 For the next 30 minutes or so, we'll be talking about topics like does service design exist in greater China? How do we transform or reinvent design methodologies to fit the Asian culture? And finally, we'll talk about the differences and similarities between service design and business design. I'm Elaine En and this is the Service Design Show. I'm Mark van Tijn. Welcome to you two weekly bursts of inspiration where you get to learn what some of the world's best service designers are currently doing. We talk about the current state of the field, exciting new developments, and the challenges that are up ahead. The Service Design Show is all about helping you to become a better service designer so you can make a bigger impact on the world around us. We bring you a new episode every two weeks on Thursday, so if you haven't done that already, be sure to subscribe. My guest in this episode is Elaine En. Elaine is the founder of a consultancy company called Kaiser Innovation that helps Western companies figure out the China market. Elaine has a strong interest in the traditional Chinese culture and uses that to reinvent design methodologies to fit the Asian market. Elaine is also running the IXDA community in Hong Kong, so she has a strong background within this field. Welcome to the show, Elaine. Thank you, Mark. Elaine, it's a pleasure to have you here, and like I said in our chat before, I'm really happy to have more guests from Asia, so I'm really excited for our chat. Elaine. Thank you, me too. I'm really curious. Service design is quite new in Asia, but I'm so curious. Where did you learn about service design? What is the first time that you heard about the topic? I actually grew up from Hong Kong, and I lived in the U.S. for 12 years in the 90s, so I actually saw this whole industry develop. I think service design, the name didn't really surface until maybe six to eight years ago, but I was enjoying user experience, and before that it was called interaction design, and before that it was called user interface. So I was involved in the whole development of this industry, and now it's service design, so it's really the channels and mediums that have changed. And do you remember? So I've learned it. Do you remember that did you read about it somewhere or did someone point you on the topic? Where did you meet with the term service design? I think it really came about from the U.K., maybe six, eight years ago the term came up, because I think that's where service design really developed. Because U.K. is never not doing manufacturing anymore and not doing a low level service job, so the industry has kind of have to move up for a higher value chain kind of design. Elaine, you've set me three topics that are really interesting, and I've sent you a few question starters that you have near, and we'll go ahead and co-create the questions for the show for the next 20 minutes, right? Are you ready? Yep. So let me pick the first topic of this episode, and it's already one I think that's really dear to your heart, and it's called service design in Greater China. Do we have a question starter that goes with this one? Can you hold it up? It's what if. What if service design is in Greater China? Isn't service design in Greater China already? I would say yes it is, but I think a lot of differences when service design is applied in mainland China or Greater China. Yeah, and the reason is because I have lived in the U.S. for 12 years, so I know how it's done over there, and coming back for 14 years and running my own business to help Western companies over here, I noticed that certain things are very different. Explain what is the biggest difference? I would say that in Chinese culture, this whole hierarchy in organizations like boss, manager, there is a hierarchical order of command, chain of command, that I think service design and innovation needs to happen in a flat culture, relatively, because what happens is if you as a consultant, if you work with middle management and middle management is never talking to top management at the same time, so you can be working in months and then suddenly be surprised. So the whole co-creation part of that we hold there as service design community is really a challenge? It is to a certain extent a challenge, but we've innovated certain methodologies to overcome that. Can you give an example? Okay, for example, I think in a hierarchical culture, of course it depends on the type of business. If it's more of a traditional manufacturing business, that would be very different from an internet business, which are composed of younger people, but let's say we worked on the post office project, which is more governmental and more traditional management culture, usually the top management would only come into the meetings for like 20 minutes or would open the show and then they'll go away and let the operational middle management people work with you, but because it's a very confusion talk down culture that middle management always looks up to the top management for decision making. And sometimes they are guessing what the boss wants or they will choose methods, choose solutions that are less risk-taking or less like shaking the bone. So sometimes like at the end of the day when the top management sees that there'll be a huge discrepancy, you know what I mean? It's what we've experienced sometimes. The nice part about this is I think this also happens in the West, but maybe not as exaggerated. Did you find that you said you've innovated as methodologies and then do things differently? Did you find some sort of solution or how do you cope with this? Because I think if we can learn from you, we can take some things back to the West because this also happens here. Sure. Is that the second question or? Do we? No, it's still the same and now it's still the same, but I... Okay, for example in a co-creation like workshop, everybody has equal voice, right? Yeah. If you have a room full of executives and some are in management positions or who is the boss and some are in operations, the people in operations will tend to be very quiet or they do not want to say something that will get them fired. So we've kind of come up with a method called anonymous postsets, meaning we'll have them, all of them write it down, we'll mix them all up, we'll post it on the wall, nobody knows who said what. Okay, yeah, and then we'll get people to randomly talk about instead of saying who said this thing or who said that thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody knows. And does it work? Does it help? Yes, definitely, I think. So people feel like they can voice it and also they're not pinpointed like who said what. So as long as the feedback comes out, but people are not like put on the spot. If you just say, oh, can you tell us what you think that people will feel that they're put on the spot and they don't want to put on the spotlight so much. I think in the Chinese culture, culturally, people like to be more conformist because it's a collectivism culture instead of individualism. People would like to get along, be part of the group. Even if they voice something, they want to voice it in a very smooth way. So they're not challenging issues directly and pinpointing a person. People would take it very personally if you say, I don't like your idea, which I think happens in some Western cultures. Yeah. And people don't take it personally, as personally. But I think this is so recognizable also in our projects, like I said, and maybe not in so much in an exaggerated way. But I think this is why we do these episodes because I think we can learn so much from what happens in a Chinese culture and transfer the interest in bits from that to here. But we're already diving into the second topic. So I'll hold it up and let's continue with this one. And this one is already called design innovation methodologies. Yes. So I have how far, meaning how far apart or how much difference is there between design methodologies, you know, in the West and in like Greatest China, for example. I think yeah, because you learn the methodologies in the US, right? So what is your take? How far, how far are they apart? I think in some ways, certain methodologies are quite far to the age group you're talking to in China, for example. For example, in the West, when we go to do like user research to understand the user needs, a lot of times, especially for American companies, we need to sign NDAs upfront before we tell the user. And we also need to tell the user upfront that they are going to be videotaped. And do they agree with this, right? So all the legal stuff needs to be taken care of up front. However, what we discovered is, I think in China, because people's trust is less based on the law, but based on people. The reason why they will let you in the home. Relationships, yeah. It's all about the relationship. It's not about the company. It doesn't matter if I'm working for this this is this large company. It's more about like if I'm this person's like classmate or family member. So the trust and the people. So if you have them sign, try to get them to sign like a five-page NDA, they're just going to freak out. And not even agree with the interview. Yeah. So what we've invented is something called a one-liner NDA. So what we do is we build the rapport, we go to people's homes, we talk to them, and it's only after we see that they're comfortable and they trust us at the very end of the interview or home visit. We take out this one NDA, which has two parts. One part is the user agrees, the company agrees to keep this information confidential. And then the second part is the user agrees to keep this information confidential. And we do it in the reverse way. We say our company, our client doesn't want to let your stuff go public. And at the same time, we wish that you would also keep it confidential. So it's like a reciprocal relationship, which is what Chinese people are much more used to. So it's not like a one-way street. And because it's online, it's simple to read. Yeah, people would say yes, usually after that. Again, I'm sort of repeating myself throughout this episode, but this is the empathy part that's so important within the service design field. And from what I'm hearing from you, it's much more important even in China than maybe in the West. Yes, yes. I think in the West, it's like, for example, empathy is seen as us using this methodology to study users. So user loss subject matters. You don't have a personal relationship with them, and you don't keep in touch with them. However, in China, it's like the opposite. Sometimes if we go to people's homes, it's actually better in some cases, depending on the target group, to bring them little presence instead of cold cash. And sometimes we need to go through a network of friends and family, and a super extended network, which we have to get the right people instead of cold calling a random database of people. And I guess this is also recognizable. There's noble methodology. I think a lot of service designers are familiar with that. You start with the first circle of people around you, and then you work your way through to interesting candidates instead of cold calling 200 people. And also because in China, the whole China is using WeChat right now. We chat the messaging thing. So each group in WeChat has a few hundred people. You don't see it on WhatsApp or Facebook messaging. So once it has a few hundred people, we can easily send out the recruitment and be able to gather people from all different classes of people. That's like your first circle of it's your network that helps you to get the right people for research, right? Everybody has different groups. For example, in the design community, we might have a group that has service design, or use experience design, or certain people. So there are many, many different groups. And in each group, there are already a few hundred people. So we'll have to send it to different groups to get the right, yeah. Or send it all in one moment. So the question that comes to my mind is you have experience with these methodologies from your own practice, but is there some sort of online resource, a website, or Facebook group, or anything where people can learn more about these methods that are used in greater China? I actually have written an article a long time ago, and it's in a book on Amazon right now. So it's in the internationalization chapter, and it's called Cultural Differences in Ethnographic Research Methodologies in China. So I highlighted why there is this difference, because our culture is fundamentally different. And the West, it came from Plato, Aristotle, and China came from Confucius, right? And the West is more about individualism. And China is very much about collectivism and harmony instead of sticking out and having your own opinion. So this is so fundamental in the way people interact and who to trust. For example, even companies like Airbnb, which is based on the model of sharing economy, which is based on the whole idea that everybody is in a community, right? But the Chinese fabric of trust is based on friends and family. And there's also a concept of in-group and out-group. So people are actually uncomfortable leasing their apartment to a total stranger. Yeah, we base our trust based on the number of reviews that are on Airbnb, right? That's the way we take the trust these days. But I think for Chinese people, if you're in the out-group and you're not part of friends and family, they're like, why should I let you stay in my place? But if they trust you and you're part of the friends and family, they'll be like, then why should I charge you? You know what I'm saying? So the whole sharing economy model is based on, I think maybe the Western culture was developed in the past a long time ago, like the church community. Church communities, it came out from that lineage. And people have more trust in strangers and also trust in the law. But Chinese culture, the whole unit is about the family. We have 100 last names, the Chan, the Li, that's how it came about. So people trust their own family, not necessarily even organizations, I think. Way too interesting a topic to actually move on. But we have to move on, Elaine. Let's move on to the third topic you pointed me to. And it's called service design versus business design. And I think this is also very relevant to us. So why? Yeah, so my question is why service design versus business design? I think the word service design, sometimes it's a little honed on to just service, but actually in an ecosystem of solution, there could be service, there could be hardware products, there could be software products, there could be mobile apps. It's really a whole big experiential design. And also, I think especially in Asia and in China, when you talk about service design, it's not possible, I think, to just design a service and not change the business structure, operations and culture, which means that we must have top down buy-in, we must have the CEO get into this. And all the concepts of design needs to be implemented and bought in by the entire company to make it work. Yeah. I think that's not very different from what I've been experiencing in our projects here. But why did you raise this topic? Why is it specifically interesting to you at this moment? Okay, for example, I think in the West, consultants are viewed as experts, where the bosses would listen to the consultant's opinion as an outsider. I think in Asia or specifically in Hong Kong and mainland China, it's slightly different. What actually works better is if you are the professor or the teacher, a consultant can be viewed as a vendor. And so the attitude is the vendor executes and the boss is actually on the client side. But if you are a professor or a teacher, you have a higher hierarchical standing. Right. Your position is different. And I think that's why in Hong Kong and China, we do training. We do it in that way so that the ideas can get implemented afterwards and people have much more respect. So for instance, do you position your own business as an innovation consultancy or as a design studio or as a trading education facility? How do you position yourself? For Western companies, we are a consultancy. For Western companies. And we help them figure out the China market. Chinese users help them figure out the product market, fit the strategy. But in Hong Kong and China, we're positioned differently. We position ourselves as an innovation training company. The reason is also because if you talk about, first, people don't understand what service design is. When people think about service, you think of the waiters in restaurants or hospitality people in hotels. That's what they consider service. Secondly, the word, for example, design thinking is super confusing to people. I think culturally, people think design is about styling. It's about fashion design. It's about interior design. So if we use that word, it's just super confusing. Plus thinking and not doing, it's even more confusing. So we have to return things. The work that I like is, we would say it's actually user or customer-centric innovation. And that includes service. And that includes products and service design. Because people need to see results. They want a term that leads, because in businesses, they understand customer. They actually might not understand user and they might not understand the word design. But innovations are definitely buy-in. So yeah. So in my company, we never call ourselves a design firm because that completely puts us in the wrong place. It's always about innovation. Customer-driven, customer-centric innovation. Yes, because if we say design, people immediately think, oh, you do website design. Or you do graphic design. We're completely not on the same page. Yeah. Well, I guess, again, this is an issue that has been raised all over the world, if I listen carefully to all of my guests. But that's sort of the baggage that design has put on itself right now. Yeah, design is a very confusing word, because it's both a noun and a verb, right? Anything is designed. Yeah. So I think we have to look at it from the business people's perspective. Plus, if you think about businesses, they are designing their businesses. Yeah. Whether they hire us or not. So Elaine, moving on to my final question in this episode is, what is the question that keeps you awake at this moment? So what is the question, for instance, you would like to ask the people watching this episode? Okay. The question that I like people to think about is, if companies are interested in Asia, especially China, because the market is so large, the population is 4.5 times the U.S. And I think a lot of people might not know that companies like Alibaba, their one-day sale equals to the entire United States' Christmas sales. And WeChat is already 600 million users with 100 million outside of China. 600 million is the size of two United States. So people might not even be aware of that. And if they are aware, then that means a lot of the economic activities that's happening over here, then we as designs have to really understand, look, so how do we design for consumers over here? Are they different? Even the methodologies, do we have to adapt it or reinvent it so that we can get better results or get better insights from it to innovate new services or businesses over here? So how would you summarize your question? I would say think about how innovation or design, service design methodologies works in different cultures. I'm most familiar with China, but even for South America or different cultures, how is it different? Yeah, super interesting. I'm curious what people put your ideas in the comments of this episode. So let's see what people think about it. Elaine, thanks. It was really inspiring and I hope to have many more guests from Asia on the show. It's really interesting. Thanks again for your time. Thank you, Mark. What are your thoughts about the topic we've just discussed with Elaine? What do you think is needed to redesign design methodologies to better fit the Asian culture? Share your thoughts in the comments. The service design show is all about helping you to become a better service designer by sharing real life stories from people that are currently shaping the field. If this is your first time here and you would like to see more interviews with service design pioneers, be sure to check out some of the past episodes and if you haven't done that already, click that subscribe button. I'll see you in two weeks time for a new episode featuring Muna Aldaba who will be talking about customer happiness projects. Make sure you don't miss that one. For now, thanks for watching.