 In this episode, you'll learn how reflecting on your current world view might help you to solve some of the biggest challenges we face today and make you a better service designer. Here's the guests for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Tristan and this is the Service Design Show Episode 101. 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 a server, a designer with a PhD in philosophy and he speaks Japanese. His name is Tristan Schultz. I'm really excited to share this chat with Tristan with you because this episode isn't about the latest tools or methods, although we'll be mentioning some. It's much more about understanding who you are as a designer. What are your existing mental models, your assumptions and your biases that originate from a certain worldview? Because once you understand that, that might just be the key that helps you to design real solutions that we really hard need for the big challenges we face today. Before we jump into the chat with Tristan, this is episode 101 and if you're new to this channel, please subscribe as we bring at least one new video a week that helps to level up your service design skills. And don't forget to click that bell icon to be notified when new videos are up. That's all for the intro and now let's quickly jump into the super fascinating chat with Tristan Schultz. Welcome to the show, Tristan. Thank you. Where again, literally across the planet on the other side of the planet? Where are you right now? I am in beautiful Gold Coast, Australia. It's on the east coast and about 100 kilometers south of Brisbane. It's a beautiful place. This is where I've grown up. For the people who haven't checked your LinkedIn profile yet or your website, which all the links are down below, tell us a little bit about you and who you are, what you do. Yeah, well, I am a designer. I guess that's the first thing that I describe myself as. I'm a Gamilaroi man. Gamilaroi is the name of the country, the Aboriginal country that my heritage is from. So I'm an Aboriginal person as much as European heritage as well. I am a surfer and really, I am kind of a critical strategic interdisciplinary designer. I guess all of those things wrapped in one. So I don't try and define myself as any discipline. You're also going to do something at Surfdesk 2020, right? Correct. Yes, when it happens. I'm going to be the keynote at Surfdesk 2020 with, so what I'm going to do is we're going to have a dialogue with an Aboriginal elder who's a mentor of mine and a really respected designer as well here in Australia from an Indigenous perspective. And we're going to have a kind of a bit more of an informal relational interrogation into what service design is during our keynote. Looking forward to that. Let's hope Surfdesk 2020 happens. Maybe it already happened depending on whatever people are listening to this episode. Tristan, do you remember your first encounter with service design? Well, my first encounter with service design. I don't particularly remember the first encounter with service design. I feel like I remember conversations during my master's research, let's say about 2010, where we did talk about service design through my professor kind of introduced me to this, not so much the notion of service design, but services and user-centered design. And we used to have some pretty robust conversations about that language being problematic because what it can kind of describe is that you, as a designer, are a service provider. You're providing a service to the status quo. And the status quo is already established and you don't have a say in disrupting that status quo. That's certainly not the way I see design. So my first introduction into service design was, I think, quite dubious about its ambitions. But I've come to understand service design is much more broad and complex than that, regardless of, you know, there's lots of things that are doing service design that aren't called service design. Sure. And I think service design can just let itself breathe and be open a bit. And I welcome all those people here into this community. And I'm sure we'll dive into your perspective on service design and how we can broaden it because that might be super valuable. You have the question starters. I have your topic for the 100th and first time. Are you ready to do interview jazz? Sure. Let's do it. Let's do it. Topic number one, I have smaller notes today so that actually fit on camera. Systemic view. Do you have a question starter that goes along with this one? And can you show it up? Yeah, sure. Let's go with when will. So when will the world and then service design move towards a systemic view of life? Yeah, you started with an easy question. Where is this question coming from? Let's start there. Wow. Where is the question coming from? Well, the question comes from Cartesian knowledge or a guy called Renee Descartes who was a philosopher some many hundreds of years ago who thought it'd be a good idea to come up with this idea of a Cartesian view of life or a dualist view of life and that kind of says mind and body are separate and all of these things and this over rationalization of life and that caught on. It caught on really well and then it turned into things like the Enlightenment, things like modernity and that dualist view, that over rational, that scientific rational view is still the predominant worldview in Western societies today. But it's not the worldview for many other cultures around the world who have much more of a systemic and relational worldview. And in fact, you know, all cultures did before, let's say, modernity come along in their own different ways. But there's a lot of movement in the last few decades in particular around, you know, you're sure you've worked systems thinking and these sorts of things. And there's a lot of movement to really not to think about it as thinking, but think about it as really adopting a complete new worldview to deal with the pressing challenges that we have going forward. And so that's going to be really tough for everybody over the coming decades, but I really see that there is going to be a clash of those worldviews between that the residue of modernity and these other movements of moving back towards or reinscribing or moving to some new version of a systemic view of life, which takes in holism, ecology, indigenous knowledge, lots of different words that we could describe for what a systemic view of life is. And so what does that mean for service design? That was my next question. Yeah. Well, if service design is about kind of mirroring what is for the status quo, well, the status quo may well change or service design about nudging towards a more ambitious value sets of the status quo. And is that a systemic view of life? So how does service design adopt systems, thinking, systemic design practices into the certain, you know, the individual methods and tools and techniques that it uses to take people through designally thinking to get them towards understanding services. Do you have just for the sake of time, just like one example that you find inspiring where you've seen like a systemic approach systemic view within service design and like the how I think a lot of people will be might be inspired by this. And now they are thinking, but how? Well, there's a, there's a, there's a couple of, sorry, my microphone says it appears to be noisy, but we'll carry on. There is a couple of really great tools and techniques out there guides out there. And I think that that would be the best place to sort of refer people to. So the transition design movement certainly comes from a systemic view. It's got its traps and problems like others, but it does. There is a guide called the systemic design guide that is freely downloadable and usable online. And, you know, and then, you know, I've got my own tools and techniques and methods as well, but really it starts there with even before design brief is created around what we're going to do with services. It starts with, well, what ways are we going to sort of on board a project? How are we going to ask people to map out what it is that their wicked problems are? Are we going to use this rationalized version of the journey map? Or are we going to use this, this really relational version that might seem harder at first, but kind of nudges and prompts to have to deal with all of that relational complexity. So I'd like to point people to the examples of say, some of the transition design workshop tools and systemic design workshop tools, even the new circular design guide, I think it's called, which, you know, emphasizes how to move towards circular economies, obviously, is a good toolkit to for service designers to perhaps using their toolkit rather than the more common ones that people go to. What do you hope, like, what would be the next logical step forward for you? Like, where if we want to challenge ourselves as a service design community and we want to go more towards a systemic approach, like adopting these toolkits might be a good idea. Should we challenge our clients? Is there like, should we challenge ourselves? Where is, what's the next step? Both, we've challenged our clients and ourselves. You know, so in many ways, a systemic view of life is as much about colonialism as well, actually. And I know that in some northern European countries, that's not as much of a loaded term that certainly here in Australia, this idea of colonialism is very potent because we were colonized and Indigenous peoples were oppressed and their knowledge was destroyed. So in Australia, and in many parts of the world, people are trying to decolonize their worlds. And a part of decolonizing their worlds is to kind of reinscribe that systemic view of understanding the world and have that contribute to society. So decolonizing is not about just kicking everyone out and starting again. It's about kind of adopting these epistemologies, like systemic views of life or what even is called ontologies into the way we do things. So where would we start? What that means is actually, it's not just Indigenous people that are colonized. It's all of us, all of our minds are colonized with this kind of overly, dualist, overly rational view of life. And so we're, say, we meaning we that the broad and general service design community would start is in unlearning that way is kind of decolonizing our own minds so that we can then begin to learn what there is to learn in front of us from other world views. And then we can move into practice itself. So it's excruciating. And I take people through this in workshops and clients even sometimes through this. And, you know, hopefully I can build it into the project budget at the same time, because it takes a lot more time to work with a client about what it is we need to unlearn in our own habits and behaviors and world views and biases before we can even begin to even put together a design brief about what we're trying to achieve here. So if the price is that high, what is the benefit? Like, why do you believe that it's so important to actually go through all this pain and pursue this? Yeah. Look, you know, it's pretty clear to me from my perspective that, you know, modernity has been really fantastic in many ways, but it's been terribly destroyed. You know, it has terribly destroyed all kinds of other things. So there's a darker side to modernity. And really that that darker side does not offset the benefits that we've had out of modernity. It may for some for the haves, but for the have nots, it's been absolutely devastating. So what does that mean really practically in relation to sustainable futures? Well, what modernity essentially did was destroy options for us to think about what futures could be. And so we have no way to really even comprehend different world views and different options for being sustainable or having sustainable. What a service is a sustainable service from that worldview, because we just can't see it anymore. And so, yeah, the implications are that until we kind of unlearn and open up and learn how we can sort of think more systemically, we're not going to find options to the most pressing problems that we have, such as, you know, the easy one like climate change and many other wicked problems. We're not going to solve modern problems with modern solutions. Yeah. Yeah. So the benefit of this is that it opens up a vast new area of potential solutions. That's 100% right. That's what this is all about. It's twofold. Even before that, what it's about is liberating billions of people around the world to be for them to sort of be able to think for themselves and decide on their own futures based on their own worldviews and their own terms. And as a byproduct of that, we will receive a plethora of new options for how to navigate futures. All right. Super inspiring. But let's move on to topic number two, and it's sort of intertwined. So you used this word, and I have to be honest, I never heard of this word. So you're going to start hopefully by explaining to me what it is. It's about indigenous knowledge. And do you have a question starter that goes along with this one? Yeah, sure. So perhaps I'll put it back on yourself since, for whatever reason, you may not have heard of it. Perhaps, what is it in your world where why? Why haven't you heard of it? Why do you think you haven't? What is it about your geography? Or what is it, do you think? It's a really good question. Apparently, it's not in the vocabulary. It's not in the sphere of attention. Are you talking about the two words together or? Well, the word indigenous. Knowledge is a word that's quite common, but indigenous is not indigenous. Yeah, exactly. Well, I can't even pronounce it. It's not common, at least in my surrounding. Right. So I don't know, there may be a term in your more native tongue, but indigenous is just those people that are native to that land. And so in Australia, as much as we call Australian indigenous people Aboriginal people, that's only the term for Aboriginal people on the mainland. The term for people in what's known as the Torres Strait Islands at the top of Australia, they're Torres Strait Islanders, and you would not call them Aboriginal people. And of course, there's all kinds of people over in the Pacific Islands. They're called all kinds of other things, but they're also indigenous people, just as North American Indians are indigenous to that land. So indigenous, that's all that means. Indigenous knowledge put together is to say, well, what is what is deriving from that knowledge from those people in that land, wherever they are in the world. So yeah, basically the knowledge that's in the surrounding that's in the context that's in the, it is tied to geography, I guess, right? Yes, very much tied to geography. It is about geographically placed knowledge that has been there for in Australia, at least 60,000 years or more. So you know, some people like to call it call it the term traditional knowledge. But there's issues with using that term traditional as if this is the old knowledge, all of this new modern stuff is the new knowledge. So there's a problem with calling it that when really what it is, is this indigenous knowledge, the same way as there's Western knowledge on there's Chinese knowledge. And of course, inside indigenous knowledge, there's many, many knowledge pockets. Aboriginal Australian indigenous knowledge is in totally is totally different to other parts of the world. And in fact, inside Australia, there are, you know, over 400 different kind of Aboriginal groups who all would have their own conception of what their fundamental indigenous philosophy and indigenous knowledge is. Yeah, is it around also culture, norms, all those kind of things? Yeah, but it's also the really practical stuff to like, here's indigenous, here's an indigenous knowledge understanding of architecture. And here's an indigenous knowledge understanding of water technologies. Here's an indigenous knowledge understanding of social structures and social binds and relationships is an indigenous knowledge understanding of agriculture. Maybe I'm making a too simplistic leap, but would indigenous knowledge also apply to the knowledge just and baked in a company? Or wouldn't you? No, you wouldn't use that term. You would, there might be some other term for that. I'm not sure. But, you know, I guess we know the term is kind of corporate knowledge and that sort of language. But it's not about that. Generally, if there's a thing that binds indigenous knowledge, it's knowledge that comes from country, comes from place. Sure. So what does this mean, again, for the field that we're in? Like, again, why are you passionate about this? Because you are. Yeah. Well, look, indigenous knowledge, as I mentioned, you know, some of those examples like, say, food and agriculture or water technologies or something like that. Now, if you're, say, in the public service and you are the region's kind of water planning service, then certainly in Australia, it is incumbent on you more and more in the last few years in particular to incorporate understandings of indigenous knowledge into how you plan for water for the citizens in your place. So what that means is, you know, and this is in my head because we're working on a big water project, is that as much as it might be, okay, water planning for irrigators, water planning for the environment, water planning for industry, what about water planning for cultures? What is a cultural lens on water and its value? And that value might not be economic. That value might not be tacit. And so how do we respect in our water plan the value that indigenous people place on water? And so, and then how do we service that? Are there any methods to surface indigenous knowledge different compared to the research methods that we already know? Or are they similar? Look, so the methods, for me, go back to how we kind of approach the questions in the first place and what methods, what mapping methods, for me, it's about what mapping methods and interrogation questions we ask at the outset. So, you know, instead of say a linear journey map, who a user is going on a journey, it might be a much more messy and creative process in that moment. And we might be asking people to go back thousands of years and respect what that ancestral knowledge is saying as much as what is being said last year or the year before. But it also might be something more deep where we might take people through a process from an indigenous knowledge perspective where we're asking them to respect the patterns that are emerging in that mapping as much as the content that's emerging. So the actual visual patterns, the visual forms and stuff that's emerging. And we might be letting that speak back to us as valid knowledge production as much as the facts, the data that's coming out of it. And so we take people through what's called yarning sessions. A yarning circle or a talking circle is an indigenous version of a kind of respectful deep dialogue. And when we add sort of patent thinking and visual patent thinking to that, we're putting cards and images in the middle of that circle and we're letting the overall form of those patterns speak back to us. So maybe a person running turns up in the total form that we're seeing. What does that mean? Why is that person running? Can you turn over the card on the front foot? What does the card on the front foot say? Oh, it says that we should be doing this. Well, how do we feel about that? So that more relational layered way of producing knowledge is how indigenous knowledge would contribute to service design questions right at the start. And it's really interesting because I think if I look back at my career in the last 12, 13 years of service design, it was really hard to prove the value of that kind of knowledge. Like you feel it's there, everybody feels it's there. We all get the tingles, don't we? Exactly. You can sort of point it, but it's then really hard, at least it was for us to put it into commercial projects. Yeah. And so look, all of this can start to sound really kind of whimsical and magical and all these sorts of things. But actually, all that indigenous knowledge is saying about this is, and this connects to systemic view, is we live in a visual and relational world where everything is interconnected. And neuroscience is telling us this now anyway. So it's catching up with indigenous knowledge. Therefore, if we live in a visual and relational world, visual and relational patterns will emerge if we just find the right way to read those patterns. And it's, what I'm understanding, it's also about accepting that this kind of knowledge is valid knowledge is as valuable as scientific data or. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So the two come together and, you know, we've heard about the sciences and the arts going through this and or even just the science and humanities and artists embedding themselves in scientific labs and stuff to give creative and artistic responses. Now, the ones that are really valid and listened to is when those artistic and creative responses are treated as, that's some really valid knowledge production there that we scientists need to listen to. And the same goes for indigenous knowledge. Indigenous people across the world are being embedded into departments and service areas and design companies and big business to offer that lens that because we have 500 years of modernity on our shoulders, we just can't, we meaning we sort of modern people can't just can't see. As with the question about systemic view, if people are interested by this, want to learn more, are there any resources that you would recommend? Yeah. So certainly the website that I mentioned before, I think if you just Google's systemic design guide, but just on that systemic do not in relation to the indigenous knowledge part of a systemic view. Hold on, I've just lost my own little thing here. Let me get that up. Here I am. In relation to systemic view of life, there's a book. In fact, I've got it here. Yeah, sure. No, I don't. And I'm messing with you. Somewhere, but it'll take too long. Free Caprof. Anyway, there's a book called the systemic view of life, which is a good textbook starter that outlines the history of how this this kind of tension unfolded and the future of how these new disciplines, whether it's ecology in environmental sciences or systemic thinking or many others come together in a coalescing as we go forward. I'll try to link to the book. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Let's move into the third and final topic. And it's just one word here on this paper, but I'm sure there's a whole world behind it. It's universal. Shit. You've picked the easy topics. What is the universal? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can. All right. Let's try. What if? All right. What if? What? What if universal design just doesn't exist? What is your, what is your perspective on universal design? Well, it is a thing. I've actually got another book here and a really famous book that is called universal design. And in many ways, universal design is trying to achieve like a simple thing around, say, you know, accessibility for the most amount of people. So if we're designing services for disabled people, if we're designing a bus stop. Standards. Yes. The most optimum universal standards that meet the needs of the most amount of people. And that's a fair, that's a fair ambition. That's fine. But it very quickly kind of lends itself towards kind of setting in place standards. As you said, modern version of man, modern measurements of man based on a hubris, based on a worldview and agenda from somebody at some point in time. Sure. You know, so those modern measurements of man are based on modern white European males. And there's all kinds of issues around that. You know, data and user experiences and the digital realm are based on perceptions that come out of Silicon Valley by young white males who, who, you know, often can't do their own laundry. And so, you know, there's these kind of universal conceptions that are imposed across the world. And it's almost like a neo colonialism. It's a new colonialism opposed through digital artifacts, through digital technologies. And so what if, what if it's just universal design is just not the way to think about it? What if, and then the other part of the thing about this is what if we never went down that road? What if modernity never did try and universalize and did try and export knowledge everywhere across the world? So what's the alternative? What's the alternative? Well, plural worldviews. So plurality, like literally a plural reverse is the alternative. And, you know, I didn't make up that term. There's plenty of people to think about it. So what if, what if we were living in a plural reverse, not not not in that conspiracy theory of plural reverse, but what if different worlds across this globe were in different worlds in different moments in time conducting their going about their life in their own ways and never had colonialism or modernity imposed on them? What would the vastly different services and ways of being look like if that occurred? Well, and it's all it that's how reality looks like the world is different everywhere. It is. Well, is it but is to what extent is it different? Yeah, that's the question to what extent, right? And your your take is that we should try to be less the same or more true to our local selves? Question, Mark? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we should we are we should have autonomy. And modernity and colonialism took away autonomy. And by the way, there's another book. There's an author called Arturo Escobar. And he has recently very heavily started to get involved in the critical design field. He's not a designer. He's an anthropologist. But he's written a book for called designs for the pluriverse. And he he kind of takes a look from the outside in at our world, not just only service design, but, you know, design futures and speculative design and critical design and social design and all of these different movements, but also indigenous and vernacular design. And he makes an argument for that that kind of plurality, what does autonomous design in place in a territory look like that's not inhibited by designs elsewhere? I'm trying to to see what has caused this. Well, let's call it colonization. And how do how do we go? Can we go back? And if so, how I can imagine that a lot of has been driven by commerce by the market, like it's easier to scale. That's not going away like tomorrow. Well, is it not? But, you know, there's been a pretty serious rupture in society at present time called the coronavirus for those watching this in five years. Yeah. Yeah. Good ambitions, 20 years. Yes. And so we'll see what happens on the other side. But I think we're going to see radically different versions of economies across the globe. And we're going to see out. We're going to see sort of people taking different directions as well. Whole society is taking entirely different directions. And also see because of sort of technologies and technological evolution over the next few decades, we're going to see the haves and the have nots and a big spectrum in between. And that gap's going to get wider and wider and wider. And we're going to see all kinds of different informal economies that are not based on economic growth and productivism. We're going to see circular economies really pick up. And we may see whole societies, whole nation states that otherwise seem like normal neo-liberal nation states actually transition to something radically different. You know, we know that the northern European countries around where you're at is sort of more of that social democracy. And but where will that go if that continues down that road? Will that be something radically different? So I guess what I'm trying to say is this is not going to communism or going to Marxism or going to socialism. There's a politics emerging that we don't even know how to define yet. And I think over the next 20 years, we're going to see that emerge. And we're going to then have to adapt services to that. The other thing we're going to see, of course, is because of climate change, we're going to see people moving on unprecedented scales. You know, millions and millions and millions of people over the next 30 years are going to have to get up and get out of the way of climate disasters. Now we're going to have to provide in order for that to be convivial for it to be prefigured for it to be pleasant enough where it's just not totally traumatic for those people or just a crisis. We're going to have to plan for that. We're going to have to do good service design to plan that out over time. And in order to really conceive and speculate how that's going to go down and start to plan for it now, we have to see long term and think long term. Unfortunately, we can't think long term because a part of sort of modernity in our worldview is to think really short term. So to deal with these pressing issues that are going forward, we urgently need to deal with our worldview in order to be able to even map them out with any warranted amount of complexity. That's maybe the summary or the call to action from this episode. At least have investigate your existing worldview and it might be interesting to explore different worldviews, right? Yes. Is there a question that you'd like to ask the people who are listening or watching the episode? Look, I think that the question for people watching the episode is what are you creating and what are you destroying? And how are you justifying that value judgment in what you do in your service design practice and in what you do in life as well. How do you make the trade off? It would be interesting if people even think about it, but we'll see. We'll see what happens in the comments. Yeah. If people want to continue this conversation with you, what's the best way to get in touch? Just go via my website, relativecreative.com.au and you'll find Tristan at relativecreative.com.au there and you're welcome to reach out anytime. Please do, everybody listening and watching to the 101st episode of the show. Tristan, thanks so much for sharing what's on your mind these days. I hope that it inspired a lot of people. We'll see how many comments and reactions you get. All right. Sounds good. So coming back to Tristan's question, how do you make the trade off between the value that you're creating and maybe the thing that you're destroying? How are you doing that? Are you doing it consciously and do you have some kind of formula? Let us know down below in the comments. If you enjoyed this episode, grab the link and share it with somebody who might find it interesting as well. That way you'll help to grow the service design show community and that helps me to invite more inspiring guests like Tristan here on the show for you. If you want to stick around and see more inspiring guests like Tristan that help to level up your service design skills, check out this video because we're going to continue over there. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video.