 In this episode we'll be talking about what it means to be a chief design officer, we'll be talking about design as activism and finally, cities that are driven by citizens. And here is the guest of this episode. Hi, I'm Anne and this is the Service Design Show. Hi all, my name is Mark Vultijn and welcome to the Service Design Show. If you want to create more impact and change the world for the better as a service designer, then you've come to the right place. Because on this show, you get the chance to learn from the success of some of the world's best service designers. We cover topics ranging from design thinking and customer experience to organizational change and creative leadership. If these are the topics you're interested in, be sure to know that we bring a brand new episode every two weeks on Thursday. So if you haven't done it already, click that subscribe button. My guest in this episode is Anne Stenros. Anne is the chief design officer for the city of Helsinki and she's been a creative catalyst basically for her whole career. In the next 25 minutes or so, Anne will be talking about three topics. What does it mean to be a chief design officer? What if design was activism and finally, what if cities would be run by citizens? If you prefer to listen to a podcast version of this episode, head over to servicedesignshow.com. But remember, here on YouTube you'll find content that isn't posted as a podcast. That was it for this introduction and now let's jump straight into the interview with Anne. Welcome to the show, Anne. Thank you. Very happy to have the first chief design officer I think in the 36 or 37 episodes we did. So very happy to have you here. My first question that I ask all the guests on the show is, do you remember when you first got in touch with service design or maybe in your role with design in general? So how did you end up here? Well, sorry to say, but I was born with design in my blood. My mom sees a very famous thing as a furniture designer and my father is an architect. So I was born and raised around design. So I couldn't discape that. You were lucky in that sense. Yeah. And where on the service design show do you, is there a moment that you can remember that you heard about service design specifically? I think it was several years ago when I was still at Kone as a design director there. And then I heard the first time about service design. And first service was at that time half of the business of Kone, namely the business of elevator and escalators. So it was very natural to get interested in that. So even for a company that produces elevators and escalators, 50% of their business was services. Yeah, and I think today it's 60 or even more because it's growing very fast. Interesting. And as with all the episodes we've done so far, we're doing the co-creation format with the questions and you've sent me a few topics that are on your mind and I've sent you a few question starters and we'll just co-create the questions for the next 20-25 minutes. Are you ready? Okay, yes. There we go. And we start with the question or the topic that I find interesting. And this is the chief design officer. Do we have a question starter that goes along with this one? All right. My question is why? Why do you have a chief design officer? And I think it's an interesting opening that the city of Helsinki that they created this job actually. First in the world probably, I think. At least there are not too many colleagues in this game. Sorry to say and welcome everyone who will point the crowd, but why is the question that why the city itself that they see that they need something like a chief design officer. Now, a few months ago I read from internet. I think it was Steve Bosnia who said that every company will need in the future chief disruption officer. And I thought that this is exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do a very disruptive innovation within the organization. And I think that's exactly what could be the benefit of the designer to join a city organization. So could you take us back to the moment where somebody in the city of Helsinki thought, well, you know what we need? We need the chief design officer. What was the process? It's a long journey because at 2000 Helsinki was the EU capital of culture and then the design was very much on the focus of all the cultural activities. And after that Helsinki got this work design capital nomination and I think that was 2012. And after that they started to think about naturally what is the next step on that plane and then they decided that they would need a chief design officer. But probably it was me myself who actually sold the idea for them without knowing that this will be my destiny because three years ago I was talking a lot publicly about the emerging tendency that the companies are hiring chief design officers and what could be the benefit out of that. So they listened to me very carefully. And I'm really interested in how is the chief design officer structured within the city? So do you have a team or a department or is everybody a designer? How does it work? Well, I have been only one year in this position now or in this role and it's still working progress because within two years time I should figure out what is the proper role for chief design officer and also what would be the proper place for that in the organization. There has been a very strong structural transformation within the Helsinki city organization. So that's why this is now only a project. But as I said, one or part of my job is to find out what is the proper place for that. At the moment I'm sitting in the strategic department and I think it's quite a good place because I can influence really all the strategic issues that the city is dealing with. So it's very high in the hierarchy. And could you give an example of a challenge or a project that you are involved with? Last year the city of Helsinki was planning the next four year strategy plan. And I participated that with a special project, an independent project, namely Scenario planning. So we did four Scanners for Helsinki and based on those we ran over 10 workshops among the 250 city leaders. And we co-created the vision for the coming strategy. And I think it was first time that people really felt engaged to the future because they were very happy about the discussions that we had. Because it was mostly a strategic discussion, value-based discussion and also a future-orientated discussion. You've been doing this for a year, you said. What is your biggest lesson from the last 12 months? What have you learned? Well, people many times they ask me what's the biggest difference comparing my previous life in business. And I think that if I think now, I think that people are the same. You will find good people in any organization that help you to accomplish what you want to do and vice versa too. But I think that the clock speed is completely different in business and in public organization. That's for sure one thing. Business is faster. By all means it's much more faster. And there is always this kind of sense of urgency. It's very complicated to create this sense of urgency for change in this city organization. Or at least it's far more difficult. And then on the other hand in business it's usually very focused. So you deep dive into one business area and you have a lot of knowledge, in-depth knowledge. But in the scale of city when I'm dealing with strategic issues there is everything from babies to grandpas. So it's very complex. It's very wide. It's more like horizontal thinking than vertical thinking. So you have to have a lot of patience when being a chief design officer at a city. I think that's not my strength. So I'm always trying to remind myself that keep going baby steps only. Where do you hope to leave the city of Helsinki with three or five years? What do you hope the chief design officer... Well of course I can't do it by myself as I said. It's 40,000 people working for the city of Helsinki. 600,000 citizens. But what I love to do is actually to get this development in the future. More citizen driven. That's my dream. Get people involved, get citizens involved and open up the organization so that there is an authentic dialogue with citizens. Whatever the issue could be. I guess that's quite scary for government organizations. Well, I think that Helsinki has taken already steps towards that. I think it's more on the side of citizens that easily you can get elderly people, retired people to participate into the discussion in local events, etc. But where are all the young people involved? Or people with families, little children. They don't have too much time for that. So probably we need different tools for different generations or different groups of people. Let's move on to the second topic. Otherwise the time will be over before we're done. And I think this one also relates to what you're already talking about. And the second topic is called design as activism. Do we have a question starter? That's my favorite. Sorry, how can we? How can we... Well, that probably. So the question would be how can we use design as an activism? Yeah, I think that we all have noticed that we are living strange times. Everything is under constant change. And not even under constant change, under constant transformation. There is so much going on in the world now. And when I participated in one of these service experience camps last year that was in Berlin, I was invited as a keynote there. So one of the young service designers actually explained me. He said that service design is always a political act. Interesting. And that was quite strange for a person of my generation because I still remember my early years at the university as a freshman in architecture and nobody was talking about politics. And ever since, I mean, not any creative people in my background they really have not discussed about politics or even mentioned it. And then in the same event, one service designer, he said to me in the dinner that I'm going to politics next year and I thought, oh my goodness. Maybe it was just by coincidence but I think that these young service designers they feel that they want to do something. It's not enough that they complain about the bad things but they really want to act. They want to do something. And I think this is very refreshing in my mind. Of course I rather see that they do things for good than for bad but basically I think that since Victor Papa next time we haven't really discussed about this kind of design activism in our discipline. And I think it's very helpful to understand that really whatever you do related to design or service design but basically in design you are touching the people's lives and that's why it is a political act. And in that sense it's a political act. Should we be adapting design education to address this more or make people make future designers more aware of this or should we just let it go and develop naturally? Well basically I'm very non-political first because I'm interested in more, maybe the other issues but I think that it should be very healthy at least to have this discussion with young designers because they will face this when they go to the brook life and the other thing is here that we really should address whatever we do, the grand challenges because if we think about urbanization for example and all the environmental issues so I think that there are so severe and complex issues that we really need all the smart minds and all the creative people to join the forces to solve them and that's why I think it's important that we have this value discussion what are the values that we stand for? And I participated just recently an EU forum, namely Responsible Research and Innovation Workshop and I was so surprised when quite many people there were talking about our planetary boundaries and also that the planet should be as a defining framework what kind of research or innovation we are actually doing and I'm more and more towards this kind of thinking that do we really dare to touch the universe in that respect so I think that we are facing as I said these big challenges and somehow we have to make up our minds are we going to settle them or are we just leaving them up there so that's why I think that this kind of design as a tool for activism could be one of the approaches for those challenges What inspires you the most regarding these topics? Do you see any good examples? Yeah, did it give you hope? Well, I think that usually when you discuss with young designers they are very aware of the issues but somehow I can't see that much this kind of enthusiasm to face the challenges among the more seasoned designers Why is that? They are boiling businesses and they have so many other focus areas but I think that I really do hope that we keep this discussion alive so that we also involve more and more people into this discussion and my worry is also that when we have these conferences, seminars, workshops it's always about two old people in my mind Who attends? Perspective, I mean that we need more young people there to challenge also our thinking questioning our status quo What is the design? Every single time that I get an invitation to those forums where there are young people I come back home with new first ideas inspired so I need that energy to sort of challenge also my ideas because then I have to look at the mirror and face sort of the next generation and the future in a very concrete way I think it's important to be professional In that sense as designers we always have to be aware that we are probably designing for a different generation than ourselves in a lot of cases And also like a very famous scientist Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once said that doubt is essential we need to know for sure so there's always room for doubt So I'm not a person to tell what is the best thing or what is the right thing I have always my doubts and I think that it's important that you keep yourself your mind open to that doubt because then you keep possibility for the future And I guess we've built a culture in a lot of areas around the world that evolve around experts and experts don't doubt Well, it's good to see that changing I want to move toward the third topic and it has to do with the first one I guess maybe even the second one and this one the third topic is called the next city or citizen Okay and I asked what if Could you explain what if What if the next city is completely you know run by citizens completely controlled by citizens What is the role of the city organization after that I think it's a very proper question because we are going more and more towards this open covenants I think that people are involved into the decision making and into the dialogue and discussion and I think that if we go very far to that direction it means that we are talking about civic city so that the citizens are really the essence of the city itself and lately I have been thinking about when we talk so much about the smart city well everybody is talking about smart city and smart city here and smart city there but I read a very nice article somebody said that I'm so bored of smart city give us something next and then he proposed the idea of responsive city and this means that the whole focus of the city is on citizens naming so the data it's based on the data of citizens and it's based on the interaction of the citizens and by doing so eventually the citizens they have the control not the city has the control over the citizens well I guess in essence it should be the same at this moment right we've just diverted it to a smaller group of people to make the decisions but citizens don't feel as well represented by the local government as they should yeah but I think if we look at what is happening in artificial intelligence for example so how long we need a voting system or is the artificial intelligence reading based on all the data basically who is voting home see what I mean that somehow I think that we are living now the times that most of the old protocols or all the processes or approaches that they are becoming obsolete but we don't know what is the real next but somehow we have to prepare our mind towards the next and that's why it was so important to create these scenarios for health and have the real discussion among the city officials what is the next something so that they prepare themselves so probably a lot of these scenarios at this moment look like science fiction right there are so far away that this could or are they they are not that far away but the whole framework was based on the idea that it's around the cities and experience and the city city so how much people are willing to participate actively into the issues of the city and what are the barriers probably that we have to break down and we also have to understand that not all citizens are that active probably there are some who are more active and some who are not that active but we also have to support different lifestyles that respect and respect the different lifestyles that seems like a design challenge that is so complex I wouldn't know where to start what do you see as a first step towards that civic city well I think that the first thing is to start this dialogue discussion really with citizens and we have done great progress at the city of Helsinki we have a local platforms to have the discussion we have the city level platforms and we are setting up more and more labs and hubs that are also platforms for this discussion with small and medium medium-sized start-up businesses so I think it's important that you have different platforms and then of course there has to be transparency and openness in the action so you have to communicate a lot what you do as a city yeah and I think that nobody has really good tools for that but hopefully in the future we have better tools we are working what has surprised you the most within this journey towards this civic city so far I think that this passion that is coming from people this autumn up passion that if you just give a little bit of freedom all kind of flowers are blooming I don't know where it comes from but especially here in Finland also we have a long, dark wintertime but there are already very good examples that you give a little bit freedom and possibilities for people and they start to build upon on that and I think this is the best thing that you can do that you are enabling people to build their dreams rather than you are pushing your own designer for them so I think there is a big difference and in that respect I try to sort of understand what could be the first baby steps for this direction that there is this real authentic voice of people citizens rather than me telling them what is best for them and then they say yes it's nothing like that Interesting, I'll make sure to interview you in 3 or 4 years and see how far you've come with these baby steps Don't wait that long I think that after a year I will be more mature Alright I promise That's a good challenge We'll be back in a year I also promise you that you will get a chance to ask a question for the people who are listening to this episode or watching it online Is there something you'd like to ask them? Well yes, this question for the audience I would ask that what is your purpose as a service designer what is your passion for? So what is your purpose and passion as a service designer? Yeah, as a service designer I think it's today a key question especially when I said that we are facing this grand challenge The only way that how you can survive professionally in my mind is that you have to have a kind of passion behind whatever you do means that you have a certain purpose perspective where you are heading it if you can't name it but at least you have the direction or I'm asking for what is your direction? Leave the comments on the video and on the podcast I'm really curious what people will answer Thank you very much for your time it was interesting to hear and we'll get back to you in a year time see how far you've come so again thanks for sharing your thoughts and ideas It was my pleasure, thank you And now we're going to wrap up this episode So what is your biggest takeaway from this episode? Show your thoughts and ideas down below in the comments If you'd like to learn more check out some of the best episodes or head over to learn.servicedesignshow.com where you'll find courses and leading service design experts that dig deeper into the topics we discuss here on the show I'll see you in two weeks time with a brand new episode Thanks for watching and see you then