puzzling and it's a topic called superhuman and do you have a question starter that goes along with that one? Shall we make it wrong? How can we? Explain and make a question if you can. How can we be superhuman? So the thing that I wanted to to think about and I mean in these moments it's always kind of when you meet interesting people a good way to connect and think out loud what fascinates me a lot in this moment and I mean everybody's probably heard a lot of chat around chatbots and what happens when these kind of things happen trendy things happen, clients are like oh should we have a chatbot, right? But I think there is some really interesting shift going on where a lot of companies are investing a lot of money in automizing their services. Finding differentiated service models and all that and it's not dissimilar from when Lean was going on and it has a very internal notion it's like oh the world is changing, we need to be smarter can we do it a bit streamlined or a bit more intelligent or have machines and computers sort of do the work first and there is a danger from a service design perspective that you're losing the human touch and on the other hand a lot of services and a lot of experiences where high touch is extremely important What do you mean with high touch? That things are extremely personalized extremely kind of tailor made like the ultimate service is most people imagine something very somebody takes care of me and it thinks for me and it's very like some aunt that you visit in the countryside or your grandmother that sort of feeling It's a lot about feeling reconnecting to ourselves as human letting go of technology so there is like this interesting thing going on and what I mean by superhuman from a service perspective is like how can we help technology to be smart and make decisions for us but not lose the human touch and how can we have a human level of quality that is aided by tech so you know high tech, high touch yin yang, hybrid, something and I think that's really interesting I listened to a lady that's researching how to teach machines empathy so how do we get robots to understand humans and she's come to the point where the robots understand humans better than humans Okay that's fascinating Exactly So you know if everything becomes robotic and I don't even know what that will I mean some people call that singularity when a point comes when that thing is as smart as we all together so not just as one but as we all and I don't know if it's called robots or you know there isn't even a good name for the super part in this but for me the most important thing is that we don't forget to be human and also from an innovation standpoint when clients ask us okay how do you know what people want in the future the human part isn't actually changing an awful lot we've all been humans for 2000 years and we're not dramatically different the software upgrades yes but the basic values don't change that much so for example the personality of somebody that doesn't change so much in a lifetime so that's something you can really work with values they depend on society in context sure but you know trying to just understand like what are the things that don't change that quickly and that help you understand behavior because I mean if you look there again it's like everybody's talking about big data but how do you make sense of what parts of that we should really care about so I think the combination of that really embracing tech but not forgetting human and finding a way for companies to really tap into that hybrid combination I think that would be exciting does it exist at the moment that hybrid combination I do think it exists the first time I really thought about this was when somebody showed me Cartmunch it was a service that I think it only existed in the US where you can basically take a picture of a business card and it then uses mechanical torque for somebody to finally type it into your LinkedIn now Evernote has that built in so it made me realize that combination of humans doing what humans are good at and tech doing what tech is good at that combination is actually really powerful but I think what we are seeing now is that it gets more translated to an experiential layer to a point where it's kind of a bit scary because you don't know is there Lisa is there Lisa who is writing to me now so it's kind of a bit interesting so where do you see this topic going in the next three let's say three years what are the big things that will change there so I think in three years what you will see is that how companies respond will be more human I mean companies have always thought of their brand as a persona our brand personality and I think that will go to an experiential level where you can really orchestrate sort of a cross channel presence of a brand persona so practically speaking every point that the customer interacts with is sort of done by somebody else it doesn't have one feel and if you can orchestrate this technically that's kind of consistent and nice but you have no fun and no friction so introducing a human experience around that I think will be very interesting to really understand how you can use data you can tap into behavior but you don't make it creepy and I think that from a design perspective that will be very interesting to learn the thresholds for different generations and for different kind of people why do we get your inspiration around this topic so if people are interested in what you are saying where should they look there is this place the interweb but it's big I've heard now I don't really know I mean obviously you get it from conferences from talking to people, from reading books but so you can't really pinpoint that it's different nuggets that then somehow marinate themselves into place I don't know there's no special get better at googling Google will tell you what you should find that's super human that's maybe creepy already Stefan let's move on to the second topic and I'll pick this one because it's maybe not the most sexy but it's definitely a hot topic if you do what if it gets very sexy make it sexy, what if it's just scaling so the reason I put it up originally is that in terms of impact many things that we work with you know it's doable to figure things out in one lab in one project, in one sprint but to really make it live and make it scale is a challenge and I think with many organizations that aren't used to working with a service to make it live and to make it scale and keep it alive is a real challenge that I've been thinking about last few weeks, months around the sort of employee co-worker aspect around scaling because often times we talk about customer experience we talk about service design and the human element now we've talked about super humans but people that are involved in delivering the service they get often under designed in so we don't really think about from an experience point of view we really hang together and I think again it's easy to solve in one store, in one channel but to really sort of work out how service design can scale and what principles we can build for that connection to work out and to live and grow and develop I think that's really interesting I think if I understand you correctly this has also been a topic on some of the episodes that in order to design good services that are scalable we should start designing the internal organization side or at least it should go hand in hand and now we have a lot of focus on the end users, is that what you're saying Tim? and I mean the end user is still the same like if you go back to how do you get scaling to work traditionally we've done a lot of stuff with sort of manuals and briefing people and so on and what I've seen from a leadership perspective I think leadership for service design, leadership for customer experience is incredibly important for us to learn and for for us to work with and what I've noticed in many programs is that leaders have still a notion of we need to make people or we need to get you know can you come and help us get the people to have empathy or ignite innovation or and when you work with our methods you can see that actually this is already within people so the scale is not in sort of cascading out and teach the teacher but more tuning in with what's already there you know allowing people to let go of some of their fears and structures and actually sort of just be yourself so scaling happens naturally if you put it in the right conditions yeah exactly how do we create the conditions that scale happens naturally yeah and what are your findings on that what are your latest insights so what I fascinates me and what gives me a lot of pleasure in my job is when you see through empathy and through human connection you know stuff clicks into place and people that are maybe in IT maybe in some other part of the organization that doesn't directly impact the customer sort of feel like now I know why I come to work and sort of find their purpose again and I think a lot of organizations are struggling especially in sectors that are being commoditized telco banking to attract cool people that would rather go to some funky big brands and if you want to attract really good people that can drive innovation that are modern you need to have your purpose in place so I think there's a lot of effort actually going into now like you said creating the conditions and maybe there's a different design of the organization we need to think about again so less about process but more about principles and belief systems and the big challenge is of course like you said we already seen this happen within labs or experiments there you can create those conditions and where you see it happening but then scaling those conditions on our large corporation that's a big challenge and maybe it goes even Daniel Euroman who was one of the guests on the show said we should be designing services we should be designing organizations and maybe I don't know if we can do it but maybe he's got a point there well I would even go one step further that we've been designing organizations now but we need to design something else and it's to do with connecting to the purpose of the organization and the leadership and sort of create the conditions for that organization to thrive because then you still need to be effective you still need to build small and then scale you know nail it and scale it but on the level of really understanding the values and making it relevant to that country to that organization to that team because I mean oftentimes we we try to sort of impose something there's no matter where we're coming from left fields top down it's more trying to understand like what is it that we can unlock they just assume it's already there and we just need to help it to come out more and all of a sudden you have scale and if you look at some of the successful scale platform companies Airbnb as one poster child you can see the innovation is happening because it unlocks something that's already there and then you get you pick with this value for traditional organizations to do this so if you so okay if you look at another phenomenon that's happening most established corporations want to be like startups so they look at startups and they try to do the same thing without understanding the reasons why the startups are successful in the way they are and I think one of the reasons is that there is less fear there's more freedom and I mean it's not that people in startups don't have dogs to feed or children to protect right but they have a different mindset they have less to lose they feel freer and I think that is this sort of starting point to be really in touch with finding a purpose and doing something about it and I mean of course not we only hear about the startups that succeed that is also one thing to remember but I think big companies need to understand it's about really understanding what are we really about and how do we make sure we have space and time to really do that without fear coming in the way and of course to set up a little lab is one sandbox you can create where you can take fear out but I've seen it so many times that even in that thing the urge to show off and the urge to succeed is so big that they don't really want to fail and I think in terms of scaling how do you do that one of the most important things that we need to learn and I mean that in our community together with with the clients or government organizations whatever it is is to really embrace learning which is a bit of a cliche thing to say probably but I think there's something really like when we work with prototyping people are not used to the language of prototyping and they don't really know how to use it to learn they want to use it to show they want to use it to explain they want to prototype and then yeah so there is a shift needed from maybe it also leads us to the next topic that it's not about teaching or it's not about showing to the rest of the organization what it's about this is not about making a prototype so the stupid IT can understand this is a prototype so we can learn what IT could do about it and how together you know just shifting that perspective in together we all want good things how do we learn instead of teaching the line organization how to do this how do we get the French people there is still this notion of scaling means roll out and I think scaling is about roll in Scaling is about roll in we'll keep that one in mind scaling is roll in alright and as you hinted upon the third topic let's just move in before it's too late your third topic is story doing I'm not sure if I heard that one on the show before I've stolen that from somebody alright that's not a bad thing for us so what is the question starter that goes along with story doing the story doing thing we've been discussing a lot it's just sort of popped out out of nowhere and there's actually a few people no there's no question it's just a cliffhanger so story doing is the opposite of storytelling and for me on a high level it means a lot of companies have spent a lot of time in marketing in a sort of advertising mindset so it's similar to how we talked about how to change culture and so on but as a company you're not what you're telling you are but it's about what what people actually feel you are so customer experience much more important than advertising and still there's a lot of money spent on advertising but I think there is a shift and there is some companies that are doing that better than others but I think ultimately when you look at service design and why it's so powerful is that what you do is more important than what you say the experience counts more than your promises right and I think that shift is I thought it was going to come quicker and bigger but I think it's now really starting to happen that companies realize isn't not good enough to tell their customers what they're going to do this is like the quote that your best marketing is a good service it aligns with with that and why do you think it's happening now because hasn't this been a topic in service design for the last 10 years or is there a significant change going on no I think for us it's been an obvious topic but I don't think that the massive shift has happened yet so for example if you look at companies I remember that I spoke to the head of innovation at a huge global company and asked him sort of you know hand on heart if you look at the investment in powder and drugs and little white stuff versus the impact what would you say is the balance of the value in the actual compound versus the value of life and not taking your pills on Wednesday night you forgot it on Tuesday morning versus the research and effort that's gone into the perfect drug and he said if we're lucky 60 40 or maybe 50 50 and then you start thinking well they spent like billions and I mean it's important it's like people's life address we don't want to mess around with cheap pills but it's like just sort of valuing so Holger said yesterday 85 15 and I mean that's probably being nice on ourselves Berger did some research many many years ago about research investment it was like 3% so the investment in R&D to services look at time spent effort spent on different things and I feel that there is a huge change now in healthcare that companies realize well it's not good enough to offer a solution in form of something but we need to really produce an experience that is enhancing outcomes and there is huge value for society there is huge value for individuals and there is also money in the works and I think when you bring a service design perspective so a lot of the work that we do at Veride in New York is around connected health working with you know kind of more understanding patient experience and building something that really creates better outcomes and I think that will continue to be a huge trend that companies need to figure this out and healthcare is just one example and pharma is just one example I think many companies will start to see that the value chain is bigger than what they do life is bigger than what they do and if they understand and embrace how people really live their lives I mean there is the jobs to be done type thing in it but I think it's bigger than that so I remember I had this really weird funny thing happen I did a seminar in Eastern Europe about service design and I had a slide with the drilling machine and the hole and you know it's not the drilling machine that people buy they buy the hole in the wall and as I was doing the workshop it was drilling behind me because there was like a bit like earlier here you know some works happening so very bizarre and then three years later I was in the same taxi with somebody at the conference I remember the thing that you did and I've been thinking about it people don't buy the hole in the wall they buy the picture hanging up on the wall so you know you can talk about the experience of art in your home so you can push that on but it's just like shifting perspective into what is really going on what really makes a difference whereas really the impact and it's not easy it is easy with stuff we've designed this thing it's nice people buy it cool but with the kind of ecosystem service it's not so easy to put your finger on somehow I have the feeling that all of your topics drop back to the purpose of organizations to the why of organizations why are we doing this the meaning of life human well maybe the meaning of why are we as an organization here on earth do you recognize that thread throughout your topics I mean it's kind of what it's all about right so if you if you look at why do we have organizations whether it's public sector or private it's about people and doing something good for people but maybe in the course of setting up big systems we sort of forgotten a little bit about it of scaling right because that's you scaled in a different way and in a sense to your point earlier and I think it's refreshing and encouraging and beautiful there'll be a sort of reconnecting to the sort of human-human level and it's humbling in some ways it's inspiring in some other ways and it's still also very frustrating because it's not it's not that hard to grasp but it is incredibly difficult to pull off you know and sometimes we have designed this camera a few years ago and I sometimes wish like you know if you could do a heat photo of office buildings and you could have a heat map of the time wasted I mean imagine what those office buildings would look like they just sending emails to each other about PowerPoint and who is creating value yeah so I think there is a lot of wasted time and a lot of like if you talk about the idea of of value as abandoned value and again I mean Airbnb is a very concrete example like stuff that didn't create any value was just sitting around empty all of a sudden does something different and touches people and it makes a difference and I think there's a lot of nice examples where we can see there is different ways and it's not just about cool they have more hotel rooms than Hilton but it's like there's something really interesting happening we have to move almost to the end of the show and I always have two questions that are not on paper and the first one is when people approach you with the question I want to get into serve design or I want to become a better serve design and what is your ultimate tip what do you say to them hmm I mean if you want to become a service designer hmm that's a good question I mean for example coming to this conference is an easy thing to do but in a sense of taking a step back from what you do and find inspiration hmm because it is whether you're in it already or you're new to it service design is a messy thing that keeps changing and it's not so easy to put your finger on it and I think my main advice maybe you can't do that much damage if you have a learning mindset and you're you know trying to reach out there's so much that you can do every day to figure it out and coming here is always sort of a reminder of all the things that you wanted to do and could do and you get some new energy and I think sometimes in organizations it feels we are trying to convince everybody that this is a good thing but then there are those moments where it just falls into place and something cool is happening and I feel that if you want to be good at service design it's about being good with people it's about being curious and I think most people have the ability to dream up a better way but sometimes they don't take their time but I think you know creativity is something we spend a lot of time on last few years to cultivate that's not the problem anymore but I love about design that it's also about doing something so I think that would be probably sort of the ultimate try to do something and then you can learn and maybe take also time to reflect so do and reflect because I started in everything that I do now even if it's one minute in the end I make sure there's time to reflect and it's incredibly valuable so in every workshop the rating goes up by one point because you know you just give people time to land and I think in our first place lives it's not always easy but it's good good investment one minute alright well keep that one in mind and the final question is if you leave Amsterdam back on the plane to Stockholm what is the question that keeps you busy at this moment what is the big question that you have right now I think I was talking with Kerry earlier and we were talking about the topic and to me a lot of things root back to the meaning of life but also to fear so what is it that we can do to help people be less fearful and less blocked up by being afraid I think that could free up a lot of energy what are we worried about and if you look in a global context we have it so good and it's so easy for us as a white male guy in Europe it's like I don't have the clue how easy I have it and that is sometimes good to remember what's the worst that can happen but I think to help organizations move I do believe that it's a very important question to figure out how to inspire people to be less afraid people have suggestions bring it on comment on the video so that's all we had time for this one last thing I have for you and you've seen it already at the conference this is your very own service design helmet very good wear it with pride give it a nice place in the everyday studio instructions even a manual a helmet has a service that comes with it it's probably needed thanks again Stefan and I have a nice trip back thanks thank you if you enjoyed this episode and would like to see more interviews with service design pioneers like Stefan subscribe to the channel and be sure to check out some of the best episodes thanks for watching bye